Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The dominant intraseasonal mode of intraseasonal South Asian summer monsoon

From June through September, the intraseasonal variability of the Asian summer monsoon is dominated by the so‐called “monsoon intraseasonal oscillation (MISO). ” This paper provides a comprehensive description of the MISO based on outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) data. The MISO is characterized by alternating active periods, in which the primary rain area of the Asian summer monsoon that stretches from the northern Arabian Sea east southeastward almost all the way to the northwest Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone is relatively intense, and break periods, in which the heaviest rainfall shifts from south Asia to the central and eastern equatorial Indian Ocean. The MISO is attended by well‐defined but weak sea surface temperature (SST) perturbations whose phase is indicative of a negative feedback upon the atmospheric perturbations. Meridional profile of variables on the various regression maps shown in this paper averaged along a set of tilted axes parallel to the west‐northwest to east‐southeast (WNW‐ESE) sloping lines in empirical orthogonal function 1 of OLR have been made, and it is found that the strongest westerly 850 hPa wind anomalies are located two grid points (5° of latitude) to the south of the reference latitude. At the 150 hPa level, the meridional profile of divergence is closely aligned with the OLR profile. SST profile is lowest at approximately 2.5° of latitude to the south of the minimum OLR and 2.5° to the north of the strongest westerly 850 hPa wind anomalies. The sea level pressure profiles and the midlower tropospheric geopotential height profiles are almost in phase. It is observed that in most years, there are two–three bands of intensified and suppressed rainfall that cross the reference line from south to north (northward propagating) at the interval of 30–60 days over South Asia. The degree of correspondence between the MISO and active and break spells of the Indian summer monsoon rainfall is also documented.
Spanning and Derivative-Security Valuation

This paper proposes a methodology for the valuation of contingent securities. In particular, it establishes how the characteristic function (of the future uncertainty) is basis augmenting and spans the payoff universe of most, if not all, derivative assets. In one specific application, from the characteristic function of the state-price density, it is possible to analytically price options on any arbitrary transformation of the underlying uncertainty. By differentiating (or translating) the characteristic function, limitless pricing and/or spanning opportunities can be designed. As made lucid via example contingent claims, by exploiting the unifying spanning concept, the valuation approach affords substantial analytical tractability. The strength and versatility of the methodology is inherent when valuing (1) Average-interest options; (2) Correlation options; and (3) Discretely-monitored knock-out options. For each option-like security, the characteristic function is strikingly simple (although the corresponding density is unmanageable/indeterminate). This article provides the economic foundations for valuing derivative securities.
Difference in the Magnitude of Muscle Damage Between Maximal and Submaximal Eccentric Loading

This study compared maximal (MAX-ECC) and submaximal (50%-ECC) eccentric exercise of the elbow flexors. Untrained male students (n = 8) performed 3 sets of 10 repetitions of MAX-ECC with one arm and 50%-ECC with the other arm, separated by 4 weeks. In MAX-ECC, the elbow joint was forcibly extended from a flexed (90°) to a full-extended position (180°) in 3 seconds while producing maximal force. For 50%-ECC, a dumbbell set at 50% of the maximal isometric strength at 90° of the elbow joint was lowered from the flexed to the extended position in 3 seconds. Changes in indicators of muscle damage were compared between the bouts by a 2-way repeated-measures analysis of variance. Changes in isometric strength, range of motion, upper arm circumference, and plasma creatine kinase activity were significantly smaller and the recovery was significantly faster for 50%-ECC compared with MAX-ECC, although the differences in the changes immediately after exercise were small. It appeared that the magnitude of initial muscle damage was similar between the bouts; however, secondary damage was less after 50%-ECC.
Ultra-thin fiber-tip micro-bubble sensor for pressure measurement

