Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hydrological Response to ~30 years of Agricultural Surface Water Management

Amongst human practices, agricultural surface-water management systems represent some of the largest integrated engineering works that shaped floodplains during history, directly or indirectly affecting the landscape. As a result of changes in agricultural practices and land use, many drainage networks have changed producing a greater exposure to flooding with a broad range of impacts on society, also because of climate inputs coupling with the human drivers. This research focuses on three main questions: which kind of land use changes related to the agricultural practices have been observed in the most recent years (~30 years)? How does the influence on the watershed response to land use and land cover changes depend on the rainfall event characteristics and soil conditions, and what is their related significance? The investigation presented in this work includes modelling the water infiltration due to the soil properties and analysing the distributed water storage offered by the agricultural drainage system in a study area in Veneto (north-eastern Italy). The results show that economic changes control the development of agro-industrial landscapes, with effects on the hydrological response. Key elements that can enhance or reduce differences are the antecedent soil conditions and the climate characteristics. Criticalities should be expected for intense and irregular rainfall events, and for events that recurrently happen. Agricultural areas might be perceived to be of low priority when it comes to public funding of flood protection, compared to the priority given to urban ones. These outcomes highlight the importance of understanding how agricultural practices can be the driver of or can be used to avoid, or at least mitigate, flooding. The proposed methods can be valuable tools in evaluating the costs and benefits of the management of water in agriculture to inform better policy decision-making.
Normalized cuts and image segmentation

We propose a novel approach for solving the perceptual grouping problem in vision. Rather than focusing on local features and their consistencies in the image data, our approach aims at extracting the global impression of an image. We treat image segmentation as a graph partitioning problem and propose a novel global criterion, the normalized cut, for segmenting the graph. The normalized cut criterion measures both the total dissimilarity between the different groups as well as the total similarity within the groups. We show that an efficient computational technique based on a generalized eigenvalue problem can be used to optimize this criterion. We have applied this approach to segmenting static images and found results very encouraging.
Using Linked Data for Semi-Automatic Guesstimation

GORT is a system that combines Linked Data from across several Semantic Web data sources to solve guesstimation problems, with user assistance. The system uses customised inference rules over the relationships in the OpenCyc ontology, combined with data from DBPedia, to reason and perform its calculations. The system is extensible with new Linked Data, as it becomes available, and is capable of answering a small range of guesstimation questions.
Neural Processing of Emotional Facial and Semantic Expressions in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder (BD) and Its Association with Theory of Mind (ToM)

Background Adults with bipolar disorder (BD) have cognitive impairments that affect face processing and social cognition. However, it remains unknown whether these deficits in euthymic BD have impaired brain markers of emotional processing. Methodology/Principal Findings We recruited twenty six participants, 13 controls subjects with an equal number of euthymic BD participants. We used an event-related potential (ERP) assessment of a dual valence task (DVT), in which faces (angry and happy), words (pleasant and unpleasant), and face-word simultaneous combinations are presented to test the effects of the stimulus type (face vs word) and valence (positive vs. negative). All participants received clinical, neuropsychological and social cognition evaluations. ERP analysis revealed that both groups showed N170 modulation of stimulus type effects (face > word). BD patients exhibited reduced and enhanced N170 to facial and semantic valence, respectively. The neural source estimation of N170 was a posterior section of the fusiform gyrus (FG), including the face fusiform area (FFA). Neural generators of N170 for faces (FG and FFA) were reduced in BD. In these patients, N170 modulation was associated with social cognition (theory of mind). Conclusions/Significance This is the first report of euthymic BD exhibiting abnormal N170 emotional discrimination associated with theory of mind impairments.
A Comparison of Internet Resource Discovery Approaches

In the past several years, the number and variety of resources available on the Internet have increased dramatically. With this increase, many new systems have been developed that allow users to search for and access these resources. As these systems begin to interconnect with one another through "information gateways", the conceptual relationships between the systems come into question. Understanding these relationships is important, because they address the degree to which the systems can be made to interoperate seamlessly, without the need for users to learn the details of each system. In this paper we present a taxonomy of approaches to resource discovery. The taxonomy provides insights into the interrelated problems of organizing, browsing, and searching for information. Using this taxonomy, we compare a number of resource discovery systems, and examine several gateways between existing systems.
Exploring Individual User Attitudes Towards Performance with Web Search Engines: An Extension Study

