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Loop-mediated isothermal amplification or LAMP has been identified to be an efficient technology for point-of-care diagnostics. Paper-based LAMP technique has tremendous potential in replacing the existing tube-based technology as the manufacturing cost of a paper-based device is comparatively lower and easy-to-use. LAMP-based paper diagnostic device for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) detection is of extreme importance as it will help in early and rapid diagnosis of the affected patients. The fabrication of these devices requires assessment of design parameters on the extent of LAMP amplification reaction. Hence, CFD studies would be extremely beneficial from the design perspective. The current work presents an insight into the CFD simulations for LAMP amplification reaction on a porous paper membrane (nitrocellulose membrane). The convection-diffusion-reaction model is solved on a COMSOL Multiphysics 5.0 platform. Studies on effect of pore size, aspect ratio and initial DNA concentration on the extent of DNA amplification reaction have been carried out. The current paper-based technique is effective in detecting a minimum of 5 copies of DNA contrasting the previous semi-quantitative technique which demonstrated the detection of minimum 98 copies. Overall, the simulation results displayed almost 96% enhancement in the DNA amplification rate on paper membrane. Graphical abstract Graphical abstract for the computational study of DNA amplification reaction via LAMP technique on a porous paper membrane.

In the present analysis, a new experimental pilot plant system for exploring resin-impregnated paper (RIP) bushing technology was conducted. Experimental and numerical studies were carried out on the resin infusion and impregnation processes in the paper condenser core of a RIP bushing. An innovative approach for the molding process (named molding method B) of a commercial RIP bushing was implemented. For this method, the homogeneity of the paper winding process was controlled precisely. The filling process was conducted by gravity due to the difference of heights between two vacuumed chambers and from bottom to top in the mold. The flow front position and infusion time were measured experimentally and used to obtain the axial permeability of the paper condenser core analytically and numerically. The results indicate that the molding methods have a significant effect on the RIP bushing quality, homogeneous filling, and impregnating process time. Also, it was found that homogeneity of the paper winding process and, consequently, uniform axial velocity of resin flow in the radial direction is the most effective factor to eject the air. Finally, it was recognized that the determination of axial permeability in the case of transient flow is novel in comparison with conventional procedures such as Darcy relation of steady flows. By decreasing the paper thickness from 0.3 to 0.2 mm, the permeability decreased from 8.84 × 10−10 to 4.52 × 10−10 m2. The microstructure of the core illustrates that the axial permeability of the crepe paper condenser core is considerably affected by the variation of the paper thickness.

Cyber-physical systems theory offers a powerful framework for modeling, analyzing, and designing real engineering systems integrating communication, control, and computation functionalities (the cyber part) within a natural and/or man-made system governed by the laws of physics (the physical part). New methodological developments in cyber-physical systems theory are required by traditional application domains such as manufacturing, transportation, and energy systems, which are currently experiencing significant and – to some extent – revolutionary changes to address the needs of our modern society. The goal of this position paper is to provide the cyber-physical systems community, and especially young researchers, a clear view on what are research directions worth pursuing motivated by the challenges posed by modern applications.

This paper demonstrates a simple-in-struct- ure, cost-effective, and environment-friendly Microfluidic Paper-based Analytical Device for Microbial Biofuel Cell ( $\mu $ PAD-MBFC). It consists of a microchannel with biofuel cell (Escherichia.Coli) and an oxidant (aerated tap water) flowing co-parallelly over Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube (MWCNT)-based Bucky Paper (BP) electrodes using a self-capillary and co-laminar flow mechanism. The electrochemical studies, such as open circuit potential (OCP) and polarization were evaluated using a potentiostat. Various volumetric bacterial studies were also carried out to find out the best suitable optimal bacterial volume. Subsequently, the morphological and detailed element composition study of electrode surface was performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) techniques. This well-designed portable $\mu $ PAD-MBFC yields a maximum power density of 4 $\mu \text{W}$ /cm2 ( $20~\mu \text{A}$ /cm2) at 0.405 V over $200~\mu \text{l}$ of culture and leveraging to its long-lasting potential to operate miniaturized microelectronics sensors and portable devices.

This paper establishes a membraneless, co-laminar flow-based approach to develop a cost-effective microfluidic paper-based analytical device for enzymatic biofuel cell ( $\mu $ PAD-EBFC). The developed $\mu $ PAD-EBFC supporting the self-capillary fluid transport action consists of Y-shaped paper microchannel with the fuel (glucose) and oxidant (O2) streaming in parallel over carbon nanotube-based bucky paper electrodes modified with biocompatible electrocatalytic enzymes, such as glucose oxidase and laccase without any additional redox cofactor. The electrochemical performance for the modified bioelectrodes, i.e., electrocatalytic oxidation and reduction reaction, was carried out using linear sweep voltammetry, cyclic voltammetry, and open circuit potential. The overall performance of $\mu $ PAD-EBFC was evaluated using the polarization studies. Subsequently, the catalytic activity of enzymes on the electrode surface was validated by the scanning electron microscope. This simple and portable $\mu $ PAD-EBFC can generate the maximum power density to the order of $100~\mu \text{W}$ /cm2 ( $600~\mu \text{A}$ /cm2) at 0.505 V over prolonged durations of around 50 h. Hence, the presented $\mu $ PAD-EBFC shows good power density and stability, leading to its strong potential to power miniaturized microelectronics devices and sensors.

This work aims at developing sustainable processes for pulp and paper industry by integration of the biorefinery concept to an existing pulp and paper process. A systematic methodology employing a superstructure-based process synthesis approach is employed with support from computer-aided tools to determine potential pathways for a long-term sustainable growth objective. A superstructure of the multi-product biorefinery process network for the pulp and paper industry is developed. It is divided into three sub-networks, a chemical pulping section, a biochemical production section and a black liquor utilization section. Superstructure optimization is performed with the objective to maximize profit to determine optimal integrated networks for three scenarios. The obtained results provide useful insights for further development of the optimal networks as sustainable integrated biorefinery combined with pulp and paper mills.

