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Matches in Ghent University Academic Bibliography for { ?s <http://schema.org/abstract> ?o. }

• 01GMACJZ6J591VWEMRCSX89SDH abstract "Implementation of five-phase machines in electric drive systems is increasing rapidly in many applications. This is owed to the advantages offered by the multi-phase machines over the three-phase ones. However, there are inevitable challenges in the system control in order to obtain the optimum high performance. In the current study, the behavior of five-phase Synchronous Reluctance Motor (SynRM) under two current vector control strategies has been studied and compared. The first control method is based on maintaining the d-axis current at a constant predetermined value while the second adopts maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) control strategy. The drive system is modelled and simulated under different operating conditions including changing load and reference speed. The obtained results showed a general superiority of the MTPA technique in most conditions, while the constant d-axis current control strategy shows slightly better behavior in some cases.".
• 01GMAETX5071Z7MH0DB8BR1NQ9 abstract "In this paper, we propose a methodology to accurately evaluate and compare the performance of efficient neural network building blocks for computer vision in a hardware-aware manner. Our comparison uses pareto fronts based on randomly sampled networks from a design space to capture the underlying accuracy/complexity trade-offs. We show that our approach enables matching of information obtained by previous comparison paradigms, but provides more insights into the relationship between hardware cost and accuracy. We use our methodology to analyze different building blocks and evaluate their performance on a range of embedded hardware platforms. This highlights the importance of benchmarking building blocks as a preselection step in the design process of a neural network. We show that choosing the right building block can speed up inference by up to a factor of two on specific hardware ML accelerators.".
• 01GMAEYPVY1WATQPCST2Z3041R abstract "The present article discusses Torquato Tasso’s (1544-1595) representation of leadership in the ‘Gerusalemme liberata’ (1581), which recounts the Christian army’s conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade (1095-1099). More specifically, this article focuses on pagan leadership, taking into account the Renaissance idea about the perfect prince and captain on the one hand, as Cinquecento intellectuals were attempting to shape the ideal Christian captain, and on the other hand Tasso’s use of historiography. Through a comparison with William of Tyre’s (ca. 1130-1186) ‘Historia belli sacri’ (1170-1184), one of Tasso’s principal sources on the First Crusade, this article shows how Tasso manipulates the Historia in creating characters of leaders. From this new thematic angle, the article confirms the analysis of the complex character of Solimano, Sultan of Nicea, considering a particular aspect, i.e. his leadership. The article aims to demonstrate that Tasso distinguishes between ‘oriental tyrants’ and Solimano, adding heroic traits to the latter and drawing distinct parallels between the ‘Soldano’ and Goffredo.".
• 01GMAF3SDPQSVKR8D3SSY7SZ27 abstract "While the standard network description of complex systems is based on quantifying the link between pairs of system units, higher-order interactions (HOIs) involving three or more units often play a major role in governing the collective network behavior. This work introduces a new approach to quantify pairwise and HOIs for multivariate rhythmic processes interacting across multiple time scales. We define the so-called O-information rate (OIR) as a new metric to assess HOIs for multivariate time series, and present a framework to decompose the OIR into measures quantifying Granger-causal and instantaneous influences, as well as to expand all measures in the frequency domain. The framework exploits the spectral representation of vector autoregressive and state space models to assess the synergistic and redundant interaction among groups of processes, both in specific bands of interest and in the time domain after whole-band integration. Validation of the framework on simulated networks illustrates how the spectral OIR can highlight redundant and synergistic HOIs emerging at specific frequencies, which cannot be detected using time-domain measures. The applications to physiological networks described by heart period, arterial pressure and respiration variability measured in healthy subjects during a protocol of paced breathing, and to brain networks described by electrocorticographic signals acquired in an animal experiment during anesthesia, document the capability of our approach to identify informational circuits relevant to well-defined cardiovascular oscillations and brain rhythms and related to specific physiological mechanisms involving autonomic control and altered consciousness. The proposed framework allows a hierarchically-organized evaluation of time- and frequency-domain interactions in dynamic networks mapped by multivariate time series, and its high flexibility and scalability make it suitable for the investigation of networks beyond pairwise interaction...".
• 01GMAFEKEAA54GEVWFW8JT8M3J abstract " The mental lexicon is a complex cognitive system representing information about the words/concepts that one knows. Decades of psychological experiments have shown that conceptual associations across multiple, interactive cognitive levels can greatly influence word acquisition, storage, and processing. How can semantic, phonological, syntactic, and other types of conceptual associations be mapped within a coherent mathematical framework to study how the mental lexicon works? We here review cognitive multilayer networks as a promising quantitative and interpretative framework for investigating the mental lexicon. Cognitive multilayer networks can map multiple types of information at once, thus capturing how different layers of associations might co-exist within the mental lexicon and influence cognitive processing. This review starts with a gentle introduction to the structure and formalism of multilayer networks. We then discuss quantitative mechanisms of psychological phenomena that could not be observed in single-layer networks and were only unveiled by combining multiple layers of the lexicon: (i) multiplex viability highlights language kernels and facilitative effects of knowledge processing in healthy and clinical populations; (ii) multilayer community detection enables contextual meaning reconstruction depending on psycholinguistic features; (iii) layer analysis can mediate latent interactions of mediation, suppression and facilitation for lexical access. By outlining novel quantitative perspectives where multilayer networks can shed light on cognitive knowledge representations, also in next-generation brain/mind models, we discuss key limitations and promising directions for cutting-edge future research. ".
• 01GMAFGC68FFKRXGP7KFQ7NGAR abstract "O-information is an information-theoretic metric that captures the overall balance between redundant and synergistic information shared by groups of three or more variables. To complement the global assessment provided by this metric, here we propose the gradients of the O-information as low-order descriptors that can characterize how high-order effects are localized across a system of interest. We illustrate the capabilities of the proposed framework by revealing the role of specific spins in Ising models with frustration, in Ising models with three-spin interactions, and in a linear vectorial autoregressive process. We also provide an example of practical data analysis on U.S. macroeconomic data. Our theoretical and empirical analyses demonstrate the potential of these gradients to highlight the contribution of variables in forming high-order informational circuits.".
• 01GMAFNF9GX0F5J3K6BBATJ0K0 abstract " In this paper, we provide a computational account of changes in synaptic connectivity within two regions of the fronto-parietal network, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the pre-supplementary motor area, applying Dynamic Causal Models to electrocorticogram recordings from two macaque monkeys performing a problem-solving task that engages working memory, and induces time-on-task effects. We find that forward connections between the two regions increased in strength when task demands were increased, and as the experimental session progressed. Similarities in the effects of task demands and time on task allow us to interpret changes in frontal connectivity in terms of increased effort allocation that compensates cognitive fatigue. ".
• 01GMAFQ764T9GYKFD32QKDSMPN abstract " Peer review is a cornerstone of modern scientific endeavor. However, there is growing consensus that several limitations of the current peer review system, from lack of incentives to reviewers to lack of transparency, risks to undermine its benefits. Here, we introduce the PRINCIPIA (http://www.principia.network/) framework for peer-review of scientific outputs (e.g., papers, grant proposals or patents). The framework allows key players of the scientific ecosystem -- including existing publishing groups -- to create and manage peer-reviewed journals, by building a free market for reviews and publications. PRINCIPIA's referees are transparently rewarded according to their efforts and the quality of their reviews. PRINCIPIA also naturally allows to recognize the prestige of users and journals, with an intrinsic reputation system that does not depend on third-parties. PRINCIPIA re-balances the power between researchers and publishers, stimulates valuable assessments from referees, favors a fair competition between journals, and reduces the costs to access research output and to publish. ".
• 01GMAFRVCS5DZKVVDJSG71PGDK abstract "The use of diffusion MRI (dMRI) for assisting in the planning of neurosurgery has become increasingly common practice, allowing to non-invasively map white matter pathways via tractography techniques. Limitations of earlier pipelines based on the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) model have since been revealed and improvements were made possible by constrained spherical deconvolution (CSD) pipelines. CSD allows to resolve a full white matter (WM) fiber orientation distribution (FOD), which can describe so-called “crossing fibers”: complex local geometries of WM tracts, which DTI fails to model. This was found to have a profound impact on tractography results, with substantial implications for presurgical decision making and planning. More recently, CSD itself has been extended to allow for modeling of other tissue compartments in addition to the WM FOD, typically resulting in a 3-tissue CSD model. It seems likely this may improve the capability to resolve WM FODs in the presence of infiltrating tumor tissue. In this work, we evaluated the performance of 3-tissue CSD pipelines, with a focus on within-tumor tractography. We found that a technique named single-shell 3-tissue CSD (SS3T-CSD) successfully allowed tractography within infiltrating gliomas, without increasing existing single-shell dMRI acquisition requirements.".
• 01GMAFTSVRYAMRT0Q4E6KA2S1P abstract " Since interactions in neural systems occur across multiple temporal scales, it is likely that information flow will exhibit a multiscale structure, thus requiring a multiscale generalization of classical temporal precedence causality analysis like Granger's approach. However, the computation of multiscale measures of information dynamics is complicated by theoretical and practical issues such as filtering and undersampling: to overcome these problems, we propose a wavelet-based approach for multiscale Granger causality (GC) analysis, which is characterized by the following properties: (i) only the candidate driver variable is wavelet transformed (ii) the decomposition is performed using the \`a trous wavelet transform with cubic B-spline filter. We measure GC, at a given scale, by including the wavelet coefficients of the driver times series, at that scale, in the regression model of the target. To validate our method, we apply it to publicly available scalp EEG signals, and we find that the condition of closed eyes, at rest, is characterized by an enhanced GC among channels at slow scales w.r.t. eye open condition, whilst the standard Granger causality is not significantly different in the two conditions. ".
• 01GMAHZDCX0KBFFCRHJZR0BW2Q abstract "Higher education institutions (HEIs) often function in an environment where various institutional pressures force them to position themselves on a national-international orientation scale in order to gain legitimacy in the eyes of different constituents with different expectations. Empirical insights, however, on how HEIs respond to these forces and position themselves within this debate are largely lacking. Hence, this study builds on organizational identity theory and institutional theory to assess the national and international identity claims expressed by the mission statements, a dominant organizational identity narrative, of HEIs as well as institutional factors affecting the selected position. A mixed methods analysis of the mission statements of 120 US universities indicates that universities' identity claims can be classified in five categories of national claims and five of international claims. The findings suggest that institutional forces affect the position of universities on the national/international continuum but that universities' attempts to reconcile these pressures are much more refined than expected as universities try to strike a subtle balance between being similar and different.".
• 01GMAMTZ4QY1YFR8K7BXQQND9X abstract "Objectves: The Evaluation of the Ability to Sing Easily (EASE) is a self-rating tool that is used to assess the singer's perceptions of the current singing voice status. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Dutch translation of the EASE. Methods: The original version of the EASE was translated and adapted to Dutch according to the recommendations of the Quality of Life Special Interest Group - Translation and Cultural Adaptation group. Subsequently, the questionnaire was individually completed by 70 singers with a mean age of 35.2 years before and after a singing activity, together with a demographic questionnaire and the Dutch Singing Voice Handicap Index 10 (SVHI-10-NL). Two groups of singers were included between September and June 2020: a group of healthy singers (n = 54) and a group of dysphonic singers (n = 16). Internal and external consistency, construct and criterion validity, test-retest and split-half reliability were calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficients, Student's t-test, the paired Wilcoxon tests and Pearson correlation coefficients. Furthermore, the impact of sex and age and the diagnostic accuracy of the EASE-NL was measured using the Mann Whitney U-test, the One Way ANOVA and the Brown Forsythe ANOVA-test. Results: The internal consistency of the EASE was considered good. For the external consistency, the Pearson correlation coefficient showed a positive correlation between the total score of the EASE-NL and the SVHI-10-NL. Dysphonic singers scored significantly higher compared to singers without voice problems and no differences were found between the pre and post singing condition in both groups. Pearson correlations coefficients showed a strong positive correlation between the test and retest condition and between the subscales. A ROC-curve analysis showed a cut-off score of 12.5, with a sensitivity level of 75.0% and a specificity level of 74.1%. No differences for sex and age were found. Conclusions: The original English version of the EASE was translated and validated in Dutch. The EASE-NL is found to be a valid and reliable self-reported tool to assess singer's perceptions of the current status of their singing voice. Keywords: EASE; EASE-NL; Self-perception; Singing voice.".
• 01GMAQ3339X82Q97P4QAD4WBZ1 abstract "Potato cultivation is regularly affected by Alternaria solani, a destructive foliar pathogen causing early blight, a premature defoliation of potato plants resulting in yield losses. Currently, Alternaria is treated through preventive application of chemical crop protection productions, following warnings based on weather predictions and visual observations. Automatic detection could make the mapping of early blight more accurate, reducing production losses and application of crop protection products. Current research explores the potential of deep learning of high resolution imagery within precision agriculture, mainly using supervised learning. However, available datasets are often limited in size and variation, which reduces the robustness of the developed models. Here, we present a convolutional network to detect Alternaria and evaluate the influence of sampling size, sampling balance and sampling accuracy on the model performance. These analyses are based on ultra-high-resolution datasets of modified RGB cameras obtained with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and collected over experimental in-field Alternaria trials. By using this varied dataset instead of a single-time dataset, higher accuracies are achieved. The method is relatively robust for imbalances of the training dataset. Further, we show that labeling quality plays a role, but that an error of up of to 20% of labeling is acceptable for good results. In conclusion, extra variability leads to more robust disease detection, desirable for in-field application.".
• 01GMAQ36SEF7AH8QGT9RJ31F5S abstract "Technical and vocational secondary school students take internships in enterprises as part of their training. As such, they are often confronted with hazardous situations, such as contact with chemical substances, operating specialist machinery or in potentially dangerous working conditions. Students therefore need to be prepared in the school setting, prior to their internship experience. To address this challenge an immersive virtual reality serious game was developed. Students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the game were assessed using a survey. Targeted variables were presence, design, interest and usefulness. Students positively evaluated all measures, suggesting an immersive virtual reality serious game is a useful instrument in teaching hazard perception in technical and vocational secondary education.".
• 01GMAQVG4QTN6H8QB8SJGA2FCV abstract "Background: The meaningful integration of technology in educational practices entails complex instructional design challenges for teachers. Little is known about the processes teachers go through when deciding whether and how to use technology [1]. Recently, researchers started to unpack these decision-making processes by examining teachers’ pedagogical reasoning underlying their technology-mediated practices [2]. Yet, research in this field is sparse [1], and literature signals a need for discipline-specific reasoning studies [2]. In this light, this study explores mathematics teachers’ pedagogical reasoning about using technology in secondary education. Methods: Qualitative research methods guided analysis of open-ended survey data. Mathematics teachers (N=30) described their 3 most-valued technology-supported instructional activities with attention toward the type of tools used, its rationales, the targeted users, and the nature of the activities. 91 instructional activities were analyzed. In addition, to identify factors influencing teachers’ decisions about using technology, teachers were asked to indicate the importance as well as the frequency of consideration of 18 ICT-related lesson planning items. Items refer to either teacher-level factors (e.g., experience with a tool), school-level factors (e.g., ICT-policy guidelines), or region-level factors (e.g., ICT-specific curriculum goals). Results: Teachers primarily report the use of mathematical action tools (51 % of the activities), in particular, GeoGebra and graphic calculators. Other types of tools were less frequently mentioned: presentation tools (18 %), instructional software (10 %), evaluation tools (9 %), and collaboration tools (0 %). Surprisingly, only in 23 % of the analyzed activities, students were actively using technology during learning. In comparison, teachers describe teacher-centered techno-activities (58 %) and passive student-centered activities (19 %). Predominantly, mathematics teachers report they value technology tools’ ability to (a) visualize mathematical concepts, and (b) save time during instruction. Moreover, teachers indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic stimulated them to adopt new technology tools in order to, among others, conduct online assessments, teach synchronously online, and record instructional videos. When selecting particular tools during lesson planning, teachers most frequently base their decisions on: (a) the added value of a tool for mathematics education, (b) the ease of use of a technology, and (c) the tool’s coherence with pedagogy, curriculum goals, and content. Surprisingly, school-level factors are least frequently considered during ICT-related lesson planning. Conclusion: As this study offers useful insights in the decision-making processes of mathematics teachers, it exemplifies how the lens of pedagogical reasoning can help to further analyze and steer (mathematics) teachers’ implementation of technology in their post-COVID practice. References: [1] T. J. Kopcha, K. L. Neumann, A. Ottenbreit-Leftwich, and E. Pitman, “Process over product: the next evolution of our quest for technology integration,” Educ. Technol. Res. Dev., vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 729–749, 2020. [2] J. E. Hughes, Y. H. Cheah, Y. Shi, and K. H. Hsiao, “Preservice and inservice teachers’ pedagogical reasoning underlying their most-valued technology-supported instructional activities,” J. Comput. Assist. Learn., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 549–568, 2020.".
