Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TRMM PR Standard Algorithm 2A23 and its Performance on Bright Band Detection

This paper presents the statistical properties of bright band (BB) measured by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR). Since BB is detected by PR standard version 6 (V6) algorithm 2A23 V6, this paper first outlines 2A23 V6, which classifies rain into three main categories: stratiform, convective, and other. This paper studies BB from the viewpoint of algorithm development. It demonstrates that the detected BB count strongly depends on the antenna scan angle. The BB height (HBB) detected by the PR is compared with the 0°C height computed using the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-Department of Energy Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project-II reanalysis (NCEP2) data. On average, the BB height is about 500 m below the 0°C height, which is computed from the NCEP2 data. However, a large difference between the above two heights is sometimes observed, mainly due to the false detection of BB. The reliability of BB detection by the current PR algorithm 2A23 V6 could be increased by introducing a simple filter that rejects BBs by regarding them as false when the number of BBs detected in one antenna scan (consisting of 49 antenna beam directions) is less than or equal to 5. An improved version of the filter is planned to be installed in the coming 2A23 V7. Statistics of 10 years of PR data indicate a small but discernible effect of the August 2001 boost of the altitude of the TRMM satellite on the rain type statistics and on the BB statistics. The zonal mean of the maximum value of reflectivity factor in the BB peak (ZmaxBB) over water is almost constant in latitude, but the zonal mean of ZmaxBB over land is less at latitudes above 20 degrees in the northern hemisphere. The width of BB increases as ZmaxBB increases. The zonal mean of the BB width in mid latitude exhibits a small but smooth decrease as the latitude increases.
The Tapered Block Bootstrap for General Statistics from Stationary Sequences

In this paper, we define and study a new block bootstrap variation, the "tapered" block bootstrap, that is applicable in the general case of approximately linear statistics, and constitutes an improvement over the original block bootstrap of Kunsch (1989). The asymptotic validity, and the favorable bias properties of the tapered block bootstrap are shown in two important cases: smooth functions of means, and "M"-estimators. The important practical issues of optimally choosing the window shape and the block size are addressed in detail, while some finite-sample simulations are also presented. Copyright Royal Economic Society 2002
The impact of board diversity on the performance of banks

This paper empirically investigated the impact of board diversity on the performance of 13 banks in Jordan during the period of 2005–2020. Panel data was collected from the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) and the formal websites of the different banks. Fixed-effect and random-effect techniques have been applied to check the impact of board diversity on banks’ performance. The results found that the larger the size of the bank, the better their return since they hold more deposits, and this increase their investment opportunities. In addition, the larger the size of the board, the better the performance since more experienced directors would be included in the decision-making and higher added knowledge in the decision-making process. Including more board members should enrich the decision-making process with high experience and know-how characteristics. In addition, this paper confirmed that Jordanian banks should include more women in their boards since sharing their managerial skills and experience should enhance banks’ performance.
Modern Value Based Reinforcement Learning: A Chronological Review

Investigation of value based Reinforcement Learning algorithms exhibited a resurgence into mainstream research in 2015 following demonstration of super-human performance when applied to Atari 2600 games. Since then, significant media attention and hype have accompanied this area, and the field of Artificial Intelligence generally, spread across distinct categories. This review paper is focused exclusively on the progression of value based Reinforcement Learning in the last five years. We aim to distill the incremental improvements to stability and performance in this period, highlighting the minimal changes to the base algorithm over this time. This holds true with all but the one exception of the Recurrent Experience Replay in Distributed Reinforcement Learning algorithm, representing a fundamental shift and increase in agent performance through an advanced memory representation. We suggest a new focus area for value based Reinforcement Learning research.
Mass Flow through Gaps in Circumbinary Disks

We demonstrate through smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations that a circumbinary disk can supply mass to the central binary through gas streams that penetrate the disk gap without closing it. The conditions for an efficient flow typically require the disk thickness-to-radius ratio z/r ≳ 0.05, if the turbulent viscosity parameter α is greater than 0.01. This mass flow may be important for both the individual systems and their statistics. It occurs preferentially onto the lower mass object and acts toward equalization of component masses. The less massive component may be more luminous and easier to detect, owing to its larger accretion luminosity. For eccentric binaries, the mass flow is strongly modulated in time, providing diagnostics for both the disk and the binary. In the protostellar disks, the flow could be detected as shock emission phased with the binary orbit, resulting from stream impact with the circumstellar disks and/or the young stars. In the (super)massive black hole binaries in nuclei of galaxies, the flow may result from the surrounding interstellar medium and produce nearly periodic emission, as observed in quasar OJ 287. For star-planet-disk systems, our results show that the opening of a gap around a planet is not always sufficient for the termination of its growth. This suggests that planets supplied by gas streams from protoplanetary disks may outgrow Jupiter to become “superplanets” with properties heretofore reserved for stars.
Gentle measurement of quantum states and differential privacy