Sandwich panels with honeycomb filler based on polymer paper "Nomex" is widely used in crucial structures for various purposes. In the process of manufacturing such panels, some factors of the technological process, such as the application of the binder on a honeycomb filler, the temperature modes of drying and polymerization of the applied layer, most significantly affect physical-mechanical characteristics of finished products. A specific factor of production of a honeycomb filler from polymer paper is its multi-stage impregnation with the dressing composition, and then by the binder during the final operations with subsequent drying and heat treatment of the honeycomb units. These operations result into non-uniform heat and mass transfer (migration) of the binder from the central part of the panel to its peripheral end areas. The regularities of this non-uniform heat and mass transfer of the binder along the length of a honeycomb channel were explored. It was shown that these phenomena are conditioned by hydrodynamic motion of the binder, caused by temperature gradient, its density and surface tension coefficient. Based on this, we designed the method for determining the thickness of the binder layer along honeycomb channels at the known (assigned) law of the change in density and surface tension along the length of the cell of a honeycomb filler. The method makes it possible to reduce the non-uniformity of mass transfer by technological means, ensuring the necessary tolerance for physical-mechanical characteristics of honeycomb fillers from polymer paper. The problem of mass transfer enabled deeper revealing the mechanisms of the formation of the non-uniform impregnation layer at the stages of the drying process during the production of a honeycomb filler from polymer paper. Using the obtained mechanisms and technological possibilities of the regulation of characteristics of binders, it is possible to improve the non-uniformity of the layer thickness along the honeycomb channels to the values that ensure the necessary tolerance for physical-mechanical characteristics of a honeycomb filler, Сендвічеві панелі зі стільниковим заповнювачем на основі полімерного паперу «Nomex» широко використовуються у відповідальних конструкціях різноманітного призначення. В процесі виробництва таких панелей деякі чинники технологічного процесу, такі як нанос зв’язуючого на стільниковий заповнювач, температурні режими сушки і полімеризації нанесеного шару, найбільш істотно впливають на фізико-механічні характеристики готових виробів. Специфічним фактором виробництва стільникового заповнювача з полімерного паперу є його багатостадійне просочення складом апретуючого, а потім зв’язуючого на заключних операціях з наступним сушінням і термообробкою стільникових блоків. В результаті цих операцій має місце нерівномірний тепло- і масоперенос (міграція) зв’язуючого від центральної площини панелі до периферійних торцевих її зон. Досліджено закономірності цього нерівномірного тепло- і масопереносу зв’язуючого уздовж довжини стільникового каналу. Показано, що ці явища обумовлені гідродинамічним рухом зв’язуючого, що викликані градієнтами температури, його густини та коефіцієнта поверхневого натяжіння. На основі цього розроблено метод визначення товщини шару зв’язуючого уздовж каналів стільників при відомих (заданих) законах зміни густини та поверхневого натяжіння уздовж довжини чарунки стільникового заповнювача. Метод дозволяє технологічними засобами знизити нерівномірність масопереносу, забезпечивши потрібний допуск на фізико-механічні характеристики стільникових заповнювачів з полімерного паперу. Розглянута задача масопереносу дозволила глибше розкрити механізми формування нерівномірного шару просочення на етапах процесу сушіння при виробництві стільникового заповнювача з полімерного паперу. Використовуючи отримані механізми і технологічні можливості регулювання характеристик зв’язуючих, можливо поліпшити рівномірність товщини шару уздовж каналів стільників до значень, які забезпечать потрібний допуск на фізико-механічні характеристики стільникового заповнювачаСендвічеві панелі зі стільниковим заповнювачем на основі полімерного паперу «Nomex» широко використовуються у відповідальних конструкціях різноманітного призначення. В процесі виробництва таких панелей деякі чинники технологічного процесу, такі як нанос зв’язуючого на стільниковий заповнювач, температурні режими сушки і полімеризації нанесеного шару, найбільш істотно впливають на фізико-механічні характеристики готових виробів. Специфічним фактором виробництва стільникового заповнювача з полімерного паперу є його багатостадійне просочення складом апретуючого, а потім зв’язуючого на заключних операціях з наступним сушінням і термообробкою стільникових блоків. В результаті цих операцій має місце нерівномірний тепло- і масоперенос (міграція) зв’язуючого від центральної площини панелі до периферійних торцевих її зон. Досліджено закономірності цього нерівномірного тепло- і масопереносу зв’язуючого уздовж довжини стільникового каналу. Показано, що ці явища обумовлені гідродинамічним рухом зв’язуючого, що викликані градієнтами температури, його густини та коефіцієнта поверхневого натяжіння. На основі цього розроблено метод визначення товщини шару зв’язуючого уздовж каналів стільників при відомих (заданих) законах зміни густини та поверхневого натяжіння уздовж довжини чарунки стільникового заповнювача. Метод дозволяє технологічними засобами знизити нерівномірність масопереносу, забезпечивши потрібний допуск на фізико-механічні характеристики стільникових заповнювачів з полімерного паперу.Розглянута задача масопереносу дозволила глибше розкрити механізми формування нерівномірного шару просочення на етапах процесу сушіння при виробництві стільникового заповнювача з полімерного паперу. Використовуючи отримані механізми і технологічні можливості регулювання характеристик зв’язуючих, можливо поліпшити рівномірність товщини шару уздовж каналів стільників до значень, які забезпечать потрібний допуск на фізико-механічні характеристики стільникового заповнювача, Сэндвичевые панели с сотовым заполнителем на основе полимерной бумаги «Nomex» широко используются в ответственных конструкциях различного назначения. В процессе производства таких панелей некоторые факторы технологического процесса, такие как нанос связующего на сотовый заполнитель, температурные режимы сушки и полимеризации нанесенного слоя, наиболее существенно влияют на физико-механические характеристики готовых изделий. Специфических фактором производства сотового заполнителя из полимерного бумаги является его многостадийная пропитка аппретирующим составом, а затем связующим на заключительный операциях с последующей сушкой и термообработкой сотоблоков. В результате этих операций имеет место неравномерной тепло- и массоперенос (миграция) связывающего от центральной части панели к периферийным торцевым ее зонам. Исследованы закономерности этого неравномерного тепло- и массопереноса связующего вдоль длина сотового канала. Показано, что эти явления обусловлены гидродинамическим движением связующего, вызванным градиентом температуры, его плотности и коэффициента поверхностного натяжения. На основе этого разработан метод определения толщина слоя связующего вдоль каналов сотов при известном (заданном) законе изменения плотности и поверхностного натяжения вдоль длины ячейки сотового заполнителя. Метод позволяет технологическими средствами снизить неравномерность массопереноса, обеспечив потребный допуск на физико-механические характеристики сотовых заполнителей из полимерной бумаги. Рассмотренная задача массопереноса позволила глубже вскрыть механизмы формирования неравномерного слоя пропитки на этапах процесса сушки при производстве сотового заполнителя из полимерной бумаги. Используя полученные механизмы и технологические возможности регулирования характеристик связующих, возможно улучшить равномерность толщины слоя вдоль каналов сотов до значений, обеспечивающих потребный допуск на физико-механические характеристики сотового заполнителя

Dirty paper coding is an interference pre-cancellation method for known interference at the transmitter and serves as a basic building block in the digital watermarking system. In this letter, we investigate the dirty paper model in the simplest digital communication system, where both the codeword and the interference are binary. For watermark embedment, we derive the relevant coding, the constant coding, and the symmetric relevant coding when the encoder focuses on the binary codeword and interference. The channel capacity is analyzed and the optimal parameter is discussed in the case.

This study investigates multi-layer coding over a dirty-paper channel. First, it is demonstrated that superposition coding in such channel still achieves the capacity of interference-free additive white Gaussian noise channel when the transmitter is non-causally aware of interference signal. Then, the problem is extended to the dirty-paper block fading channel, where it is shown that in the lack of channel information at the transmitter, the so-called broadcast approach maximises the average achievable rate of such channel.

Nowadays, recommender system has become one of the main tools to search for users’ interested papers. Since one paper often contains only a part of keywords that a user is interested in, recommender system returns a set of papers that satisfy the user’s need of keywords. Besides, to satisfy the users’ requirements of further research on a certain domain, the recommended papers must be correlated. However, each paper of an existing paper citation network hardly has cited relationships with others, so the correlated links among papers are very sparse. In addition, while a mass of research approaches have been put forward in terms of link prediction to address the network sparsity problems, these approaches have no relationship with the effect of self-citations and the potential correlations among papers (i.e., these correlated relationships are not included in the paper citation network as their published time is close). Therefore, we propose a link prediction approach that combines time, keywords, and authors’ information and optimizes the existing paper citation network. Finally, a number of experiments are performed on the real-world Hep-Th datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of our proposal and achieve good performance.

Lactoferrin is an abundant glycoprotein in human body fluids and is known as a biomarker for various diseases. Therefore, point-of-care testing (POCT) for lactoferrin is of interest. Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) have gained a lot of attention as next-generation POCT device candidates, due to their inexpensiveness, operational simplicity, and being safely disposable. This work presents a colorimetric sensing approach for quantitative lactoferrin analysis. The detection mechanism takes advantage of the high affinity of lactoferrin to ferric ions (Fe3+). Lactoferrin is able to displace an indicator from a colorimetric 2-(5-bromo-2-pyridylazo)-5-diethylaminophenol (5-Br-PADAP)-Fe3+ complex, resulting in a color change. A 5-Br-PADAP-Fe3+ complex was encapsulated into water-dispersible poly(styrene-block-vinylpyrrolidone) particles, whose physical entrapment in the cellulosic fiber network results in the immobilization of the complex to the paper matrix. The complex-encapsulating particles showed a color change response in accordance with lactoferrin concentration. Both color intensity-based paper well plates and distance readout-based µPADs are demonstrated. Color intensity-based devices allowed quantitative analysis of lactoferrin concentrations with a limit of detection of 110 µg/mL, using a smartphone and a color readout app. On the other hand, distance readout-based µPADs showed changes of the length of colored sections in accordance with lactoferrin concentration. In summary, we successfully developed both colorimetric intensity-based paper wells and distance-based µPADs for lactoferrin detection. This work demonstrates a user-friendly colorimetric analysis platform for lactoferrin without requiring lab equipment and expensive antibodies.

In this study, hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets enriched with hydroxyl groups (h-BN-OH) were successfully grafted on the surface of cellulose fibers after the simple and effective exfoliation and oxidation of bulk h-BN. OH groups of h-BN-OH and the ones presented on the surface of cellulose fibers interacted via hydrogen bonding. Both spectroscopic (FT-IR, XRD) and microscopic (TEM, SEM, and atomic force microscopy (AFM)) methods results proved the successful functionalization of the cellulose fibers with the nanomaterial. Modified cellulose fibers were used to prepare paper sheets samples with different concentrations of the nanomaterial (1 wt %, 2 wt %, and 3 wt %). All the samples were tested for the antibacterial properties via the colony forming unit method and exhibited good performance against both Gram-negative (E. coli) and Gram-positive (S. epidermidis) model bacteria. Additionally, the influence of the volume of working bacterial suspension on the antibacterial efficiency of the obtained materials was examined. The results showed significantly better antibacterial performance when the volume of bacterial suspension was reduced. Mechanical properties of the paper samples with and without nanofiller were also characterized. Tensile strength, tearing strength, and bursting strength of the paper samples containing only 2 wt % of the nanofiller were improved by 60%, 61%, and 118% in comparison to the control paper samples, respectively. Furthermore, the nanofiller improved the thermal properties of the composite paper&mdash, the heat release rate decreased by up to 11.6%. Therefore, the composite paper can be further explored in a wide range of antibacterial materials, such as packaging or paper coatings

With the increase in the new development of paper electronics, there is a great demand for paper-compatible and reliable electrical joining techniques. In this work, we particularly addressed the interconnecting of multilayers of paper-based magneto-electronics. We deployed three room-temperature electrical joining techniques: (i) through-paper via, (ii) mechanical caulking, and (iii) collapsible daisy chain to fabricate an anisotropic magnetoresistive five-layer thin film sensor stack for planar rotary motion sensing. We studied the interplay between the electrical joining technique and the sensor characteristics such as magnetoresistive sensitivity and asymmetries in the sensor signal within the magnetic field strength domain. Despite process complexity and the precision limitations of manual machining and positioning, deployed in this work, the sensor stacks prepared by the through-paper via technique exhibited the closest uniformity in the magnetization planes across the stack, and hence the highest cumulative magnetoresistive sensitivity and lowest unfavorable asymmetries. Last, using peeling tests, we verified the mechanical reliability of the interconnects prepared by the through-paper via and collapsible daisy chain techniques.

