Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection of new strongly variable brown dwarfs in the L/T transition

Context. Brown dwarfs in the spectral range L9–T3.5, within the so called L/T transition, have been shown to be variable at higher amplitudes and with greater frequency than other field dwarfs. This strong variability allows for the probing of their atmospheric structure in 3D through multi-wavelength observations for studying the underlying physical mechanisms responsible for the variability. The few known strongly variable dwarfs in this range have been extensively studied. Now, more variables such as these need to be discovered and studied to better constrain atmospheric models. This is also critical to better understand giant exoplanets and to shed light on a number of possible correlations between brown dwarf characteristics and variability. Aims. Previous studies suggest an occurrence rate for strong variability (peak-to-peak amplitudes > 2%) of up to ∼39% among brown dwarfs within the L/T transition. In this work, we aim to discover new strong variables in this spectral range by targeting ten previously unsurveyed brown dwarfs. Methods. We used the NOTCam at the Nordic Optical Telescope to observe 11 targets, with spectral types ranging from L9.5 to T3.5, in the J-band during October 2017 and September 2018. Using differential aperture photometry, we then analysed the light curves for significant variability using Lomb-Scargle periodogram algorithms and least squares fitting. Results. We report first discoveries of strong and significant variability in four out of the ten targets (false alarm probability < 0.1%), measuring peak-to-peak amplitudes up to 10.7 ± 0.4% in J for the T1 dwarf 2MASS J22153705+2110554, for which we observe significant light curve evolution between the 2017 and 2018 epochs. We also report a marginally significant detection of strong variability, and confirm that the well known 2MASS J01365662+0933473 is still strongly variable three years after the last reported epoch. Finally, we present an extensive multi-epoch catalogue of strong variables reported in the literature and discuss possible correlations that are identifiable from the catalogue. Conclusions. We significantly add to the number of known strong variables, and through Poisson statistics infer an occurrence rate for strong variability among L9–T3.5 brown dwarfs of 40 +32−19%, which is in agreement with previous estimates. The new variables identified in this work are also excellently suited for extensive multi-wavelength observations dedicated to probing the 3D structure of brown dwarf atmospheres.
Tuning heat transport via boundary layer topographies

A primary objective in turbulent thermal convection research is to understand and control the heat transport scaling behaviour. Previous studies have shown that the heat transport can be tuned by manipulating the boundary layer topographies with monoscale roughness elements. Now, Zhu et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 869, 2019, R4) have demonstrated that with multiscale wall roughness, the heat transport law with an exponent of $1/2$ can be achieved for an extended range of the Rayleigh number, providing a new way to manipulate heat transport by tuning boundary topographies in turbulent flows.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Psychological Arrow of Time

Can the second law of thermodynamics explain our mental experience of the direction of time? According to an influential approach, the past hypothesis of universal low entropy (required to explain the temporal directionality of the second law in terms of fundamental physics, which is time-symmetric) also explains how the psychological arrow comes about. We argue that although this approach has many attractive features, it cannot explain the psychological arrow after all. In particular, we show that the past hypothesis is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the psychological arrow on the basis of current physics. We propose two necessary conditions on the workings of the brain that any account of the psychological arrow of time must satisfy. And we propose a new reductive physical account of the psychological arrow of time compatible with time-symmetric physics, according to which these two conditions are also sufficient. Our proposal has some radical implications, for example, that the psychological arrow of time is fundamental, whereas the temporal direction of entropy increase in the second law of thermodynamics and the past hypothesis is derived from it, rather than the other way around.
Efficiency of Using some Soil Supplements on Sweet Pepper Productivity under Delta Region Conditions

Two investigations were carried out in the open field to study the effects of some soil stimulating supplements, i.e., humic and fulvic acids, zeolite, chicken manure as well as compost on vegetative growth, chemical contents and productivity of sweet pepper plants under drip irrigation system. Results indicated that all applied soil substances significantly enhanced vegetative growth parameters, chemical constituents, endogenous phyto-hormones of leaves, yield and fruit quality compared to the control in both growing seasons of study. Soil applications of either zeolite or compost are the best treatments in enhancing most of the aforementioned parameters. Additionally, our results undoubtedly confirm that the application of zeolite or compost could decrease chemical fertilizers through improving the efficiency of both fertilizers and irrigation water which in turn increase vegetable crops production, minimize economic costs as well as limit environmental contamination.
Beyond the State of the Art: Novel Approaches for Thermal and Electrical Transport in Nanoscale Devices

