Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Machine learning analysis of lifeguard flag decisions and recorded rescues

Abstract. Rip currents and other surf hazards are an emerging public health issue globally. Lifeguards, warning flags, and signs are important, and to varying degrees they are effective strategies to minimize risk to beach users. In the United States and other jurisdictions around the world, lifeguards use coloured flags (green, yellow, and red) to indicate whether the danger posed by the surf and rip hazard is low, moderate, or high respectively. The choice of flag depends on the lifeguard(s) monitoring the changing surf conditions along the beach and over the course of the day using both regional surf forecasts and careful observation. There is a potential that the chosen flag is not consistent with the beach user perception of the risk, which may increase the potential for rescues or drownings. In this study, machine learning is used to determine the potential for error in the flags used at Pensacola Beach and the impact of that error on the number of rescues. Results of a decision tree analysis indicate that the colour flag chosen by the lifeguards was different from what the model predicted for 35 % of days between 2004 and 2008 (n=396/1125). Days when there is a difference between the predicted and posted flag colour represent only 17 % of all rescue days, but those days are associated with ∼60 % of all rescues between 2004 and 2008. Further analysis reveals that the largest number of rescue days and total number of rescues are associated with days where the flag deployed over-estimated the surf and hazard risk, such as a red or yellow flag flying when the model predicted a green flag would be more appropriate based on the wind and wave forcing alone. While it is possible that the lifeguards were overly cautious, it is argued that they most likely identified a rip forced by a transverse-bar and rip morphology common at the study site. Regardless, the results suggest that beach users may be discounting lifeguard warnings if the flag colour is not consistent with how they perceive the surf hazard or the regional forecast. Results suggest that machine learning techniques have the potential to support lifeguards and thereby reduce the number of rescues and drownings.
The Impacts of Perceived Crowding, and Atmospherics on Visitor Satisfaction at Cultural Heritage Sites: A Comparison of Turkish and British Visitors to Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

Cultural heritage sites impress the visitors by their ‘worth-to-see’ architectural characteristics and historical or cultural importance. Visitor experiences at cultural areas are also influenced by site atmospherics, and crowd, that form visitors’ overall satisfaction with the site. This study aims to examine the relationships amongst visitors’ crowding, and atmospherics perceptions, and overall satisfactions in a cultural tourism area. With this purpose, a survey was conducted at one of the most popular heritage sites of Turkey; Topkapi Palace, Istanbul. Data collected from 261 Turkish and 236 British visitors, who have seen the interior and exterior parts of the Palace. By factor analysis, atmospherics is found to have two dimensions, namely; service and spatial. Analyses results exhibit that both atmospherics dimensions positively affect visitor satisfaction, although perceived crowding has a negative impact or both nationalities. Findings of this study indicate that cultural heritage sites are the areas where domestic and foreign visitors may have similar kinds of perceptions and evaluations.
Perspectives from 2037—Can Environmental Impact Assessment be the Solution for an Early Consideration of Climate Change-related Impacts?

Consideration of climate change in environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a rather novel topic, which became partly mandatory through the revised EU Directive on EIA. Through a mixed-methods approach involving key-actors from EIA practice, decision making and climate adaptation planning, this study presents a transdisciplinary point of view on barriers and opportunities to tackle climate change adaptation in the environmental assessment of large-scale projects. It is based on both a retrospective ex-post evaluation of existing practices in Austria and Germany as well as prescriptive examination and development of outcomes for practice through the development of a climate-fit toolkit that supports the incorporation of climate change impacts into EIAs. The scenario analysis applied with a backcasting approach provided the opportunity to look beyond limitations related to legal compliance and partly lack of data identified by previous research. Three scenario narratives were elaborated based on nine key impact factors based on literature review, content analysis of EIA documents and interviews with EIA actors. The groups of actors carried out a prioritization of actions towards consideration of climate change in EIA. Finally, the actors were involved in co-production of an online tool-kit for Austrian and German EIA practice.
Water Security Issues Affecting Migration and Conflict in the Middle East