The contact angle (CA) of a water droplet on the polished aluminum surfaces is usually between 60° and 90°. This paper discusses a tuned bulk micro-manufacturing approach for transforming the surface topology of aluminum simultaneously at the micro- and nano-length scales, thereby significantly influencing its wetting characteristics. The approach is cheap, easy to implement, and scalable. The treated aluminum surfaces appeared like roughly polished surfaces at the macroscale and were found to be robust and non-toxic. They exhibited a paper towel effect by showing extreme surface wettability (CA of zero) to many industrial liquids, i.e., wetting on these surfaces is only a function of the surface roughness but not the fluid type. This extreme wetting ability to multiple liquids (or ultra-omniphilicity) was generated by sequentially creating a sub-surface micro- and nano-cavity architecture with nano-cavities within the embryos of micro-cavities interconnected by a network of micro-grooves.

Background Display signage is ubiquitous and essential in hospitals to serve several clerical, operational, and clinical functions, including displaying notices, providing directions, and presenting clinical information. These functions improve efficiency and patient engagement, reduce errors, and enhance the continuity of care. Over time, signage has evolved from analog approaches such as whiteboards and handwritten notices to digital displays such as liquid crystal displays, light emitting diodes, and, now, electronic ink displays. Electronic ink displays are paper-like displays that are not backlit and show content by aligning microencapsulated color beads in response to an applied electric current. Power is only required to generate content and not to retain it. These displays are very readable, with low eye strain; minimize the emission of blue light; require minimal power; and can be driven by several data sources, ranging from virtual servers to electronic health record systems. These attributes make adapting electronic ink displays to hospitals an ideal use case. Objective In this paper, we aimed to outline the use of signage and displays in hospitals with a focus on electronic ink displays. We aimed to assess the advantages and limitations of using these displays in hospitals and outline the various public-facing and patient-facing applications of electronic ink displays. Finally, we aimed to discuss the technological considerations and an implementation framework that must be followed when adopting and deploying electronic ink displays. Methods The public-facing applications of electronic ink displays include signage and way-finders, timetables for shared workspaces, and noticeboards and bulletin boards. The clinical display applications may be smaller form factors such as door signs or bedside cards. The larger, ≥40-inch form factors may be used within patient rooms or at clinical command centers as a digital whiteboard to display general information, patient and clinician information, and care plans. In all these applications, such displays could replace analog whiteboards, noticeboards, and even other digital screens. Results We are conducting pilot research projects to delineate best use cases and practices in adopting electronic ink displays in clinical settings. This will entail liaising with key stakeholders, gathering objective logistical and feasibility data, and, ultimately, quantifying and describing the effect on clinical care and patient satisfaction. Conclusions There are several use cases in a clinical setting that may lend themselves perfectly to electronic ink display use. The main considerations to be studied in this adoption are network connectivity, content management, privacy and security robustness, and detailed comparison with existing modalities. Electronic ink displays offer a superior opportunity to future-proof existing practices. There is a need for theoretical considerations and real-world testing to determine if the advantages outweigh the limitations of electronic ink displays.

Educational evaluation helps to improve the learning and teaching process. The learning process can be assessed by the examination system. In the examination system, the learners have to answer a set of questions. The learning assessment ensures improved performance in the educational system. The success of the learning assessment is highly dependent on the listening and understanding ability of each student. The assessment of the question paper can be at two levels—cognitive level assessment and difficulty level. The cognitive level assessment is purely based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and the difficulty level assessment is purely based on the examination marks of each student. This article presents a technical method called Question Paper’s Difficulty Level (QPDL) that helps to identify the difficulty level of each question in the question paper. The QPDL method is incorporate in the implementation of ‘QAUDIT’ web application to assess the difficulty level of the question paper systematically. The systematic analysis to identify the difficulty level of the question paper is made for 239 question papers. Each question paper can be recognized based on three difficulty levels such as High, Moderate and Low.

Finding relevant papers is a non-trivial problem for scholars due to the tremendous amount of academic information in the era of scholarly big data. Scientific paper recommendation systems have been developed to solve such problem by recommending relevant papers to scholars. However, previous paper recommendations calculate paper similarity based on hand-engineered features which are inflexible. To address this problem, we develop a scientific paper recommendation system, namely VOPRec, by vector representation learning of paper in citation networks. VOPRec takes advantages of recent research in both text and network representation learning for unsupervised feature design. In VOPRec, the text information is represented with word embedding to find papers of similar research interest. Then, the structural identity is converted into vectors to find papers of similar network topology. After bridging text information and structural identity with the citation network, vector representation of paper can be learned with network embedding. Finally, top- $Q$ Q recommendation list is generated based on the similarity calculated with paper vectors. Through the APS data set, we show that VOPRec outperforms state-of-the-art paper recommendation baselines measured by precision, recall, F1, and NDCG.

The conversion of biowaste to activated carbon (AC) for supercapacitor applications is recently gaining attention due to its extraordinary high specific surface area (SSA), hierarchical pore size distribution, and very good conductivity. Therefore, in this work, we have utilized waste office papers as a precursor to synthesize highly porous carbon to be used as an electrode material for supercapacitors. The sub-nanometre pores in as-synthesized office paper waste-derived activated carbon (OPDAC) material, facilitate easy flow of ions and surprisingly increase the specific capacitance up to 237 F/g at a current density of 1 A/g. Moreover, an all-solid-state symmetric supercapacitor using OPDAC electrodes delivers an ultrahigh energy density of 31 Wh/kg at a power density of 380 W/kg along with a long cycle life of 95% after 3000 charge-discharge cycles. Hence, these remarkable results pave the path for the usage of different biowastes for varying energy storage applications.

