Identification of temperature profile and heat transfer on a dielectric membrane for gas sensors by `COSMOS' program simulation

The application of commercial 3-D software `COSMOS' for the design and thermal analysis of the low power consumption test structures with dielectric membrane for gas microsensors is presented. Within this work, the simulation provides the estimation of the temperature profile on the active area and the whole membrane including the four bridges and the heating efficiency in the temperature range 20-500 °C. Unravelling of the heat loss mechanisms in terms of radiation, convection, conduction by air and solid materials during heat transfer on the dielectric membrane is reported for the first time as a mean to evaluate by 3-D simulation the contribution of technological processes and lay-out design to the total heat losses

Ring-Pattern Dynamics in Smectic-C* and Smectic-C_A* Freely Suspended Liquid Crystal Films

Ring patterns of concentric 2pi-solitons in molecular orientation, form in freely suspended chiral smectic-C films in response to an in-plane rotating electric field. We present measurements of the zero-field relaxation of ring patterns and of the driven dynamics of ring formation under conditions of synchronous winding, and a simple model which enables their quantitative description in low polarization DOBAMBC. In smectic C_A* TFMHPOBC we observe an odd-even layer number effect, with odd number layer films exhibiting order of magnitude slower relaxation rates than even layer films. We show that this rate difference is due to much larger spontaneous polarization in odd number layer films.Comment: 4 RevTeX pgs, 4 eps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Classification of Russian textbooks by grade level and topic using ReaderBench

This article analyzes automated methods for classifying Russian-language textbooks in two dimensions, and precisely on the topic of the text and its complexity, reflected by the corresponding school level (class

Software Requirements Specification of A University Class Scheduler

The University Class Scheduler (UCS) presented in this paper is a novel scheduling tool intended to be used by universities to schedule classes into classrooms. In essence, UCS allows university administrators to enter relevant college and building information, schedule the input classes (courses) into input classrooms, and create web pages that provide detailed schedule information on a semester-by-semester basis. The UCS, which performs the scheduling of classes according to a number of user-selected parameters, can be easily adapted for applications outside the academic realm. This paper presents the main aspects of the University Class Scheduler’s UML-based specification, gives details of the UCS’ current development status, and points to a series of possible extensions that we intend to investigate in the near future

The role of endothelium in covid-19

The 2019 novel coronavirus, known as severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is causing a global pandemic. The virus primarily affects the upper and lower respiratory tracts and raises the risk of a variety of non-pulmonary consequences, the most severe and possibly fatal of which are cardiovascular problems. Data show that almost one-third of the patients with a moderate or severe form of COVID-19 had preexisting cardiovascular comorbidities such as diabetes mellitus, obesity, hypertension, heart failure, or coronary artery disease. SARS-CoV2 causes hyper inflammation, hypoxia, apoptosis, and a renin–angiotensin system imbalance in a variety of cell types, primarily endothelial cells. Profound endothelial dysfunction associated with COVID-19 can be the cause of impaired organ perfusion that may generate acute myocardial injury, renal failure, and a procoagulant state resulting in thromboembolic events. We discuss the most recent results on the involvement of endothelial dysfunction in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 in patients with cardiometabolic diseases in this review. We also provide insights on treatments that may reduce the severity of this viral infection

Lexical and syntactic features of academic Russian texts: a discriminant analysis

This article presents three mathematical models to differentiate academic texts from three subject discourses written in Russian (i.e., Philological, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences) which further enable design and automated profiling of corresponding typologie

Belimumab promotes negative selection of activated autoreactive B cells in systemic lupus erythematosus patients.

Belimumab has therapeutic benefit in active systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), especially in patients with high-titer anti-dsDNA antibodies. We asked whether the profound B cell loss in belimumab-treated SLE patients is accompanied by shifts in the immunoglobulin repertoire. We enrolled 15 patients who had been continuously treated with belimumab for more than 7 years, 17 matched controls, and 5 patients who were studied before and after drug initiation. VH genes of sort-purified mature B cells and plasmablasts were subjected to next-generation sequencing. We found that B cell-activating factor (BAFF) regulates the transitional B cell checkpoint, with conservation of transitional 1 (T1) cells and approximately 90% loss of T3 and naive B cells after chronic belimumab treatment. Class-switched memory B cells, B1 B cells, and plasmablasts were also substantially depleted. Next-generation sequencing revealed no redistribution of VH, DH, or JH family usage and no effect of belimumab on representation of the autoreactive VH4-34 gene or CDR3 composition in unmutated IgM sequences, suggesting a minimal effect on selection of the naive B cell repertoire. Interestingly, a significantly greater loss of VH4-34 was observed among mutated IgM and plasmablast sequences in chronic belimumab-treated subjects than in controls, suggesting that belimumab promotes negative selection of activated autoreactive B cells

ReaderBench Learns Dutch: Building a Comprehensive Automated Essay Scoring System for Dutch Language

Automated Essay Scoring has gained a wider applicability and usage with the integration of advanced Natural Language Processing techniques which enabled in-depth analyses of discourse in order capture the specificities of written texts. In this paper, we introduce a novel Automatic Essay Scoring method for Dutch language, built within the Readerbench framework, which encompasses a wide range of textual complexity indices, as well as an automated segmentation approach. Our method was evaluated on a corpus of 173 technical reports automatically split into sections and subsections, thus forming a hierarchical structure on which textual complexity indices were subsequently applied. The stepwise regression model explained 30.5% of the variance in students’ scores, while a Discriminant Function Analysis predicted with substantial accuracy (75.1%) whether they are high or low performance students.This study is part of the RAGE project. The RAGE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644187. This publication reflects only the author's view. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains