Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biomass dynamics of dead Douglas-fir and western hemlock boles in mid-elevation forests of the Cascade Range

approved: Jerry F. Franklin The rate and manner of bioniass loss from decomposing Douglas-fir and western hemlock boles in mid-elevation forests of the central Cascade Range were measured. Bole bark and wood were considered separately. Loss of bole wood due to respiration was measured by change in bole wood density. Loss of bole wood due to fragmentation was measured by change in bole volume. Bole species, position (upright or prostrate), and diameter affected the rate of bole decomposition with regard to both fragmentation and respiration. Douglas-fir boles decomposed slower than western hemlock boles. For both species, upright boles decomposed faster than prostrate boles (k 0.031 yr versus 0.012 for Douglas-fir wood and k= 0.090 yr versus 0.021 for western hemlock wood). Fragmentation proceeded at a faster rate than respiration for both prostrate and upright Douglas-fir boles. AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF ROBIN LEE LANBERT GRM1AM for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in BOTANY AND PLANT PATHOLOGY presented on OCTOBER 23, 1981 Title: BIOMASS DYNAMICS OF DEAD DOUGLAS-FIR AND WESTERN HEMLOCK BCLES IN MID-ELEVATION FORESTS OF THE CASCADE RANGE Decomposing prostrate boles of western hemlock did not fragment. Upright western hemlock boles had substantial fragmentation losses. Seven to thirteen percent of the wood of an upright western hemlock bole was lost each year to fragmentation. The relationship between bole size and decomposition rate was complex. For upright boles, decomposition rates increased as bole diameter decreased. Prostrate boles showed no relationship between bole diameter and decomposition rate. Bark loss rates of prostrate boles were similar for both species (k= 0.02 yr). Upright boles lost their bark faster than prostrate boles (k 0.038 yr to 0.14). Bark was lost faster from small than large boles. The decomposition data for all boles were quite variable. A computer simulation model was built to attempt to examine the question of how the quantity and type of wood and bark of dead boles would vary in a Douglas-fir/western hemlock forest as the stand developed. No age trends were apparent from the model output. The amount and type of dead bole wood fluctuated within a given range which was determined by the stochastic fluctuations in annual mortality. Biomass Dynamics Of Dead Douglas-fir And Western Hemlock Boles In Mid-elevation Forests Of The Cascade Range
Calculation of Forest Potential Evapotranspiration of Okinawa in Japan Using the Penman Equation

The northern area of Okinawa Island is a unique forest area in Japan, with a distinctive ecosystem and subtropical climate. The area is a central region of forestry in Okinawa Prefecture. However, quantitative evaluation of the effects of the forest environment is inadequate. The authors began meteorological observation of this forested area to address this situation by setting up a weather station in 2009. In this study, we performed research on one of the major factors of the water cycle in forest ecosystems, evapotranspiration. We calculate seasonal changes in potential evapotranspiration through analysis of data from our weather station in 2013, because all measurement elements were assembled. To calculate potential evapotranspiration, we used the Penman equation. We found that the potential evapotranspiration in this forest area was 1170.5 mm in 2013. The mean temperature in 2013 was 20.7°C, yearly average relative humidity was 84.7%, and average wind speed was 1.40 m/s. Regarding the amount of evapotranspiration in the forests of northern Okinawa Island, which has not been previously obtained, it has become possible to calculate the amount of potential evapotranspiration using the Penman equation.
Theoretical Aspects of Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization---A Review

Optimization problems in practice often involve the simultaneous optimization of 2 or more conflicting objectives. Evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO) techniques are well suited for tackling those multiobjective optimization problems because they are able to generate a set of solutions that represent the inherent trade-offs between the objectives. In the beginning, multiobjective evolutionary algorithms have been seen as single-objective algorithms where only the selection scheme needed to be tailored towards multiobjective optimization. In the meantime, EMO has become an independent research field with its specific research questions---and its own theoretical foundations. Several important theoretical studies on EMO have been conducted in recent years which opened up a better understanding of the underlying principles and resulted in the proposition of better algorithms in practice. Besides a brief introduction about the basic principles of EMO, the main goal of this report is to give a general overview of theoretical studies published in the field of EMO and to present some of the theoretical results in more detail. Due to space limitations, we only focus on three main aspects of previous and current research here: (i) performance assessment with quality indicators, (ii) hypervolume-based search, and (iii) rigorous runtime analyses and convergence properties of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms.
Evaluation of the influence of two operational fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) products on terrestrial ecosystem productivity modelling

The fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by vegetation (FAPAR) represents the available light energy for plant productivity and is the key variable influencing photosynthesis, transpiration, and energy balance in most terrestrial vegetation productivity models. With availability of earth observation data from different satellite sensors increasing, a number of FAPAR products are being generated. Several studies have investigated the differences between these products. However, very few studies have investigated how the differences between these products influence the output from ecosystem productivity models that utilise them. This study evaluated the influence of two operational FAPAR products (i.e. the MODIS and CYCLOPES FAPAR products) on the terrestrial vegetation primary productivity predicted by the Carnegie–CASA model across various biomes in the USA. The GPP predicted by the Carnegie–CASA model was compared to GPP measurements from various flux tower sites representing five biomes (i.e. croplands, broadleaf deciduous forests, grassland, needle-leaf evergreen forests, and savanna woodland). With the exception of cropland sites, the two FAPAR products resulted in GPP predictions which were higher than the in situ GPP measurements for the evaluated biomes. However, the CYCLOPES FAPAR product resulted in GPP outputs which were closer (lower RMSE values) to the in situ measurements than the MODIS FAPAR product. The two FAPAR products do not account for the FAPAR absorbed by non-photosynthetic elements of the canopy, which may lead to overestimation of the FAPAR that is actually used in photosynthesis. This could explain the higher GPP values derived using these products when compared to the in situ GPP measurements.
Weighted Sum-Rate Maximization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Enhanced Wireless Networks

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a romising solution to build a programmable wireless environment for future communication systems, in which the reflector elements steer the incident signal in fully customizable ways by passive beamforming. This work focuses on the downlink of an IRSaided multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) system. A practical IRS assumption is considered, in which the incident signal can only be shifted with discrete phase levels. Then, the weighted sum-rate of all users is maximized by joint optimizing the active beamforming at the base-station (BS) and the passive beamforming at the IRS. This non-convex problem is firstly decomposed via Lagrangian dual transform, and then the active and passive beamforming can be optimized alternatingly. In addition, an efficient algorithm with closed-form solutions is proposed for the passive beamforming, which is applicable to both the discrete phase- shift IRS and the continuous phaseshift IRS. Simulation results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm as compared to different benchmark schemes.
Environmental exposures and cardiovascular morbidity in Scotland: a study of the effects of air pollution on health

Air pollution has been an ongoing problem around the world for centuries. It was brought to the public's attention in the mid 1900s with the London Smog which resulted in approximately 3000 excess deaths. Since then, there have been numerous studies carried out to determine the extent to which air pollution is related to human health. There are two main aims to this thesis, the first of which is to investigate the effects of PM10 exposure on cardiovascular illness in Scotland, focusing on the three largest cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. As this study makes use of readily available data, the second aim is to determine whether or not such data can be used to accurately estimate the effects of air pollution. Chapter 1 provides a detailed discussion of air pollution, focussing on the history of air pollution and the change in pollutants over time, and cardiovascular illnesses, giving a definition of cardiovascular disease, details of how they occur and giving incidence rates in Scotland. This chapter also gives an overview of the Information Services Division of the NHS (ISD), the Scottish Air Quality Website and the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC). Chapter 2 is a review of the relevant literature covering the standard modelling approach used in air pollution and health studies and will also outline the data used in these studies and the covariates involved. This chapter focuses exclusively on the short-term effects of air pollution as this is the focus of this thesis. Chapter 3 uses Poisson generalised linear models to explore the relationship between exposure to air pollution and cardiovascular admissions to hospital in Scotland, focusing specifically on Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Chapter 4 comprises a set of subanalyses of these data focusing on the effects of air pollution on various subclasses of cardiovascular morbidity in Glasgow. All analyses will be implemented using a generalised linear model, within the statistical programming language R (R 2.2.0 - A Language and Environment (2005)). Chapter 5 provides a summary of the results from the analyses. It also discusses the limitations associated with the use of routinely collected data and describes some of the dilemmas faced by researchers in this field.
An initial assessment of Suomi NPP VIIRS vegetation index EDR

The Suomi National Polar‐orbiting Partnership (S‐NPP) satellite with Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard was launched in October 2011. VIIRS is the primary instrument for a suite of Environmental Data Records (EDR), including Vegetation Index (VI) EDR, for weather forecasting and climate research. The VIIRS VI EDR operational product consists of the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Top of the Canopy (TOC) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), and per‐pixel product quality information. In this paper, we report results of our assessment of the early VIIRS VI EDR (beta quality) using Aqua MODIS and NOAA‐18 AVHRR/3 as a reference for May 2012 to March 2013. We conducted two types of analyses focused on an assessment of physical (global scale) and radiometric (regional scale) performances of VIIRS VI EDR. Both TOA NDVI and TOC EVI of VIIRS showed spatial and temporal trends consistent with the MODIS counterparts, whereas VIIRS TOA NDVI was systematically higher than that of AVHRR. Performance of the early VIIRS VI EDR was limited by a lack of adequate per‐pixel quality information, commission/omission errors of the cloud mask, and uncertainties associated with the surface reflectance retrievals. A number of enhancements to the VI EDR are planned, including: (1) implementation of a TOC EVI back‐up algorithm, (2) addition of more detailed quality flags on aerosols, clouds, and snow cover, and (3) implementation of gridding and temporal compositing. A web‐based, product quality monitoring tool has been developed and automated product validation protocols are being prototyped.
Towards robust visual object tracking : proposal selection and occlusion reasoning. (Vers un suivi robuste d'objets visuels : sélection de propositions et traitement des occlusions)

