Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seismic attenuation in partially saturated rock

Measurements of attenuation in the extensional and shear modes for a sandstone (Murphy, 1982) indicate that two separate mechanisms are operative, one at very low saturation and another at saturation levels above 50%. At saturations of less than a few percent, attenuation in extension increases to a peak and then decreases to a plateau. Attenuation in shear behaves similarly, the magnitude being 20–30% less than that in extension. At saturations greater than 50%, attenuation in shear remains at the plateau value, while attenuation in extension rises to a broad peak, finally decreasing to a low value at full saturation. We analyzed a model in which porosity of the sample is assumed to be composed of cracks and equiaxed cavities called pores. At low saturation, attenuation is assumed to be caused by viscous dissipation as fluid in cracks is squished by changes in aperture under the normal component of the wave. At higher saturation, attenuation is assumed to be caused by viscous losses as fluid is forced from completely saturated regions, composed of many pores, to dry regions. Analysis shows that the model simulates the behavior observed by Murphy for Massilon sandstone. Agreement between theory and experiment suggests that the dominant aspect ratio for cracks is of the order of 10−3 and the size of saturated regions is about 1 mm at 90% saturation, decreasing to smaller values as the sample dries.
Global population collapse in a superabundant migratory bird and illegal trapping in China

Persecution and overexploitation by humans are major causes of species extinctions. Rare species, often confined to small geographic ranges, are usually at highest risk, whereas extinctions of superabundant species with very large ranges are rare. The Yellow‐breasted Bunting (Emberiza aureola) used to be one of the most abundant songbirds of the Palearctic, with a very large breeding range stretching from Scandinavia to the Russian Far East. Anecdotal information about rapid population declines across the range caused concern about unsustainable trapping along the species’ migration routes. We conducted a literature review and used long‐term monitoring data from across the species’ range to model population trend and geographical patterns of extinction. The population declined by 84.3–94.7% between 1980 and 2013, and the species’ range contracted by 5000 km. Quantitative evidence from police raids suggested rampant illegal trapping of the species along its East Asian flyway in China. A population model simulating an initial harvest level of 2% of the population, and an annual increase of 0.2% during the monitoring period produced a population trajectory that matched the observed decline. We suggest that trapping strongly contributed to the decline because the consumption of Yellow‐breasted Bunting and other songbirds has increased as a result of economic growth and prosperity in East Asia. The magnitude and speed of the decline is unprecedented among birds with a comparable range size, with the exception of the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), which went extinct in 1914 due to industrial‐scale hunting. Our results demonstrate the urgent need for an improved monitoring of common and widespread species’ populations, and consumption levels throughout East Asia.
Early Effects of Long-Term Neurotoxic Lead Exposure in Copper Works Employees

The situation of exposure in a copper works facility in Germany enabled early lead-induced neurotoxic effects to be investigated in the workers. The aim of the investigation was to study the long-term effects of small doses of lead on psychometric/psychophysiological performance of workers. The study involved 70 male lead exposed workers and 27 male controls with no neurotoxic exposure. All test persons were subjected to the method of investigation involving performance data, physiological strain data, and the subjective state. It was found that of the psychometric performance parameters, only the mainly motor performance parameters had a potential for being neurotoxic early indicators. Preferably centrally influenced performance parameters were found to be less suitable early indicators. The lead-exposed subjects exhibited a slowed poststrain resetting behaviour of the vegetative nervous system, which correlated with the individual blood lead level. This was attributed to vagus depression, which had already started in the prevailing situation of exposure and was reflected by diminished cardiac phase duration variability. Our results indicate that it is necessary to more critically choose the lead level standards in the air on the working area. Heart rate variability may be affected even at small lead concentration.
Comparison of Radiological Findings of Chest X-Ray With Echocardiography in Determination of the Heart Size