A novel ultra-thin fiber-tip micro-bubble pressure sensor is fabricated by pressure-assisted arc discharge in this paper. The sealed capillary which filled with pressure, was discharged continuously to fabricate such ultra-thin micro-bubble just by using a common fusion splicer. The fabrication approach is relatively simple, high efficiency and easy to handle. The wall thickness of micro-bubble can reach several micrometers. The pressure sensitivity was 105.08 pm/Kpa and temperature sensitivity was 7.7 pm/O. Moreover, such micro-bubble sensor has compact size, good mechanical strength and the thinner wall than traditional Fabry-Perot sensor, which makes it suitable for high sensitivity pressure sensing in harsh environments and of great significance in the development of whispering gallery modes and FP interference sensor.
Variational Bayes based I-vector for speaker diarization of telephone conversations

In this paper, we investigate the variational Bayes based I-vector method for speaker diarization of telephone conversations. The motivation of the proposed algorithm is to utilize variational Bayesian framework and exploit potential channel effect of total variability modeling for diarization of conversation side. Other three well-known techniques are compared as follows: K-means clustering for eigenvoices and I-vector speaker diarization, and variational Bayes applied to eigenvoices. Performance evaluations are conducted on the summed-channel telephone data from the 2008 NIST speaker recognition evaluation. The paper discusses how the performance is influenced by different modules, e.g., VAD, initial speaker clustering and Viterbi re-segmentation. Comparison experiments show the interest of variational Bayesian probabilistic framework for speaker diarization.
A Line Rate Outlier Filtering FPGA NIC using 10GbE Interface

As data sets grow rapidly in size and the number, an outlier detection that filters unnecessary normal information becomes important. In this paper, we propose to move the unsupervised outlier detection from an application layer to a network interface card (NIC). Only anomalous items or events are received for a network protocol stack and the other packets are discarded at the NIC. The demands for storage and computation costs at a host are thus dramatically reduced. However, because normal items are discarded at the NIC and the application layer can no longer know what is normal, in our approach, the application at the host periodically peeks at the NIC buffer. We select an outlier detection based on the Mahalanobis distance as one of the simplest algorithms. Our approach is implemented on an FPGA-based NIC that has 10GbE interfaces. The sampling frequency of the NIC buffer vs. outlier detection precision is analyzed. Real experiments using the FPGA NIC demonstrate a 14,000,000 samples-per-second throughput in performance, which is close to the 10GbE line rate.
If the Current Clique Algorithms are Optimal, So is Valiant's Parser

The CFG recognition problem is: given a context-free grammar G and a string w of length n, decide if w can be obtained from G. This is the most basic parsing question and is a core computer science problem. Valiant's parser from 1975 solves the problem in O(nO) time, where ? <; 2:373 is the matrix multiplication exponent. Dozens of parsing algorithms have been proposed over the years, yet Valiant's upper bound remains unbeaten. The best combinatorial algorithms have mildly subcubic O(n3= log3 n) complexity. Lee (JACM'01) provided evidence that fast matrix multiplication is needed for CFG parsing, and that very efficient and practical algorithms might be hard or even impossible to obtain. Lee showed that any algorithm for a more general parsing problem with running time O(|G| n3 -- e) can be converted into a surprising subcubic algorithm for Boolean Matrix Multiplication. Unfortunately, Lee' s hardness result required that the grammar size be |G| = O(n6). Nothing was known for the more relevant case of constant size grammars. In this work, we prove that any improvement on Valiant' s algorithm, even for constant size grammars, either in terms of runtime or by avoiding the inefficiencies of fast matrix multiplication, would imply a breakthrough algorithm for the k-Clique problem: given a graph on n nodes, decide if there are k that form a clique. Besides classifying the complexity of a fundamental problem, our reduction has led us to similar lower bounds for more modern and well-studied cubic time problems for which faster algorithms are highly desirable in practice: RNA Folding, a central problem in computational biology, and Dyck Language Edit Distance, answering an open question of Saha (FOCS'14).
EU protected area network did not prevent a country wide population decline in a threatened grassland bird

Background Few studies have assessed the effectiveness of the Protected Area networks on the conservation status of target species. Here, we assess the effectiveness of the Portuguese Natura 2000 (the European Union network of protected areas) in maintaining a species included in the Annex I of the Bird Directive, namely the population of a priority farmland bird, the little bustard Tetrax tetrax. Methods We measured the effectiveness of the Natura 2000 by comparing population trends across time (2003–2006 and 2016) in 51 areas, 21 of which within 12 Special Protection Areas (SPA) that were mostly designated for farmland bird conservation and another 30 areas without EU protection. Results Overall, the national population is estimated to have declined 49% over the last 10–14 years. This loss was found to be proportionally larger outside SPA (64% decline) compared to losses within SPA (25% decline). However, the absolute male density decline was significantly larger within SPA . Discussion In spite of holding higher population densities and having prevented habitat loss, we conclude that Natura 2000 was not effective in buffering against the overall bustard population decline. Results show that the mere designation of SPA in farmland is not enough to secure species populations and has to be combined with agricultural policies and investment to maintain not only habitat availability but also habitat quality.
CellMR: A framework for supporting mapreduce on asymmetric cell-based clusters

The use of asymmetric multi-core processors with on-chip computational accelerators is becoming common in a variety of environments ranging from scientific computing to enterprise applications. The focus of current research has been on making efficient use of individual systems, and porting applications to asymmetric processors. In this paper, we take the next step by investigating the use of multi-core-based systems, especially the popular Cell processor, in a cluster setting. We present CellMR, an efficient and scalable implementation of the MapReduce framework for asymmetric Cell-based clusters. The novelty of CellMR lies in its adoption of a streaming approach to supporting MapReduce, and its adaptive resource scheduling schemes: Instead of allocating workloads to the components once, CellMR slices the input into small work units and streams them to the asymmetric nodes for efficient processing. Moreover, CellMR removes I/O bottlenecks by design, using a number of techniques, such as double-buffering and asynchronous I/O, to maximize cluster performance. Our evaluation of CellMR using typical MapReduce applications shows that it achieves 50.5% better performance compared to the standard nonstreaming approach, introduces a very small overhead on the manager irrespective of application input size, scales almost linearly with increasing number of compute nodes (a speedup of 6.9 on average, when using eight nodes compared to a single node), and adapts effectively the parameters of its resource management policy between applications with varying computation density.
Using the focus of visual attention to improve spontaneous speech recognition

We investigate recognition of spontaneous speech using the focus of visual attention as a secondary cue to speech. In our experiment we collected a corpus of eye and speech data where one participant describes a geographical map to another while having their eye movements tracked. Using this corpus we characterise the coupling between eye movement and speech. Speech recognition results are presented to demonstrate proof of concept for development of a bimodal ASR using focus of visual attention to drive a dynamic language model. Marginal improvement in WER is observed.
Identifying riparian vegetation as indicator of stream water quality in the Gilgel Gibe catchment, southwestern Ethiopia

Riparian land use has substantial effects on aquatic habitats and biological communities resulting in a dramatic loss of natural riparian vegetation and affecting the physicochemical properties of streams. The study investigates the relationships among indigenous riparian plants and water quality in the upper Gilgel Gibe catchment in southwestern Ethiopia. The floristic composition of the riparian vegetation and the water quality of streams were studied at selected sites, ranging from first‐ to third‐order streams. We quantified relationships between disturbance level and both physicochemical characters and traits of riparian plant species during two sampling periods (December 2013 and April 2014). Data were collected from a priori designated three land use types (forest, plantation, and agriculture) and ranked along nine streams. Ranks were based on surrounding land use characteristics and deforestation categories. We used analysis of variance and the Tukey's post‐hoc test to conduct pair‐wise comparisons among different land use types. Both species richness and diversity values of forest sites were significantly (p < 0.001) higher than agricultural sites. Whereas, stream water quality deterioration indicator gradient such as total suspended solid, water turbidity, and orthophosphate was significantly (p < 0.001) higher in agricultural sites than forest sites. We identified species such as Croton macrostachyus, Ficus sur, Maytenus arbutifolia, and Millettia ferruginea as indicator species of water quality (p < 0.05). Our study is the first assessment of the role of indigenous plant species as indicator of highland stream water quality in the tropical area. The study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the assessment and monitoring of stream ecosystems and for following stream restoration projects in tropical regions around the globe.
A modern Sr/Ca‐δ18O‐sea surface temperature calibration for Isopora corals on the Great Barrier Reef

Isopora (Acroporidae) is a genus of often encrusting, branching to submassive corals that are common in many shallow habitats on modern and fossil Indo-West Paci ﬁ c reefs. Although abundant, Isopora is largely absent from paleoceanographic literature. The scarcity of large Porites and the abundance of Isopora retrieved from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) on Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 325 focused paleoceanographic attention on Isopora . Here we provide the ﬁ rst independent high-resolution calibration of both Sr/Ca and δ 18 O for temperature analyses based on Isopora and demonstrate its consistency with Porites records. We developed modern skeletal Sr/Ca- and δ 18 O-sea surface temperature (SST) calibrations based on ﬁ ve modern Isopora colonies from Heron Island in the southern GBR. Pairing the coral Sr/Ca record with monthly SST data yielded Sr/Ca-SST sensitivities from (cid:1) 0.061 ± 0.004 (centered) to (cid:1) 0.083 ±0.007 (raw) mmol/mol°C (cid:1) 1 based on reduced major axis regressions. These sensitivities are in the middle of the range of published Porites values and overlap most published values for Isopora , (cid:1) 0.075± 0.011 to (cid:1) 0.065 ±0.011 mmol/mol°C (cid:1) 1 . The δ 18 O-SST sensitivities range from (cid:1) 0.184 ±0.014 (centered) to (cid:1) 0.185 ±0.014 (raw) ‰ °C (cid:1) 1 , assuming that all seasonal variation in δ 18 O was due to SST. These δ 18 O-SST sensitivities are smaller than the widely accepted value of (cid:1) 0.23 ‰ °C (cid:1) 1 for biogenic aragonite but are at the upper end of high-resolution Porites -de ﬁ ned sensitivities that are consistently less than the aforementioned established value. Our results validate the use of Isopora as an alternative source of paleoceanographic records in habitats where large massive Porites are scarce or absent.
Neural Network Models of Perceptual Learning of Angle Discrimination

We study neural network models of discriminating between stimuli with two similar angles, using the two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) paradigm. Two network architectures are investigated: a two-layer perceptron network and a gating network. In the two-layer network all hidden units contribute to the decision at all angles, while in the other architecture the gating units select, for each stimulus, the appropriate hidden units that will dominate the decision. We find that both architectures can perform the task reasonably well for all angles. Perceptual learning has been modeled by training the networks to perform the task, using unsupervised Hebb learning algorithms with pairs of stimuli at fixed angles and . Perceptual transfer is studied by measuring the performance of the network on stimuli with . The two-layer perceptron shows a partial transfer for angles that are within a distance a from , where a is the angular width of the input tuning curves. The change in performance due to learning is positive for angles close to , but for a it is negative, i.e., its performance after training is worse than before. In contrast, negative transfer can be avoided in the gating network by limiting the effects of learning to hidden units that are optimized for angles that are close to the trained angle.
Error Characterization, Mitigation, and Recovery in Flash-Memory-Based Solid-State Drives