Almost any interaction between two physical entities can be described through the transfer of either charge, spin, momentum, or energy. Therefore, any theory able to describe these transport phenomena can shed light on a variety of physical, chemical, and biological effects, enriching our understanding of complex, yet fundamental, natural processes, e.g., catalysis or photosynthesis. In this review, we will discuss the standard workhorses for transport in nanoscale devices, namely Boltzmann’s equation and Landauer’s approach. We will emphasize their strengths, but also analyze their limits, proposing theories and models useful to go beyond the state of the art in the investigation of transport in nanoscale devices.
RNA-Seq of Liver From Pigs Divergent in Feed Efficiency Highlights Shifts in Macronutrient Metabolism, Hepatic Growth and Immune Response

Liver is a metabolically complex organ that influences nutrient partitioning and potentially modulates the efficiency of converting energy acquired from macronutrients ingestion into a muscle and/or adipose tissue (referred to as feed efficiency, FE). The objective of this study was to sequence the hepatic tissue transcriptome of closely related but differently feed efficient pigs (n = 16) and identify relevant biological processes that underpin the differences in liver phenotype between FE groups. Liver weight did not significantly differ between the FE groups, however, blood parameters showed that total protein, glucose, cholesterol and percentage of lymphocytes were significantly greater in high-FE pigs. Ontology analysis revealed carbohydrate, lipid and protein metabolism to be significantly enriched with differentially expressed genes. In particular, high-FE pigs exhibited gene expression patterns suggesting improved absorption of carbohydrates and cholesterol as well as enhanced reverse cholesterol transport. Furthermore, the inferred decrease in bile acid synthesis in high-FE pigs may contribute to the observed greater levels of serum glucose, which can be then delivered to cells and utilized for growth and maintenance. Gene ontology analysis also suggested that livers of more efficient pigs may be characterized by higher protein turnover and increased epithelial cell differentiation, whereby an enhanced quantity of invariant natural killer T-cells and viability of natural killer cells could induce a quicker and more effective hepatic response to inflammatory stimuli. Our findings suggest that this prompt hepatic response to inflammation in high-FE group may contribute to the more efficient utilization of nutrients for growth in these animals.
Panel cointegrating polynomial regression analysis and the environmental Kuznets curve

This paper develops a modified and a fully modified OLS estimator for a panel of cointegrating polynomial regressions, i.e. regressions that include an integrated process and its powers as explanatory variables. The stationary errors are allowed to be serially correlated and the regressors are allowed to be endogenous and we allow for individual and time fixed effects. Inspired by Phillips and Moon (1999) we consider a cross-sectional i.i. d. random linear process framework. The modified OLS estimator utilizes the large cross-sectional dimension that allows to consistently estimate and subtract an additive bias term without the need to also transform the dependent variable as required in fully modified OLS estimation. Both developed estimators have zero mean Gaussian limiting distributions and thus allow for standard asymptotic inference. Our illustrative application indicates that the developed methods are a potentially useful addition to not least the environmental Kuznets curve literature’s toolkit. JEL Classification: C13, C23, Q20
Analysis of Severe Elevated Thunderstorms over Frontal Surfaces Using DCIN and DCAPE

A 10-year study of elevated severe thunderstorms was performed using The National Centers for Environmental Information Storm Events Database. A total of 80 elevated thunderstorm cases were identified, verified, and divided into “Prolific” and “Marginal” classes. These severe cases occurred at least 80 km away from, and on the cold side of, a surface boundary. The downdraft convective available potential energy (DCAPE), downdraft convective inhibition (DCIN), and their ratio are tools to help estimate the potential for a downdraft to penetrate through the depth of a stable surface layer. The hypothesis is that as the DCIN/DCAPE ratio decreases, there exists enhanced possibility of severe surface winds. Using the initial fields from the Rapid Refresh numerical weather prediction model, datasets of DCIN, DCAPE, and their ratio were created. Mann-Whitney U tests on the Prolific versus Marginal case sets were undertaken to determine if the DCAPE and DCIN values come from different populations for the two different case sets. Results show that the Prolific cases have values of DCIN closer to zero, suggesting the downdraft is able to penetrate to the surface causing severe winds. Thus, comparing DCIN and DCAPE is a viable tool in determining if downdrafts will reach the surface from elevated thunderstorms.
Explicit Constructions of MBR and MSR Codes for Clustered Distributed Storage.