Background: Heart size is an important and effective parameter in chest X-ray (CXR) interpretation. Studies indicate that, especially in middle-aged men, increased cardiothoracic ratio (CTR) is associated with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and increased rate of morbidity and mortality. The CXR is the most common imaging examination of the heart. Objectives: A good quality posterior-anterior (PA) chest radiograph is an important indicator of the cardiac size. Nowadays, CXR has given its place to more advanced approaches such as two-dimensional echocardiography. However, CXR is still more accessible and feasible for most of the physicians. This study was designed to compare the findings of CXR and echocardiography in determination of the heart size. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out from 2006 to 2007. A total of 197 patients entered the study. The cases had been undergone PA CXR and 2-D echocardiography maximum within two days. Results: Of participants, 24.9% had cardiomegaly according to the findings of CXR and 50.8% based on echocardiography. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean size of Right Ventricular End Diastolic Diameter in the patients with cardiothoracic ratio < 50% and ≥ 50% (P = 0.002) as well as Left Ventricular End Diastolic Diameter (P = 0.023). Also, a statistically significant difference was seen between echocardiography and CXR findings with regard to determination of the heart size (P = 0.003). Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that sensitivity and specificity of CXR findings in the diagnosis of cardiomegaly were 34%, and 84.5%, respectively. Conclusions: CTR is the most common method of describing the heart size. Increased CTR in CXR is associated with poor prognosis, which is suggestive of importance and necessity of early diagnosis. Although CXR may not have the same diagnostic accuracy as echocardiography, its easy accessibility and high specificity in diagnosis of cardiomegaly is very helpful, which can play an important and a cost-benefit role, particularly in screening the enlarged heart size. Moreover, according to the statistics released by Medical Council of Iran, most of Iranian physicians are general practitioners and a few of them are cardiologist.
β‐cell function assessment from modelling of oral tests: an effective approach

The quantitative study of β‐cell function has relied on mathematical models for almost 40 years. During the last decades, the initial elaborate models have been simplified with the aim of obtaining mathematical methods suitable for the assessment of β‐cell function in an individual from an intravenous test. In more recent times, modelling methods have been proposed for analysing oral glucose tolerance tests or meal tests. In this review, we describe these methods with particular emphasis on an approach we have developed. We discuss the relevance of potentiation of insulin secretion in an oral glucose test, which our model has reintroduced after the historical models. We provide evidence on the validity of the method and illustrate significant applications. We emphasize the importance of quantifying β‐cell function through multiple indices and highlight how our approach has provided new insight on the relationships between β‐cell function and insulin sensitivity and on the role of β‐cell function in glucose intolerance and diabetes.
Remarks on strong stabilization and stable H/sup /spl infin// controller design

A state space based design method is given to find strongly stabilizing controllers for multi-input-multi-output plants (MIMO). A sufficient condition is derived for the existence of suboptimal stable H/sup /spl infin// controller in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMI) and the controller order is twice that of the plant. A new parameterization of strongly stabilizing controllers is determined using linear fractional transformations (LFT).
Life events, drinking patterns and depressive symptomatology; the stress-buffering role of alcohol consumption.

This paper examines the question of whether the relationship between life events and depressive symptomatology varies with the individual's typical drinking pattern. Cross-sectional data from a sample of 713 rural residents are used. To clarify the nature of the stress-buffering functions of alcohol use, the relationships are then examined for different categories of stressors (e.g.) marital, job-related). Results show that life events are more strongly related to depressive symptomatology in abstainers and heavy drinkers than in moderate drinkers. More specifically, the interaction profiles suggested that financial and calamitous events were but minimally related to symptomatology among both moderate and heavy drinkers (thus suggesting stress-buffering functions with regard to these events). In contrast, relational and health events were unrelated to symptomatology only among moderate drinkers.
Strong consistency of kernel-based local variable selection for nonlinear nonparametric systems

Local variable selection by first order expansion for nonlinear nonparametric systems is investigated in the paper. By substantially modifying the algorithms developed in our earlier work, the previous results have been considerably strengthened under much less restrictive conditions. Precisely, the estimates generated by the modified algorithms are shown to have both the set and parameter convergence with probability one, rather than only the set convergence in probability given in our earlier work.
Lithographic Source and Mask Optimization With Low Aberration Sensitivity

Source and mask optimization (SMO) is an important lithographic resolution enhancement technology. Recently, some research indicate that the lithography performance is sensitive to the errors of an actual lithography system, such as thermal aberration, thick mask effects, and mask uncertainties. Most of the errors would result in uncertain wavefront aberration, so the reduction of aberration sensitivity means the improvement of lithography stability. In this paper, we propose a low aberration sensitivity SMO (LASSMO) method to improve robustness of lithography performance against uncertain aberration. To reduce the aberration sensitivity, we build the LASSMO model via innovating new cost function including sensitivity penalty terms. Aiming at spherical aberration and coma, this method is demonstrated using two target patterns with critical dimensions of 45 nm. Taking into account the statistic characteristics of uncertain aberration, we use the normalized stochastic gradient descent algorithm to establish an iterative optimization framework. The simulation results show the benefit of LASSMO method in both high pattern fidelity and the low sensitivity of lithography imaging to aberration.
Information Extraction: Beyond Document Retrieval