• 01GMATFPKK59WN0WYAVF1A6X80 abstract "In an increasingly competitive environment where news revenue streams are increasingly dependent on user subscriptions, paywalls have become an essential part of newspapers’ business model. But even though there are some studies on issues such as the types of content in front of and behind paywalls (f.e. Myllylahti, 2016), the impact of paywalls on traffic to the news website (f.e. Olsen et al., 2019), or audience engagement with paywalled content (Wadbring & Bergström, 2021), these efforts are rare and often isolated. There is need for more research that establishes the relationship between (paid versus free) content strategies and audience responses. To fill this void, the paper will analyze the similarities and differences between highly-engaged content in front and behind of the paywall. The research we will present is based on a large-scale automated content analysis of all news stories published online in four consecutive weeks in January 2020 on four major Belgian Dutch-speaking news media outlets, consisting of two quality newspapers and two popular newspapers (N=9,148). We computationally collected all news website articles, whether they were paywalled or freely accessible and registered which outlets they derived from. Subsequently, these articles were manually coded on a range of other factors such as topic (e.g. politics, sports, lifestyle, …) and article format (interview, opinion piece, news report, …). Additionally, we also collected metrics like page views and time spent to compare engagement with news articles in front of and behind paywalls. The study shows that roughly 19% of all articles are put behind a paywall. In a next step of the analysis, we will use Independent Samples t-Test in order to determine not only whether there are discrepancies between news locked behind the paywall and content free of charge but also within the group of paywalled articles in terms of traffic they are likely to generate. At the conference, we will present the findings and discuss the implications they may have for newspapers’ paywall strategy. References Myllylahti, M. (2017). What content is worth locking behind a paywall? Digital news commodification in leading Australasian financial newspapers. Digital Journalism, 5(4), 460-471. Olsen, R. K. (2020). Understanding the relationship people in their early adulthood have to small-town news and paywalls. Journalism, 21(4), 507-523. Wadbring, I., & Bergström, L. (2021). Audiences behind the paywall: News navigation among established versus newly added subscribers. Digital Journalism, 9(3), 319-335.".
• 01GMATYHH34RKWMKHTCY2Q74EH abstract "The Center for Journalism Studies (Ghent University, Belgium) has a long tradition in profiling studies of journalists based on survey research in collaboration with the Belgian associations of professional journalists (VVJ and AJP). Every five years (since 2003, last wave in 2018), a representative sample of Belgian journalists answer a series of questions about their background, work conditions and role conceptions. Following the start of the corona pandemic, we have launched an intermediary survey in April 2020 to collect data on how the crisis impacts important aspects of the journalistic profession, including news gathering, autonomy and income. 628 completed questionnaires were returned, i.e. a response rate of 20% of the total population of professional journalists. The findings of this representative survey reveal, first, that the consequences of the crisis are felt most strongly by freelance journalists, who reported a substantial decrease of assignments and income. It is remarkable that this was also the case for freelance journalists who work for the public broadcaster, which has a rather stable source of income not directly impacted by the corona pandemic. In contrast, commercial news media are more susceptible to sudden market changes and are therefore more associated with fluctuating employment of freelancers. Seen that the last profiling study in 2018 revealed a substantial increase of freelance employment in Belgian newsrooms from 18 to 25%, our findings point to increasing precarity in the journalistic workforce. A second important finding is that more journalists (both freelance and staff reporters) report problems with access to news sources and news gathering locations, indicating that safety measures are also used strategically by unwilling news sources. This raises concerns about the quality and independence of Belgian journalism during the corona pandemic. We end with a critical reflection about our collaboration with the professional associations to gather data on journalistic profiles and work conditions, and we show how our research can be useful in negotiations with news media groups and policy makers.".
• 01GMAVY505QGK07NK0NH9HD6AG abstract "The Neotropics have recently emerged as an important region for studies of tropical ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi. Specific neotropical areas with high ECM host tree densities have ECM fungal diversities rivaling those of higher-latitude forests. Some forests of the Guiana Shield are dominated by endemic ECM trees of the Fabaceae, including species of Dicymbe (subfam. Detarioideae), Aldina (subfam. Papilionoideae), and Pakaraimaea (Cistaceae). One of the most species-rich ECM fungal families present in each of these systems is Russulaceae. Long-term sampling in forests in Guyana's Pakaraima Mountains has revealed a number of species of the Russulaceae genera Lactarius, Lactifluus, and Russula. In this study, we document a previously unknown, distinct lineage of Lactarius subg. Plinthogalus containing eight species from the Guiana Shield. Here, we describe five of these species from Guyana as new to science: Lactarius humiphilus, Lactarius mycenoides, Lactarius guyanensis, Lactarius dicymbophilus, and Lactarius aurantiolamellatus. Morphological descriptions, habit, habitat, and known distribution are provided for each new species. Sequence data for the barcode internal transcribed spacer (ITS) locus are provided for types and most other collections of the new taxa, and a molecular phylogenetic analysis based on the ITS, 28S, and RPB2 (second-largest subunit of the RNA polymerase II) loci across the genus Lactarius corroborates their morphology-based infrageneric placement. The discovery of this lineage changes our insights into the biogeography and evolutionary history of Lactarius subg. Plinthogalus.".
• 01GMAVY50KHK1TGF2CSQ3B2ATF abstract "Fungi are highly diverse organisms, which provide multiple ecosystem services. However, compared with charismatic animals and plants, the distribution patterns and conservation needs of fungi have been little explored. Here, we examined endemicity patterns, global change vulnerability and conservation priority areas for functional groups of soil fungi based on six global surveys using a high-resolution, long-read metabarcoding approach. We found that the endemicity of all fungi and most functional groups peaks in tropical habitats, including Amazonia, Yucatan, West-Central Africa, Sri Lanka, and New Caledonia, with a negligible island effect compared with plants and animals. We also found that fungi are predominantly vulnerable to drought, heat and land-cover change, particularly in dry tropical regions with high human population density. Fungal conservation areas of highest priority include herbaceous wetlands, tropical forests, and woodlands. We stress that more attention should be focused on the conservation of fungi, especially root symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal fungi in tropical regions as well as unicellular early-diverging groups and macrofungi in general. Given the low overlap between the endemicity of fungi and macroorganisms, but high conservation needs in both groups, detailed analyses on distribution and conservation requirements are warranted for other microorganisms and soil organisms.".
• 01GMAVY50VGSXMPHT6BCK9W011 abstract "The biogeography of neotropical fungi remains poorly understood. Here, we reconstruct the origins and diversification of neotropical lineages in one of the largest clades of ectomycorrhizal fungi in the globally widespread family Russulaceae. We inferred a supertree of 3285 operational taxonomic units, representing worldwide internal transcribed spacer sequences. We reconstructed biogeographic history and diversification and identified lineages in the Neotropics and adjacent Patagonia. The ectomycorrhizal Russulaceae have a tropical African origin. The oldest lineages in tropical South America, most with African sister groups, date to the mid-Eocene, possibly coinciding with a boreotropical migration corridor. There were several transatlantic dispersal events from Africa more recently. Andean and Central American lineages mostly have north-temperate origins and are associated with North Andean uplift and the general north-south biotic interchange across the Panama isthmus, respectively. Patagonian lineages have Australasian affinities. Diversification rates in tropical South America and other tropical areas are lower than in temperate areas. Neotropical Russulaceae have multiple biogeographic origins since the mid-Eocene involving dispersal and co-migration. Discontinuous distributions of host plants may explain low diversification rates of tropical lowland ectomycorrhizal fungi. Deeply diverging neotropical fungal lineages need to be better documented.".
• 01GMAVY9XB6C7QDTNT5REFF9G0 abstract "In order to contribute to the valorisation of wild fungi whose nutritional potential, although considerable, is not sufficiently known in some countries such as Togo, a study has been carried out on Russula species. The diversity of Russula species from Aledjo Wildlife Reserve has been assessed using a focused inventory in woodlands dominated by Isoberlinia doka Craib & Stapf, Isoberlinia tomentosa (Harms) Craib & Stapf, Monotes kerstingii Gilg, Uapaca togoensis Pax and gallery forests dominated by Berlinia grandiflora (Vahl) Hutch & Dalz and Uapaca guineensis Mull. Ethnomycological surveys have been carried out among Tem and Kabye, two riparian ethnic groups that are mainly represented. Biochemical analyses have been carried out using the AOAC method. Fifteen (15) taxa of edible Russula species are commonly used by Tem and Kabye people living along the Aledjo Wildlife Reserve among which thirteen (13) taxa have been identified up to species level. R. oleifera is eaten by all interviewed people in both sociolinguistic groups (Fr = 100%) followed by R. compressa (Fr = 92.31%), R. ochrocephala (Fr = 87.18%) among Tem people and R. ochrocephala (Fr = 91.67%), R. compressa (Fr = 83.33%) among Kabye people. Five (05) new species of edible Russula have been identified for the first time in Togo. The Russula species analysed have been rich in macronutrients with contents ranging from 2.88 g/100 g of dw for fat to 65.83 g/100 g of dw for total carbohydrates. In addition, these Russula species have shown a relatively high mineral content with contents ranging from 405.70 mg/100 g of dw for Ca to 2784 mg/100 g of dw for K. Furthermore, the results have revealed that Russula species analysed are a source of energy with 309.50 Kcal/100 g of dw. The edible Russula species analysed can thus contribute to food security in Togo.".
• 01GMAWV8TY0XE59YCV8PW5TZBB abstract "Augmented and Virtual Reality systems have complex optical architectures. In many of these, adaptive lenses are used or are envisaged to be used to improve image perception quality. The use of tunable liquid crystal lenses in these systems is discussed.".
• 01GMAY9S11KCFNJ078YNEVD6BP abstract "Eco-efficiency of concrete is essential for sustainable development given the huge amounts of concrete used every year by mankind. Three aspects are fundamental in this regard: low carbon emission, limited use of non-renewable resources, and extended service life. First, concerning carbon emissions, reducing the clinker factor in concrete is essential due to the high carbon intensity of this constituent. Even though alternative binder materials have successfully proven to be sustainable alternative binders, the versatility of Portland cement (PC) makes it a hard-to-fully-replace binder. Production of Portland clinker is however responsible for about 6 to 8% of the global CO2 emissions, so more environmentally friendly alternative binders are still needed to take action on climate change. Interesting alternatives are binders based on industrial by-products, e.g. ferrous slags (FS) such as blast furnace slag (BFS), or fly ash (coal combustion by-product). A wide range of studies have already discussed in detail the reactivity and reaction products of binders based on fly ash and BFS but these industrial by-products are not available in sufficient quantities to cover the needs. An interesting alternative to investigate is the applicability of non-ferrous slags (NFS). NFS are industrial by-products synthesized during the production of non-ferrous metals such as copper (Cu), lead (Pb), Zinc (Zn) and others. There is a large production of NFS and usually, these slags are stockpiled or used in low-value applications. NFS can find a high-value application as a sustainable binder for concrete. In this research, Modified Ferro Silicate (MFS) slag, one kind of cleaned NFS is used as a PC replacement. These MFS slags can be used as a PC replacement, whereby in this work three different binder systems have been applied: binder systems with MFS as supplementary cementitious material (SCM), hybrid binder systems and quaternary binder systems. In the SCM binder series, for instance, MFS slags are added together with PC in a mortar or concrete mix, and the amorphous slag phase reacts with the alkaline pore solution (enriched in calcium hydroxide CH, resulting from the PC hydration) precipitating hydrates of calcium silicates (C-S-H). These MFS slags can be used as SCM without modification and can satisfy the requirements of demanding construction applications. However, these binders are slow in reactivity and do not allow for high PC replacement levels. In the second set of series, hybrid systems are a solution that can provide higher strengths at an early age, and also at higher PC replacement levels. In such a case, the MFS slag is mixed with a small proportion of PC and an additional alkali-activator is applied, allowing for the production of concrete with a similar performance to more conventional concrete types. By adding activators in combination with PC the slag hydration is more complete via a complex mechanism, which involves increased pH from the equilibration of portlandite in the presence of reduced Ca2+ activity. Reduced Ca2+ activity appeared to promote slag dissolution by increasing the under-saturation of the slag. The third set of the series is a novel quaternary system where MFS slag is mixed with PC, as well as with additives. In this thesis, the combined usage of BFS and dolomite as additives was tested. By adding dolomite and BFS into the system, the synergetic effect of latent hydraulic and dedolomitization tend to increase the hydration and reactivity of the MFS slag. Since all these binders contain also a large concentration of Fe in the system, the role of Fe is also a vital factor in influencing its reactivity. XRD analysis of the MFS slag model paste indicated the participation of Fe in the hydration mechanism, as well as the formation of Fe-AFm, besides other hydrated phases in the SCM binder system. Second, related to the extended service life of structures, good durability performance is required for eco-efficient concrete to prevent the early need for intervention or replacement of structures, hence extended service life. Amongst other, important durability properties of concrete are related to carbonation, frost scaling and chloride ingress. Usually, the durability properties such as frost scaling and carbonation of the PC replacement binders might be less good, due to their different pore structure and CO2 buffer capacity and also possible coupling of the deterioration mechanisms. Thus, as an important scope of the thesis, for the three different binder systems (SCM, hybrid and quaternary binder) concrete compositions were designed and further tested, including durability. The durability properties such as carbonation resistance, chloride resistance and frost scaling of the concrete were thoroughly assessed. All series of concrete showed positive chloride binding capacity, this is likely due to the binding of Cl ions in calcium alumina silicate hydrates (C-A-S-H), ettringite and Fe-AFm phases. However, SCM and hybrid concrete showed an increased carbonation rate compared to quaternary binder concrete. This positive result of the quaternary system is believed to be due to the synergetic effect of BFS and dolomite. As expected, all series also showed poor frost scaling resistance, when no air entraining agent was applied. Third, depletion of non-renewable resources is also a growing environmental concern globally. Aggregates are a major ingredient of concrete. Depending on its geographic location, the construction industry mainly uses non-renewable sources, such as marine sand, dredged gravel or crushed rocks, often granite or limestone, as aggregates. By using recycled aggregates as a primary source for the inert skeleton in concrete, a contribution can be made to the development of a circular economy. Promoting the recycling of waste concrete into high-value applications is key to developing such a circular economy. However, the attached mortar in recycled aggregate particles is a specific feature that limits structural applications. The water absorption and porosity of the recycled aggregates are higher than for most natural aggregates. The durability performance of recycled aggregate concrete can be affected unless transport properties are controlled by embedding the recycled aggregate in a compact matrix that isolates their pore structure. In this scope, novel hybrid binder concrete with MFS slag (as partial replacement of PC, rather or not in combination with BFS) and alkali activator was successfully produced containing 50% recycled aggregates. The presence of recycled aggregates had an adverse effect on early age strength whereas after 91-day no difference could be observed between concrete with or without recycled aggregates. A positive effect on chloride binding capacity could be observed in the BFS/MFS slag system with recycled aggregates. However, BFS/MFS slag concrete with recycled aggregates showed an increased carbonation rate and frost scaling compared to the system with virgin aggregates. Durability properties such as sorptivity and water penetration were positively affected by a longer curing time for the BFS/MFS system. Finally, the usage of the MFS slag for the production of large-scale elements under realistic conditions was investigated and proven to be successful. The PC replacement by binders such as BFS and MFS slag could be easily introduced in the silos of the concrete plants without the need for significant changes in the mixing protocol. Thus, large-scale reinforced concrete (RC) slabs applying MFS slag-based concrete were manufactured to test their flexural performance. Flexural behaviour was investigated in terms of deformations under increasing load, crack patterns, load bearing capacity and failure aspect.".