NAND flash memory is ubiquitous in everyday life today because its capacity has continuously increased and cost has continuously decreased over decades. This positive growth is a result of two key trends: 1) effective process technology scaling; and 2) multi-level (e.g., MLC, TLC) cell data coding. Unfortunately, the reliability of raw data stored in flash memory has also continued to become more difficult to ensure, because these two trends lead to 1) fewer electrons in the flash memory cell floating gate to represent the data; and 2) larger cell-to-cell interference and disturbance effects. Without mitigation, worsening reliability can reduce the lifetime of NAND flash memory. As a result, flash memory controllers in solid-state drives (SSDs) have become much more sophisticated: they incorporate many effective techniques to ensure the correct interpretation of noisy data stored in flash memory cells. In this article, we review recent advances in SSD error characterization, mitigation, and data recovery techniques for reliability and lifetime improvement. We provide rigorous experimental data from state-of-the-art MLC and TLC NAND flash devices on various types of flash memory errors, to motivate the need for such techniques. Based on the understanding developed by the experimental characterization, we describe several mitigation and recovery techniques, including 1) cell-to-cell interference mitigation; 2) optimal multi-level cell sensing; 3) error correction using state-of-the-art algorithms and methods; and 4) data recovery when error correction fails. We quantify the reliability improvement provided by each of these techniques. Looking forward, we briefly discuss how flash memory and these techniques could evolve into the future.
The Comparison of Metaphors Translation Strategies in Subtitling of the King’s Speech Film

This research aims to compare the use of translation strategies used between humans and YouTube’s automated machine translator. This study employed the descriptive qualitative method. The writers collected data using a note-taking strategy. Based on the research findings, there are sixteen data that use metaphors. Six data use “anthropomorphic metaphor”; five data use “dead metaphor”; four data use “concrete to abstract metaphors”; and one datum uses “live metaphor”. This research shows that only three out of seven metaphor translation strategies are employed by human translators and YouTube. They use translation strategies “reproducing the same image in the TL”, “replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image”, and “deletion”. The human translator uses “reproducing the same image in the TL” ten times, “replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image” five times, and “deletion” once. YouTube uses “reproducing the same image in the TL” thirteen times and “replacing the image in the SL with a standard TL image” three times. Keywords: translation, metaphor, translation strategy, subtitle.
Phenotypic Switching of Nonpeptidergic Cutaneous Sensory Neurons following Peripheral Nerve Injury

In adult mammals, the phenotype of half of all pain-sensing (nociceptive) sensory neurons is tonically modulated by growth factors in the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) family that includes GDNF, artemin (ARTN) and neurturin (NRTN). Each family member binds a distinct GFRα family co-receptor, such that GDNF, NRTN and ARTN bind GFRα1, -α2, and -α3, respectively. Previous studies revealed transcriptional regulation of all three receptors in following axotomy, possibly in response to changes in growth factor availability. Here, we examined changes in the expression of GFRα1-3 in response to injury in vivo and in vitro. We found that after dissociation of adult sensory ganglia, up to 27% of neurons die within 4 days (d) in culture and this can be prevented by nerve growth factor (NGF), GDNF and ARTN, but not NRTN. Moreover, up-regulation of ATF3 (a marker of neuronal injury) in vitro could be prevented by NGF and ARTN, but not by GDNF or NRTN. The lack of NRTN efficacy was correlated with rapid and near-complete loss of GFRα2 immunoreactivity. By retrogradely-labeling cutaneous afferents in vivo prior to nerve cut, we demonstrated that GFRα2-positive neurons switch phenotype following injury and begin to express GFRα3 as well as the capsaicin receptor, transient receptor potential vanilloid 1(TRPV1), an important transducer of noxious stimuli. This switch was correlated with down-regulation of Runt-related transcription factor 1 (Runx1), a transcription factor that controls expression of GFRα2 and TRPV1 during development. These studies show that NRTN-responsive neurons are unique with respect to their plasticity and response to injury, and suggest that Runx1 plays an ongoing modulatory role in the adult.
Natural Landmarks Localisation

In this report the idea of natural landmark localisation is studied in some detail. In particular localising using two robots using triangulation techniques on detected landmarks on the horizon is examined. Furthermore profiling techniques based on comparing the current horizon to a predetermined 360-degree array representing the full horizon from a central point is observed. Whilst triangulation is theoretically robust and has the most potential, it is not practical because of the amount of image noise and movement in a live game that can throw it off. Profiling has more potential to be practically useful, but more analysis and implementation must be made to make it game-ready.