As the Internet fulfills an increasingly important role in society, study into human behavior and interaction with the technology becomes key to the development of improved systems. As a result, the research agenda of the authors seeks to identify the role of individual differences with users of technology and its subsequent impact on performance. In this initial study, we examine an instance of individual differences with users of the World Wide Web by evaluating user attitudes and performance with Web search engines. Search engine importance is connected to their role as the primary vehicle for locating content on the Internet. Prior research into user attitude has shown a connection with use of technology. In our study we replicate, extend, and critique an investigation conducted by Liaw and Huang (2003) into user attitudes toward search engines as information retrieval tools. Liaw and Huang found that factors such as individual computer experience, quality of search systems, motivation, and perceptions of technology acceptance impact users desire to use search engines as a tool for information retrieval. However, the connection is not drawn to actual individual user performance with a searching task. Based upon the analysis of our data, we were unable to replicate the results achieved in the Liaw and Huang study or draw a connection between these factors and performance. This finding, that our analysis yielded different results, supports the need for further investigation into individual differences and suggests areas for future research.
Retinal microscotomas revealed with adaptive-optics microflashes.

PURPOSE To develop a sensitive psychophysical test for detecting visual defects such as microscotomas. METHODS Frequency-of-seeing curves were measured with 0.75' and 7.5' spots. On each trial, from 0 to 4 stimuli were randomly presented at any of eight equally spaced loci 0.5 degrees from fixation. By correcting the aberrations of the eye, adaptive optics produced retinal images of the 0.75' spot that were 3.0 microm wide at half height, small enough to be almost entirely confined within the typical cone diameter at this eccentricity. Data were collected from a patient with deuteranopia (AOS1) whose retina, imaged with adaptive optics, suggested that approximately 30% of his cones were missing or abnormal. Patients with protanomalous trichromacy (1 subject), deuteranopia (1 subject), and trichromacy (5 subjects) served as controls (all had normal cone density and complete cone mosaics). Psychophysical results were modeled by a Monte Carlo simulation incorporating measured properties of the cone mosaic. RESULTS Frequency-of-seeing curves for AOS1 obtained with 0.75' spots showed lower asymptote, slope, and sensitivity than for controls. The 7.5' results showed that these differences were the result of the small spot size, which on some trials was confined mostly to the locus of the putatively missing cones. A two-parameter model satisfactorily described the data and was highly sensitive to the proportion of missing cones simulated. CONCLUSIONS Adaptive-optics microperimetry is a powerful psychophysical test for assessing the loss of neural elements, even in retinas that appear otherwise normal in standard clinical tests. This technique may prove useful in estimating the proportion of missing cones in different patients and in detecting other visual losses such as those associated with glaucoma.
Planetary nebulae with emission-line central stars

Received ; accepted Abstract. The kinematic structure of a sample of planetary nebulae, consisting of 23 (WR) central stars, 21 weak emission line stars (wels) and 57 non-emission line central stars, is studied. The (WR) stars are shown to be surrounded by turbulent nebulae, a characteristic shared by some wels but almost completely absent from the non-emission line stars. The fraction of objects showing turbulence for non-emission-line stars, wels and (WR) stars is 7%, 24% and 91%, respectively. The (WR) stars show a distinct IRAS 12-micron excess, indicative of small dust grains, which is not found for wels. The (WR)-star nebulae are on average more centrally condensed than those of other stars. On the age-temperature diagram, the wels are located on tracks of both high and low stellar mass, while (WR) stars trace a narrow range of intermediate masses. Emission-line stars are not found on the cooling track. One group of wels may form a sequence wels-(WO) stars with increasing temperature. For the other groups both the wels and the (WR) stars appear to represent several, independent evolutionary tracks. We find a discontinuity in the (WR) stellar temperature distribution and suggest different evolutionary sequences above and below the temperature gap. One group of cool (WR) stars has no counterpart among any other group of PNe and may represent binary evolution. A prime factor distinguishing wels and (WR) stars appears to be stellar luminosity. We find no evi dence for an increase of nebular expansion velocity with time.
STELLAR CLUSTERS IN THE NGC 6334 STAR-FORMING COMPLEX

The full stellar population of NGC 6334, one of the most spectacular regions of massive star formation in the nearby Galaxy, has not been well sampled in past studies. We analyze here a mosaic of two Chandra X-ray Observatory images of the region using sensitive data analysis methods, giving a list of 1607 faint X-ray sources with arcsecond positions and approximate line-of-sight absorption. About 95% of these are expected to be cluster members, most lower mass pre-main-sequence stars. Extrapolating to low X-ray levels, the total stellar population is estimated to be 20,000–30,000 pre-main-sequence stars. The X-ray sources show a complicated spatial pattern with ∼10 distinct star clusters. The heavily obscured clusters are mostly associated with previously known far-infrared sources and radio H ii regions. The lightly obscured clusters are mostly newly identified in the X-ray images. Dozens of likely OB stars are found, both in clusters and dispersed throughout the region, suggesting that star formation in the complex has proceeded over millions of years. A number of extraordinarily heavily absorbed X-ray sources are associated with the active regions of star formation.
Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. III. The MBH-σ* Relation in the Last Six Billion Years