This paper considers capacity-achieving coding for the clustered form of distributed storage that reflects practical storage networks. To reflect the clustered structure with limited cross-cluster communication bandwidths, nodes in the same cluster are set to communicate $\beta_I$ symbols, while nodes in other clusters can communicate $\beta_c \leq \beta_I$ symbols with one another. We provide two types of exact regenerating codes which achieve the capacity of clustered distributed storage: the minimum-bandwidth-regenerating (MBR) codes and the minimum-storage-regenerating (MSR) codes. First, we construct MBR codes for general parameter settings of clustered distributed storage. The suggested MBR code is a generalization of an existing code proposed by Rashmi et al., for scenarios where storage nodes are dispersed into L > 1 clusters. The proposed MBR code for the $\beta_c = 0$ case requires a much smaller field size compared to existing local MBR codes. Secondly, we devise MSR codes for clustered distributed storage. Focus is given on two important cases:$\epsilon=0$ and $\epsilon \in [1/(n-k), 1]$, where $\epsilon=\beta_c/\beta_I$ is the ratio of the available cross- to intra-cluster repair bandwidths, n is the total number of distributed nodes and k is the number of contact nodes in data retrieval. The former represents the scenario where cross-cluster communication is not allowed, while the latter corresponds to the case of minimum node storage overhead. For $\epsilon=0$, two existing locally repairable codes are proven to be MSR codes for the clustered model. For $\epsilon \in [1/(n-k), 1]$, existing MSR codes for the non-clustered model are applicable to clustered scenarios with a simple modification.
Improved Multifractal Fusion Method to Blend SMOS Sea Surface Salinity Based on Semiparametric Weight Function

The multifractal fusion method has proved to be an effective algorithm to mitigate the noise of the sea surface salinity (SSS) of Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. However, the traditional nonparametric weight function used in this method is unable to fully capture the dynamic evolution of the oceanic environment. Considering the multiscale, nonuniform, anisotropic, and flow-dependent nature of the ocean, a prototype with the so-called flexible circle (FLC) weight function or flexible ellipse (FLE) weight function with a set of predefined parameters is proposed in this paper. The improved weight functions could draw dynamic information from the sea surface temperature, Rossby radius of deformation, and surface geostrophic flow to improve the quality of the remotely sensed SSS. The validation against the in situ data indicates that the improved weight functions perform better than the traditional one with a reduced root-mean-square (RMS) and standard deviation (STD) of the differences with respect to EN 4.2. 0 profiles (from 0.50 and 0.46 to 0.42 and 0.38 for FLC and 0.39 and 0.36 for FLE in the global ocean). In particular, the FLE scheme could highlight the variation of the strong currents without affecting the computational efficiency. Furthermore, this paper discusses the influences of the error distribution on the fusion results and underlines the importance of error-based adaptions for further improvements.
Seasonal Time Lag Response of NDVI to Temperature and Precipitation Change and Its Spatial Characteristics in Tibetan Plateau

Today,human activities become more and more intense.How to minimize human disturbance is very important in the study of the relationship between vegetation and climate.The Tibetan Plateau,as one of the few extensive regions escaped from human disturbance,provides an ideal site for studies on the response of natural vegetation cover to water/thermal conditions.Based on the trend surface of TN(short for time series of ten-day NDVI),TP(short for time series of ten-day rainfall) and TT(short for time series of ten-day temperature),which all are multi-year means,ARCGIS9.2 software and lag cross-correlation method are used to analyze the temporal and spatial characteristics of the relationships between water/thermal climate elements and vegetation cover.The main results are as follows:(1) Except high-cold desert vegetation and forest vegetation,the TN has very good correlation with TT and TP on the Tibetan Plateau,especially in the areas with a vegetation cover of moderate density,such as meadow and grassland. (2) NDVI has a hysteresis effect towards temperature and precipitation and in the northern part(Qaidam Basin and the north of Kunlun Mountains) and southern part of the Tibetan Plateau,the vegetation responds to the water/thermal changes slowly,but in the middle and east parts of the Tibetan Plateau,the vegetation responds to the water/thermal changes quickly;(3) Different vegetation types respond to water/thermal condition differently.The descending order of the responding degree for each vegetation type is: alpine cold meadow,alpine cold grassland,alpine cold brush,periglacial cushion vegetation,desert,and forest.
Wake behind a three-dimensional dry transom stern. Part 2. Analysis and modelling of incompressible highly variable density turbulence

We analyse the turbulence characteristics and consider the closure modelling of the air entraining flow in the wake of three-dimensional, rectangular dry transom sterns obtained using high-resolution implicit large eddy simulations (iLES) (Hendrickson et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 875, 2019, pp. 854–883). Our focus is the incompressible highly variable density turbulence (IHVDT) in the near surface mixed-phase region ${\mathcal{R}}$ behind the stern. We characterize the turbulence statistics in ${\mathcal{R}}$ and determine it to be highly anisotropic due to quasi-steady wave breaking. Using unconditioned Reynolds decomposition for our analysis, we show that the turbulent mass flux (TMF) is important in IHVDT for the production of turbulent kinetic energy and is as relevant to the mean momentum equations as the Reynolds stresses. We develop a simple, regional explicit algebraic closure model for the TMF based on a functional relationship between the fluxes and tensor flow quantities. A priori tests of the model show mean density gradients and buoyancy effects are the main driving parameters for predicting the turbulent mass flux and the model is capable of capturing the highly localized nature of the TMF in ${\mathcal{R}}$ .
Simultaneous optimization of treatment efficiency and operating cost in leachate concentrate degradation by thermal-activated persulfate catalysed with Ag (I): comparison of microwave and conventional heating

