Fifty years of Rietveld refinement: Methodology and guidelines in superconductors and functional magnetic nanoadsorbents

The Rietveld refinement method has taken high relevance since its creation. Nowadays, it is an useful tool in many fields of industry, materials science, and technology. For these reasons, it becomes a need for scientists and engineers whom pretend to use it for proper analysis of their materials. However, the initiation in the method can be slow, taking into account the accelerated rhythm of the research and economic demands. Thus, this work is an intend to fulfill this hole, providing the basic foundations and methodology of the Rietveld refinement in a brief way, this along with the results of its application in superconducting samples of Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide and magnesium diboride, and functional magnetic nanoadsorbents of maghemite and a multiphasic composite (iron oxide, hydroxyapatite and secondary phases). In the process, an in-detail protocol was designed and provided. It was concluded that the samples were successfully refined and that this work represents a fast introduction to the Rietveld method for which beginners can obtain good results while making correct interpretations ofthe whole refinement process.

Tiny Drone Tracking Framework Using Multiple Trackers and Kalman-based Predictor

Unmanned aerial vehicles like drones are one of the key development technologies with many beneficial applications. As they have made great progress, security and privacy issues are also growing. Drone tacking with a moving camera is one of the important methods to solve these issues. There are various challenges of drone tracking. First, drones move quickly and are usually tiny. Second, images captured by a moving camera have illumination changes. Moreover, the tracking should be performed in real-time for surveillance applications. For fast and accurate drone tracking, this paper proposes a tracking framework utilizing two trackers, a predictor, and a refinement process. One tracker finds a moving target based on motion flow and the other tracker locates the region of interest (ROI) employing histogram features. The predictor estimates the trajectory of the target by using a Kalman filter. The predictor contributes to keeping track of the target even if the trackers fail. Lastly, the refinement process decides the location of the target taking advantage of ROIs from the trackers and the predictor. In experiments on our dataset containing tiny flying drones, the proposed method achieved an average success rate of 1.134 times higher than conventional tracking methods and it performed at an average run-time of 21.08 frames per second.

Estimative of royalties: appropriation of gains provided by innovations associated with plant breeding

Genetic breeding is based on the inheritance of quantitative traits, which provides the basis for developing methods that can be used to increase the rate of genetic improvement, known as genetic gain. Through selection, new varieties of plants can be obtained, which can be protected. Thus, this research investigates the mechanisms for estimating royalties in protected cultivars and the importance of genetic gains in such estimations. A systematic review was carried out based on articles published in 10 years, from 2009 to 2019, in the scientific bases Scopus (71) and Web of Science (73). The main crop, take as an example, was sugar cane. A survey of documents was carried out containing the Boolean terms and operators: “(genetic * and gain) and (sugarcane or cane)” in the title and/or abstract. One hundred forty-four articles were searched. After processing the data and removing duplicate documents, 107 scientific articles remained. With an average publication of 6.38 publications per year. Average of 14.6 citations per document. There were 463 authors and 456 co-authors, with nine documents having single authorship and an average of 4.33 authors per article. After the refinement process, a study sample of 25 articles was obtained. The analyzed journals provided information about the estimates, applied model, and study variables, being of great importance in constructing a linear regression model of royalty valuation linked to intellectual property rights related to the breeder of plant breeding.

ExoClock project: an open platform for monitoring the ephemerides of Ariel targets with contributions from the public

The Ariel mission will observe spectroscopically around 1000 exoplanets to further characterise their atmospheres. For the mission to be as efficient as possible, a good knowledge of the planets’ ephemerides is needed before its launch in 2028. While ephemerides for some planets are being refined on a per-case basis, an organised effort to collectively verify or update them when necessary does not exist. In this study, we introduce the ExoClock project, an open, integrated and interactive platform with the purpose of producing a confirmed list of ephemerides for the planets that will be observed by Ariel. The project has been developed in a manner to make the best use of all available resources: observations reported in the literature, observations from space instruments and, mainly, observations from ground-based telescopes, including both professional and amateur observatories. To facilitate inexperienced observers and at the same time achieve homogeneity in the results, we created data collection and validation protocols, educational material and easy to use interfaces, open to everyone. ExoClock was launched in September 2019 and now counts over 140 participants from more than 15 countries around the world. In this release, we report the results of observations obtained until the 15h of April 2020 for 120 Ariel candidate targets. In total, 632 observations were used to either verify or update the ephemerides of 84 planets. Additionally, we developed the Exoplanet Characterisation Catalogue (ECC), a catalogue built in a consistent way to assist the ephemeris refinement process. So far, the collaborative open framework of the ExoClock project has proven to be highly efficient in coordinating scientific efforts involving diverse audiences. Therefore, we believe that it is a paradigm that can be applied in the future for other research purposes, too.