In differential privacy (DP), we want to query a database about n users, in a way that “leaks at most ε about any individual user,” even conditioned on any outcome of the query. Meanwhile, in gentle measurement, we want to measure n quantum states, in a way that “damages the states by at most α,” even conditioned on any outcome of the measurement. In both cases, we can achieve the goal by techniques like deliberately adding noise to the outcome before returning it. This paper proves a new and general connection between the two subjects. Specifically, we show that on products of n quantum states, any measurement that is α-gentle for small α is also O( α) -DP, and any product measurement that is ε-DP is also O( ε√n) -gentle. Illustrating the power of this connection, we apply it to the recently studied problem of shadow tomography. Given an unknown d-dimensional quantum state ρ, as well as known two-outcome measurements E1,…,Em, shadow tomography asks us to estimate Pr[ Ei accepts ρ] , for every i∈[ m] , by measuring few copies of ρ. Using our connection theorem, together with a quantum analog of the so-called private multiplicative weights algorithm of Hardt and Rothblum, we give a protocol to solve this problem using order ( logm) 2( logd) 2 copies of ρ, compared to Aaronson’s previous bound of O( ( logm) 4( logd) ) . Our protocol has the advantages of being online (that is, the Ei’s are processed one at a time), gentle, and conceptually simple. Other applications of our connection include new lower bounds for shadow tomography from lower bounds on DP, and a result on the safe use of estimation algorithms as subroutines inside larger quantum algorithms.
Gross Cystic Disease Fluid Protein-15 (GCDFP-15) Expression Characterizes Breast Mucinous Carcinomas in Older Women

The predominant histological subtype of breast mucinous carcinoma in older women is type B (hypercellular type), and, in younger women, it is type A (hypocellular type). The characteristics of mucinous carcinomas of the same histological subtype may differ between older and younger women. This study aims to systematically clarify the pathological/immunohistochemical features of mucinous carcinomas. A total of 21 surgical cases of mucinous carcinoma (type A/B: 9/12 cases) in the older group (≥65 years) and 16 cases (type A/B: 14/2 cases) in the younger group (≤55 years) (n = 37) were included. Gross cystic disease fluid protein-15 (GCDFP-15) and eight other markers were used for immunostaining. The GCDFP-15-positive rate in the older group was high regardless of the histological subtype (type A, 77.8%; type B, 91.7%). The GCDFP-15 positivity in the older group was significantly higher than that in the younger group (p < 0.001 for Allred score). Among type A, GCDFP-15 positivity was significantly higher in the older group than in the younger group (p = 0.042 for the Allred score and p = 0.007 for the positivity rate). The present results suggest that GCDFP-15 expression characterizes mucinous carcinomas in older women.
Simulation Of Fluid-structure Interaction ForAn Elastic Cylinder In An Axial Flow

The fluid-structure interaction for an elastic cylinder in an axial flow was studied numerically with the ALE method and the LES turbulence model. The commercial CFD software Fluent is used as the fluid solver and the EulerBernoulli beam solver is embedded into Fluent by its user defined functions (UDF). Two types of cylinder are included in this study. The motion for the first type of cylinder is constrained in one lateral direction and for the second in two lateral directions. The two types of cylinder are both released from their equilibrium state. When the stiffness is kept large enough, only weak oscillatory is induced by the flow. However, the motion of the cylinder induced by the flow may become unstable in the form of either buckling or oscillatory, when the stiffness becomes small enough. In this study, it is found that with the same simulation parameters the first type of cylinder is buckled and the second has an oscillatory. When buckled, the cylinder is located at a new state with weak oscillatory. The oscillatory after the instability has much larger amplitude than that before the instability.
Dielectronic recombination data for dynamic finite-density plasmas VI. The boron isoelectronic sequence

We have calculated dielectronic recombination rate coefficients for 22 ions of the boron isoelectronic sequence, between C+ and Xe49+, within the generalized collisional-radiative framework, as outlined by Badnell et al. (2003). Calculations have been performed from both ground and metastable initial states, in both LS- and intermediate-coupling, allowing for Deltan = 0 and Deltan = 1 core-excitations. Results are presented and discussed for a selection of ions from the sequence. Results which are not presented here can be accessed from the Atomic Data and Analysis Structure (ADAS) database (Summers 2003) or from the Oak Ridge Controlled Fusion Atomic Data Center (http://www-cfadc.phy.ornl.gov). Comparison is made with the results of other existing theoretical calculations.
Delayed slip after step strains in highly entangled polystyrene solutions