• 01GMAYJMT8BHWX8KFX2FVNV6P1 abstract "Als na controle blijkt dat een aangifte voor een vrijstelling van doorstorting van bedrijfsvoorheffing een onjuist negatief bedrag aan bedrijfsvoorheffing vermeldt, is sinds 1 april 2022 uitdrukkelijk bepaald dat de fiscus een belastingverhoging kan opleggen. Het KB van 13 september 2022, dat in werking is getreden op 23 oktober 2022, introduceert nu een afzonderlijke getrapte schaal van belastingverhogingen ingeval van een onjuiste aangifte inzake BV-vrijstellingen. Die percentages liggen hoger dan in het geval van een ‘traditionele’ onjuiste aangifte inzake bedrijfsvoorheffing.".
• 01GMAZ18TNJCZV7DCSGFWRVM11 abstract "Feature selection is a crucial step in developing robust and powerful machine learning models. Feature selection techniques can be divided into two categories: filter and wrapper methods. While wrapper methods commonly result in strong predictive performances, they suffer from a large computational complexity and therefore take a significant amount of time to complete, especially when dealing with high-dimensional feature sets. Alternatively, filter methods are considerably faster, but suffer from several other disadvantages, such as (i) requiring a threshold value, (ii) not taking into account intercorrelation between features, and (iii) ignoring feature interactions with the model. To this end, we present powershap, a novel wrapper feature selection method, which leverages statistical hypothesis testing and power calculations in combination with Shapley values for quick and intuitive feature selection. Powershap is built on the core assumption that an informative feature will have a larger impact on the prediction compared to a known random feature. Benchmarks and simulations show that powershap outperforms other filter methods with predictive performances on par with wrapper methods while being significantly faster, often even reaching half or a third of the execution time. As such, powershap provides a competitive and quick algorithm that can be used by various models in different domains. Furthermore, powershap is implemented as a plug-and-play and open-source sklearn component, enabling easy integration in conventional data science pipelines. User experience is even further enhanced by also providing an automatic mode that automatically tunes the hyper-parameters of the powershap algorithm, allowing to use the algorithm without any configuration needed. ".
• 01GMAZ48R4P1SVS05ZZDRFHFG7 abstract "Accepting defeat in the aftermath of elections is crucial for the stability of democracies. But in times of intense polarization, the voluntary consent of electoral losers seems less obvious, as is illustrated by recent political events. In this paper, I study whether affective and perceived ideological polarization amplify the winner-loser gap in political support. Using multilevel growth curve modelling on pre-and post-election panel data from the BESIP collected during the 2015 and 2019 UK general elections, I show that the winner-loser gap is indeed more pronounced amongst voters with higher levels of affective and perceived ideological polarization. Moreover, the results illustrate that polarized voters experience a stark decrease in their support for the political system following their electoral loss. Given the rising polarization levels in many Western democracies, these findings have important implications for losers’ consent and the stability of democracies in election times.".
• 01GMAZB7XJM8BM9YF4KNQQQXW2 abstract "Blast furnace slag (BFS), a by-product of the iron and steel manufacturing industry, has latent hydraulic properties and therefore has been extensively used as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) in the construction industry for decades. In recent years, in addition to its advantages in improving concrete performance, BFS as SCM has gradually attracted more interest due to its advantages for the future low carbon economy. However, concrete containing BFS generally has a weaker carbonation resistance than Portland cement concrete. This Ph.D. thesis focuses on the carbonation behaviour and mechanisms of concrete with different BFS replacement ratios of 0%, 50% and 70% (denoted as PC, BFS-50% and BFS-70%). Accelerated carbonation of BFS concrete and the effect of curing time The carbonation behaviour of concrete was investigated in terms of carbonation rate, phase assemblage and pore structure. The carbonation depth of concrete with different curing times (14 d, 28 d and 84 d) was measured after accelerated carbonation for 14 d, 28 d, 56 d, 91 d and 183 d to evaluate the carbonation rate. During the accelerated carbonation, the temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentration were maintained at (20 ± 2) ℃, (60 ± 5) %, and 2%, respectively. The phase assemblage of the non-carbonated and carbonated cement paste was compared using Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD). The pore structure of the non-carbonated and carbonated concrete was compared using Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP) and Scanning Electron Microscope with Backscattered Electron mode (SEM-BSE). The carbonation resistance of concrete with BFS replacement is worse than for Portland cement concrete due to the lower amount of portlandite and coarser pore structure of carbonated BFS concrete. The carbonation rate increases with the increasing BFS replacement ratio. In addition to the coarsened pore structure of the cement paste matrix after carbonation, the greatly weakened interfacial transition zone of BFS concrete plays an important role. However, a proper curing protocol such as a longer curing time can effectively improve the carbonation resistance of BFS concrete. The carbonation rate of BFS-50% after 84 d curing (1.05 mm/d1/2) is close to that of PC (0.94 mm/d1/2). The longer curing time results in less calcium carbonate formation and lower carbonation degree of AFm phases for carbonated cement paste. With the increase in BFS replacement ratio, the carbonation degree of AFm phases decreases while the carbonation of clinkers increases. The pore structure of non-carbonated PC and BFS-50% is densified by a longer curing time, while that of BFS-70% remains unchanged. After the carbonation, the concrete with a longer curing time has a denser carbonated pore structure, which can slow down the further carbonation. In the case of BFS concrete, though still higher than for non-carbonated concrete, the porosity of carbonated concrete with a longer curing time is greatly decreased. Moreover, the carbonation rate at different surfaces of the concrete specimens is found to be different due to the compaction-induced microstructure changes. The carbonation rate at different surfaces shows the following order: top trowelled surface > side cast surface > bottom cast surface. The effect of CO2 concentration on the carbonation The difference between the concrete behaviour under natural carbonation and accelerated carbonation was investigated in terms of carbonation rate, phase assemblage and pore structure. The carbonation depth of concrete cured for 28 days and carbonated at different CO2 concentrations (0.04%, 1% and 2% CO2) was measured after different exposure times. The phase assemblage and pore structure before and after the carbonation were investigated using XRD, TGA, MIP and SEM-BSE. The estimation of the natural carbonation coefficient based on accelerated carbonation tests can lead to inaccurate results as not only the CO2 concentration determines the CO2 diffusion rate. In this thesis, the change in diffusion coefficient during the carbonation results in an underestimation of the natural carbonation coefficient which could cause issues for service life prediction. A higher CO2 concentration leads to a denser carbonated pore structure. It should be noted that carbonation leads to a coarser pore structure for BFS concrete which is opposite to the effect of increased CO2 concentration. Therefore, the extrapolation of accelerated tests to natural conditions is difficult, in particular for BFS concrete. The lower porosity induced by higher CO2 concentrations (accelerated carbonation at 1% and 2% CO2) is mainly attributed to the heterogeneous C-S-H carbonation. The carbonation of inner C-S-H eases the access of water to the clinker phases, leading to a higher reaction degree of clinker and a denser structure. The carbonation of outer C-S-H under natural carbonation, which shows a large amount of silica gel formation, accounts for the increased porosity of BFS concrete. The CO2 concentration influences the experimentally observed carbonation product assemblage. More calcite tends to form under higher CO2 concentrations while metastable vaterite is more likely to form under a lower CO2 concentration. Less well-crystallized calcium carbonate is formed at higher CO2 concentrations of 1% and 2% CO2 due to the higher amount of C-S-H carbonation. The hydrotalcite is more stable at higher CO2 concentrations and carbonates slower. Coupled effect of carbonation and mechanical load on the carbonation of concrete The carbonation behaviour of concrete under sustained compressive load which simulates the on-site concrete carbonation process under service load was investigated. The loading setups which can fit into the carbonation chamber were developed for load application and maintenance during the carbonation. The carbonation depth of concrete after the accelerated carbonation at 1% and 2% CO2 under different sustained compressive load levels (25%-75% of the breaking load) was measured after the exposure time of 28 d. The pore structure of non-carbonated and carbonated concrete was investigated by MIP. The internal crack pattern was investigated by fluorescent resin impregnation and SEM-BSE. The crack propagation on the concrete outer surface during the compressive loading was investigated by Digital Image Correlation (DIC). In addition to PC, BFS-50% and BFS-70%, the effect of fly ash was investigated based on concrete with 30% fly ash (FA-L) at 2% CO2. The sustained compressive load can slow down the carbonation at moderate load levels, but lead to an increase in carbonation rate above a threshold load level. At 1% CO2, the threshold compressive load level for PC is around 0.25, while the threshold load level for BFS-50% and BFS-70% is around 0.5. At 2% CO2, the threshold load level for FA-L is around 0.4. The sustained compressive load shows a greater densification effect on the concrete with SCMs. The difference between the carbonation depth of PC and BFS-50% at moderate load levels is very limited. The densification effect of sustained compressive load which can slow down the carbonation is to a greater extent due to the carbonated zone instead of the non-carbonated zone. The carbonated zone primarily shows a load-induced densification effect and contributes to the slowed-down carbonation rate through autogenous healing of microcracks, ITZ densification and pore densification. In the non-carbonated zone, the densification effect is partially because of the densified interfacial transition zone and large gel pores. However, crack propagation dominates in the non-carbonated zone, especially at a high load level. The increase in the carbonation depth under sustained compressive load above the threshold load level is mainly because of the generation and propagation of microcracks. For PC without initial carbonation, it is attributed to the sharp increase in crack width, while it is attributed to the internal coalesced fine microcracks and superficial cracks for BFS concrete. For PC with initial carbonation during the pre-conditioning, it is attributed to a large number of coalesced cracks both at the outer surface and inside the carbonated zone. Thermodynamic modelling of the carbonation process A simulation of the carbonation process was carried out to better understand the investigated effects of BFS replacement, curing time and CO2 concentration. The thermodynamic modelling was carried out using the Gibbs free energy minimization program GEMS. In addition to the CEMDATA18 database (developed by EMPA, Switzerland) for hydrated solids in the Portland cement system and the default thermodynamic database, K-, Na- and Ca-based zeolites which represent the amorphous aluminosilicate gel formed during the carbonation process and hydrotalcite with different Mg/Al ratios containing CO3 2− , SO4 2− and OH− are included. The evolution of portlandite, C-S-H, ettringite and AFm phases during the carbonation process was calculated. The thermodynamic model developed in this thesis can adequately simulate the carbonation process of concrete with different BFS replacement ratios in terms of chemical changes and phase evolution. The modelled results agree well with the experimental results. The total solid volume of PC is predicted to increase after carbonation. However, due to the lack of portlandite and a higher amount of AFm phases, the total solid volume of BFS-50% and BFS-70% is predicted to continuously decrease during the carbonation process. The anion substitutions in the structure of hydrotalcite during the carbonation are predicted by thermodynamic modelling. A transformation from OH-Ht to CO3-Ht with a decrease in Mg/Al ratio during the carbonation is predicted for all concrete mixes. Before the carbonation, the hydrotalcite in the PC system is predicted to mostly contain CO3 2− due to the excess limestone powder, while the BFS-50% and BFS-70% systems contain mostly OH- ions. During the carbonation, the hydrotalcite of PC is gradually depleted. However, the CO3-Ht is predicted to remain stable even at complete carbonation conditions for BFS- 50% and BFS-70%.".
• 01GMAZTRK58NTYDQND3EHX578J abstract "A cylinder clamped at both ends and subjected to an axial flow will typically become unstable with increasing axial flow velocity. At low velocity the cylinder will buckle and, as the flow velocity is further increased, flutter will occur. These instabilities can be devastating in some applications such as nuclear reactor cores or can be put to good use in energy harvesting tools. A substantial amount of analytical and experimental work has already been performed on the stability of clamped-clamped cylinders in axial flow. Consequently, the dynamic behavior is well-documented and experimental data is readily available. Numerical simulations on the topic are rather scarce but could give access to information that is hard to obtain experimentally or capture in a theoretical model. However, simulating the dynamic behavior requires a two-way coupling, which entails a certain computational cost. Furthermore, the rather large displacements associated to the instabilities can cause problems due to mesh distortion in the flow solver, especially in confined geometries. In this research fluid-structure interaction simulations are performed on a clamped-clamped cylinder subjected to axial flow for a range of inlet velocities. The critical velocities for buckle and flutter and their amplitudes are compared to experimental data obtained from literature. In the flow solver a Chimera technique is used which allows for large structural deformations without degrading the mesh. By doing so the concept could also be extended to cantilevered cylinders which show even larger displacements. One of the goals of the research is to investigate the effect of compressibility on the stability.".