Iran is facing a daunting reality regarding the future of their water resources which may result in conflict and migration within the country with the potential to affect the Middle East and North African region and beyond. The country has failed to address critical preservation, risk mitigation, infrastructural, and political efforts to accommodate their rising population due to economic expansion. Water resources are dependent on social, political, economic, and environmental variables related to conflict and migration. Given the recent examples of water security issues in Syria resulting in migration and conflict, this thesis investigates the total available water per capita as a driver for the potential collapse of Iran’s water resources. Portions of two key world system dynamics models were combined to identify interrelated variables leading to migration and conflict. It was found through multiple simulations that decreasing water per capita levels leads to increases in aggregated migration and death rates for this particular investigation. Further experimentation with other interrelated variables such as civil liberties, level of government, and GDP per capita may highlight other drivers and allow extension of this model to other countries of interest.
Network design and optimizations with applications in optical and wireless networks

Typically, enterprise networks may incorporate Wide Area Networks (WANs), Metro Area Networks (MANs) and Local Area Networks (LANs). These networks have very different characteristics in terms of the physical media, data link layer and network layer protocols they use. In all these networks, well-designed network architectures are the key to achieving high performance at reasonable costs. We study the optimization problems arised in the design of different networks, specifically, optical networks and wireless networks. In optical networks, we study the traffic grooming problem in Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks with dynamic traffic demands. We present of detailed study of current research in this area and propose a new design problem for both single-link and multi-link networks. In wireless networks, we present new formulations for the design problem in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) that take different inteference models into consideration and propose algorithmic methods to solve them.
The Role of the Substrate on the Mineralization Potential of Microbial Mats in A Modern Freshwater River (Paris Basin, France)

The relationship between environmental conditions and the development, mineralization and preservation of modern tufa microbialites was investigated in a 1.1 km long freshwater stream in Villiers-le-Bâcle, a tributary of Mérantaise river. Detailed mapping of the tufa microbialite distribution combined with sedimentological, petrographical and mineralogical analyses were coupled with chemical measurements. Six organosedimentary structures were identified; their distribution appears heterogeneous along the stream and responds to physicochemical conditions of water and specific biological components (e.g., microorganism, exopolymeric substance). Two of the organosedimentary structures show evidence of mineralization and only one is lithified. Based on field observations and in-situ deployment of mineralization markers (bricks), three zones with increasing mineralization intensities are defined, ranging from no mineralization to thick mineralized crusts forming riverine tufa. Both biotic and abiotic processes were proposed for the tufa microbialite formation. We explained changes in mineralization intensities by the specific physicochemical conditions (e.g., calcite saturation index (SIcalc) and partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and a closed proximity of the cyanobacterial biofilm and carbonates precipitates. The physical and chemical composition of substrate impact development of microbial communities, mineralization potential of tufa microbialite. Even though the physicochemical and biological conditions were optimal for mineral precipitation, the potential of lithification depended on the presence of a suitable (physical and chemical) substrate.
Cultivatable Bacteria in Dentine after Caries Excavation Using Rose-Bur or Carisolv

To measure the amount of viable bacteria after excavation using conventional rose-bur or the chemo-mechanical Carisolv method, a total of 22 lesions were analyzed (one vital tooth per patient) in this open, controlled and randomized study. Two samples per lesion were taken under aseptic conditions using a rose-bur, one superficially in the caries lesion and one after completed excavation. In in vitro tests more material was collected from the hard caries free dentine as compared to the carious dentine. The samples were incubated on blood agar (aerobically and anaerobically), Rogosa (SL) agar and mitis salivarius (MS) agar. For blood agar (aerobic) both methods resulted in a significant decrease in CFU, for blood agar (anaerobic) and MS agar only the Carisolv method resulted in a significant decrease in CFU and for SL agar neither method resulted in a significant decrease in CFU. Comparing CFU before and after excavation, a considerable reduction of CFU was seen ranging from 101 to 104. Comparing the excavation methods, there were no significant differences, except in the case of blood agar (aerobic), which showed that Carisolv excavation was more effective in reducing CFU. This study indicated that bacterial sampling collected more material from hard dentine as compared from soft. Remaining bacteria after excavation were low in both groups. The Carisolv method seemed to remove bacteria at least up to and possibly beyond the extent of conventional drilling.
TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN MESSUAGES IN AUTONOMOUS PROVINCE OF VOJVODINA: POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS

Thanks to the fact that it was noticed that the messuages have a tourist value, new opportunities for their revival through tourism development have been revealed. The research subject of this paper is the messuages tourism in the area of AP Vojvodina. The objective of the research is to examine the possibilities (conditions) for the development of messuages tourism in AP Vojvodina and the situation in this area, as well as the positive effects of development. In the preparation of this paper the following methods were applied: analysis, historical method, comparative method and synthesis method. Also, the results of the survey of rural tourist households (RTHs) and tourist organizations (TOs) in the area of Vojvodina from 2011, which were relevant for the topic, were also used. Based on the results of the research, it was concluded that the agricultural tourism in the area of AP Vojvodina has very favorable development opportunities that are mostly seized in Backa, and especially in the South-Backa district. Key areas whose development could significantly contribute to the process of development of messuages tourism in the territory of AP Vojvodina are state financial support and categorization.
Quantification of the magnitude of net apparent erosion in the southwestern Barents Sea by using compaction trends in shales and sandstones – Implications for hydrocarbon exploration

During specific intervals within Mesozoic and Cenozoic times, several areas of the southwestern Barents Sea were subjected to uplift and erosion. Areas with missing shallow stratigraphic interval sections and major erosion can be seen at several places along interpreted regional profiles in the southwestern Barents Sea. A new Normal Compaction Trend (NCT) for two selected shalee and sandstoneedominated lithologies has been constructed based on sonic logs in the southwestern Barents Sea. The shalee dominated NCT is calibrated to the Cretaceous shales in the northern North Sea and Norwegian Sea and applied to the Cretaceous shales of the Barents Sea. The sandstoneedominated NCT is calibrated to the Lower Jurassic Åre Formation of the Norwegian Sea and applied to the Lower JurassiceUpper Triassic coastal plain section in the Barents Sea. By utilising the NCT model, the study estimates net apparent erosion in 28 selected Barents Sea wells based on comparison of sonic log velocities. A net apparent erosion map of the study area was constructed by gridding of the well values. The accuracy of the map is limited in areas with little well control, such as in the northwest, where the eastewest transition into the southwestern Barents Sea region is poorly constrained. With that in mind, the map clearly shows two regional trends which dominate the erosion pattern in the study area; an increasing amount of erosion towards the north and a sharp decrease of erosion westwards of the hinge zone into the southwestern Barents Sea. The highest erosion estimates are observed towards Svalbard, with values up to 2500 m. The results of this study can be further utilized in petroleum system studies in the eroded areas. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Multifocal Cerebral Fusiform Aneurysms in Children with Immune Deficiencies Report of Four Cases

We describe three children infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV 1), and one child suffering from familial mucocutaneous candidiasis, who all had multiple, fusiform subarachnoid intracranial aneurysms. Because infectious causative agents were never detected at the level of the lesions, a classical “mycotic” origin of these aneurysms seemed unlikely. Despite the fact that these aneurysms have the same angiographic appearance, they have different etiologies (immune and infectious). These data open the discussion on the reciprocal role of an infectious or immune initial trigger acting on a vascular (endothelial) target. The specificities of the target in terms of location and response enhance specific topographic characteristics (phenotypes) of the cerebral vasculature.
Adaptive observer-based haptic control of nonlinear bilateral teleoperation

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The Capacity of Visual Working Memory for Motion Direction of Objects

To memorize both feature and spatiotemporal information of moving objects is a critical human activity.Much research has been done to explore the storage of visual information from a static scene in working memory and to investigate how visual information is dynamically updated in a multiple object tracking task;however,the storage of motion information of multiple objects in working memory has been rarely discussed.By combining multi-object tracking and change detection paradigms,with individual moving objects as stimuli,the present research investigated the capacity of visual working memory for moving objects and the results indicated that about 3 objects can be retained in visual working memory.
Fluid inclusion and C and O stable isotopes in hydrothermal calcite from the Gharkohneh iron deposit, NE Iran

The Gharkohneh stratabound iron deposit is located in the southern Binaloud zone, northeast of Iran. This deposit occurred as lenses, veins/veinlets, and layers of iron oxides and hydroxides within the Devonian carbonates. The main opaque minerals are hematite and goethite, accompanied by lesser amounts of pyrite and magnetite. The hydrothermal calcite is the most important gangue mineral, principally containing liquid-rich 2-phase inclusions, which homogenize into liquid state. The δ 13 C (PDB) and δ 18 O (SMOW) values of calcite range from -2.5‰ to -8.2‰, and +19.2‰ to +21.4‰, respectively, which are similar to the host carbonates. The C and O isotopic composition of calcite in the host carbonates has become lighter relative to those of the normal Devonian marine carbonates during the formation of iron ores. The microthermometric and isotopic data revealed that the Gharkohneh iron deposit was formed as the result of interaction between the hydrothermal fluids and the host carbonates at moderate temperatures (~200°C) in an open system. Pyrite and magnetite have been formed by metasomatic replacement of the host carbonates. In contrast, hematite and goethite have been developed during the supergene alteration under oxidizing conditions. Certain convincing evidence such as intimate association of mineralization with fault breccia zone, hydrothermal alteration, and lack of massive sulfide-type and Mn-rich ores in the area suggest that the iron deposit in Gharkohneh is of stratabound-type, developed by both hypogene and supergene processes.
Innovation and Its Discontents