Here, we aimed to boost antibacterial performance of cellulose fibers for paper sheet application. Therefore, TiO2 nanoparticles have been used with controlled loading onto the surface of the fibers. A simple and facile composite preparation route based on ultrasound and mechanical assisted stirring has been developed. We tested cellulose paper enriched by TiO2 from 1.0 wt% to 8.0 wt%, respectively. Antibacterial performance has been studied against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli bacteria. Studies showed that all composites exhibit significant capability to reduce living cells of S. aureus and E. coli bacteria at least 60%. The simplicity, low cost, and reproducibility of the prepared method indicates the potential to be scaled up for industrial applications.

Here, a disposable ultra-low cost and simple paper-based sensor (PBS) for on-site quantification of nitrite in environmental matrices is introduced. The PBS consists of a filter paper disc with 1.2 cm in diameter that is impregnated with the Griess reagents including 3-nitroaniline, 1-naphthylamine and hydrochloric acid with the optimal concentrations obtained by response surface methodology. After introducing 20.0 µL of a sample/standard solution to the sensor, nitrite reacts with the Griess reagents on the sensor and produces the red-pink colored azo dye after 30 min. By use of a digital camera, the image of the PBS is captured and then analyzed by partial least squares for nitrite determination. The use of a blank and sample image reduces bias from variations in ambient light and makes it possible to acquire and process images on-site. In order to demonstrate the potential impact of this technology in the environment monitoring, the device was successfully applied to the analysis of a series of water samples, including tap, rain and wastewater. The results of the method were validated by standard method.

We present a deep learning-based framework to design and quantify point-of-care sensors. As its proof-of-concept and use-case, we demonstrated a low-cost and rapid paper-based vertical flow assay (VFA) for high sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (hsCRP) testing, a common medical test used for quantifying the degree of inflammation in patients at risk of cardio-vascular disease (CVD). A machine learning-based sensor design framework was developed for two key tasks: (1) to determine an optimal configuration of immunoreaction spots and conditions, spatially-multiplexed on a paper-based sensing membrane, and (2) to accurately infer the target analyte concentration based on the signals of the optimal VFA configuration. Using a custom-designed mobile-phone based VFA reader, a clinical study was performed with 85 human serum samples to characterize the quantification accuracy around the clinically defined cutoffs for CVD risk stratification. Results from blindly-tested VFAs indicate a competitive coefficient of variation of 11.2% with a linearity of R2 = 0.95; in addition to the success in the high-sensitivity CRP range (i.e., 0-10 mg/L), our results further demonstrate a mitigation of the hook-effect at higher CRP concentrations due to the incorporation of antigen capture spots within the multiplexed sensing membrane of the VFA. This paper-based computational VFA that is powered by deep learning could expand access to CVD health screening, and the presented machine learning-enabled sensing framework can be broadly used to design cost-effective and mobile sensors for various point-of-care diagnostics applications.

A novel electrochemical glucose sensor was created for a simple but semiquantitative visual screening of specific glucose concentrations in urine. This noninvasive glucose biosensor integrated a disposable, paper-based sensing strip and a simple amplifier circuit with a visual readout. The paper strip consisted of five enzyme-activated electrodes. Each electrode was connected to a specific indicator circuit that triggered a light-emitting diode (LED) when a predefined glucose concentration was reached. The device features (1) low-cost, disposable, paper-based glucose oxidase (GOx)/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) sensing electrodes, (2) simple signal amplification, and (3) on-site, rapid, and visual detection. The sensor generated reliable, discrete visual responses to determine five glucose levels (1, 2, 3, 4, and higher than 4 mM) in urine in less than 2 min. This innovative approach will provide a simple but powerful glucose sensing paradigm for use in POC diagnostics.

Dirty paper coding (DPC) offers an information-theoretic result for pre-cancellation of known interference at the transmitter. In this letter, we propose practical DPC schemes that use only one error correction code. Our designs focus on practical use from the viewpoint of complexity. For fair comparison with previous schemes, we compute the complexity of proposed schemes by the number of operations used. Simulation results show that compared to previous DPC schemes, the proposed schemes require lower transmission power to maintain the bit error rate to be within $10^{-5}$ .

The confluence of significant computational power and inexpensive sensors provides the opportunity to reliably collect large volumes of information from the world and extract humanly useful information resources. This paper reviews a coherent body of work over the last 20+ years focused on development of advanced bio-inspired computing techniques, and their applications primarily for human related data in behaviour and human centered computing. We close with a synthesis proposing an experiment analysis methodology combining these tools.

Exam paper generation is an indispensable part of teaching. Existing methods focus on the use of question extraction algorithms with labels for each question provided. Obviously, manual labeling is inefficient and cannot avoid label bias. Furthermore, the quality of the exam papers generated by the existing methods is not guaranteed. To address these problems, we propose a novel approach to generating exam papers based on prediction of exam performance. As such, we update the quality of the initially generated questions one by using dynamic programming, as well as in batches by using genetic algorithms. We performed the prediction task by using Deep Knowledge Tracing. Our approach considered the skill weight, difficulty, and distribution of exam scores. By comparisons, experimental results indicate that our approach performed better than the two baselines. Furthermore, it can generate exam papers with adaptive difficulties closely to the expected levels, and the related student exam scores will be guaranteed to be relatively reasonable distribution. In addition, our approach was evaluated in a real learning scenarios and shows advantages.

The medical field has witnessed an exponential growth of wearable devices mainly due to the advancement in wireless communication and antenna technology. There is a demand for wearable antennas, which are lightweight, flexible, and ease of integration into the fabric which suits on-body applications. Therefore, this work presents the design, fabrication, and analysis of two microstrip antennas using denim cloth and stacked photo paper as substrate material. The novelty of these antennas is the use of silver fabric as ground and radiating patch-conducting layer, which has resulted in significant improvement in overall antenna performance. It is observed that our fabricated antennas have exhibited a gain of 8.71 dB with VSWR of 1.32 for denim and gain of 2.45 dB with VSWR of 1.03 for photo paper substrates respectively.