• 01GMB032S925VTWJD4VYMHQ6RK abstract "The general objective of this PhD thesis is to improve the durability of concrete repair systems. Therefore, two major subject matters were considered including the adhesion between concrete substrate and the repair mortar as well as the durability of the repair mortar when shrinkage and chloride ingress are concerned. Removal of degraded concrete during repair activities might have a detrimental impact on the bond strength between the concrete substrate and the repair mortar. The first objective of this thesis was to investigate how concrete removal techniques affect substrates of different compositions, and as a result, the bonding with repair mortar. Different aggressive concrete removal techniques such as jack-hammering (JH) and water jetting (WJ) were compared and the experimental results showed that JH resulted in the highest detrimental impact on the substrate and so the bond strength between the concrete substrate and the repair mortar. Although there are many research studies on this topic, the findings of this section added valuable knowledge to the already published results. It was suggested to consider the removal depth as a criterion to select and compare removal techniques in laboratory studies. The other novelty of this section was to study the effect of concrete substrate properties such as mix composition. It was found that the failure modes and bonding were different from one mix composition to another. Failure modes, surface roughness, and bonding strength, apart from the removal technique, did depend on the characteristics of the mixture such as aggregate size and shape. The bond strength of samples with large aggregate size (i.e. crushed stone concrete mixtures) was more detrimentally affected by the aggressive removal techniques than for other mixtures. The influence of substrate surface roughness on the bond strength was shown to be dependent on the state of stress applied during the bond test, and therefore, on the applied test method. The second goal of this phase of the thesis was to restore the lost bond caused by the JH. To this end, colloidal nano-silica (CNS) and bacterially induced CaCO3 were employed in singular and combined strategies. Finally, a novel solution was introduced to restore the lost bond (measured by the pull-off tests) induced by the aggressive removal technique. The singular application of CNS resulted in the highest adhesion between the JH substrate and the overlay. Some pores were observed in the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images of JH samples. However, a dense microstructure was observed at the interphase zone of the CNStreated substrates. Moreover, Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis showed to be a promising method to ease the investigation of the microstructure of the interlayer in layered composites. Chloride ingress is widely known as a detrimental factor that affects the durability of repaired concrete structures by the corrosion of steel reinforcements in concrete. Therefore, in this phase of the thesis, the focus was on the reduction of chloride ingress into the repair mortar by applying layered double hydroxides (LDHs) or by developing and adding chloride entrapping superabsorbent polymers (SAPs). This should be mentioned that the incipient anode phenomenon which is also very important in repair systems was not studied in this research. The addition of LDHs to the paste samples resulted in the reduction of the free chloride ions in the system. This was assessed by the performance of pore expression experiments. However, when the chloride diffusion results were concerned, one could observe a difference between the bound chloride levels depending on the NaCl concentration. The higher the exposure solution concentration (165 g/l versus 50 g/l), the higher the bound chloride levels were for the samples with 10% LDH compared to those of the control samples. A novel method (incorporation of Ag+) was employed to enable SAPs (Alg-MA) to bind chloride ions. The experimental results were evidence of the reduction in the depth of penetration of free chloride ions into the system when the inhouse developed Alg-MA incorporated with Ag+ (Alg-MA-Ag) were used. This was determined by the chloride diffusion test. The pore expression tests also showed the reduction in the chloride content with the incorporation of Alg-MA-Ag. The bound Cl- ions on the surface of the Alg- MA-Ag were confirmed by SEM-EDX analysis. The last phase of the thesis was related to the shrinkage of repair mortars. In this phase, further tailoring of Alg-MA took place to prevent autogenous and total shrinkage of mixtures. Polyacrylic acid-grafted Alg-MA (P-Alg- MA) was successfully synthesized, incorporated with Ag+ (P-Alg-MA-Ag) and the effects on the repair mortar were compared with the effects caused by a commercially available superabsorbent polymer, SNF. The in-house developed P-Alg-MA-Ag could mitigate the autogenous shrinkage and in some cases reduced the total shrinkage of the mixtures unlike the SNFcontaining and Alg-MA-Ag samples. The reduction in the total shrinkage of mixtures was mainly observed when P-Alg-MA was incorporated with Ag+ and also no additional water was added to the mixtures. In addition, 𝜇CT-scan images of samples proved the presence of Ag+ in the SAPs at older ages and the reaction between Ag+ and chloride ions after exposure to the NaCl solution. This is important as it shows that Ag+ remains in the SAPs till samples are exposed to the NaCl solution and later can react with the Cl- ions. In addition, a comprehensive investigation was performed on the influence of incorporation of Ag+ in Alg-MA and P-Alg-MA on their swelling properties and also on the hydration and microstructure of repair mixtures. Similar to Alg-MA, the incorporation of Ag+ in P-Alg-MA by immersion in AgNO3 with a concentration of 0.05 M was reported to be optimal. A significant reduction was observed in the swelling capacity of both SAPs in Milli-Q® H2O. Nevertheless, the swelling capacity was not affected in cement filtrate solution after the incorporation with Ag+. Moreover, the lost swelling capacity could be regained with the reaction between Ag+ and chloride ions in the Milli-Q® H2O. However, this was not the case in the cement filtrate solutions. Different isothermal calorimetry results compared to those of Alg-MA-Ag were achieved for P-Alg-MA-Ag. The results showed the impact of incorporation with Ag+ on the hydration with shifting the main peak to a later time when Alg-MA-Ag was used by 0.8 wt% (by the mass of binder). Therefore, 0.4 wt% was considered as the maximum amount of Alg-MA-Ag in the system for further analysis. No impact of incorporation with Ag+ on the hydration was observed for the PAlg- MA. Different results with Alg-MA-(Ag) were also observed when MIP tests were performed. The MIP results showed an increase in the porosity of mixtures with P-Alg-MA-(Ag). When the results of SNF-containing samples were considered, one could notice a significant influence of SNF SAPs on the porosity, mechanical strength, autogenous shrinkage and total shrinkage of mixtures. Among which only autogenous shrinkage was mitigated and the effect on the remaining parameters was negative. In the end, this thesis could successfully introduce a novel method to restore the lost bond strength (measured by the pull-off tests) caused by an aggressive removal technique such as JH and also develop SAPs to bind chloride ions and therefore limit the depth of penetration of such ions into the repair mortars. Moreover, the autogenous and total shrinkage of the repair mortar could be reduced by the incorporation of the in-house developed SAPs (P-Alg-MA-Ag).".
• 01GMB03PPYJCZ4ANQ8DYMAZC8Q abstract "On 19 September 2022, the first workshop on AI for Manufacturing (AI4M Workshop) took place at ECML-PKDD, the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice for Knowledge Discovery in Databases. The workshop brought together researchers and practitioners, from academia and industry, contributing their perspectives. This special section includes five articles in which Artificial Intelligence methods are used to address real problems in the manufacturing industry, ranging from the supply chain, to production, to quality insurance, and predictive maintenance. In this introduction, we present a high-level overview of the current state of the area: observed trends and the main open challenges. This overview is based on these papers, the keynote presentation, the panel discussion, and the discussion that emerged during the workshop.".
• 01GMB08XNYH6ZW351MZM2RRXD2 abstract "Mangrove forests, provide vital food resources and are an endangered ecosystem worldwide due to pollution and habitat destruction. A risk-benefit assessment (RBA) was performed on the red mangrove crab (Ucides occidentalis) from the threatened Guayas mangroves in Ecuador. It was aimed to assess the combined potential adverse and beneficial health impact associated with crab consumption and define a recommended safe intake (SI) to improve the diet of the Ecuadoran population while ensuring safe food intake. Target hazard quotients (THQs), benefit quotients (Qs), and benefit-risk quotients (BRQs) were calculated based on the concentrations of the analyzed contaminants (121 pesticide residues, 11 metal(loid)s, antimicrobial drugs from 3 classes) and nutrients (fatty acids, amino acids, and essential nutrients). Except for inorganic arsenic (iAs), the THQ was below 100 for all investigated contaminants, suggesting that the average crab consumer is exposed to levels that do not impose negative non-carcinogenic or carcinogenic health effects in the long and/or short term. Concentrations of iAs (average AsIII: 25.64 and AsV: 6.28 μg/kg fw) were of the highest concern because of the potential to cause negative health effects on long-term consumption. Despite the thriving aquaculture in the Guayas estuary, concentrations of residues of the antimicrobial drugs oxytetracycline (OTC), florfenicol, and nitrofurans still were low. Based on the fact that different risk reference values exist, related to different safety levels, four SI values (0.002, 0.04, 4, and 18 crabs/day) were obtained. The strictest intake values indicate a concern for current consumption habits. In conclusion, the red mangrove crab contains various important nutrients and can be part of a balanced diet for the Ecuadorian population when consumed in limited portions. The present study emphasizes the importance of safeguarding the quality of the environment as a prerequisite for procuring nutritious and safe food.".
• 01GMB197ZHQ6DR6RCKMQ48VP91 abstract "This work develops and benchmarks surrogate models for Dynamic Phasor (DP) simulation of electrical drives. DP simulations of complex systems may be time-consuming due to the increased number of equations. Thus, it is desirable to have a data-driven approach to compute the critical state/control variables and power losses. The surrogate models are intended to be used as a steady-state equivalent of the DP simulation model. We consider the Gaussian Process (GP), Multi Layer Perceptron, and Random Forest as surrogate models. Among other techniques, GPs are found to have good accuracy. Moreover, GPs are data-efficient and have desirable properties, such as built-in uncertainty quantification. The study shows that the GP performs better compared to other techniques in terms of the Mean Squared Error of the prediction, while still being very fast to evaluate. We illustrate the potential of these surrogate models to also predict transient behavior.".
• 01GMB1A5Q1Q9GZTMXTVK3PKVZC abstract "Understanding the vibration of tubes subjected to an internal liquid-gas mixture is of primary importance to improve the design of heat exchangers. Consequently, a large amount of experimental research has been performed in the past decades. Although an extensive number of numerical investigations have been published more recently, most of these papers do not focus on the effect of conditions applied at the fluid domain boundaries. In the current paper it is shown that these boundary conditions can have an important effect on both the stability of the obtained flow solution and on the force exerted on the surrounding tube. The current work aims at correctly predicting the forces on a horizontal 90° bend that was investigated experimentally by Belfroid et al. (2016). The forces exerted on the bend are directly related to the presence of liquid slugs coming into the bend. In the last part of this research, a finite element model for the structure of the pipe is presented.".
• 01GMB1ETTSBANXBQWXCD135YMJ abstract "A new formalism for the derivation of the cnoidal wave solution is presented by introducing a new set of initial conditions and a subacoustic moving frame. The resulting set of solutions is also constructed in a way that ensures the conservation of number density. The solutions are illustrated in a variety of graphical representations, and the effect of the amplitude's magnitude on the cnoidal wave form is presented. Interestingly, it is shown that the wavelength of the solutions decreases with amplitude. In addition, it is shown that the small-amplitude cnoidal wave solutions converge to linear waves in the small-amplitude limit.".
• 01GMB1GTST7671VQGX3SGCZTRB abstract " E-recruitment recommendation systems recommend jobs to job seekers and job seekers to recruiters. The recommendations are generated based on the suitability of the job seekers for the positions as well as the job seekers' and the recruiters' preferences. Therefore, e-recruitment recommendation systems could greatly impact job seekers' careers. Moreover, by affecting the hiring processes of the companies, e-recruitment recommendation systems play an important role in shaping the companies' competitive edge in the market. Hence, the domain of e-recruitment recommendation deserves specific attention. Existing surveys on this topic tend to discuss past studies from the algorithmic perspective, e.g., by categorizing them into collaborative filtering, content based, and hybrid methods. This survey, instead, takes a complementary, challenge-based approach, which we believe might be more practical to developers facing a concrete e-recruitment design task with a specific set of challenges, as well as to researchers looking for impactful research projects in this domain. We first identify the main challenges in the e-recruitment recommendation research. Next, we discuss how those challenges have been studied in the literature. Finally, we provide future research directions that we consider promising in the e-recruitment recommendation domain. ".
• 01GMB1TX4EMBX42ZBKN946YS4Y abstract "Gap vortex streets in tube bundles subject to axial flow have been found for several geometries and fluids, both experimentally as numerically. An important parameter influencing its occurrence and strength is the size of the gaps between the tubes. It has also been shown that the associated pressure fluctuations are strong enough to give rise to flow-induced vibrations (FIV). In this work the existence of a gap vortex street is demonstrated to trigger vibrations in a large pitch-over-diameter ratio (P/D) rod bundle with eccentric positioning of the central tube for a flow of liquid lead-bismuth-eutectic (LBE). This is done using fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations. In the first half of the simulation a gap vortex street arises, then triggers an asymmetric transient vibration while being advected downstream, after which the vibration decays. In the second half the flow pulsations weaken globally and are only present close to the pressure outlet. They trigger very small amplitude vibrations in a beating fashion. The overall behavior described in this paper raises some new questions: firstly why no new vortex train arises at an upstream position nor any associated (large) vibration and secondly whether this is due to the influence of the boundary conditions and thus mainly a numerical artifact. Another question to be answered is what lies at the root of the asymmetry of the vibration.".
• 01GMB1XX7RB8V1QE1FSC5E03J6 abstract "Articular cartilage defects have limited healing potential and, when left untreated, can lead to osteoarthritis. Tissue engineering focuses on regenerating the damaged joint surface, preferably in an early stage. Here, we investigate the regenerative potential of three-dimensional (3D) constructs consisting of human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived chondrocytes in gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) hydrogel for stable hyaline cartilage production. iPSC-derived chondrocytes are encapsulated in GelMA hydrogel at low (1 x 10(7) ml(-1)) and high (2 x 10(7) ml(-1)) density. In a conventional medium, GelMA hydrogel supports the chondrocyte phenotype, as opposed to cells cultured in 3D in absence of hydrogel. Moreover, encapsulated iPSC-derived chondrocytes preserve their in vivo matrix formation capacity after 21 days in vitro. In differentiation medium, hyaline cartilage-like tissue forms after 21 days, demonstrated by highly sulfated glycosaminoglycans and collagen type II. Matrix deposition is delayed at low encapsulation density, corroborating with lower transcript levels of COL2A1. An ectopic assay in nude mice demonstrates further maturation of the matrix deposited in vitro. Direct ectopic implantation of iPSC-derived chondrocyte-laden GelMA, without in vitro priming, also generates hyaline cartilage-like tissue, albeit less mature. Since it is unclear what maturity upon implantation is desired for joint surface regeneration, this is an attractive technology to generate immature and more mature hyaline cartilage-like tissue.".
• 01GMB24G85NM934YBTC94T4XD2 abstract "Herein, a series of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)/carbomer (CB)/nano-celluloses (CNCs) multi-responsive shape-memory nanocomposite films were tailored using CNCs as a crosslinker. The impact of CNCs content on the mechanical properties of the TPU/CB/CNC nanocomposite films has been comprehensively studied by which the best CNCs loading was reported at 5 wt%. The chemistry and microstructure of the nanocomposite film have been precisely elucidated by FT-IR spectroscopy, 1H NMR spectrum, XRD, and DSC to verify the reaction of -CONH- in TPU with -COOH in CB-forming quaternary ammonium ionic and hydrogen bonds. The shape-memory properties of the TPU/CB/CNC nanocomposite film were also investigated in different conditions such as water, ethanol, acid, alkali, and heat. Moreover, the shape recovery behavior of the nanocomposite film was examined by changing pH, which affects the quaternary ammonium ionic and hydrogen bonds as switch units. Although the shape of the thin nanocomposite film has successfully recovered in the alkaline environment, the internal structure was damaged. After transfer to the acidic environment, the destroyed internal structure of the strip was revived, and its strength improved to carry a foolproof load. Eventually, the as-made nanocomposite film has a multi-responsive capability against water, ethanol, pH, and heat, representing its potential in slow-release drug and flexible robotic as well as electronic applications.".
• 01GMB26C8S58ZY04F883Q06E2D abstract "Naturally occurring oligoamines, such as spermine, spermidine, and putrescine, are well-known regulators of gene expression. These oligoamines frequently have short alkyl spacers with varying lengths between the amines. Linear polyethylenimine (PEI) is a polyamine that has been widely applied as a gene vector, with various formulations currently in clinical trials. In order to emulate natural oligoamine gene regulators, linear random copolymers containing both PEI and polypropylenimine (PPI) repeat units were designed as novel gene delivery agents. In general, statistical copolymerization of 2-oxazolines and 2-oxazines leads to the formation of gradient copolymers. In this study, however, we describe for the first time the synthesis of near-ideal random 2-oxazoline/2-oxazine copolymers through careful tuning of the monomer structures and reactivity as well as polymerization conditions. These copolymers were then transformed into near-random PEI-PPI copolymers by controlled side-chain hydrolysis. The prepared PEI-PPI copolymers formed stable polyplexes with GFP-encoding plasmid DNA, as validated by dynamic light scattering. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity and transfection efficiency of polyplexes were evaluated in C2C12 mouse myoblasts. While the polymer chain length did not significantly increase the toxicity, a higher PPI content was associated with increased toxicity and also lowered the amount of polymers needed to achieve efficient transfection. The transfection efficiency was significantly influenced by the degree of polymerization of PEI-PPI, whereby longer polymers resulted in more transfected cells. Copolymers with 60% or lower PPI content exhibited a good balance between high plasmid-DNA transfection efficiency and low toxicity. Interestingly, these novel PEI-PPI copolymers revealed exceptional serum tolerance, whereby transfection efficiencies of up to 53% of transfected cells were achieved even under 50% serum conditions. These copolymers, especially PEI-PPI with DP500 and a 1:1 PEI/PPI ratio, were identified as promising transfection agents for plasmid DNA.".