We measure the evolution of the correlation between black hole mass and host spheroid velocity dispersion (MBH-σ*) over the last 6 billion years, by studying three carefully selected samples of active galaxies at z = 0.57, z = 0.36 and z < 0.1. For all three samples, virial black hole masses are consistently estimated using the line dispersion of Hβ and the continuum luminosity at 5100 Å or Hα line luminosity, based on our cross calibration of the broad-line region size-luminosity relation. For the z = 0.57 sample, new stellar velocity dispersions are measured from high signal-to-noise ratio spectra obtained at the Keck Telescope, while for the two lower redshift samples they are compiled from previous works. Extending our previous result at z = 0.36, we find an offset from the local relation, suggesting that for fixed MBH, distant spheroids have on average smaller velocity dispersions than local ones. The measured offset at z = 0.57 is Δ log σ* = 0.12 ± 0.05 ± 0.06 (or Δ log MBH = 0.50 ± 0.22 ± 0.25), i.e., Δ log MBH = (3.1 ± 1.5) log (1 + z) + 0.05 ± 0.21. This is inconsistent with a tight and nonevolving universal MBH-σ* relation at the 95% CL.
Treatment of stage I and II Hodgkin's lymphoma with ABVD chemotherapy: results after 7 years of a prospective study.

BACKGROUND Chemotherapy with ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine and darcarbacine) schedule is the standard treatment for advanced Hodgkin's lymphoma. Certain facts, including a low toxicity compared with MOPP/ABV (mechlorethamine, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone, doxorubicin, bleomycin and vinblastine) and minimal potential for inducing second neoplasias or patient sterility, support the use of ABVD to treat early disease stages. In the present study, we prospectively evaluated the long-term efficacy and toxicity of six cycles of ABVD as treatment for early-stage Hodgkin's lymphoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS From January 1990 to June 2002, 95 patients with stage I and II Hodgkin's lymphoma were treated with six ABVD cycles. Fifteen patients who met the criteria for mediastinal bulky disease also received further radiotherapy on the mediastinum. RESULTS After six cycles, 89 patients (94%) showed a complete response (CR) and six patients (6%) showed a partial response (PR). These PRs became CRs after radiotherapy. After a median follow-up of 78 months, 14 patients had relapsed and three had died. Overall survival and progression-free survival rates at 7 years were 96% and 84%, respectively. For patients with stage IA and IIA without mediastinal bulky disease, the survival rates were 97% and 88%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The administration of six ABVD cycles is an effective and safe treatment in patients with stage I and II Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Ascertain privacy conservation and data security protection onboard small UAS

The potential application areas for small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) are massive. This paper takes into account the unstoppable trend toward the widespread use of sUAS for a large number of applications and reports on the needed privacy preserving measures and techniques. Specifically, this work researches the prospect of implementing object detection and blurring techniques on the actual sUAS hardware, such that the privacy of sensitive objects captured by the sUAS camera is preserved. The solution approach is to embed FPGA development boards with connected image sensors onboard the sUAS and implement MATLAB image processing algorithms into VHDL/Verilog code. Given the fact that the sUAS may run out of battery or crash during flight, and thus be captured by unauthorized persons, data encryption on the FPGA development boards needs also be studied for security purposes.
Baseline bone mineral density and bone turnover in pre-operative hip and knee arthroplasty patients

Aims Osteoporosis and abnormal bone metabolism may prove to be significant factors influencing the outcome of arthroplasty surgery, predisposing to complications of aseptic loosening and peri-prosthetic fracture. We aimed to investigate baseline bone mineral density (BMD) and bone turnover in patients about to undergo arthroplasty of the hip and knee. Methods We prospectively measured bone mineral density of the hip and lumbar spine using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scans in a cohort of 194 patients awaiting hip or knee arthroplasty. We also assessed bone turnover using urinary deoxypyridinoline (DPD), a type I collagen crosslink, normalised to creatinine. Results The prevalence of DEXA proven hip osteoporosis (T-score ≤ -2.5) among hip and knee arthroplasty patients was found to be low at 2.8% (4 of 143). Spinal osteoporosis prevalence was higher at 6.9% (12 of 175). Sixty patients (42% (60 of 143)) had osteopenia or osteoporosis of either the hip or spine. The mean T-score for the hip was -0.34 (sd 1.23), which is within normal limits, and the mean hip Z-score was positive at 0.87 (sd 1.17), signifying higher-than-average BMD for age. The median urinary DPD/creatinine was raised in both female patients at 8.1 (interquartile range (IQR) 6.6 to 9.9) and male patients at 6.2 (IQR 4.8 to 7.5). Conclusions Our results indicate hip and knee arthroplasty patients have higher BMD of the hip and spine compared with an age-matched general population, and a lower prevalence of osteoporosis. However, untreated osteoporotic patients are undergoing arthroplasty, which may negatively impact their outcome. Raised DPD levels suggest abnormal bone turnover, requiring further investigation. Cite this article: Bone Joint Res 2014;3:14–19.
Mapping Meaning into the Everyday: Experiences of an Urban Walk and Talk Group