In this dissertation we address the problem of visual object tracking, whereinthe goal is to localize an object and determine its trajectory over time. Inparticular, we focus on challenging scenarios where the object undergoessignificant transformations, becomes occluded or leaves the field of view. Tothis end, we propose two robust methods which learn a model for the object ofinterest and update it, to reflect its changes over time.Our first method addresses the tracking problem in the context of objectsundergoing severe geometric transformations, such as rotation, change in scale.We present a novel proposal-selection algorithm, which extends the traditionaldiscriminative tracking-by-detection approach. This method proceeds in twostages -- proposal followed by selection. In the proposal stage, we compute acandidate pool that represents the potential locations of the object byrobustly estimating the geometric transformations. The best proposal is thenselected from this candidate set to localize the object precisely usingmultiple appearance and motion cues.Second, we consider the problem of model update in visual tracking, i.e.,determining when to update the model of the target, which may become occludedor leave the field of view. To address this, we use motion cues to identify thestate of the object in a principled way, and update the model only when theobject is fully visible. In particular, we utilize long-term trajectories incombination with a graph-cut based technique to estimate parts of the objectsthat are visible.We have evaluated both our approaches extensively on several trackingbenchmarks, notably, recent online tracking benchmark and the visual objecttracking challenge datasets. Both our approaches compare favorably to thestate of the art and show significant improvement over several other recenttrackers. Specifically, our submission to the visual object tracking challengeorganized in 2015 was the winner in one of the competitions.
No pain, no gain? Teachers' implementing ICT in instruction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between 99 Finnish primary and secondary teachers in their frequency and nature of information and communication technology (ICT) use, levels of ICT implementation, functional uses and perceived values about educational use of ICT.Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected with an online questionnaire and analyzed with expectancy‐value theory as a theoretical background.Findings – Teachers use ICT mostly for administrative tasks. Teachers' methods of utilizing student‐centred approaches in their teaching, proficiency levels in relation to ICT, and their self‐reported stage of ICT integration into teaching strongly depend on how much ICT teachers use in their teaching activities. Primary teachers value utilizing ICT in teaching more positively than secondary teachers even though secondary teachers reported being more active in the use of ICT in various functional uses. Pedagogical thinking in educational institutes has not adv.
Optimized Power Control for Over-the-Air Computation in Fading Channels

Over-the-air computation (AirComp) of a function (e.g., averaging) has recently emerged as an efficient multiple-access scheme for fast aggregation of distributed data at mobile devices (e.g., sensors) at a fusion center (FC) over wireless channels. To realize reliable AirComp in practice, it is crucial to adaptively control the devices’ transmit power for coping with channel distortion to achieve the desired magnitude alignment of simultaneous signals. In this paper, we solve the power control problem. Our objective is to minimize the computation error by jointly optimizing the transmit power at devices and a signal scaling factor (called denoising factor) at the FC, subject to individual average power constraints at devices. The problem is generally non-convex due to the coupling of the transmit powers at devices and denoising factor at the FC. To tackle the challenge, we first consider the special case with static channels, for which we derive the optimal solution in closed form. The derived power control exhibits a threshold-based structure: if the product of the channel quality and power budget for each device, called quality indicator, exceeds an optimized threshold, this device applies channel-inversion power control; otherwise, it performs full power transmission. We proceed to consider the general case with time-varying channels. To solve the more challenging non-convex power control problem, we use the Lagrange-duality method via exploiting its “time-sharing” property. The derived power control exhibits a regularized channel inversion structure, where the regularization balances the tradeoff between the signal-magnitude alignment and noise suppression. Moreover, for the special case with only one device being power limited, we show that the power control for the power-limited device has an interesting channel-inversion water-filling structure, while those for other devices (with sufficiently large power budgets) reduce to channel-inversion power control. Numerical results show that the derived power control significantly reduces the computation error as compared with the conventional designs.
A geostatistical approach to the trickle irrigation design in heterogeneous soil: 1. Theory