• 01GMB2946S2X8SA42JJW2HJHBT abstract "The unique material properties of cyclic polymers have made them attractive biomaterials, prompting the need for more efficient cyclization protocols. Due to their chemical versatility, poly(2-alkyl-2-oxazoline)s (PAOx) and poly(2-oxazine)s (POzi) provide potent candidates in this field. However, little to no comprehensive data on the cyclization process of these materials is available, especially not for POzi. In this study, we investigate the impact of a number of reaction parameters (batch volume, catalyst equivalents, molecular weight, and polymer addition method) on the macrocyclization efficiency of PAOx and POzi using copper(i)-catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC). It was found that POzi show more efficient conversion to the desired monocyclic species compared to PAOx, possibly due to increased chain flexibility of POzi. Considering macrocyclization efficiency, up to 33x more cyclic POzi could be synthesized per unit volume of solvent, compared to previous protocols for related PAOx, indicating potential for the future scale-up of macrocyclic POzi.".
• 01GMB2BX6RPB3ZQDS6N7YQC2HW abstract "Transmucosal administration offers numerous advantages for drug delivery as it usually helps to avoid first pass metabolism, provides rapid onset of action, and is a non-invasive route. Mucosal surfaces are covered by a viscoelastic mucus gel layer which acts as a protective barrier preventing the entrance of harmful substances into the human tissues. This function of mucus also inhibits the diffusion of drugs and nano-formulations and can result in a significant reduction of their efficacy. The design of mucuspenetrating nanoparticles can overcome the barrier function of mucus which may lead to better therapeutic outcomes. In this study, chitosan was chemically modified by grafting short chains of poly(ethylene glycol), poly(2-hydroxyethyl acrylate), poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline), or poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidone) and".
• 01GMB2D79E9NAP2P9HKDEH0FVE abstract "Poly(2-alkyl/aryl-2-oxazoline)s (PAOxs) have gained immense attraction in the polymer research community because of their relative ease of microwave-assisted synthesis, tailor-made properties and, most importantly, recent recognition as an upcoming polymer platform for many medical and biological applications (next generation polymer therapeutics/biomaterials). The materials and solution properties of PAOx can be easily tuned by changing the side chain functionalities. This review describes very recent advances in structures and side-chain-dependent properties of PAOx that are reported in the literature from 2017 and onwards. The review starts with providing an encyclopaedic overview of newly reported PAOx homopolymers, including their design strategies and limitations. Subsequently, their side-chain-dependent thermal and solution properties are discussed. (c) 2022 Society of Industrial Chemistry.".
• 01GMB2EQFPHPVDP010BWRV7H2T abstract "The development of interstrand-crosslinking (ICL) probes for the covalent targeting of DNA and RNA sequences of interest has been extensively reported in the past decade. However, most of the reactions reported so far induce the formation of a stable adduct that cannot be reverted, thus rendering these chemistries less useful in applications where the reversibility of the reaction is needed for further downstream processing of the targeted and isolated sequences, such as enzymatic amplification steps. In this work, we report on the reversibility of the furan-mediated ICL reaction. ICL formation can be conveniently triggered by either chemical (N-bromo succinimide, NBS) or luminous stimuli (visible light irradiation in presence of a photosensitizer) and quantitative reversion can be achieved by heating the crosslinked sample at 95 degrees C, while maintaining the structure of the DNA/RNA targets intact. As a proof-of-concept and showing the benefits of the ICL reversibility, we apply furan-mediated ICL to the pulldown of a target RNA strand from cell lysate.".
• 01GMB2TYPVJ5RQEQENN4ZHGEHA abstract "Reverse engineering an application requires attackers to invest time and effort doing manual and automatic analyses. When a new version of the application is released, this investment could be lost completely, if all the analyses had to be re-done. The gained insights into how an application functions might be transferred from one version to the next, however, if the versions do not differ too much. Diffing tools are thus valuable to reverse engineers attempting to transfer their knowledge across versions, as well as to defenders trying to assess this attack vector, and whether or how much a new version has to be diversified. While such diffing tools exist and are in widespread use for binary applications, they are in short supply for Android apps. This paper presents ApkDiff, a tool for diffing Android apps based on the semantic features of the class structure. To evaluate our tool we selected 20 popular financial apps available in the Google Play Store, and tracked their version updates over eight months. We found that on average 79% of all classes had a unique match across version updates. When we consider only classes for which we detect explicit obfuscations being applied (by applying heuristics on their identifiers), we still find that we can find a match for 56% of the classes (ranging from 23% to 85%), suggesting that these obfuscated apps are not resilient to our matching strategies. Our results suggest that ApkDiff provides a valuable approach to diffing Android apps.".
• 01GMB484BBA5FSW82TTXXYFZXB abstract "National shoulder arthroplasty registries are currently used to assess incidence, indication, type of prosthesis and revision, but they seem to lack sufficient information to lead to evidence based decision-making in shoulder surgery. There appears to be a large difference in registered parameters and outcome measurement per country. First we investigated whether existing registries have sufficient common datasets to enable pooling of data. Second, we determined whether known risk factors for prosthetic failure are being recorded. Through a non-systematic literature review studies on registries were analyzed for included parameters. Seven national registries were scrutinized for the data collected and these were classified according to categories of risk factors for failure: patient-, implant and surgeon related, and other parameters. This shows a large heterogeneity of registered parameters between countries. The majority of parameters shown to be relevant to outcome and failure of shoulder prostheses are not included in the studied registries. International agreement on parameters and outcome measurement for registries is paramount to enable pooling and comparison of data. If we intend to use the registries to provide us with evidence to improve prosthetic shoulder surgery, we need adjustment of the different parameters to be included.".
• 01GMB5YGCS9H479WHKPWW468FV abstract "Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a well-known complication following orthopaedic surgery. The incidence of this complication has decreased substantially since the introduction of routine thromboprophylaxis. However, concerns have been raised about increased bleeding complications caused by aggressive thromboprophylaxis. Attention has grown for aspirin as a safer thromboprophy-lactic agent following orthopaedic surgery. A systematic review using MEDLINE, Embase and Web of Science databases was undertaken to compare the effectiveness of aspirin prophylaxis following knee surgery with the current standard prophylactic agents (low molecular weight heparin [LMWH], vitamin K antagonists and factor Xa inhibitors). No significant difference in effectiveness of VTE prevention was found between aspirin, LMWH and warfarin. Factor Xa inhibitors were more effective, but increased bleeding complications were reported. As evidence is limited and of low quality with substantial heterogeneity, further research with high-quality, adequately powered trials is needed.".
• 01GMB5ZCBV6KK992NTY2Q3FCNV abstract "The present article argues for the need of an alternative way of thinking about international investment law and investor-State disputes in Latin America. The article explains how the current critical approach to foreign investment comes from a conceptual trajectory that originated in the 19th century with the work of Carlos Calvo, inspired in turn by Emer De Vattel’s conceptual model for international law, and how a principles discourse would be a viable alternative for enhancing the legitimacy of investment arbitration. The article further structures such a principles discourse in three clusters: general principles recognised by Latin American nations; principles compatible with concepts developed by investment arbitrators, and regional principles not yet recognised by international investment arbitrators. The last cluster contains in particular principles such as transparency and inclusion that ought to be the core of a Latin American discourse as the limit of the authority granted to investment arbitrators.".
• 01GMB62663912YNTV1BFC5HZ9B abstract "Data on return to work and sport following open wedge high tibial osteotomy (HTO) have been underreported. Furthermore, there is no clear consensus in literature about the postoperative alignment goals following HTO. A retrospective case series was performed to evaluate return to sport and work following open wedge HTO. The University of California, Los Angeles scale, the German classification system according to the Reichsausschua fur Arbeitszeitermittlung, the Tegner score and the Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score were used to asses the employment status, sport status and clinical outcome at the time of surgery and at final follow-up, minimum 2 years after surgery. The pre- and postoperative hip knee ankle angle (HKA) were documented. The desired postoperative alignment target was 0 degrees-2 degrees valgus mechanical axis. 30 open wedge HTOs were performed of which 27 patients were retrospectively included in the study. 25 out of 26 patients returned to work and 15 out of 17 patients returned to sport following surgery. Outcome scores were significantly higher after surgery. The mean postoperative HKA was 0,9 degrees of valgus mechanical axis. This study shows excellent outcome in sport and work activity and clinical outcome after open wedge HTO. We furthermore suggest that these outcomes can be obtained with a postoperative alignment of 0 degrees-2 degrees of valgus mechanical axis.".
• 01GMB7GYHA8AKB062RWFE4FVS1 abstract "Constitutional courts worldwide are becoming actors that can directly influence the texts of new investment treaties. This is part of a general phenomenon where the Constitutional Courts have become an institutional force to protect the international rule of law. The decisions of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador, the only country that has adopted an exit strategy with the investment treaty regime and that is trying to reintegrate into it, are very illustrative of how constitutional adjudication has an impact on international investment law. . This text analyzes the role that a constitutional court can have as an actor within international investment law. In the first place, several conceptual reflections are offered on the relationship strategies between constitutional courts and international investment law. The following sections expose the specific role of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court in the different phases of exit and subsequent return to the investment treaty regime.".
• 01GMB8RZGTHYXCEXN7VTD7TZ4Z abstract "Models based on diverse attention mechanisms have recently shined in tasks related to acoustic event classification (AEC). Among them, self-attention is often used in audio-only tasks to help the model recognize different acoustic events. Self-attention relies on the similarity between time frames, and uses global information from the whole segment to highlight specific features within a frame. In real life, information related to acoustic events will attenuate over time, which means the information within some frames around the event deserves more attention than distant time global information that may be unrelated to the event. This paper shows that self-attention may over-enhance certain segments of audio representations, and smooth out the boundaries between events representations and background noises. Hence, this paper proposes an event-related data conditioning (EDC) for AEC. EDC directly works on spectrograms. The idea of EDC is to adaptively select the frame-related attention range based on acoustic features, and gather the event-related local information to represent the frame. Experiments show that: 1) compared with spectrogram-based data augmentation methods and trainable feature weighting and self-attention, EDC outperforms them in both the original-size mode and the augmented mode; 2) EDC effectively gathers event-related local information and enhances boundaries between events and backgrounds, improving the performance of AEC.".
• 01GMB8XV6CT92JKRWJKZ104XSX abstract "To solve the limitation of labeled samples in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification, cross-scene learning methods are developed recently. However, the disparity caused by environmental variation between HSI scenes is still a challenge. As a supplement, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data provides elevation and spatial information regardless the variations. In this paper, we propose a multisource cross-scene classification method using fractional fusion and spatial-spectral domain adaptation to reduce disparity between scenes. The spatial information of HSI is preserved by fractional differential masks (FrDM) firstly. Then the LiDAR data is utilized for spectral alignment of HSI. The utilization of LiDAR data reduces the pixel-level disparity between scenes. At last, a spatial-spectral domain adaptation network is proposed for feature extraction and classification. Experimental results on HSI and LiDAR scenes show 5% improvements in overall accuracy compared with state-of-the-art methods.".
• 01GMB95VA80KJ55WDGGNVFG732 abstract "Focusing on joint classification of Hyperspectral image (HSI) and Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, a fractional Fourier image transformer (FrIT) is proposed as a backbone network in this paper. In the proposed FrIT, HSI and LiDAR data are firstly fused at pixel-level. Both multi-source and HSI feature extractors are utilized to capture local contexts. Then, a plug-and-play image transformer FrIT is explored for global contexts and sequential feature extraction. Unlike the attention-based representations in classic visual image transformer (VIT), FrIT is capable of speeding up the transformer architectures massively. To reduce the information loss from shallow to deep layers, FrIT is devised to connect contextual features in multiple fractional domains. At last, to evaluate the performance of FrIT, a new HSI and LiDAR benchmark is provided for extensive experiments, on which the proposed FrIT gains an improvement of 3% over state-of-the-art methods.".
• 01GMBA3JPV0KX0YXEGDZVFSSMN abstract "Sequential audio event tagging can provide not only the type information of audio events, but also the order information between events and the number of events that occur in an audio clip. Most previous works on audio event sequence analysis rely on connectionist temporal classification (CTC). However, CTC's conditional independence assumption prevents it from effectively learning correlations between diverse audio events. This paper first introduces the Transformer into sequential audio tagging, since Transformers perform well in sequence-related tasks. To better utilize contextual information of audio event sequences, we draw on the idea of bidirectional recurrent neural networks, and propose a contextual Transformer (cTransformer) with a bidirectional decoder that could exploit the forward and backward information of event sequences. Experiments on the real-life polyphonic audio dataset show that, compared to CTC-based methods, the cTransformer can effectively combine the fine-grained acoustic representations from the encoder and coarse-grained audio event cues to exploit contextual information to successfully recognize and predict the audio event sequence in polyphonic audio clips.".
• 01GMBA59KXME7SJBJSPN3EJVRT abstract "This chapter explores what could be an appropriate standard of review that investment arbitrators could use to evaluate the lawfulness of acts of national competition authorities in the context of “economic lawfare”. The interest in international investment arbitration and competition law adjudicators is justified since both are empowered with effective coercion mechanisms. Also, both fields have developed a highly specialized legal vocabulary to codify economic transactions. Therefore, in the context of current developments especially with the intervention of state-owned enterprises in the markets of other states, it is possible that these two fields could be used (or abused) by the states involved in an international conflict. These dynamics are explored with reference to the arbitration case between Gazprom, the state-owned enterprise of Russia and the Ukrainian competition authority. The chapter argues in general for the need of a three-principles standard of review to examine the acts of national competition authorities in light of the current standards of treatment contained in international investment agreements (IIAs).".
• 01GMBADMAFC9JC0NFKCCNCS52C abstract "Previous works on scene classification are mainly based on audio or visual signals, while humans perceive the environmental scenes through multiple senses. Recent studies on audio-visual scene classification separately fine-tune the large-scale audio and image pre-trained models on the target dataset, then either fuse the intermediate representations of the audio model and the visual model, or fuse the coarse-grained decision of both models at the clip level. Such methods ignore the detailed audio events and visual objects in audio-visual scenes (AVS), while humans often identify a scene through both audio events and visual objects within, and the congruence between them. To exploit the fine-grained information of audio events and visual objects in AVS, and coordinate the implicit relationship between audio events and visual objects, this paper proposes a multi-branch model equipped with contrastive event-object alignment (CEOA) and semantic-based fusion (SF) for AVSC. CEOA aims to align the learned embeddings of audio events and visual objects by comparing the difference between audio-visual event-object pairs. Then, visual objects associated with certain audio events and vice versa are accentuated by cross-attention and undergo SF for semantic-level fusion. Experiments show that: 1) the proposed AVSC model equipped with CEOA and SF outperforms the results of audio-only and visual-only models, i.e., the audio-visual results are better than the results from a single modality. 2) CEOA aligns the embeddings of audio events and related visual objects on a fine-grained level, and the SF effectively integrates both; 3) Compared with other large-scale integrated systems, the proposed model shows competitive performance, even without using additional datasets and data augmentation tricks.".
• 01GMBAJ8H0MCB317KJ9Z8PMBFE abstract "In real life, acoustic scenes and audio events are naturally correlated. Humans instinctively rely on fine-grained audio events as well as the overall sound characteristics to distinguish diverse acoustic scenes. Yet, most previous approaches treat acoustic scene classification (ASC) and audio event classification (AEC) as two independent tasks. A few studies on scene and event joint classification either use synthetic audio datasets that hardly match the real world, or simply use the multi-task framework to perform two tasks at the same time. Neither of these two ways makes full use of the implicit and inherent relation between fine-grained events and coarse-grained scenes. To this end, this paper proposes a relation-guided ASC (RGASC) model to further exploit and coordinate the scene-event relation for the mutual benefit of scene and event recognition. The TUT Urban Acoustic Scenes 2018 dataset (TUT2018) is annotated with pseudo labels of events by a simple and efficient audiorelated pre-trained model PANN, which is one of the state-of-the-art AEC models. Then, a prior scene-event relation matrix is defined as the average probability of the presence of each event type in each scene class. Finally, the two-tower RGASC model is jointly trained on the real-life dataset TUT2018 for both scene and event classification. The following results are achieved. 1) RGASC effectively coordinates the true information of coarsegrained scenes and the pseudo information of fine-grained events. 2) The event embeddings learned from pseudo labels under the guidance of prior scene-event relations help reduce the confusion between similar acoustic scenes. 3) Compared with other (non-ensemble) methods, RGASC improves the scene classification accuracy on the real-life dataset.".