A Semantic Model to Assist Policy Refinement Mechanisms for NFV-MANO Systems

Management in NFV scenarios is a complex task. In this scenario, automated policy refinement can be used to enforce NFV-MANO functions to deal with the increased complexity. However, existing solutions do not perform policy analysis. Therefore, in this work, we propose a semantic model in OWL 2, named Onto-Planner, to assist the policy refinement process for NFV-MANO systems. Preliminary results show that Onto-Planner provides policy analysis when a DL reasoner is applied.

Development and Validation of an Online Emotional Intelligence Training Program

Emotional intelligence (EI) is associated with a range of positive outcomes, and methods to increase EI are greatly needed. The present study tests the effectiveness of an online training program for increasing EI in adults. After an initial design and refinement process, 326 participants were randomly assigned to complete an EI training program or a placebo control training program. Participants in the EI training program showed increased scores pre- to post-training on standard self-report measures of EI (relative to placebo), indicating self-perceived improvements in recognizing emotions, understanding emotions, and managing the emotions of others. Participants in the EI training also showed increased scores in standard performance-based EI measures, demonstrating an increased ability to strategically use and manage emotions. Improvements to performance measures also remained significantly higher than baseline six months following the training. These results suggest that use of this novel online training program can improve EI.

Distinct functional developments of surviving and eliminated presynaptic terminals

For neuronal circuits in the brain to mature, necessary synapses must be maintained and redundant synapses eliminated through experience-dependent mechanisms. However, the functional differentiation of these synapse types during the refinement process remains elusive. Here, we addressed this issue by distinct labeling and direct recordings of presynaptic terminals fated for survival and for elimination in the somatosensory thalamus. At surviving terminals, the number of total releasable vesicles was first enlarged, and then calcium channels and fast-releasing synaptic vesicles were tightly coupled in an experience-dependent manner. By contrast, transmitter release mechanisms did not mature at terminals fated for elimination, irrespective of sensory experience. Nonetheless, terminals fated for survival and for elimination both exhibited developmental shortening of action potential waveforms that was experience independent. Thus, we dissected experience-dependent and -independent developmental maturation processes of surviving and eliminated presynaptic terminals during neuronal circuit refinement.

Behaviour and Properties of Eco-Cement Pastes Elaborated with Recycled Concrete Powder from Construction and Demolition Wastes

This work analyses the influence of fine concrete fractions (<5 mm) of different natures —calcareous (HcG) and siliceous (HsT)—obtained from construction and demolition waste (C&DW) on the behaviour of blended cement pastes with partial replacements between 5 and 10%. The two C&DW fractions were characterised by different instrumental techniques. Subsequently, their lime-fixing capacity and the physico-mechanical properties of the blended cement pastes were analysed. Lastly, the environmental benefits of reusing these fine wastes in the manufacture of future eco-efficient cement pastes were examined. The results show that HsT and HcG exhibit weak pozzolanic activity, owing to their low reactive silica and alumina content. Despite this, the new cement pastes meet the physical and mechanical requirements of the existing regulations for common cements. It should be highlighted that the blended cement pastes initially showed a coarser pore network, but then they underwent a refinement process between 2 and 28 days, along with a gain in compressive strength, possibly due to the double pozzolanic and filler effect of the wastes. The environmental viability of the blended cements was evaluated in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) concluding that the overall environmental impact could be reduced in the same proportion of the replacement rate. This is in line with the Circular Economy goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Designing a new multi epitope-based vaccine against COVID-19 disease: an immunoinformatic study based on reverse vaccinology approach

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has currently caused a significant pandemic among worldwide populations. The transmission speed and the high rate of mortality caused by the disease necessitate studies for the rapid designing and effective vaccine production. The purpose of this study is to predict and design a novel multi-epitope vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus using bioinformatics approaches. Coronavirus envelope proteins, ORF7b, ORF8, ORF10, and NSP9 were selected as targets for epitope mapping using IEDB and BepiPred 2.0 Servers. Also, molecular docking studies were performed to determine the candidate vaccine's affinity to TLR3, TLR4, MHC I, and MHC II molecules. Thirteen epitopes were selected to construct the multi-epitope vaccine. We found that the constructed peptide has valuable antigenicity, stability, and appropriate half-life. The Ramachandran plot approved the quality of the predicted model after the refinement process. Molecular docking investigations revealed that antibody-mode in the Cluspro 2.0 server showed the lowest binding energy for MHCI, MHCII, TLR3, and TLR4. This study confirmed that the designed vaccine has a good antigenicity and stability and could be a proper vaccine candidate against the COVID-19 infectious disease though, in vitro and in vivo experiments are necessary to complete and confirm our results.