Abstract: This study emphasizes the importance of utilizing biodegradable material Butea parviflora (BP) fiber for sustainable solutions. BP fiber offers numerous ecological benefits, such as being lightweight, biodegradable, and affordable to recycle. The study examines the effects of potassium permanganate (KMnO4) treatment on BP fiber and analyzes its physical and chemical behavior using various methods, including X-ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis, tensile testing, thermogravimetric analysis, thermal conductivity, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopic (FTIR) analysis. The results demonstrate that BP fiber possesses low density (1.40 g/cc) and high cellulose content (59.4%), which fosters compatibility between the matrix and resin. XRD analysis indicates a high crystallinity index (83.47%) and crystallite size (6.4 nm), showcasing exceptional crystalline behavior. Treated fibers exhibit improved tensile strength (198 MPa) and Young's modulus (4.40 GPa) compared to untreated fibers (tensile strength-92 MPa, tensile modulus-2.16 GPa). The Tg-DTA thermograms reveal the fiber's thermal resistance up to 240 degrees C with a kinetic activation energy between 62.80-63.46 KJ/mol. Additionally, the lowered thermal conductivity (K) from Lee's disc experiment suggests that BP fiber could be used in insulation applications. SEM photographic results display effective surface roughness for composite making, and FTIR studies reveal vibrational variations of cellulosic functional groups, which correlates with increased cellulosic behavior. Overall, the study affirms the potential of BP fiber as a reinforcing material for composite-making while emphasizing the importance of utilizing biodegradable materials for sustainability.

Abstract: We study a cellular automaton (CA) model of information dynamics on a single hypha of a fungal mycelium. Such a filament is divided in compartments (here also called cells) by septa. These septa are invaginations of the cell wall and their pores allow for the flow of cytoplasm between compartments and hyphae. The septal pores of the fungal phylum of the Ascomycota can be closed by organelles called Woronin bodies. Septal closure is increased when the septa become older and when exposed to stress conditions. Thus, Woronin bodies act as informational flow valves. The one-dimensional fungal automaton is a binary-state ternary neighborhood CA, where every compartment follows one of the elementary cellular automaton (ECA) rules if its pores are open and either remains in state 0 (first species of fungal automata) or its previous state (second species of fungal automata) if its pores are closed. The Woronin bodies closing the pores are also governed by ECA rules. We analyze a structure of the composition space of cell-state transition and pore-state transition rules and the complexity of fungal automata with just a few Woronin bodies, and exemplify several important local events in the automaton dynamics.

Abstract: Renewable energies (RE) in Chile and around the world have experienced outstanding growth in recent years. However, RE technologies such as solar photovoltaic and wind generate an imbalance between generation (offer) and consumption (demand) because of their intermittent and variable nature. Moreover, RE & rsquo;s natural variability makes it necessary for conventional technologies to play a significant role in adjusting for the imbalance in the electric system frequency. As variable RE penetration grows, the need for frequency regulation will increase and, depending on how those higher costs are financed, this could lead to a disincentive to invest in conventional plants that provide that service. In this paper we study the impact of increased photovoltaic energy penetration, the leading RE in Chile, on the profitability of different conventional generation technologies. Specifically, we analyze the role that the frequency control remuneration mechanism has on that impact. For this purpose, four different solar photovoltaic penetration scenarios are simulated in Chile & rsquo;s Northern System, comparing two payment criteria for frequency regulation services: i) a cost-based pricing system whose payments relate to the incurred costs and ii) a market-based pricing system where the marginal cost of providing the services is paid. The results show that as installed photovoltaic capacity increases, the average marginal cost of energy (operation cost) decreases due to a displacement of more expensive power plants, but at the same time, investment cost may increase. In the long run, contract prices change as a result of falling operational costs and rising investment cost, resulting in changes in the profitability of all technologies. Finally, while both cost-based and market-based systems reward the ability to regulate frequency, the technologies performing the regulation receive different payments for the service, affecting both their profitability and the incentives for investment.

Abstract: Environmental transitions leading to spatial physical-chemical gradients are of ecological and evolutionary interest because they are able to induce variations in phenotypic plasticity. Thus, the adaptive variability to low-pH river discharges may drive divergent stress responses [ingestion rates (IR) and expression of stress-related genes such as Heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) and Ferritin] in the neritic copepod Acartia tonsa facing changes in the marine chemistry associated to ocean acidification (OA). These responses were tested in copepod populations inhabiting two environments with contrasting carbonate system parameters (an estuarine versus coastal area) in the Southern Pacific Ocean, and assessing an insitu and 96-h experimental incubation under conditions of high pressure of CO2 (PCO2 1200ppm). Adaptive variability was a determining factor in driving variability of copepods' responses. Thus, the food-rich but colder and corrosive estuary induced a traits trade-off expressed as depressed IR under insitu conditions. However, this experience allowed these copepods to tolerate further exposure to high PCO2 levels better, as their IRs were on average 43% higher thanthose of the coastal individuals. Indeed, expression of both the Hsp70 and Ferritin genes in coastal copepods was significantly higher after acclimation to high PCO2 conditions. Along with other recent evidence, our findings confirm that adaptation to local fluctuations in seawater pH seems to play a significant role in the response of planktonic populations to OA-associated conditions. Facing the environmental threat represented by the inter-play between multiple drivers of climate change, this biological feature should be examined in detail asa potential tool for risk mitigation policies in coastal management arrangements.