A geostatistical approach was used to investigate the spatial variability of two measured soil hydraulic parameters, the saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks and α = d[log K(h)]/[d(h)], where K is the hydraulic conductivity and h is the soil water pressure head. Using a linearized solution to steady infiltration from a circular shallow pond, the spatial distribution of the midway soil water pressure head between emitters, hc (for a given trickle discharge rate Q and spacing between emitters, d), was calculated using the spatially variable soil parameters Ks and α. The spatial distribution of the crop yield Y was calculated from the spatially variable hc by using a quadratic expression for the Y(hc) relationships. It was found that the spatial variability of each of the measured input parameters (Ks and α) or the calculated output variables (hc and Y) is expressed through the variogram γ and can be characterized in terms of the coefficient of variation CV and the integral scale J. In the case of log Ks, for which the sill is reached at relatively small range, two different γ were tested. Results showed that the kriged values of log Ks as well as the resultant values of hc = hc(Ks α; d, Q) were relatively insensitive to the selected γ. The spatial variability of hc reduced the average (over the field) crop yield that would have been obtained when hc was uniform throughout the field. The spatially variable soil parameters Ks and α were used to calculate the spatial distribution of the spacing between emitters (d) required to achieve (for a given trickle discharge) a prespecified value of hc, uniform throughout the field. It was found that the use of a spatially variable d increased the field crop yield by 3% relative to the yield that was obtained when a single-valued d uniform throughout the field was used. The spatial distribution of d was combined with hydraulic principles to derive the spatial distribution of lateral diameter and length for engineering design requirements.
Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Customer Markets

A growing body of evidence suggests that ongoing relationships between consumers and firms may be important for understanding price dynamics. We investigate whether the existence of such customer relationships has important consequences for the conduct of both long-run and short-run policy. Our central result is that when consumers and firms are engaged in long-term relationships, the optimal rate of price inflation volatility is very low even though all prices are completely flexible. This finding is in contrast to those obtained in first-generation Ramsey models of optimal fiscal and monetary policy, which are based on Walrasian markets. Echoing the basic intuition of models based on sticky prices, unanticipated inflation in our environment causes a type of relative price distortion across markets. Such distortions stem from fundamental trading frictions that give rise to long-lived customer relationships and makes pursuing inflation stability optimal.
Ultrasonic wave propagation in dry and brine-saturated sandstones as a function of effective stress: laboratory measurements and modelling1

Abstract Compressional and shear‐wave velocities have been measured and a novel approach using digital processing employed to study wave attenuation for brine‐ and gas‐ saturated sandstones, over a range of effective stresses from 5 to 60 MPa. Also measured were the complex conductivity in the brine‐saturated state and permeability in the gas‐saturated state over the same range of stresses as for the velocity measurements. Broadband ultrasonic pulses of P‐ and orthogonally polarized S‐waves in the frequency range 0.3–0.8 MHz are transmitted through the specimen to be characterized for comparison with a reference (aluminium) having low attenuation. The attenuation is calculated in terms of the quality factor Q from the Fourier spectral ratios, using the frequency spectral ratios technique. The corrections necessary for the effects of diffraction due to the finite size of the ultrasonic transducers have been carried out for the case of measurements under lower confining stress. To interpret the laboratory measured velocity and attenuation data under the physical conditions of this study and to estimate the effects of pore structure, numerical modelling of velocities and attenuation as functions of the confining stress have been performed, based on the MIT model. Theoretical models based on several hypothesized attenuation mechanisms are considered in relation to laboratory data of the effects of confining pressure, fluid saturation and pore structure on attenuation. Numerical calculations using these models with the experimental data indicate that friction on thin cracks and grain boundaries is the dominant attenuation mechanism for dry and brine‐saturated sandstones at low effective stresses for the frequencies tested. However, for brine‐saturated sandstones at moderately high effective stresses, fluid flow could play a more important role in ultrasonic S‐wave attenuation, depending on the pore structure of the sample.
Multiple Object Tracking by Learning Feature Representation and Distance Metric Jointly

Designing a robust afﬁnity model is the key issue in multiple object tracking (MOT). With the release of more challenging benchmarks, the association performance based on traditional hand-crafted features is unsatisfactory. Although several current MOT methods adopt deep CNN features directly, they don’t resort to metric learning which can signiﬁcantly improve the model’s discriminability. This paper proposes a novel afﬁnity model by learning feature representation and distance metric jointly in a uniﬁed deep architecture. Speciﬁcally, we design a CNN network to obtain appearance cue tailored towards person Re-ID, and a LSTM network for motion cue to predict target position, respectively. Both cues are then combined with a triplet loss function, which performs end-to-end learning to fuse features in the desired embedding space. Experiments in the challenging MOT benchmark demonstrate that even by a simple Linear Assignment strategy fed with afﬁnity scores, our method achieves competitive results when compared with several state-of-the-art approaches.