Because of the cost and complexity of implementing an optical paper sorting system, the demand for an intelligent system for waste paper sorting has increased. This research focused on the development of a smart intelligent system (SIS) for recyclable waste paper sorting. The basis for selecting the regions of interests (ROIs) is the margin area of a paper object image because almost all printed documents keep the margin area intact. The paper grade is identified using a proximity search. The SIS with the HSI colour space offered maximum success rates of 99 %, 82 % and 89 %, while with the RGB model, the classification success rates were 94 %, 93 % and 98 % for white paper, old newsprint paper and old corrugated cardboard, respectively. The SIS is clearly superior to other prevailing techniques because of the faster decision making and lower cost of implementation.

Paper-reviewer recommendation task is of significant academic importance for conference chairs and journal editors. How to effectively and accurately recommend reviewers for the submitted papers is a meaningful and still tough task. In this paper, we propose a Multi-Label Classification method using a hierarchical and transparent Representation named Hiepar-MLC. Further, we propose a simple multi-label-based reviewer assignment MLBRA strategy to select the appropriate reviewers. It is interesting that we also explore the paper-reviewer recommendation in the coarse-grained granularity., Comment: 21 pages

The Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) game is a classic non-cooperative game widely studied in terms of its theoretical analysis as well as in its applications, ranging from sociology and biology to economics. Many experimental results of the RPS game indicate that this game is better modelled by the discretized best-response dynamics rather than continuous time dynamics. In this work we show that the attractor of the discrete time best-response dynamics of the RPS game is finite and periodic. Moreover we also describe the bifurcations of the attractor and determine the exact number, period and location of the periodic strategies., 24 pages, 9 figures

The open-source release of self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRaps) has created a rich opportunity for low-cost distributed digital fabrication of complex 3-D objects such as scientific equipment. For example, 3-D printable reactionware devices offer the opportunity to combine open hardware microfluidic handling with lab-on-a-chip reactionware to radically reduce costs and increase the number and complexity of microfluidic applications. To further drive down the cost while improving the performance of lab-on-a-chip paper-based microfluidic prototyping, this study reports on the development of a RepRap upgrade capable of converting a Prusa Mendel RepRap into a wax 3-D printer for paper-based microfluidic applications. An open-source hardware approach is used to demonstrate a 3-D printable upgrade for the 3-D printer, which combines a heated syringe pump with the RepRap/Arduino 3-D control. The bill of materials, designs, basic assembly, and use instructions are provided, along with a completely free and open-source software tool chain. The open-source hardware device described here accelerates the potential of the nascent field of electrochemical detection combined with paper-based microfluidics by dropping the marginal cost of prototyping to nearly zero while accelerating the turnover between paper-based microfluidic designs.

Global energy consumption is increasing every year, and, despite their many negative impacts, fossil fuels are a major source of energy, but their reserves are gradually depleting. One of the promising but underutilized resources is plant biomass (phytomass). The main problem of plant biomass combustion is the low melting temperature of ash, but there are also problems with corrosion of heat exchangers and clogging of heat-exchanging surfaces. This work is concerned with the production of straw pellets in order to increase the melting temperature of ash by adding an additive. The paper sludge contains substances that can increase the melting point of ash and was therefore added to the pellet samples. This additive was mixed with straw in ratios from 90:10, 80:20 and 70:30 (straw/paper sludge). The use of paper sludge showed positive effects on increasing the melting temperature of the ash samples. The deformation temperature of the ash has already risen from 1020 to 1260 &deg, C after the addition of 10% sludge, which is comparable to wood pellets.

This paper presents an innovative method devised to study some of the harmful effects of moisture on power transformers, considering the possible formation of bubbles and free water. Its novelty stems from the fact that it comprises: (a) a rating system from “A” to “E” and their respective recommended actions and (b) an analysis that involves varying the different levels of electrical loads applied to the equipment. The importance of this work is confirmed when power transformers are exposed to unfavorable conditions that can critically affect their insulation. To this end, a tool to study moisture was developed, which uses the finite difference method, based not only on the experience of experts/analysts but also on existing studies in the area and on the analysis of a database of actual field tests. The contribution of this work is an efficient method, implemented via a computational algorithm, which provides a technique for the real-time or offline rating of power transformers, helping maintenance teams to diagnose problems and decide whether or not to repair the equipment. The tool provided the satisfactory results, which are presented in a case study of a real transformer operating at the local electric utility company. These results were obtained by applying different levels of electrical loads, for which thermal simulations were performed.

In this note, it is shown that the results claimed in the paper [1] —as well as the examples presented there—are incorrect.

Enterprise imaging governance is an emerging need in health enterprises today. This white paper highlights the decision-making body, framework, and process for optimal enterprise imaging governance inclusive of five areas of focus: program governance, technology governance, information governance, clinical governance, and financial governance. It outlines relevant parallels and differences when forming or optimizing imaging governance as compared with other established broad horizontal governance groups, such as for the electronic health record. It is intended for CMIOs and health informatics leaders looking to grow and govern a program to optimally capture, store, index, distribute, view, exchange, and analyze the images of their enterprise.

Qualitative research involves scientific narratives and the analysis and interpretation of textual or numerical data (or both), mostly from conversations and discussions, to uncover meaningful patterns that describe a particular phenomenon. It is important to know other ways of framing and explaining these nuanced scientific narratives so that they can convey scientific knowledge. A qualitative hypothesis can play this role. The testing of hypotheses in qualitative research&mdash, which does not strictly mean the same thing as testing of hypotheses in quantitative research&mdash, always comes with challenges that provoke concerns. The questions that scholars, especially undergraduate and postgraduate students, have had to deal with are: Is it possible to &ldquo, test&rdquo, hypotheses using a qualitative method? If it is possible, how can this be done? This study deconstructs the concept, notion, and use of the hypotheses. It presents the &ldquo, how-to&rdquo, aspect of hypothesising (in qualitative research and inquiries) by using creative diagramming within post-positivist research, and also contributes to the literature on visual communication and qualitative research. The study is a guide to early career scholars (including undergraduate and post-graduate students) on how to formulate and &ldquo, hypotheses qualitatively using visual or diagrammatical approaches.