• 01GMBAV2GEVNWW8BKH0XNJ69WF abstract "In earlier work, a mobile sensor network had been deployed in passenger cars to measure road quality using sound and vibration sensors. A self-calibration and confounder removal (SCCR) algorithm eliminated the effect of the measurement device in sound and vibration measurements. It relied on the hypothesis that two measurements of the same object should give the same result. However, once the deep learning model has been trained, the model cannot easily include more devices, because it relies on a one-hot encoded device identification. Therefore, additional characterization of both sensor and vehicle is proposed here using a batch of observations (a bag) from the same sensors. A set-encoder is trained with a device classification head. This set-encoder compresses the input bag into a latent representation, irrespective of the input order. This latent vector, which characterizes the sensor, is injected into the SCCR framework to steer the calibration. New devices are characterized by the pre-trained set-encoder. This relies on the hypothesis that closely related sensors with a similar response should be close to each other in the latent space. Therefore, SCCR is now possible with new devices, previously unseen at the training time of SCCR. However, an increase in reconstruction error is observed for the unseen devices.".
• 01GMBCGM561085EP2YFQXQQK5K abstract "The growing surplus of green electricity generated by renewable energy technologies has fueled research towards chemical industry electrification. By adapting power-to-chemical concepts, such as plasma-assisted processes, cheap resources could be converted into fuels and base chemicals. However, the feasibility of those electrified processes at large scale has not been investigated yet. Thus, the current work strives to compare, for first time in the literature, plasma-assisted production of syngas, from CH4 and CO2 (dry methane reforming), with thermal catalytic dry methane reforming. Specifically, both processes are conceptually designed to deliver syngas suitable for methanol synthesis (H-2/CO >= 2 in mole). The processes are simulated in the Aspen Plus process simulator where different process steps are investigated. Heat integration and equipment cost estimation are performed for the most promising process flow diagrams. Collectively, plasma-assisted dry methane reforming integrated with combined steam/CO2 methane reforming is an effective way to deliver syngas for methanol production. It is more sustainable than combined thermal catalytic dry methane reforming with steam methane reforming, which has also been proposed for syngas production of H-2/CO >= 2; in the former process, 40% more CO2 is captured, while 38% less H2O is consumed per mol of syngas. Furthermore, the plasma-assisted process is less complex than the thermal catalytic one; it requires higher amount of utilities, but comparable capital investment.".
• 01GMBCP5YTDFGNHXDD62PX5JK0 abstract "Methane is an important raw material for fuel and commodity chemicals production. Energy-intensive steam methane catalytic reforming in gas-fired furnaces is the main industrial process for methane conversion to synthesis gas and further to other chemicals. Methane conversion by means of non-thermal plasma technologies has attracted attention in the last years, as no pre-heating of the feed-stream at high temperatures is needed. Electric energy is consumed in producing energetic electrons for molecule bonds breaking, instead of gas heating, thereby overcoming the disadvantages of high operational temperatures. In this work, after introducing plasma classification and plasma chemistry, a comprehensive review of literature papers on non-thermal plasma assisted methane coupling in the period 2010-2016 is presented and the best results that have been obtained with all different kinds of non-thermal plasma techniques are reported. Finally, as the energy cost is the main cost driver of the process after the raw material cost, comparison among all plasma techniques used for methane coupling is performed in terms of specific energy requirement to crack a mole of methane (SER, kJ/mol(CH4)), efficiency (eta %) and energy requirement to produce a mole of target product (ER, either kJ/mol(C2H2) or kJ/mol(C2H4)). This is followed by a comparison between plasma-driven and thermal energy-driven methane coupling.".
• 01GMBCRERHQMWXSTASJM599DXS abstract "New insights into the obscure mechanisms of solid-state deracemization phenomena are obtained by crystal ripening experiments that, contrary to standard techniques, exclude attrition enhancement (grinding). The results point out that small particles and an initial size imbalance between the two enantiomeric crystal populations can intensify the rate of solid-state enantiomeric enrichment even in the absence of intermediate actions (e.g., grinding or thermal cycling). On this ground, a new process that creates such initial conditions is designed and exemplified for the proteinogenic glutamic acid. As a first step, racemic compound solvate (DL-glutamic acid monohydrate) crystals are completely converted to small-sized conglomerate anhydrate crystals, in the presence of larger seeds of a single chirality. After the transformation is complete and the racemization catalyst is added, the suspension contains an equal number of small-sized conglomerate crystals of both enantiomers together with the larger seeds of the preferred enantiomer. Over time, the large crystals of the preferred enantiomer tend to grow at the expense of smaller ones, which dissolve. This, combined with the fast racemization, leads to enantiomeric enrichment. The possible occurrence of enantioselective agglomeration between small and seed crystals speeds up this process by removing small crystals of the preferred enantiomer. Since most amino acids and several other pharmaceutical compounds are known to form metastable racemic hydrate crystals, it is expected that this new method is readily applicable to a variety of compounds. In addition, the process provides a technically simpler and more scalable route to enantiomeric enrichment compared to attrition enhanced deracemization, and its applicability extends to the wider pool of compounds that crystallize as racemic crystals.".
• 01GMBD4BYTZKW8VKT5ZRBRVXQT abstract "A systematic study of the conventional and microwave (MW) kinetics of an industrially relevant demethylation reaction is presented. In using industrially relevant reaction conditions the dominant influence of the solvent on the MW energy dissipation is avoided. Below the boiling point, the effect of MWs on the activation energy E-a and k(0) is found nonexistent. Interestingly, under reflux conditions, the microwave-heated (MWH) reaction displays very pronounced zero-order kinetics, displaying a much higher reaction rate than observed for the conventionally thermal-heated (CTH) reaction. This is related to a different gas product (methyl bromide, MeBr) removal mechanism, changing from classic nucleation into gaseous bubbles to a facilitated removal through escaping gases/ vapors. Additionally, the use of MWs compensates better for the strong heat losses in this reaction, associated with the boiling of HBr/water and the loss of MeBr, than under CTH. Through modeling, MWs was shown to occur inhomogeneously around gas/liquid interfaces, resulting in localized overheating in the very near vicinity of the bubbles, overall increasing the average heating rate in the bubble vicinity vis-a-vis the bulk of the liquid. Based on these observations and findings, a novel continuous reactor concept is proposed in which the escaping MeBr and the generated HBr/water vapors are the main driving forces for circulation. This reactor concept is generic in that it offers a viable and low cost option for the use of very strong acids and the managed removal/quenching of gaseous byproducts.".
• 01GMBD8TEVYG1G21RK66QNE1DY abstract "The use of renewable energy (RE) to transform carbon dioxide into commodities (i.e., CO2 valorization) will pave the way towards a more sustainable economy in the coming years. But how can we efficiently use this energy (mostly available as electricity or solar light) to drive the necessary (catalytic) transformations? This paper presents a review of the technological advances in the transformation of carbon dioxide by means of RE. The socioeconomic implications and chemical basis of the transformation of carbon dioxide with RE are discussed. Then a general view of the use of RE to activate the (catalytic) transformations of carbon dioxide with microwaves, plasmas, and light is presented. The fundamental phenomena involved are introduced from a catalytic and reaction device perspective to present the advantages of this energy form as well as the inherent limitations of the present state-of-the-art. It is shown that efficient use of RE requires the redesign of current catalytic concepts. In this context, a new kind of reaction system, an energy-harvesting device, is proposed as a new conceptual approach for this endeavor. Finally, the challenges that lie ahead for the efficient and economical use of RE for carbon dioxide conversion are exposed.".
• 01GMBDB3SX3DZWGG0P8A51S573 abstract "It has been recently observed that coupling Viedma ripening with a seeded in situ metastable racemic crystal to conglomerate transformation leads to accelerated and complete deracemization: crystal transformation enhanced deracemization. By means of a simple kinetic model, we show that the mechanistic pathway of this new process depends profoundly on the interplay between the crystal transformation and racemization processes, which in turn influence the nucleation process of the counter enantiomer. If the nucleation of the counter enantiomer is suppressed (e.g., by sufficiently fast racemization, low amount of raceniic compound or gradual feed, low relative solubility between racemic compound and conglomerate), deracemization proceeds via a second order asymmetric transformation (SOAT) and is limited primarily by the dissolution rate of the racemic crystals and the growth rate of the preferred enantiomer crystals. Breakage and agglomeration accelerate the process, but contraryto conventional Viedma ripening, they are not essential ingredients to explain the observed enantiorneric enrichment. If the mucleation process of the counter enantiomer is not sufficiently suppressed, deracemization is initially controlled by the dissolution rate of the racemic crystals, but Viedma ripening is subsequently required to convert the conglomerate crystals of the counter enantiomer formed' by nucleation, resulting in slower deracemization kinetics. In both cases, the combined process leads to faster deracemization kinetics compared to conventional Viedma ripening, while it autocorrects for the main disadvantage of SOAT, i.e., the accidental nucleation of the counter enantiomer. In addition, crystal transformation enhanced deracemization extends the range of applicability of solid-state deracemization processes to compounds that form metastable racemic crystals.".
• 01GMBDD9ZWNJTGB5WMFXY3Y0B9 abstract "The aim of this paper is to produce spherical encapsulates of wheat gluten in a food-grade biopolymer for preparing sheared meat analogs, to prevent instant fibrilization of the gluten during a pre-mixing step. The hydrogel should release the gluten inside the Couette Cell, as a result of the higher temperature and shear in the process. Both sodium alginate and -carrageenan were used as encapsulants. Spherical particles of hydrogel-gluten mixtures were produced by means of a dripping method using an encapsulator. While the particle properties of -carrageenan surpassed those of alginate in terms of controlled release of the core, the particle production using the encapsulator was more complicated. With -carrageenan, a layer of oil on top of the cross-linking bath fluid, as well as through the outer orifice of a concentric nozzle were required to obtain a good sphericity of the particles. For the alginate particles the use of oil was not necessary. Gluten loadings of 7% w/w were achieved with 1.5% w/w alginate and with 2% w/w -carrageenan. The water content of the particles can be easily controlled by a subsequent partial drying step. A mixture of Soy Protein Isolate and particles was sheared in the Couette Cell. Controlled release of the gluten from the alginate particles was not achieved properly by temperature or shear. The controlled release of the gluten was achieved at the processing conditions only with -carrageenan. Some fibrilization was observed in the sheared product, but the macrostructure was not yet well developed. However, an optimization of the shearing process for the use of the particles may lead to an improved structure for the meat analogs. Practical applicationsThis paper investigated the effect of encapsulation in hydrogels on the fibrilization behavior of wheat gluten upon contact with water. A cheap and easily scalable dripping technique was used to create spherical particles in which the gluten did not fibrilize, although the coating material consists of 95% of water. Upon reaching the process conditions in the shearing device, the gluten is released and able to form fibers. The results show that hydrogels can mechanically protect the core and act as a delivery structure. The protective and carrier functions of the hydrogel can alternatively be used for cores like food additives (e.g., vitamins) or even to pharmaceutical ingredients, not only for the production of meat analogs, but also in other food applications.".
• 01GMBDJH8WRN36VC5AVEN79GPF abstract "The complexity and challenges in noncontact temperature measurements inside microwave-heated catalytic reactors are presented in this paper. A custom-designed microwave cavity has been used to focus the microwave field on the catalyst and enable monitoring of the temperature field in 2D. A methodology to study the temperature distribution in the catalytic bed by using a thermal camera in combination with a thermocouple for a heterogeneous catalytic reaction (methane dry reforming) under microwave heating has been demonstrated. The effects of various variables that affect the accuracy of temperature recordings are discussed in detail. The necessity of having at least one contact sensor, such as a thermocouple, or some other microwave transparent sensor, is recommended to keep track of the temperature changes occurring in the catalytic bed during the reaction under microwave heating.".
• 01GMBG1ENKQ25X3W6F8C0A0TVM abstract "Gamma delta T cells are increasingly emerging as crucial immune regulators that can take on innate and adaptive roles in the defence against pathogens. Although they arise within the thymus from the same hematopoietic precursors as conventional alpha beta T cells, the development of gamma delta T cells is less well understood. In this review, we focus on summarising the current state of knowledge about the cellular and molecular processes involved in the gener-ation of gamma delta T cells in human.".
• 01GMBG1EPBDDDJ50VKDS6MPA7Y abstract "T cells are generated from hematopoietic stem cells through a highly organized developmental process, in which stage-specific molecular events drive maturation towards alpha beta and gamma delta T cells. Although many of the mechanisms that control alpha beta- and gamma delta-lineage differentiation are shared between human and mouse, important differences have also been observed. Here, we studied the regulatory dynamics of the E and ID protein encoding genes during pediatric human T cell development by evaluating changes in chromatin accessibility, histone modifications and bulk and single cell gene expression. We profiled patterns of ID/E protein activity and identified up- and downstream regulators and targets, respectively. In addition, we compared transcription of E and ID protein encoding genes in human versus mouse to predict both shared and unique activities in these species, and in prenatal versus pediatric human T cell differentiation to identify regulatory changes during development. This analysis showed a putative involvement of TCF3/E2A in the development of gamma delta T cells. In contrast, in alpha beta T cell precursors a pivotal pre-TCR-driven population with high ID gene expression and low predicted E protein activity was identified. Finally, in prenatal but not postnatal thymocytes, high HEB/TCF12 levels were found to counteract high ID levels to sustain thymic development. In summary, we uncovered novel insights in the regulation of E and ID proteins on a cross-species and cross-developmental level.".
• 01GMBG1EPGQ2C8E77HGXXGJ8G0 abstract "T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is a heterogeneous and aggressive malignancy arising from T-cell precursors. MiRNAs are implicated in negative regulation of gene expression and when aberrantly expressed contribute to various cancer types, including T-ALL. Previously we demonstrated the oncogenic potential of miR-363-3p overexpression in a subgroup of T-ALL patients. Here, using combined proteomic and transcriptomic approaches, we show that miR-363-3p enhances cell growth of T-ALL in vitro via inhibition of PTPRC and SOCS2, which are implicated in repression of the JAK-STAT pathway. We propose that overexpression of miR-363-3p is a novel mechanism potentially contributing to overactivation of JAK-STAT pathway. Additionally, by combining the transcriptomic and methylation data of T-ALL patients, we show that promoter methylation may also contribute to downregulation of SOCS2 expression and thus potentially to JAK-STAT activation. In conclusion, we highlight aberrant miRNA expression and aberrant promoter methylation as mechanisms, alternative to mutations of JAK-STAT-related genes, which might lead to the upregulation of JAK-dependent signaling in T-ALL.".
• 01GMBK1262Z4TDKZ5RBXCDHR5F abstract "The loess-paleosol sequences in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) are an important terrestrial paleoclimate record. However, quantitative understanding of the response of paleosol development to various climate and environmental factors remains poor. Based on simulations with combined soil-climate models (SoilGen2-LOVECLIM1.3), this study investigates the sensitivity of paleosol development to different soil forming factors as well as the influence of ice sheets and astronomical forcing during the interglacials of the past 500 ka. Sensitivity analyses show that precipitation, dust addition and evapotranspiration are the dominant factors controlling the interglacial paleosol formation, but their relative importance varies between intergalcials and for different soil properties such as calcite and clay contents. Our results show that the simulated S1, S2, S3, S5-1 paleosols, which correspond to MIS 5, 7, 9 and 13 respectively, exhibit strong relationship with precession through its control on precipitation, whereas the precession signal is weak in the simulated S4 paleosol, in line with the weak precession variation during MIS 11. The results also show variable length of lags between different soil properties and precession and also in different interglacials. The lag between the simulated calcite and precession is shorter than that of clay. Moreover, clay content also shows strong relation with temperature during MIS 5 and MIS 13. Large ice sheets in the early and late phases of the interglacials have substantial impact on both temperature and precipitation in the CLP and thus on carbonate leaching and clay migration. Therefore, the simulated paleosols result mainly from the joint effect of precession and ice sheets via their control on local climate, and they show qualitative agreement with observations.".