Abstract: About 70% of the Universe is Dark Energy, but the physics community still does not know what it is. Delta gravity (DG) is an alternative theory of gravitation that could solve this cosmological problem. Previously, we studied the Universe's accelerated expansion, where DG was able to explain the SNe-Ia data successfully. In this work, we computed the cosmological fluctuations in DG that give rise to the CMB through a hydrodynamic approximation. We calculated the gauge transformations for the metric and the perfect fluid to present the equations of the evolution of cosmological fluctuations. This provided the necessary equations to solve the scalar TT power spectrum in a semi-analytical way. These equations are useful for comparing the DG theory with astronomical observations and thus being able to constrain the DG cosmology.

Abstract: The present work proposes a novel Network Optimization problem whose core is to combine both network design and network construction scheduling under uncertainty into a single two-stage robust optimization model. The first-stage decisions correspond to those of a classical network design problem, while the second-stage decisions correspond to those of a network construction scheduling problem (NCS) under uncertainty. The resulting problem, which we will refer to as the Two-Stage Robust Network Design and Construction Problem (2SRNDC), aims at providing a modeling framework in which the design decision not only depends on the design costs (e.g., distances) but also on the corresponding construction plan (e.g., time to provide service to costumers). We provide motivations, mixed integer programming formulations, and an exact algorithm for the 2SRNDC. Experimental results on a large set of instances show the effectiveness of the model in providing robust solutions, and the capability of the proposed algorithm to provide good solutions in reasonable running times. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: The simple assembly line balancing problem (SALBP) involves the determination of the assignment of elementary assembly operations to the workstations of the assembly line for the manufacture of a final product, with the objective of maximising assembly efficiency. In addition to its practicality, the SALBP can be considered as an extension of the bin packing problem (BPP) to account for the precedence relations between items. These constraints introduce an ordering component to the problem, which increases the complexity of SALBP resolution. However, previous studies indicated that precedence constraints do not play an important role in the capacity of state-of-the-art procedures to solve benchmark instances to optimality. In this study, we analysed the influences of different features of an SALBP instance on the performance of state-of-the-art solution methods for the abovementioned problem. First, we provide an alternative proof of complexity for the SALBP that uses precedence constraints to demonstrate its non-deterministic polynomial time (NP)-complete status, followed by a new set of benchmark instances directed towards an empirical analysis of the different features of SALBP instances. The experimental results revealed that the packing features of the SALBP are a major source of the perceived difficulty for any instance; however, precedence constraints play a role in the performance of these solution procedures. Specifically, the number of precedence constraints plays an important role in the results obtained from state-of-the-art methods. In addition to the analysis, certain issues that were identified in the publicly available implementations of the state-of-the-art method for resolving this problem were addressed in this study.

Abstract: Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality among men worldwide. Accurate and efficient segmentation of clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) regions from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) plays a crucial role in diagnosis, treatment planning, and monitoring of the disease, however, this is a challenging task even for the specialized clinicians. This study presents SAM-UNETR, a novel model for segmenting csPCa regions from MRI images. SAM-UNETR combines a transformer-encoder from the Segment Anything Model (SAM), a versatile segmentation model trained on 11 million images, with a residual-convolution decoder inspired by UNETR. The model uses multiple image modalities and applies prostate zone segmentation, normalization, and data augmentation as preprocessing steps. The performance of SAM-UNETR is compared with three other models using the same strategy and preprocessing. The results show that SAM-UNETR achieves superior reliability and accuracy in csPCa segmentation, especially when using transfer learning for the image encoder. This demonstrates the adaptability of large-scale models for different tasks. SAM-UNETR attains a Dice Score of 0.467 and an AUROC of 0.77 for csPCa prediction.

Abstract: We consider the linear stability of 4-dimensional hairy black holes with mixed boundary conditions in Anti-de Sitter spacetinie. We focus on the mass of scalar fields around the maximally supersymmetric vacuum of the gauged N = 8 supergravity in four dimensions, m(2) = -2l(-2). It is shown that the Schrodinger operator on the half-line, governing the S-2, H-2 or R-2 invariant mode around the hairy black hole, allows for nontrivial self-adjoint extensions and each of them corresponds to a class of mixed boundary conditions in the gravitational theory. Discarding the self-adjoint extensions with a negative mode impose a restriction on these boundary conditions. The restriction is given in terms of an integral of the potential in the Schrodinger operator resembling the estimate of Simon for Schrodinger operators on the real line. In the context of AdS/CFT duality, our result has a natural interpretation in terms of the field theory dual effective potential.

Abstract: We present a bottom-up experimental research to address evidence of internal curing of mortars using randomly distributed pig-hair as water reservoirs. Plain and reinforced mortars with pig hair ranging from 0 to 8 kg of fibers per cubic meter of mortar were prepared. The microstructures of plain and reinforced mortars were scanned using electron microscopy and the microhardnesses were measured within
the bulk cement paste and cement paste near pig fibers. Electrical resistivity, surface absorption, and residual compressive strength of mortars after freeze-thaw cycles were used to test the effects of internal curing caused by pig hair. Natural fibers used to reinforce mortars increase their toughness and provide
part of the necessary water for internal curing, yet internal curing originated by the addition of natural fibers is not proportional to fiber dosage; where the potential to form fiber clusters increases as fiber dosage increases. Results show that there is an optimum fiber dosage that maximizes internal curing
caused by these fibers. This study contributes to the research on reinforced mortars with natural fibers to provide sustainable solutions for construction materials.