Abstract The present study investigates the treatment of membrane concentrate leachate by thermal-activated persulfate catalysed with Ag(I). Activation of persulfate was done by microwave/conventional heating. The persulfate activation with microwave (MW) and conventional heating (CH) processes was compared with Taguchi multi-response optimization as robust design approach. Parameters affecting the leachate concentrate treatment were determined as required energy for persulfate activation, the oxidation time and concentrations of persulfate anion and Ag(I). With multi-response optimization, maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, maximum colour removal and minimum operating costs are determined simultaneously. The optimal combination levels for multi-response characteristics were determined as power at 700 W, oxidation time at 4 min, persulfate anion concentration at 187.5 g/L and Ag(I) ion concentration at 0.5 g/l for MW and 80°C, oxidation time at 30 min, 112.5 g/L persulfate anion concentration and Ag(I) ion concentration at 0.25 g/L for CH processes. The optimum combinations were confirmed with confirmation experiments for both processes. In the MW process, COD removal of 53.3%, colour removal of 99.9% and operating cost of 25 €/L wastewater were observed, while in the CH process COD removal of 20%, colour removal of 65.4% and operating cost of 16.5 €/L wastewater were observed.
Intermediate inflation with non-canonical scalar field in the low anisotropy Universe

The behavior of a non-canonical scalar field within an anisotropic Bianchi type I, spatially homogeneous Universe in the framework of the intermediate inflation will be studied. It will be examined on the condition that both the anisotropy and non-canonical sources come together if there is any improvement in compatibility with the observational data originated from Planck 2015. Based on this investigation, it can be observed that automatically a steep potential which can manage inflation in a better way will be obtained. Additionally, as a common procedure for an inflationary study, we shall try to calculate the related inflationary observables such as the amplitude of the scalar perturbations, scalar and tensor spectral indices, tensor-to-scalar ratio, the running spectral index and the number of e-folds. As an exciting part of our results, we will find that our model has a good consistency compared to data resulting from CMB and different Planck results. To justify our claims, the well-known canonical inflationary scenario in an anisotropic Bianchi type I Universe will also be evaluated.
Upper limit on shift current generation in extended systems

Author(s): Tan, LZ; Rappe, AM | Abstract: © 2019 American Physical Society. Despite a long history of research into nonlinear response theory, there has been no systematic investigation into the maximum amount of nonlinear optical response attainable in solid-state materials. In this work, we present an upper bound on the second-order response functions of materials, which controls the shift current response. We show that this bound depends on the band gap, bandwidth, and geometrical properties of the material in question. We find that delocalized systems generally have larger responses than more localized or isolated ones. As a proof of principle, we perform first-principles calculations of the response tensors of a wide variety of materials, finding that the materials in our database do not yet saturate the upper bound. This suggests that new large shift current materials will likely be discovered by future materials research guided by the factors mentioned in this work.
Journal of WSCG Editor-in-Chief

Many large scale volume visualization techniques are based on partitioning the data into bricks, which are stored and rendered using mipmaps. To generate such mipmaps, in most cases an averaging is applied such that an area in a lower mipmap level is presented by the areas’ average in the next higher mipmap level. Unfortunately, this averaging results in the fact that mipmaps are not feature-preserving, as details are often lost. In this paper, we discuss and compare mipmap modiﬁcation schemes which have been developed to support feature-preserving reconstruction during rendering. In particular, we focus on reconstruction schemes which are capable to support anisotropic and non-linear reconstruction, as these are promising to preserve features that are often sacriﬁced by averaging. The presented techniques are discussed in detail and are thoroughly compared in a quantitative and qualitative analysis. We will discuss their impact on performance, memory footprint and visual quality with respect to feature preservation. Based on the ﬁndings we present guidelines for generating and using mipmaps in various visualization scenarios.
H. PYLORI GASTRITIS IN PATIENT WITH ACTIVE DUODENAL ULCER IN AL-YARMUK HOSPITAL.

Background: It is estimated that 50% of the world’s population is infected by H pylori. It is isolated from the antrum of patient with active chronic gastritis, the organism has been demonstrated in the antrum in most patient with duodenal ulcer. Methods: Twenty eight randomly selected patients were found to have active duodenal ulcer as diagnosed by endoscopy in the endoscopy department of Al Yarmuk teaching hospital. Results: All the patients in the study were found to have histological gastritis, twenty one (75%) were found to have H. pylori organism diagnosed by direct staining method of the histological specimen, sixteen (57%) were found to be positive in special culture media for H. pylori. Conclusion: there is high prevalence of H. pylori gastritis