In this paper we give a synoptic view of the growth of the text processing technology of information extraction (IE) whose function is to extract information about a pre‐specified set of entities, relations or events from natural language texts and to record this information in structured representations called templates. Here we describe the nature of the IE task, review the history of the area from its origins in AI work in the 1960s and 70s till the present, discuss the techniques being used to carry out the task, describe application areas where IE systems are or are about to be at work, and conclude with a discussion of the challenges facing the area. What emerges is a picture of an exciting new text processing technology with a host of new applications, both on its own and in conjunction with other technologies, such as information retrieval, machine translation and data mining.
A Robust Maximum Likelihood Scheme for PSS Detection and Integer Frequency Offset Recovery in LTE Systems

Before establishing a communication link in a cellular network, the user terminal must activate a synchronization procedure called initial cell search in order to acquire specific information about the serving base station. To accomplish this task, the primary synchronization signal (PSS) and secondary synchronization signal (SSS) are periodically transmitted in the downlink of a long term evolution (LTE) network. Since SSS detection can be performed only after successful identification of the primary signal, in this work, we present a novel algorithm for joint PSS detection, sector index identification, and integer frequency offset (IFO) recovery in an LTE system. The proposed scheme relies on the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation criterion and exploits a suitable reduced-rank representation of the channel frequency response, which proves robust against multipath distortions and residual timing errors. We show that a number of PSS detection methods that were originally introduced through heuristic reasoning can be derived from our ML framework by simply selecting an appropriate model for the channel gains over the PSS subcarriers. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed scheme can be effectively applied in the presence of severe multipath propagation, where existing alternatives provide unsatisfactory performance.
EPIZOOTIOLOGIC SURVEY OF MYCOBACTERIUM BOVIS IN WILDLIFE AND FARM ENVIRONMENTS IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN

Bovine tuberculosis (bovine TB), caused by Mycobacterium bovis, has reemerged in northern Michigan, USA, with detections in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in 1994 and in cattle in 1998. Since then, significant efforts have been directed toward reducing deer densities in the area in the hopes of reducing the bovine TB prevalence rate in deer and eliminating spillover of the disease into cattle. Despite the success of the efforts to reduce deer densities, additional cattle herds have become infected. Other mammals can be infected with M. bovis, and some carnivores and omnivores had been found to be infected with the disease in northern Michigan, USA. We conducted a multiyear surveillance effort to detect bovine TB in wild species of mammals in the Michigan, USA, outbreak area. From 2002 to 2004, tissue samples from 1,031 individual animals of 32 species were collected, processed, and cultured for M. bovis. Only 10 (1.0%) were culture-positive for M. bovis (five raccoons [Procyon lotor], four opossums [Didelphis virginiana], and one grey fox [Urocyon cinereoargenteus]). We also found two raccoons and four opossums to be positive for Mycobacterium avium. We collected 503 environmental samples from cattle farms recently identified as bovine TB positive; none yielded positive M. bovis culture results. Finally, we used infrared cameras to document wildlife use of four barns in the area. Many avian and mammalian species of wildlife were observed, with raccoons being the most commonly observed species. This surveillance study identified no new wildlife species that should be considered significant reservoirs of bovine TB in the outbreak area in northern Michigan, USA. However, the relatively high, apparent bovine TB prevalence rates in some carnivorous and omnivorous species, their relatively long life spans, and their frequent use of barns, suggests that removal of raccoons, opossums, foxes, and coyotes (Canis latrans) should be considered when a newly infected farm is depopulated of cattle.
Reviewing population studies for forensic purposes: Dog mitochondrial DNA

Abstract The identification of dog hair through mtDNA analysis has become increasingly important in the last 15 years, as it can provide associative evidence connecting victims and suspects. The evidential value of an mtDNA match between dog hair and its potential donor is determined by the random match probability of the haplotype. This probability is based on the haplotype’s population frequency estimate. Consequently, implementing a population study representative of the population relevant to the forensic case is vital to the correct evaluation of the evidence. This paper reviews numerous published dog mtDNA studies and shows that many of these studies vary widely in sampling strategies and data quality. Therefore, several features influencing the representativeness of a population sample are discussed. Moreover, recommendations are provided on how to set up a dog mtDNA population study and how to decide whether or not to include published data. This review emphasizes the need for improved dog mtDNA population data for forensic purposes, including targeting the entire mitochondrial genome. In particular, the creation of a publicly available database of qualitative dog mtDNA population studies would improve the genetic analysis of dog traces in forensic casework.
An experimental test of reciprocal transmission over two long-distance high-frequency radio circuits