Context: According to the search reported in this paper, as of this writing (May 2015), a very large number of papers (more than 70,000) have been published in the area of Software Engineering (SE) since its inception in 1968. Citations are crucial in any research area to position the work and to build on the work of others. Identification and characterization of highly-cited papers are common and are regularly reported in various disciplines. Objective: The objective of this study is to identify the papers in the area of SE that have influenced others the most as measured by citation count. Studying highly-cited SE papers helps researchers to see the type of approaches and research methods presented and applied in such papers, so as to be able to learn from them to write higher quality papers which will likely receive high citations. Method: To achieve the above objective, we conducted a study, comprised of five research questions, to identify and classify the top-100 highly-cited SE papers in terms of two metrics: total number of citations and average annual number of citations. Results: By total number of citations, the top paper is "A metrics suite for object-oriented design", cited 1,817 times and published in 1994. By average annual number of citations, the top paper is "QoS-aware middleware for Web services composition", cited 154.2 times on average annually and published in 2004. Conclusion: It is concluded that it is important to identify the highly-cited SE papers and also to characterize the overall citation landscape in the SE field. We hope that this paper will encourage further discussions in the SE community towards further analysis and formal characterization of the highly-cited SE papers., Vahid Garousi was partially supported by several internal grants provided by the Hacettepe University. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Resource discovery is a key challenge in dynamic environment such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) MANETs. To leverage the lookup costs and efficiently discover the resources, the peers in a P2P network commu ...

In automata networks, it is well known that the way entities update their states over time has a major impact on their dynamics. In particular, depending on the chosen update schedule, the underlying dynamical systems may exhibit more or less asymptotic dynamical behaviours such as fixed points or limit cycles. Since such mathematical models have been used in the framework of biological networks modelling, the question of choosing appropriate update schedules has arised soon. In this note, focusing on Boolean networks, our aim is to emphasise that the adequate way of thinking regulations and genetic expression over time is certainly not to consider a wall segregating synchronicity from asynchronicity because they actually complement rather well. In particular, we highlight that specific update schedules, namely block-parallel update schedules, whose intrinsic features are still not known from a theoretical point of view, admit realistic and pertinent properties in the context of biological modelling and deserve certainly more attention from the community.

The purpose of this study is to make geopolymers using burned joss paper ash (BJPA)&mdash, which is used in traditional Chinese festivals&mdash, and ground-granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBFS). GGBFS-based geopolymers were replaced by BJPA, by mass, at levels of 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% and the liquid-to-solid ratios (L/Ss) were 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The properties of fresh, hardening, durability and microscopic analysis were examined to determine the effect of BJPA-substitution ratios and L/S on the engineering properties of composite geopolymers. The results show that among the fresh properties, as the amount of BJPA replacement increases, the setting time tended to increase, but the fluidity slowed down. The maximum compressive strength reached 81.1 MPa. As the amount of BJPA replacement increased, the elastic modulus of the geopolymer increased and the brittleness decreased. However, in the dry shrinkage test, it was found that an increase in BJPA helped reduce the dry shrinkage of the geopolymer. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that a rise in the BJPA-substitution ratio increased the peak value of calcium carbonate. Scanning electron microscope images showed that microcrack size decreased with an increase in the BJPA-substitution ratio, with maximum and minimum crack sizes of 5.80 &mu, m and 176.8 nm, respectively. This was because BJPA was unable to undergo complete polymerization and therefore was able to fill the cracks produced during the polymerization. In conclusion, BJPA may be used for waste recycling in the production of geopolymers.

Academic papers not only contain text but also links via citation links. Representing such data is crucial for many tasks, such as classification, disambiguation, duplicates detection, recommendation and influence prediction. The success of the skip-gram model has inspired many algorithms for learning embeddings for words, documents, and networks. However, there is limited research on learning the representation of linked documents such as academic papers. In this paper, we propose a new neural network based algorithm, called P2V (paper2vector), to learn high-quality embeddings for academic papers on large-scale datasets. We compare our model with traditional non-neural network based algorithms and state-of-the-art neural network methods on four datasets of various sizes. The largest dataset we used contains 46.64 million papers and 528.68 million citation links. Experimental results show that P2V achieves state-of-the-art performance in paper classification, paper similarity, and paper influence prediction task.

The cross-directional model predictive control (CD-MPC) tuning problem is investigated for multiple-array paper-making process with parametric uncertainty. A systematic spatial tuning method is proposed to tune the penalty matrices such that the harmful high frequency elements in each actuator profile can be eliminated. A multivariable temporal filter is employed to adjust the output references, and a temporal tuning algorithm is developed for the filter parameters to achieve the pre-specified 2 σ performance indices. The computational time of the proposed methods is reduced via event-based sampling strategy. The effectiveness of the techniques is shown via a CD system from paper-making industry.

Literature reviews are essential for any researcher trying to keep up to date with the burgeoning software engineering literature. FAST$^2$ is a novel tool for reducing the effort required for conducting literature reviews by assisting the researchers to find the next promising paper to read (among a set of unread papers). This paper describes FAST$^2$ and tests it on four large software engineering literature reviews conducted by Wahono (2015), Hall (2012), Radjenovi\'c (2013) and Kitchenham (2017). We find that FAST$^2$ is a faster and robust tool to assist researcher finding relevant SE papers which can compensate for the errors made by humans during the review process. The effectiveness of FAST$^2$ can be attributed to three key innovations: (1) a novel way of applying external domain knowledge (a simple two or three keyword search) to guide the initial selection of papers---which helps to find relevant research papers faster with less variances; (2) an estimator of the number of remaining relevant papers yet to be found---which in practical settings can be used to decide if the reviewing process needs to be terminated; (3) a novel self-correcting classification algorithm---automatically corrects itself, in cases where the researcher wrongly classifies a paper., Comment: 20+3 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, and 4 algorithms. Accepted by Journal of Expert Systems with Applications

Flexible electronics based on the paper have attracted significant attention. A paper-based triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) consisting of commercial and low-cost materials, e.g., printer paper, polytetrafluoroethylene tape, and conductive ink, was proposed in this study. This TENG unit can directly illuminate 24 blue commercial LEDs. Furthermore, compound paper-based TENGs were developed and a considerable enhancement of the electrical output performance was thereby realized. These compound TENGs can also serve as a height sensor.