Apparent slip within a few micrometers of a glass surface is visualized with a microscope using small glass spheres as tracers suspended in a highly entangled 20% solution of polystyrene of molecular weight 8.42 million, confined between glass plates in a plane Couette device. After step shears of 0.5–5 strain units, particles within a few micrometers of each surface move by 70–500 μm, enough to unload more than half of the imposed shear strain at intermediate strains. The slip displacement, when plotted logarithmically against time, show a peculiar ‘‘kink’’ in the vicinity of the ‘‘Rouse’’ time of 100 s, similar to the kink reported for the shear stress. These results show that the peculiar rheological properties reported for highly entangled solutions are produced by an effective slip phenomenon that occurs either at the wall or in a thin disentanglement layer near it.
Population pharmacokinetics of riociguat in a pediatric population (aged ≥ 6 years) with pulmonary arterial hypertension

The PATENT‐CHILD study investigated riociguat in children aged ≥ 6 to <18 years with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) treated with tablets or an oral pediatric suspension based on bodyweight‐adjusted dosing of up to 2.5 mg three times daily. PATENT‐CHILD demonstrated an acceptable riociguat safety profile and individual plasma concentrations in pediatric patients were consistent with those in adult patients.
Temporal Early Exiting With Confidence Calibration for Driver Identification Based on Driving Sensing Data

Driver identification systems that use deep-neural-network-based sequential models have been studied for personalized intelligent vehicles. After a vehicle starts moving for a trip, the system identifies the driver at each time step using accumulated driving sensing data. We propose a novel driver identification system with temporal early exiting to identify a driver as early as possible while maintaining accuracy. Existing systems require entire-trip data or fixed-length partial trip data, regardless of driver identification difficulty. The proposed system automatically identifies the driver with less driving data for easy-to-identify trips and more driving data for hard-to-identify trips. To adaptively exit the identification by considering the difficulty of a trip, we propose a temporal early-exiting method by thresholding the confidence score. Sequential models output an identified driver and confidence score at each time step. However, the confidence score of deep neural networks is unreliable owing to the overconfidence problem. To overcome this problem, we propose three temporal confidence calibration methods that adjust the calibration strength according to the driving time and trip difficulty. Thus, the system can determine the best time to exit the identification, considering the trade-off between latency and accuracy. Our experiments on a naturalistic driving dataset show that the proposed system achieved 90.06% accuracy with early exiting at an average of 6.7 min, yielding the same accuracy with 74.2% latency reduction compared with driver identification with 26 min of fixed-length data for each trip.
The Effect of Repeated Sol Infiltrations on the Microstructure and Electrical Properties of PZT Composite Sol-Gel Films

PZT films in excess of 20 w m thick can readily be fabricated by repeated deposition of a powder/sol-gel slurry. The resultant films often contain a considerable level of porosity which has a detrimental effect on the material properties. A technique for increasing the density of such films through the use of controlled heat treatments and sol infiltration is presented. It is shown that with increased levels of sol infiltration the density and the relative permittivity of the films is increased. Measurements of the piezoelectric properties indicate that sol infiltration can lead to an increase in d 33 and e 31,f . A sample with approximately 10% closed porosity was obtained following 4 infiltration steps per layer. This resulted in a maximum relative permittivity of approximately 80% of the quoted bulk value. Using a poling condition of 5mins at 200°C a maximum value d 33 of 70p C/N was obtained. Examination of cross-sections of the films produced shows that for intermediate levels of sol infiltration (typically between 1 and 3) a density gradient is obtained with higher densities observed nearer to the base of the film. It is postulated that the observed density gradient is a result of continued infiltration from the upper layers when further layers of slurry are deposited. The effects of changing the number of infiltration steps upon the film structures and electrical properties will be discussed.
Comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder in low- and middle-income countries: A narrative review

Abstract Abstract Much of the research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been conducted in high-income countries (HICs). However, PTSD and AUD commonly co-occur (PTSD + AUD) are both associated with high global burden of disease, and disproportionately impact those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This narrative review attempts to synthesize the research on prevalence, impact, etiological models, and treatment of PTSD + AUD drawing from research conducted in HICs and discussing the research that has been conducted to date in LMICs. The review also discusses overall limitations in the field, including a lack of research on PTSD + AUD outside of HICs, issues with measurement of key constructs, and limitations in sampling strategies across comorbidity studies. Future directions are discussed, including a need for rigorous research studies conducted in LMICs that focus on both etiological mechanisms and on treatment approaches.
On the vanishing viscosity limit for the 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the friction type boundary conditions

The vanishing viscosity limit is considered for the incompressible 2D Navier-Stokes equations in a bounded domain. Motivated by studies of turbulent flow we suppose Navier's friction condition in the tangential direction, i.e. the creation of a vorticity proportional to the tangential velocity. We prove the existence of the regular solutions for the Navier-Stokes equations with smooth compatible data and of the solutions with bounded vorticity for initial vorticity being only bounded. Finally, we establish a uniform -bound for the vorticity and convergence to the incompressible 2D Euler equations in the inviscid limit.
Study of metamaterial-based nonlinear optics

