Building a text collection for Urdu information retrieval

Urdu is a widely spoken language in the Indian subcontinent with over 300 million speakers worldwide. However, linguistic advancements in Urdu are rare compared to those in other European and Asian languages. Therefore, by following Text Retrieval Conference standards, we attempted to construct an extensive text collection of 85 304 documents from diverse categories covering over 52 topics with relevance judgment sets at 100 pool depth. We also present several applications to demonstrate the effectiveness of our collection. Although this collection is primarily intended for text retrieval, it can also be used for named entity recognition, text summarization, and other linguistic applications with suitable modifications. Ours is the most extensive existing collection for the Urdu language, and it will be freely available for future research and academic education.     

Dynamics of Pulsed Signals in a Pipeline Filled with a Methane–Vapor–Droplet Mixture and Affected by Gas–Hydrate Deposits

Journal of Engineering Physics and Thermophysics - A study is made of the evolution of pulsed pressure perturbations in a pipeline filled with a gas–droplet medium, which represents...     

Diagnostics of the Surfaces of 20 аnd 17G1S-U Steels Corrosion Damaged by Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria

Materials Science - We develop new methods of the laboratory defectometry of biocorroded microareas in structural steels based on the quantitative analysis of variations of their roughness. We...     

Investigation into the Pyrolysis of Medical Waste in a Fixed-Bed Reactor

Journal of Engineering Physics and Thermophysics - An experimental investigation has been conducted into the pyrolysis of typical medical waste components in a fixed-bed reactor with a view to...     

A High Capacity All Solid-State Li-Sulfur Battery Enabled by Conversion-Intercalation Hybrid Cathode Architecture

As demands for electrochemical energy storage continue to rise, alternative electrochemistries to conventional Li-ion batteries become more appealing. Here, an intercalation-conversion hybrid cathode that combines intercalation-type VS₂ with conversion-type sulfur chemistry to construct high performance solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries is reported. The layered VS₂ nanomaterial features Li-ion transport channels, metallic conductivity, and active capacity contribution, all of which provide an ideal platform for the solid state S/Li₂S redox couple to unlock its high gravimetric capacity. The S/VS₂/Li₃PS₄ hybrid cathode composite is prepared by a facile, low-cost, and low-energy mechanical blending process. The S/VS₂/Li₃PS₄|Li₃PS₄|Li/In (or Li) all-solid-state cell exhibits sulfur utilization of ≈85%, with a Coulombic efficiency of close to 100%. High areal capacity up to 7.8 mA h cm⁻² with an active material loading (S/VS₂) as high as 15.5 mg cm⁻² is achieved.     

Constructing Onboard Switched Networks of Minimum Complexity

Programming and Computer Software - In this paper, we formulate the problem of constructing an onboard switched network of minimum complexity required for real-time transmission of periodic...     

Interlayer bonding between thermoplastic composites and metals by in-situ polymerization technique

Fiber-metal laminates (FMLs) offer the superior characteristics of polymer composites (i.e., light weight, high strength and stiffness) with the ductility and fracture strength of metals. The bond strength between the two dissimilar materials, composite and metal, dictates the properties and performance of the FMLs. The bonding becomes more critical when the polymer matrix is thermoplastic and hydrophobic in nature. This work employed a novel bonding technique between thermoplastic composites and a metal layer using six different combinations of organic coatings. The flexural, and interlaminar shear strength of the thermoplastic fiber metal laminates (TP-FMLs) were examined to investigate the bond strengths in the different cases along with fracture characteristics revealed from the tested samples using scanning electron microscopy. The viscoelastic performance of the fabricated TP-FMLs were also investigated using the dynamic mechanical thermal analysis method.     

Multivariate process trajectories for molecular description of MF thermal curing and correlation with hydrolytic stability

During curing of thermosetting resins the technologically relevant properties of binders and coatings develop. However, curing is difficult to monitor due to the multitude of chemical and physical processes taking place. Precise prediction of specific technological properties based on molecular properties is very difficult. In this study, the potential of principal component analysis (PCA) and principal component regression (PCR) in the analysis of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra is demonstrated using the example of melamine-formaldehyde (MF) resin curing in solid state. FTIR/PCA-based reaction trajectories are used to visualize the influence of temperature on isothermal cure. An FTIR/PCR model for predicting the hydrolysis resistance of cured MF resin from their spectral fingerprints is presented which illustrates the advantages of FTIR/PCR compared to the combination differential scanning calorimetry/isoconversional kinetic analysis. The presented methodology is transferable to the curing reactions of any thermosetting resin and can be applied to model other technologically relevant final properties as well.     

Chemical Bonding by the Chemical Orthogonal Space of Reactivity

The fashionable Parr–Pearson (PP) atoms-in-molecule/bonding (AIM/AIB) approach for determining the exchanged charge necessary for acquiring an equalized electronegativity within a chemical bond is refined and generalized here by introducing the concepts of chemical power within the chemical orthogonal space (COS) in terms of electronegativity and chemical hardness. Electronegativity and chemical hardness are conceptually orthogonal, since there are opposite tendencies in bonding, i.e., reactivity vs. stability or the HOMO-LUMO middy level vs. the HOMO-LUMO interval (gap). Thus, atoms-in-molecule/bond electronegativity and chemical hardness are provided for in orthogonal space (COS), along with a generalized analytical expression of the exchanged electrons in bonding. Moreover, the present formalism surpasses the earlier Parr–Pearson limitation to the context of hetero-bonding molecules so as to also include the important case of covalent homo-bonding. The connections of the present COS analysis with PP formalism is analytically revealed, while a numerical illustration regarding the patterning and fragmentation of chemical benchmarking bondings is also presented and fundamental open questions are critically discussed.