• 01GMD15P9ZF8KFJZG31K0C7DTQ abstract "Rapid cooling and microwave heating substantially speed up temperature cycling-enhanced deracemization, while limiting the concomitant side reactions. During fast cooling, secondary nucleation is shown to enable deracemization.".
• 01GMD18EXK7WZX0RE6RRTH43CE abstract "Industrial synthesis of enantiopure compounds is nowadays heavily based on the separation of racemates through crystallization processes. Although the application of ultrasound in solution crystallization processes (sonocrystallization) has become a promising emerging technology, offering several benefits (e.g. reduction of the Induction time and narrowing of the metastable zone width, control over the product size, shape and polymorphic modification), little attention has been paid so far to the effects of ultrasound on chiral crystallization processes. Several recent studies have reported on the application of acoustic energy to crystallization processes that separate enantiomers, ranging from classical (diastereomeric) resolution and preferential crystallization to new and emerging processes such as attrition-enhanced deracemization (Viedma ripening). A variety of interesting effects have been observed, which include among others, enhanced crystallization yield with higher enantiomeric purity crystals, spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking crystallization, formation of metastable conglomerate crystals and enhanced deracemization rates. The objective of this review is to provide an overview of the effects of ultrasound on chiral crystallization and outline several aspects of interest in this emerging field.".
• 01GMD1DN96MVSQ4Q95J2QKJX2C abstract "A series of ruthenium-doped strontium titanate (SrTiO3) perovskite catalysts were synthesized by conventional and microwave-assisted hydrothermal methods. The structure was analyzed by X-Ray diffraction (XRD) confirming the formation of the perovskite phase with some TiO2 anatase phase in all the catalysts. Microwave irradiation decreases the temperature and time of synthesis from 220 degrees C for 24 h (conventional heating) to 180 degrees C for 1 h, without affecting the formation of perovskite. A 7 wt. % ruthenium-doped SrTiO3 catalyst showed the best dielectric properties, and thus its catalytic activity was evaluated for the methane dry reforming reaction under microwave heating in a custom fixed-bed quartz reactor. Microwave power, CH4:CO2 vol. % feed ratio and gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) were varied in order to determine the best conditions for performing dry reforming with high reactants conversions and H-2/CO ratio. Stable maximum CH4 and CO2 conversions of similar to 99.5% and similar to 94%, respectively, at H-2/CO similar to 0.9 were possible to reach with the 7 wt. % ruthenium-doped SrTiO3 catalyst exposed to maximum temperatures in the vicinity of 940 degrees C. A comparative theoretical scale-up study shows significant improvement in H-2 production capability in the case of the perovskite catalyst compared to carbon-based catalysts.".
• 01GMD1G956APYRZ655HMM0CBDD abstract "In this study, we report on experiments designed to deconvolute the particle breakage kinetics and mechanism from the parallel phenomena (growth-dissolution, agglomeration) in attrition-enhanced deracemization processes. Through such experiments, we derived the specific breakage rates and cumulative breakage distribution functions for three grinding methods typically used in deracemization experiments: (a) bead grinding, (b) ultrasound grinding, and (c) the combination of bead and ultrasound grinding. Subsequently, we tested these methods on their ability to induce deracemization. We show that in the conventional bead grinding process, breakage occurs mostly by fracture. This results in slow deracemization rates due to the delayed formation of submicron particles that are essential to the process. Conversely, ultrasound grinding very efficiently breaks particles by abrasion. This leads to fast generation of an abundance of submicron fragments resulting in fast deracemization. However, using ultrasound, large crystals fracture rates are an order of magnitude lower than those using bead grinding, which results in an insufficient size decrease of the large counter enantiomer crystals and eventually to incomplete deracemization. Remarkably, the simultaneous application of bead and ultrasound grinding leads, due to synergistic effects of both fracture and abrasion, to 2-fold higher total deracemization rates compared to bead grinding alone. The present work offers new insights into the key role of particle breakage in attrition-enhanced deracemization, together with a basis for decoupling the individual phenomena involved in the process.".
• 01GMD1JBY8D6R3GD50E5WAKPV3 abstract "We report that gas phase plasma-assisted non-oxidative methane coupling can lead to formation of ethylene as major product at similar to 20% yield per pass. This is attained by using a nanosecond pulsed discharge (NPD) reactor, featuring rapid product quenching rates, ( recyclable) hydrogen co-feeding (CH1: H-2 = 1: 1) and elevated pressures (5 bar) at which NPD is ignited.".
• 01GMD1R5RMPMJXVXEYD7DRQY6Q abstract "In this work, we report on low energy cost methane conversion to ethylene in a hybrid plasma-catalytic reactor system. Methane is first converted to acetylene, reaching up to 23.5% yield per pass, by a nanosecond pulsed discharge (NPD), and subsequently, acetylene is hydrogenated to ethylene using a Pd-based catalyst, which is placed in the post-plasma zone. Overall, ethylene is formed as major product at 25.7% yield per pass, consuming 1642 kJ/molC(2)H(4), which is the lowest energy cost reported for plasma-assisted methane-to-ethylene conversion so far. The two-step process is carried out in a single reactor volume that aside from the discharge energy does not require any heat or hydrogen input since both are provided by methane cracking in the plasma zone itself.".
• 01GMD1S5CVCFEX46YSZPC7G5XG abstract "Elk jaar worden in Vlaanderen ongeveer 2000 doctoraten succesvol verdedigd, een stijging met 50% ten opzichte van tien jaar geleden. Elk doctoraat is het sluitstuk van een parcours waarin niet alleen unieke, innovatieve kennis werd ontwikkeld, maar waarin creativiteit, volharding en probleemoplossend vermogen noodzakelijk waren. Deze competenties zijn waardevol voor alle academische en niet- academische werkgevers en carrières, maar ze zijn in het bijzonder van belang voor wie wil ondernemen. Tot op vandaag weten we niet hoeveel doctorandi en doctoraathouders inVlaanderen als ondernemer aan de slag zijn. De laatste jaren horen we evenwel steeds meer ver- halen van doctorandi en doctoraathouders die (wensen te) ondernemen. Hoe worden doctorandi en doctoraathouders in dit ondernemerschap ondersteund? Heeft het doc- toraat een meerwaarde als doctorandi en doctoraathouders wensen te ondernemen? Welke competenties relevant voor het ondernemerschap werden tijdens het doctoraat verworven of verder ontwikkeld? De doelstelling van deze publicatie is tweeledig. Enerzijds laten we 21 stakeholders aan het woord die gericht zijn op het ondersteunen en optimaliseren van ondernemerschap bij doctorandi en doctoraathouders. De lezer krijgt daardoor (deels) een overzicht van het innovatie ecosysteem. De publicatie geeft ook een overzicht van diensten en platformen in Vlaanderen die van nut kunnen zijn bij het opstarten of uitbouwen van een onderneming. Anderzijds tekenen we ook 18 inspirerende interviews op met doctorandi en docto- raathouders die momenteel aan het ondernemen zijn. Hun unieke verhalen getuigen van diverse perspectieven op hun ondernemerstrajecten. De onderzoekers komen uit verschillende onderzoeksdomeinen en hun ondernemingen zitten in verschillende fases van ontwikkeling.Wie alle verhalen leest zal enkele rode draden ontdekken, zoals het voordeel van ondernemen vanuit een complementair team, de noodzaak van een brede kijk en het inzetten op de noden van de klant. Een ander element dat uit deze interviewreeks naar boven komt, is het zeer groot aandeel mannelijke onderzoekers dat geïnterviewd is. Voorafgaand aan alle interviews laten we minister Jo Brouns aan het woord,Vlaams minister van Economie, Innovatie,Werk, Sociale Economie en Landbouw. Minister Brouns stipt het belang aan van wetenschappelijk onderzoek en ondernemerschap binnenVlaanderen; kadert dit ook in een breder perspectief en vermeldt ook specifieke initiatieven binnen het Vlaamse landschap. Deze reeks hoopt zo inspiratie te geven over de wisselwerking tussen wetenschappelijk onderzoek en het ondernemerschap.".
• 01GMD1VGZ1ZPM45KDEXYR113H4 abstract "The electrification of the petrochemical industry, imposed by the urgent need for decarbonization and driven by the incessant growth of renewable electricity share, necessitates electricity-driven technologies for efficient conversion of fossil fuels to chemicals. Non-thermal plasma reactor systems that successfully perform in lab scale are investigated for this purpose. However, the feasibility of such electrified processes at industrial scale is still questionable. In this context, two process alternatives for ethylene production via plasma-assisted non-oxidative methane coupling have conceptually been designed based on previous work of our group namely, a direct plasma-assisted methane-to-ethylene process (one-step process) and a hybrid plasma-catalytic methane-to-ethylene process (two-step process). Both processes are simulated in the Aspen Plus V10 process simulator and also consider the technical limitations of a real industrial environment. The economically favorable operating window (range of operating conditions at which the target product purity is met at minimum utility cost) is defined via sensitivity analysis. Preliminary results reveal that the hybrid plasma-catalytic process requires 21% less electricity than the direct one, while the electric power consumed for the plasma-assisted reaction is the major cost driver in both processes, accounting for ~75% of the total electric power demand. Finally, plasma-assisted processes are not economically viable at present. However, future decrease in electricity prices due to renewable electricity production increase can radically affect process economics. Given that a break-even electricity price of 35 USD/MWh (without considering the capital cost) is calculated for the two-step plasma process and that current electricity prices for some energy intensive industries in certain countries can be as low as 50 USD/MWh, the plasma-assisted processes may become economically viable in the future.".
• 01GMD1YCAW6D8Q956PQM69G2ZX abstract "We present a study on the reaction pathways involved in non-oxidative methane coupling in a nanosecond pulsed discharge reactor using isotope analysis. Specifically, plasma-assisted reactions with isotopes, serving as tracers, are performed in two ratios (CH4:D-2 = 1:1 and CH4:D-2 = 1:3) and elevated pressures (up to 5 bar). Acetylene hydrogenation reactions are also performed in a tubular reactor under conventional furnace heating to simulate post plasma zone conditions. Depending on the pressure applied the major product formed changes. At ambient pressure, acetylene is the major product through thermally driven methane coupling to ethane in gas phase followed by stepwise dehydrogenation of ethane to acetylene (C2H6 -> C2H5 -> C2H4 -> C2H3 -> C2H2). At higher pressures (> 3 bar), acetylene is formed via the same sequence of paths. However, the higher bulk gas temperature attained when operating at overpressure also activates gas phase methane coupling to ethylene and acetylene hydrogenation to ethylene catalyzed by the copper-based electrode of the reactor. These two reaction paths shift product selectivity from acetylene to ethylene at higher pressures.".
• 01GMD20JVYHKHT1GEH39NCJ2R5 abstract "Crystallization is an important and widely used separation technique in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. Control of the final particle properties is of great importance for these industries. The application of ultrasound in these crystallization processes, also referred to as sonocrystallization, has shown to impact nucleation, crystal growth and fragmentation. As a result this technology has potential to control the final particle size, shape and polymorphic form. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the recent advances in sonocrystallization. It reviews the observed effects of ultrasound on the different stages of the crystallization process. Recent insights in the mechanism behind these effects are discussed as well. Finally, guidelines for the operating conditions, such as ultrasonic frequency, power, type of cavitation bubbles, time window and moment of application are formulated.".
• 01GMD22JPXJCTPWPG8SJ411TKP abstract "In this work, we report on air/N-2 gasification of a byproduct stream from an industrial fermenter in a tubular microwave plasma reactor to investigate the feasibility of the technology for organic compounds valorization, given the limited number of relevant works in the literature. In this context, an operating window regarding air/N-2/biomass flow rates and power input has been identified to enable stable and efficient operation. Up to 89% carbon conversion efficiency and 41% cold gas efficiency have been attained with syngas product composition H-2:CO:CO2 = 41:53:6 on molar basis, fairly close to the calculated equilibrium composition values in the temperature range 973 K to 2173 K.".
• 01GMD240FBE84YJ7SSRBQY0BF8 abstract "Modelling approach that comprises a 2D self-consistent plasma model for discharge characterization in the first step and a 0D global plasma model for performance analysis in the second step.".
• 01GMD240FBE84YJ7SSRBQY0BF8 abstract "Plasma reactors have the potential to enable CO2 utilization technologies and so there is need to investigate their performance from a chemical or process engineering perspective. Multiphysics models are excellent tools to carry out this analysis; however, practical engineering models of plasma reactors are limited. Herein a two-step modelling approach for plasma reactors is presented. In the first step, a 2D plasma reactor model with a simple chemistry is used to characterize the discharge. The result of this step is used in the second step to develop a global (volume averaged) model of the reactor with the actual chemistry. The approach is applied in the case of CO2 dissociation in a non-thermal surface wave microwave plasma reactor. Preliminary calculations reveal the need to include the vibrationally enhanced dissociation of CO2 in the chemistry of the model. Reduced vibrational kinetics are employed for this purpose by introducing the fictitious species . The model predictions are compared to experimental results to validate the model and obtain insight into the performance of the reactor. In comparison to the experimental results the conversions obtained with the model are underestimated between 11% and 25%. The dominant dissociation paths in the plasma reactor are also identified. Further calculations are performed to show the importance of an approximate description of the power deposition. Limitations of the approach are discussed as well, especially those with major contribution to the discrepancies between experimental and modelling results.".
• 01GMD25KJDJHHFAK83R831RNHR abstract "The aim of this review is to discuss the applications of microwave heating to separation and purification processes in chemical engineering from the perspective of its three unique features, namely rapid heating, selective heating and specific microscopic effects. These features render microwaves an alternative clean energy source that can replace or complement the conventional heating in various separation processes. The rapid heating and evaporation of water under the influence of microwaves renders the technology valuable in materials drying and organic extraction. The direct and selective heating of materials with high dielectric loss in a mixture enables energy savings in the treatment of petrochemical products. In adsorption processes, microwave heating can selectively heat solid adsorbent material leading to the formation of micro "hot spots" (localized zones of high temperature), increasing the efficiency in adsorbent regeneration. Finally, a deeper understanding of the impact of microwaves on microscopic structure has led to novel separation methods, such as microwave-assisted per-vaporation and microwave-assisted reactive distillation. An overview of the key mechanisms and developments of microwave heating in all these applications during the recent five years is provided and is followed by identification of the associated challenges in scale up. Fundamental research is still required for guiding further industrial application, while numerical simulations considering both heat transfer and distribution of the electromagnetic field in various reactor geometries can be helpful in the design of microwave reactors for large scale applications.".