In line with public health discourses, current literature indicates that walking can improve mental wellbeing. Much of this research draws on bio-cognitive models to suggest that walking, especially in natural environments, reduces distress. The individualist focus in these studies means that service-users’ holistic experiences of environments and walking are overlooked. There is also little qualitative research that considers service-users’ subjective meaning-making processes. Alternatively, this qualitative study explores service-users’ perspectives of an urban-based ‘Walk and Talk’ (WnT) group and how being part of it has intersected with their experiences of other contexts. An ecological ontology that drew on the work of Tim Ingold (2011; 2015) and Kurt Lewin (1936/2015) and critical realist epistemology underpinned the study. Multi-modal methods were employed. Participants took photographs that formed the basis of a semi-structured interview and also participated in individual walk-along interviews. Transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. This framework aimed to increase nuanced understandings of participants’ ongoing experiences of their environments and walking. An analysis of the data identified several, interconnected themes that are situated within two overarching sections: ‘Everyday Landscapes’ and ‘Wider Worlds’. It is argued that participants inhabited complex environments which contained malleable micro-spaces and oppressive boundaries shaped by macro forces. Furthermore, WnT is argued to be a relational space that fluidly accommodated participants’ subjectivities and helped expand their personal territories. The findings suggest that urban walking groups, which are not time-limited and focus on shared interests, can form a therapeutic space for service-users. Moreover, the findings highlight the need for clinical psychologists to develop clinical and theoretical frameworks that engage more fully and dynamically with service-users’ experiences of environments. It is also recommended that further research should highlight the complex and multifarious ways that structural inequalities enfold the fluid contexts’ that service-users negotiate.
Refining Cortical Representation of Sound Azimuths by Auditory Discrimination Training

Although training-based auditory cortical plasticity in the adult brain has been previously demonstrated in multiparametric sound domains, neurochemical mechanisms responsible for this form of plasticity are not well understood. In this study, we trained adult rats to identify a target sound stimulus at a specific azimuth angle by using a reward-contingent auditory discrimination task. We found that auditory spatial discrimination training significantly enhanced representation of sound azimuths in the primary auditory cortex, as shown by sharper azimuth-selective curves and more evenly distributed best angles of cortical neurons. Training also facilitated long-term potentiation of field potentials in the primary auditory cortex induced by theta burst stimulation of the white matter. In parallel, there were significant alterations in expression levels of certain cortical GABAA and NMDA receptor subunits, resulting in a marked decrease in the level of GABAA relative to NMDA receptors. These changes in the expression profile of inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitter receptor subunits might enhance synaptic transmission, thereby facilitating training-induced cortical plasticity in the spatial domain.
Using the UM dynamical cores to reproduce idealised 3-D flows

Abstract. We demonstrate that both the current (New Dynamics), and next generation (ENDGame) dynamical cores of the UK Met Office global circulation model, the UM, reproduce consistently, the long-term, large-scale flows found in several published idealised tests. The cases presented are the Held–Suarez test, a simplified model of Earth (including a stratosphere), and a hypothetical tidally locked Earth. Furthermore, we show that using simplifications to the dynamical equations, which are expected to be justified for the physical domains and flow regimes we have studied, and which are supported by the ENDGame dynamical core, also produces matching long-term, large-scale flows. Finally, we present evidence for differences in the detail of the planetary flows and circulations resulting from improvements in the ENDGame formulation over New Dynamics.
SAR Image Segmentation Based on Fuzzy Region Competition Method and Gamma Model

In this paper, we present a novel variational framework for multiphase synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image segmentation based on the fuzzy region competition method. A new energy functional is proposed to integrate the Gamma model and the edge detector based on the ratio of exponentially weighted averages (ROEWA) operator within the optimization process. To solve the optimization problem efficiently, the functional is firstly modified to be convex and differentiable by using the fuzzy membership functions. And then the constrained optimization problem is converted to an unconstrained one by using the variable splitting techniques and the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM). Finally the energy is minimized with an alternative iterative minimization algorithm. The effectiveness of our proposed algorithm is validated by experiments on both synthetic and real SAR images.