In the last two decades, the role of patents in the U.S. innovation system has become increasingly troublesome, driven by two apparently mundane changes in patent law and policy. Economic analysis does not support abolishing patents, and even weakening the fundamental presumption of validity for appropriately issued patents would carry serious policy risks. The alternative is to make sure that, before they can be used to restrict the commercial activities of competitors, patents have gotten the appropriate scrutiny to ensure their validity. At the same time, we need to accept that the PTO will still make mistakes, and create a judicial system that deals with those mistakes in a balanced way. Doing this without an infeasible increase in resources for the Patent Office will require that the system be significantly modified. The modifications should be carefully tuned to create incentives so that private parties have the incentive and opportunity to bring information to bear, but have limited incentive and opportunity to act simply to gum up the works.
Biomass Production of Monocultures and Mixtures of Cup Plant and Native Grasses on Prime and Marginal Cropland

To date, most candidate systems for producing herbaceous cellulosic biomass have been composed of monocultures of perennial or annual grasses. Ecosystem goods and services provided from these biomass feedstock production systems could be increased dramatically with mixing of one or more forb species that would increase biodiversity and provide habitat for pollinators. Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum L.) is featured with many desirable characteristics, such as high biomass potential, adaptation to marginal soils, and attractiveness to pollinators, desirable in a dicot species to grow in mixtures with perennial warm-season grasses. The objective of this study was to compare cup plant, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), and prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata Link) monocultures to their mixtures for biomass production on prime and poorly drained marginal crop land for two years in both South Dakota and Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, monocultures of prairie cordgrass and cup plant and their mixture produced more biomass (8.1 Mg·ha-1) than the switchgrass monoculture and switchgrass/cup plant mixture (5.3 Mg·ha-1) on both prime and marginal land. While in South Dakota, drought and meristem destruction by the cup plant moth (Eucosma giganteana Riley) caused large reductions in biomass production (1.7 Mg·ha-1) in both years, with the switchgrass/cup plant mixture on marginal land having the highest yield (2.1 Mg·ha-1). Our study showed binary mixtures of cup plant and native warm-season grasses have great potential for increasing biodiversity and other ecosystem goods and services, relative to monocultures, for sustainable biomass feedstock production on poorly drained marginal land in the northcentral USA.
Exploring the affordances of The Writing Portal (TWP) as an online supplementary writing platform (for the special issue of GLoCALL 2013 and 2014 conference papers)

Abstract The writing process has traditionally been seen ‘as a lonely journey’ to typify the lack of support that students experience for writing outside the classroom. This paper examines an attempt of The Writing Portal (TWP), a supplementary online writing platform, to support students’ writing needs throughout the five stages of the writing process, viz., planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Social constructivist principles underpin TWP, which was designed to engender collaboration amongst its student participants. Not only does TWP provide links to evaluated Internet resources and a writing portfolio, but it also features collaboration tools such as the Group Forum, chat, a writing portfolio, a private messaging system, and a comment function for pages or articles created. Thus, it is very much akin to a ‘one-stop centre’ for academic writing within a flexible and supportive environment. In this qualitative case study, 16 third-year TESL pre-service teachers at a Malaysian Teacher Education Institute embarked on a 12-week writing course using TWP. Qualitative data in the form of students’ online discourses, task reflections, log files, and digital artefacts were captured to explore how TWP's affordances supported students’ writing needs. In addition, Soller's collaborative learning conversation skills (CLCS) taxonomy was used as an analytical framework to investigate the collaborative learning engendered in the online environment. The findings indicate that TWP served its purpose by addressing students’ writing needs at all stages of the writing process as they accomplished multiple writing tasks. Additionally, evidence of collaborative learning is evident in three functions of TWP: the Group Forum, chat, and the comments for pages/articles. However, there are differences between the frequencies of the specific skills used for each function. To conclude, TWP appears to be a successful tool at supporting students at all stages of the writing process.