• 01GMD280KB747NB2R4GJ7XBR2T abstract "In this work, we demonstrate a semibatch solid-state deracemization process for N-(2- chlorobenzylidene)henylglycine amide (NCPA), a complex chiral polymorphic system that involves three types of crystalline racemates (racemic compound and conglomerate forms I and II). In this process, gradually fed metastable racemic compound crystals are converted in situ to crystals of the preferred (seeded) enantiomer under grinding conditions through a series of solvent-mediated transformations in a racemizing solution. The phase diagram for this system shows that while conglomerate form II is stable under the conditions examined (acetonitrile at 21 degrees C), form I crystals of a single enantiomer (used as seeds) are unstable at (nearly) racemic compositions and convert to the racemic compound upon addition of the racemization catalyst. Thus, care needs to be exercised in order to fully convert form Ito form II before addition of the racemization catalyst in order to prevent the undesired crystallization of the racemic compound. This can be achieved by adding a small amount of water, which is found to enhance the nucleation and growth kinetics of the most stable conglomerate form II, eventually leading to complete deracemization. Importantly, we show that this special deracemization process can be easily monitored online by Raman spectroscopy, which gives access to the evolution of the solid-phase composition. For the studied system, this information can in turn be used to directly estimate the solid-phase enantiomeric excess online throughout the process, as long as conglomerate crystals of the counter enantiomer do not form.".
• 01GMD2ABJ142TFRY68WV6D33AR abstract "Non-thermal microwave plasma reactors can efficiently split the CO2 molecule. However, big challenges remain before this technology can become a feasible industrial technology. Computer modelling can be very useful to tackle such challenges. Detailed kinetic modelling is commonly used to gain insights into the complex vibrational kinetics of CO2, as vibrational excitation is strongly related to the energy efficiency in the dissociation process. The vibrational-to-translational temperature ratio has been identified as a key variable to achieve high energy efficiencies. This ratio has also been used to simplify detailed CO2 vibrational kinetics, notably reducing the number of species and reactions required to model the non-thermal plasma. In this paper we use an isothermal reaction kinetics model to study the vibrational kinetics of CO2 under the typical conditions used in non-thermal microwave plasma experiments. The importance of the different collisional processes is evaluated with respect to the different conditions and timescales at which CO2 dissociation takes place. The long timescale behavior of the vibrational-to-translational temperature ratio under different conditions is discussed in detail. It is shown that the behavior at increasing gas temperatures can be fitted to an expression that incorporates the Landau-Teller temperature dependence. This is confirmed by the average adjusted R-square values higher than 0.99 and the average root mean square error values smaller than 0.22 at low gas temperatures. The limitations of the fitting expression are also discussed, especially the conditions and timescales at which it yields better results.".
• 01GMD2ABJ142TFRY68WV6D33AR abstract "Reaction kinetics study of the vibrational-to-translational temperature ratio of CO2, a crucial variable to achieve an energetically efficient dissociation in non-thermal plasma.".
• 01GMD2C581ENA2MT5QZVZQ4T8H abstract "In this work, we establish a set of reactor operation guidelines for efficient non-oxidative methane coupling (i.e., high olefins yield) in nanosecond pulsed discharges and plate-to-plate electrode configuration. The reactor performance analysis suggests that the operating conditions directly affect the bulk gas temperature, which in turn determines the plasma resistance and, subsequently, the energy channeled into the discharge. High performance is attained only at proper load-impedance matching, i.e. when operating in spark regime and applying i) moderate pulse frequencies (<= 20 kHz) combined with moderate discharge gaps (<= 3.5 mm) or ii) high pulse frequencies (> 20 kHz) combined with high discharge gaps (> 3.5 mm). Further, the electrode configuration itself significantly affects the reactor performance. When applying same operating conditions, the plate-to-plate configuration attains lower olefin (C-2) yield than the co-axial one (similar to 27% vs similar to 34%, respectively) since lesser energetic discharges are ignited (11 W vs 17 W), but similar to 20% lower energy is used due to lower electric energy dissipation into gas heating. The plate-to-plate configuration also features significantly higher performance stability and robustness in carbon formation, enabling an order-of-magnitude longer operating periods.".
• 01GMD2DG7C7SSPE2A9DN3B81SX abstract "Herein, the pivotal role of secondary nucleation in a crystallization-enhanced deracemization process is reported. During this process, complete and rapid deracemization of chiral conglomerate crystals of an isoindolinone is attained through fast microwave-assisted temperature cycling. A parametric study of the main factors that affect the occurrence of secondary nucleation in this process, namely agitation rate, suspension density, and solute supersaturation, confirms that an enhanced stereoselective secondary nucleation rate maximizes the deracemization rate. Analysis of the system during a single temperature cycle showed that, although stereoselective particle production during the crystallization stage leads to enantiomeric enrichment, undesired kinetic dissolution of smaller particles of the preferred enantiomer occurs during the dissolution step. Therefore, secondary nucleation is crucial for the enhancement of deracemization through temperature cycles and as such should be considered in further design and optimization of this process, as well as in other temperature cycling processes commonly applied in particle engineering.".
• 01GMD2F16C79MWA3DQ2B7CVZTQ abstract "The search for sustainable alternatives for use in chemical synthesis and catalysis has found an ally in non-conventional energy sources and widely available green solvents. The use of glycerol, an abundant natural solvent, as an excellent "sacrificial" hydrogen source for the copper-catalyzed microwave (MW)-promoted transfer hydrogenation of nitrobenzene to aniline has been investigated in this work. Copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) were prepared in glycerol and the efficacy of the glycerol layer in mediating the interaction between the metal active sites has been examined using HRTEM analyses. Its high polarity, low vapor pressure, long relaxation time, and high acoustic impedance mean that excellent results were also obtained when the reaction media was subjected to ultrasound (US) and MW irradiation. US has been shown to play an important role in the process via its ability to enhance CuNPs dispersion, favor mechanical depassivation and increase catalytic active surface area, while MW irradiation shortened the reaction time from some hours to a few minutes. These synergistic combinations promoted the exhaustive reduction of nitrobenzene to aniline and facilitated the scale-up of the protocol for its optimized use in industrial MW reactors.".
• 01GMD2JV4ZXPYMC7J3TEXY8QRC abstract "Widespread use of microwave technology requires quantitative scale-up models. Currently, microwave models are typical qualitative in nature. This work focuses on rendering models quantitative and elucidating the scale-up behavior of microwave heating using numerical simulations. A commonly used bench-scale microwave reactor from the CEM Corp. (CEM Discover SP) is used for benchmarking. To enable quantitative modeling, microwave heating experiments are conducted and compared to COMSOL calculations to develop a calibration curve for the set point vs the actually delivered microwave power. Using the validated computational model, microwave-heating of various liquids in a wide range of vial sizes is investigated. The computational study shows that during the scale-up, the volumetric power absorbed passes through a maximum, whereas the energy efficiency and heating uniformity exhibit strongly nonlinear behavior. This work introduces a method for quantitative microwave models and insights into the scale-up of commercial microwave reactors.".
• 01GMD2MH89X72ND8TCZ97FR184 abstract "Herein, the sustainability of plasma-assisted processes for ethylene production from rich-in-methane gas streams namely, natural and shale gas, is investigated by performing life cycle assessment (LCA). Two plasma-assisted process alternatives, a direct gas conversion to ethylene (one-step) and a stepwise gas conversion to acetylene followed by acetylene-to-ethylene hydrogenation (two-step), both previously demonstrated in the lab and modeled on a large scale, are evaluated using the SimaPro (R) software and ecoinvent database. Different scenarios regarding purge stream utilization and electricity sources are considered for both process alternatives. On the basis of LCA results, it is highly probable (confidence interval 93.5%) that the two-step process results in a lower carbon footprint than the one-step process. The two-step process, powered by electricity generated by wind turbines and utilizing the purge stream as the byproduct (instead of flaring it), produces the lowest carbon footprint among all studied scenarios. When natural gas is utilized as the feedstock, the two-step plasma-assisted ethylene production process is more environmentally sustainable than other peer processes (i.e. thermally driven and bio-based). When shale gas is used, greenhouse gas emissions decrease compared to natural gas, resulting in a comparable carbon footprint to the conventional (naphtha cracking) process. Further, aside from ethylene production onshore, plasma reactors can also be employed for ethylene production offshore, thereby valorizing currently wasted rich-in-methane gas streams and thus reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.".
• 01GMD2P6P2JS35AZ456WN53S8Q abstract "A novel continuous flow reactive crystallization process for the in situ on-demand access of single enantiomer crystals is reported and exemplified for a chiral pharmaceutical intermediate that crystallizes as a racemic conglomerate. During this process, a nearly racemic feed suspension with a racemization catalyst is circulated through a tubular coiled milli-reactor immersed in two thermostatic baths set at different temperatures. This flow configuration enables rapid heat transfer, which in turn results in successive spatial cycles of dissolution and re-crystallization carried out at extremely short residence times, unattainable in batchwise operations. By tuning the number of cycles, residence time per cycle and feed suspension density we show that unprecedented productivities (>20 g L-1 h(-1)) of the preferred enantiomer at purities >98% can be attained that could easily suit industrial demand in a directly scalable process.".
• 01GMD2SDKGCX802AT2V6AR98M3 abstract "Microfluidic devices present new opportunities for a wide range of applicationsin which the temperature control of nanoliter droplets is required. Due to the inherent size of the employed miniature volumes, several challenges exist, related to temperature measurements. In this work, we present a non-contact and label-free dielectric-based temperature measurement technique. A capacitive sensor transduces the temperature-dependent dielectric properties into a capacitive value. With a post-processing tuned matching network, the reflection coefficient of the capacitive sensor is minimized at a specific frequency, directly related to the sample temperature. The system is calibrated via a water-only calibration method, using two calibration values. A measurement accuracy of +/- 0.24 degrees C is achieved, with an offset of -0.19 degrees C, over a temperature range from 20 degrees C to 55 degrees C. The potential for simultaneous use of the proposed sensor as a microwave heater, gives us a dual-purpose device that minimizes the footprint of the chip, and thus its cost, while also reducing the number of electrical connections to the chip.".
• 01GMD2VAXFT7R8NCD2VZH5P6T7 abstract "The analysis, development, and implementation of novel complex industrial crystallization processes requires kinetic knowledge of not only crystal growth and nucleation but also breakage, dissolution, and agglomeration processes. In this work, the crystal growth, dissolution, and agglomeration kinetics of sodium chlorate (NaClO3) in aqueous solutions are estimated via seeded batch experiments with in-line particle size distribution measurements. Contrary to previous works, the growth/dissolution kinetics are expressed in terms of the fundamental driving force of crystallization calculated from the activity of supersaturated solutions. The activity-based driving force is roughly 2-fold higher than the commonly used representation, which assumes ideal solutions. By fitting experimental desupersaturation data to mechanistic and empirical growth models, we show that the growth of sodium chlorate is surface integration controlled and is best described by a two-dimensional birth and spread surface nucleation mechanism. The dissolution of sodium chlorate crystals is diffusion controlled and is similar to 4 times faster than the growth at an equal initial driving force. Particle agglomeration is substantial in the early stages of crystallization experiments, likely due to a strong increase in the particle number due to initial breeding secondary nucleation upon seeding. The agglomeration rate constant increases with supersaturation and decreases at higher energy dissipation rate (by increased agitation) due to a strong decrease in the efficiency of interparticle collisions. Seeding with material of different sizes does not influence the agglomeration rate constant, although substantial amount of small particles was present in all seeding materials.".
• 01GMD2ZMGK236WD8MXZSGSF87V abstract "An overview of plasma technology for the electrified and sustainable conversion of lignocellulosic biomass.".
• 01GMD2ZMGK236WD8MXZSGSF87V abstract "Lignocellulosic biomass conversion to renewable, carbon-neutral materials, fuels, and chemicals is the cornerstone of the transition to a sustainable future bioeconomy. Green energy in the form of electricity needs to be coupled with or substitute conventional thermally driven processes to realize small-scale, economically viable and environmentally friendly biorefineries. Gas discharge plasmas enable the conversion of renewable electric energy, supplied in the form of an electric field, to chemical energy through the formation of a highly reactive environment that can induce several transformations related to agricultural waste valorization processes. Herein, we review the application of plasma technology to lignocellulosic biomass upgrade, aiming to provide the scientific background and technical challenges in this rapidly emerging research field. To bridge the gap between plasma science and biomass valorization technologies, we initially present the technical aspects of plasma reactors related to biomass processing and further discuss the advances in plasma processing for each biomass conversion technology, providing insights into the related plasma chemistry and interaction mechanisms. We first focus on the low and medium-temperature biomass conversion processes, including biomass pretreatment and delignification to promote enzyme or acid-catalyzed hydrolysis to sugars and biomass liquefaction using plasma electrolysis. Then we discuss the high and very high-temperature conversion processes, such as plasma-assisted pyrolysis and gasification to syngas and plasma application to tar removal, combustion, and vitrification. Overall, this review provides knowledge at the interface of plasma science and biomass conversion technology to promote the interaction between the individual communities, which is crucial for the further advancement of the field.".
• 01GMD32R50BG71TSTPS2Y6R2PC abstract "In this work, we report for the first time on the influence of the quality of reactants and reaction conditions on the production of hydrophobically modified ethoxylated urethanes (HEURs) and selected prepolymers without the use of solvents. We show that the polyol water concentration is detrimental to the progress of the main urethane forming reaction, confirming the necessity of carefully drying the reactants below 1000 ppm to suppress the consumption of diisocyanate toward urea during HEUR synthesis. Increasing the mixing speed (approximate to 30 to 750 rpm), reaction temperature (80-110 degrees C), and catalyst concentration (0.035-2.1 wt % bismuth carboxylate) can significantly increase the rate of molecular weight buildup, but their effect decreases with time as the bulk viscosity increases and mixing limitations eventually take over, leading to the Weissenberg effect and chain growth termination. Consequently, for the selected formulation, the maximum product molecular weight attained lies in the range of approximate to 20 000-22 000 g/ mol, irrespective of the specific process conditions applied.".
• 01GMD343KMRESCBGEV0B6FV82N abstract "Plasma processing can be one of the drivers of low-carbon footprint chemical manufacturing using renewable electricity. Several established commercial processes already rely on this technology in different production sectors, such as metallurgy, waste-to-energy, olefin production, and ozone production. Emerging plasma applications such as activation of stable small molecules (e.g. CO2, CH4, and N2) can greatly outperform their thermo(catalytic) counterparts at mild operating conditions and low CO2 emissions. Nonetheless, a series of scientific and technical hurdles must be overcome to scale-up plasma processes without compromising energy efficiency and economics, thus enabling widespread implementation of plasma technology at industrial level.".
• 01GMD3VDBKEHA69SYGZDRV9WD5 abstract "D’après la philosophie de la loi Major, les organisations patronales reconnues d’entreprises portuaires doivent remplir les conditions d’application des dispenses de versement du précompte professionnel (Pr P) au niveau portuaire. Cela a été confirmé par la loi du 20 novembre 2022 portant des dispositions fiscales et financières diverses. Ces organisations sont désormais considérées comme l’employeur de tous les ouvriers portuaires travaillant dans une même zone portuaire. Ce qui a un impact significatif sur les organisations patronales et les entreprises portuaires individuelles, en particulier en ce qui concerne les dispenses de versement du Pr P pour le travail en équipe.".
• 01GMD5B9YG6MZZ347N98NKNB9Q abstract "El artículo estudia el uso de laudos anteriores en el arbitraje de inversiones, donde tanto las partes y tribunales arbitrales recurren frecuentemente a decisiones arbitrales previas para justificar y argumentar sus propias decisiones. En este sentido, las decisiones arbitrales previas han sido usadas para para dar forma a normas abstractas como el estándar de Trato Justo y Equitativo. Al respecto, se puede afirmar que la referencia de tribunales arbitrales a casos anteriores no solo es referencial, sino que forma parte de la construcción misma de obligaciones que son exigidas a los estados. El presente artículo estudia diferentes explicaciones que tanto la doctrina y los propios tribunales arbitrales han desarrollado para conceptualizar el uso de decisiones arbitrales previas en el derecho internacional de inversiones. Adicionalmente, se argumenta sobre la necesidad de concebir a estas decisiones previas como una expresión de ejercicio de autoridad pública por parte de arbitrajes de inversión.".

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