Metamaterials (MMs) are artificial structures that display properties beyond those available in naturally occurring materials. The most notable MM is the negative-index material with simultaneously negative electric and magnetic responses. Recently, MMs exhibiting negative electric and magnetic properties in the infrared and optical frequencies have been realized, which will affect substantially the conventional optics and their applications in devices of compact cavities, adaptive lenses, tunable mirrors, isolators, converters, and so on. Moreover, MMs with nonlinear electric and/or magnetic response have also been demonstrated. This will further stimulate intense investigation in MM-based nonlinear optics due to the richness and the potential applications of the nonlinear property of MMs. In this paper, we report on our recent progress on investigation of some typical third-order nonlinear optical phenomena in MMs, such as modulation instability, soliton propagation, self-focusing, and so on. The controllability and the novel properties of the nonlinear phenomena in MMs are demonstrated.
A Measurement of the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation

We describe the design and performance of the Boomerang experiment, and report on measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) obtained during the January 2003 flight of Boomerang (B2K). To enable these studies, we have developed a bolometric detector which is intrinsically sensitive to linear polarization. The receiver consists of a pair of co-located silicon nitride micromesh absorbers which couple anisotropically to linearly polarized radiation through a corrugated waveguide structure. This system allows simultaneous background limited measurements of the Stokes I and Q parameters over ~30% bandwidths at frequencies from ~60 to 400 GHz. The science results reported here are derived from 195 hours of observation with four 145 GHz Polarization Sensitive Bolometer (PSB) pairs. The data include 75 hours of observations distributed over 1.8% of the sky with an additional 120 hours concentrated on the central portion of the field, itself representing 0.22% of the full sky. The B2K data improve significantly on existing measurements of the CMB temperature power spectrum at angular scales of 500 < l < 1100. In addition we have measured a spectrum of curl-free polarization anisotropies which, in the context of the most simple adiabatic inflationary models, are consistent with the predictions of the currently favored LCDM cosmology
Root endophytic bacterial community composition of Aconitum carmichaelii debx. from three main producing areas in China

Aconitum carmichaelii Debx. is famous for the bioactive aconitum alkaloids as traditional Chinese medicine. Endophytic bacteria play vital roles in plant growth, health, and the production of secondary metabolites such as alkaloids. In this study, we employed 16 S rRNA amplicon high‐throughput sequencing to determine the root endophytic bacterial community of A. carmichaelii Debx. collected from three main producing areas including the geo‐authentic area in China, high performance liquid chromatography to measure the contents of six bioactive alkaloids and correlation analysis to explore the relationship among environmental factors, alkaloids contents, and endophytic bacterial community. The results indicated that the root core microbiota of A. carmichaelii Debx. was dominated by Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria. Root endophytic bacterial community in the geo‐authentic area was distinct from the other two regions. Soil nitrogen contents, organic matter, and temperature were the main factors contributing to the endophytic bacterial community structure. Significant correlation was found between alkaloids contents and some bacterial genera. Particularly, the abundance of Lactobacillus was positively correlated with the contents of benzoyl‐mesaconitine and benzoyl‐aconine. This study provided the first insight into the root endophytic bacterial community composition of A. carmichaelii Debx. , and can direct further isolation of functional bacterial strains.
Undistorted delivery of sub-15-fs pulses via high-numerical-aperture microscope objectives

We demonstrated that the dispersion of scanning microscope optics (including a Zeiss 40x/1.2 Apochromat objective) can be compensated by means of chirped mirrors over a bandwidth of 170 nm at 800 nm. The interferometric autocorrelation trace recorded at the focus of the microscope objective with a two-photon diode indicated a pulse duration of < 12 fs. The propagation time difference of the system can be minimized by proper choice of the components, enabling sub-12-fs pulse delivery with a completely filled 40x/0.8 Zeiss Achroplan water immersion objective.
Evaluation of variability in real-ear attenuation testing using a unique database—35 years of data from a single laboratory

The gold standard in measuring hearing protector attenuation since the late 1950s has been real-ear attenuation at threshold (REAT). Though well understood and standardized both in the U. S. (ANSI S3.19-1974 and ANSI S12.6-2008) and internationally (ISO 4869-1:1990), and known to provide valid and reliable estimates of protection for the test panel being evaluated, an area that is not clearly defined is the variability of the test measurements within a given laboratory. The test standards do provide estimates of uncertainty, both within and between laboratories, based on limited test data and interlaboratory studies, but thus far no published within-laboratory data over numerous tests and years have been available to provide empirical support for variability statements. This paper provides information from a one-of-a-kind database from a single laboratory that has conducted nearly 2500 studies over a period of 35 years in a single facility, managed by the same director (the lead author). Repeat test data .