With rapid growth of digital publishing, a great deal of document datum has been published online for a widely spread of knowledge innovations, which is an important resource for human survival and social development. However, it is a time-consuming and difficult task to conduct a high-efficiency access of valuable papers from an extremely large document database. A set of ranking techniques have been proposed to evaluate the influence of articles by counting the number and quality of citations, such as PageRank. In fact, the influence of an article does not merely depend on the account of citations, which is also highly related to the citation network. In this paper, we propose a visual analytics system for visual ranking of academic influence of articles, based on an insightful analysis of citation network. Firstly, a characterization of articles is established through word2vec model, based on an analogy between the articles in citation network and natural language processing (NPL) terms. Then, the difference between articles in the vectorized space is employed to optimize the PageRank model and achieve desired influence ranking results. A set of meaningful visual encodings are also designed to present the relationships among articles, such as the visualization of high-dimensional vectors and time-varying citation networks. At last, a visualization framework is implemented for visual ranking of academic influence of articles, with the ranking models and visual designs integrated. Case studies based on real-world datasets and interviews with domain experts have demonstrated the effectiveness of our system in the evaluation of academic influence of articles.

In this paper, I posit that from a research point of view, Data Science is a language. More precisely Data Science is doing Science using computer science as a language for datafied sciences; much as mathematics is the language of, e.g., physics. From this viewpoint, three (classes) of challenges for computer science are identified; complementing the challenges the closely related Big Data problem already poses to computer science. I discuss the challenges with references to, in my opinion, related, interesting directions in computer science research; note, I claim neither that these directions are the most appropriate to solve the challenges nor that the cited references represent the best work in their field, they are inspirational to me. So, what are these challenges? Firstly, if computer science is to be a language, what should that language look like? While our traditional specifications such as pseudocode are an excellent way to convey what has been done, they fail for more mathematics like reasoning about computations. Secondly, if computer science is to function as a foundation of other, datafied, sciences, its own foundations should be in order. While we have excellent foundations for supervised learning-e.g., by having loss functions to optimize and, more general, by PAC learning (Valiant in Commun ACM 27(11):1134-1142, 1984)-this is far less true for unsupervised learning. Kolmogorov complexity-or, more general, Algorithmic Information Theory-provides a solid base (Li and Vitanyi in An introduction to Kolmogorov complexity and its applications, Springer, Berlin, 1993). It provides an objective criterion to choose between competing hypotheses, but it lacks, e.g., an objective measure of the uncertainty of a discovery that datafied sciences need. Thirdly, datafied sciences come with new conceptual challenges. Data-driven scientists come up with data analysis questions that sometimes do and sometimes don't, fit our conceptual toolkit. Clearly, computer science does not suffer from a lack of interesting, deep, research problems. However, the challenges posed by data science point to a large reservoir of untapped problems. Interesting, stimulating problems, not in the least because they are posed by our colleagues in datafied sciences. It is an exciting time to be a computer scientist.

In this paper, we consider precoder designs for multiuser multiple-input-single-output (MISO) broadcasting channels. Instead of using a traditional linear zero-forcing (ZF) precoder, we propose a generalized ZF (GZF) precoder in conjunction with successive dirty-paper coding (DPC) for data-transmissions, namely, the GZF-DP precoder, where the suffix \lq{}DP\rq{} stands for \lq{}dirty-paper\rq{}. The GZF-DP precoder is designed to generate a band-shaped and lower-triangular effective channel $\vec{F}$ such that only the entries along the main diagonal and the $\nu$ first lower-diagonals can take non-zero values. Utilizing the successive DPC, the known non-causal inter-user interferences from the other (up to) $\nu$ users are canceled through successive encoding. We analyze optimal GZF-DP precoder designs both for sum-rate and minimum user-rate maximizations. Utilizing Lagrange multipliers, the optimal precoders for both cases are solved in closed-forms in relation to optimal power allocations. For the sum-rate maximization, the optimal power allocation can be found through water-filling, but with modified water-levels depending on the parameter $\nu$. While for the minimum user-rate maximization that measures the quality of the service (QoS), the optimal power allocation is directly solved in closed-form which also depends on $\nu$. Moreover, we propose two low-complexity user-ordering algorithms for the GZF-DP precoder designs for both maximizations, respectively. We show through numerical results that, the proposed GZF-DP precoder with a small $\nu$ ($\leq\!3$) renders significant rate increments compared to the previous precoder designs such as the linear ZF and user-grouping based DPC (UG-DP) precoders., Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications in Aug. 2016

This paper describes a work on transfer learning in neural networks carried out in 1970s and early 1980s, which produced its first publication in 1976. In the contemporary research on transfer learning there is a belief that pioneering work on transfer learning took place in early 1990s, and this paper updates that knowledge, pointing out that the transfer learning research started more than a decade earlier. This paper reviews that 1970s research and addresses important issues relevant for the current transfer learning research. It gives a mathematical model and geometric interpretation of transfer learning, and a measure of transfer learning indicating positive, negative, and no transfer learning. It presents experimental investigation in the mentioned types of transfer learning. And it gives an application of transfer learning in pattern recognition using datasets of images.

Based on Karl Popper’s approach to science, this conceptual article aims at promoting a discussion on important issues debated in the OM literature. Our focus is on the different types of hypothese...

The increasing number of self-report surveys being collected using computers has led to a body of literature examining the response rates for computerized surveys compared with the more traditional paper-and-pencil method. However, results from individual studies have been inconsistent, and the meta-analyses available on this topic have included studies from a restricted range of years and did not use proper statistical procedures for examining comparability. Consequently, we conducted a meta-analysis with 96 independent effect sizes spanning over two decades of studies; we also assessed potential moderators. Comparability was determined using confidence interval equivalence testing procedures. The meta-analysis indicated nonequivalence, with those in the paper-and-pencil condition being almost twice as likely to return surveys as those in the computer condition. There was large heterogeneity of variance, and 11 of the 18 potential moderators were significant. Two meta-regressions yielded only two significant unique moderators: population and type of measure. Results highlighted issues within the response rate literature that can be addressed in future studies, as well as provided an example of using equivalence testing in meta-analyses.