Tests have been carried out under carefully controlled conditions to see whether the attenuation of high-frequency signals sent over a given long-distance radio path differs according to the direction of transmission. The results obtained both across the North Atlantic and between Australia and the United Kingdom show that at times the loss in both directions is substantially the same, and that at other times the loss difference can rise to values of the order of 5 or 10 dB. Usually the loss differences were such that signals outwards from the United Kingdom suffered the greater attenuation, but without further evidence it would be unwise to assume that this tendency is permanent.
Development of drowsy driving accident prediction by heart rate variability analysis

Drowsy driving accidents can be prevented if it can be predicted in advance. The present work aims to develop a new method for predicting a drowsy driving accident based on the fact that the autonomic nervous function affects heart rate variability (HRV), which is the fluctuation of the RR interval (RRI) obtained from an electrocardiogram (ECG). The proposed method uses HRV features derived through HRV analysis as input variables of multivariate statistical process control (MSPC), which is a well-known anomaly detection method in process control. Driving simulator experiments demonstrated that driver drowsiness was successfully predicted seven out of eight cases before drowsy driving accidents occur.
Comparing solubility algorithms of greenhouse gases in Earth-System modelling

Abstract. Accurate solubility estimates are fundamental for (i) Earth-System models forecasting the climate change taking into consideration the atmosphere–ocean balances and trades of greenhouse gases, and (ii) using field data to calibrate and validate the algorithms simulating those trades. We found important differences between the formulation generally accepted and a recently proposed alternative relying on a different chemistry background. First, we tested with field data from the Baltic Sea, which also enabled finding differences between using water temperatures measured at 0.5 or 4 m depths. Then, we used data simulated by atmospheric (Meteodata application of WRF) and oceanographic (WW3-NEMO) models of the European Coastal Ocean and Mediterranean to compare the use of the two solubility algorithms in Earth-System modelling. The mismatches between both formulations lead to a difference of millions of tons of CO2, and hundreds of tons of CH4 and N2O, dissolved in the first meter below the sea surface of the whole modelled region.
SENSITWITY ANALYSIS OF SIMULATED CONTAMINATED SEDIMENT TRANSPORT 1

ABSTRACT: A simulation analysis of contaminated sediment transport involves model selection, data collection, model calibration and verification, and evaluation of uncertainty in the results. Sensitivity analyses provide information to address these issues at several stages of the investigation. A sensitivity analysis of simulated contaminated sediment transport is used to identify the most sensitive output variables and the parameters most responsible for the output variable sensitivity. The output variables included are streamflow and the flux of sediment and Cs137. The sensitivities of these variables are measured at the field and intermediate scales, for flood and normal flow conditions, using the HSPF computer model. A sensitivity index was used to summarize and compare the results of a large number of output variables and parameters. An extensive database was developed to calibrate the model and conduct the sensitivity analysis on a 6.2 mi2 catchment in eastern Tennessee. The fluxes of sediment and Cs137 were more sensitive than streamflow to changes in parameters for both flood and normal flow conditions. The relative significance of specific parameters on output variable sensitivity varied according to the type of flow condition and the location in the catchment. An implications section illustrates how sensitivity analysis results can help with model selection, planning data collection, calibration, and uncertainty analysis.
Risks of model weighting in multi-model climate projections - lessons learnt from seasonal forecasting

Multimodel combination is a pragmatic approach to estimating model uncertainties and to making climate projections more reliable. The simplest way of constructing a multimodel is to give one vote to each model (‘‘equal weighting’’), while more sophisticated approaches suggest applying model weights according to some measure of performance (‘‘optimum weighting’’). In this study, a simple conceptual model of climate change projections is introduced and applied to discuss the effects of model weighting in more generic terms. The results confirm that equally weighted multimodels on average outperform the single models, and that projection errors can in principle be further reduced by optimum weighting. However, this not only requires accurate knowledge of the single model skill, but the relative contributions of the joint model error and unpredictable noise also need to be known to avoid biased weights. If weights are applied that do not appropriatelyrepresentthetrueunderlyinguncertainties,weightedmultimodelsperformonaverageworsethan equally weighted ones, which is a scenario that is not unlikely, given that at present there is no consensus on how skill-basedweights can be obtained.Particularly when internal variabilityis large, more information may be lost by inappropriate weighting than could potentially be gained by optimum weighting. These results indicate that for many applications equal weighting may be the safer and more transparent way to combine models. However, also within the presented framework eliminating models from an ensemble can be justified if they are known to lack key mechanisms that are indispensable for meaningful climate projections.