Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emerging Technologies in Requirements Elicitation Interview Training: Robotic and Virtual Tutors

[Context] Requirements elicitation interviews are the most widely used elicitation technique. The interviewer’s preparedness and communication skills play an important role in the quality of interaction, therefore, the interview’s success. Students can develop their skills through practice interviews. [Problem] Arranging practice interviews for many students is not scalable, as the involvement of a stakeholder in each interview requires a lot of time and eﬀort. [Principal Idea] To address this problem, we propose REIT , an extensible architecture for Requirements Elicitation Interview Trainer system based on emerging technologies for education. It has two separate phases. The ﬁrst is the interview phase, where the student acts as an interviewer and the system as an interviewee. The second is the feedback phase, where the system evaluates the student’s performance and provides contextual and behavioral feedback to enhance their interviewing skills. [Results/Contribution] We demonstrate the applicability of REIT by implementing two instances: RoREIT with an embodied physical robotic agent and VoREIT with a virtual voice-only agent. We empirically evaluated these two instances with a target user group consisting of graduate students. The results reveal that the students appreciated both systems. The participants demonstrated higher learning gain when trained with RoREIT , but they found VoREIT more engaging and easier to use. These ﬁndings indicate that each system has its distinct beneﬁts and drawbacks, suggesting that our generic architecture REIT can be conﬁgured for various educational settings based on preferences and available resources.
Winter climate and atmospheric circulation patterns in the Sonoran desert region, USA

The goal of this research is to identify key features of atmospheric circulation that influence winter climate variability in the Sonoran Desert region, and to determine how much variability in climate can be explained by these features. The relationship between winter climate and atmospheric circulation is investigated through the use of circulation indices, which describe the principal features of circulation patterns. A set of six circulation indices was used. Existing indices used include the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and a sea-surface temperature index (SST) from the equatorial Pacific. Derived indices include a modified Pacific North American (PNA) index, a cyclone frequency index, a south-western trough index, and a Pacific-high–south-western low index. Winter climate is described in terms of numbers of rainy days and average maximum temperatures at a network of 40 to 50 climate stations across southern California, Arizona, and western New Mexico. A rotated principal components analysis on the six indices yielded a component containing SOI, SST, and PNA indices and a component containing the cyclone frequency, south-western trough, and Pacific-high– south-western low indices. These two components appear to be defining two types of circulation mechanisms influential to climate; an El Nino– Southern Oscillation and PNA mechanism, and a South-western Low mechanism, although it is likely that the two are not independent. The two components explained up to 63 per cent of the variation in numbers of rainy days and up to 82 per cent of the variation in maximum winter temperatures. These results suggest that there are two main circulation features that influence climate variation in this area, and have important implications for how changes in global- to hemispheric-scale circulation features may influence climate in the Sonoran Desert region. © 1997 by the Royal Meteorological Society. Int. J. Climatol. , 17: 859–873 (1997) (No. of Figures: 7. No. of Tables: 4. No. of References: 23.)
Metal Accumulation, Blood δ-Aminolevulinic Acid Dehydratase Activity and Micronucleated Erythrocytes of Feral pigeons (Columba Livia) Living Near Former Lead-Zinc Smelter " Trepça" - Kosovo

The concentration of lead in blood and tibia (Pb), zinc (Zn) and cupper (Cu) in tibia, blood δ - aminolevulinic acid dehydratase (ALA-D; EC: 4.2.1.24) activity, hematocrit value (Hct) and micronuclei frequency (MN) of peripheral erythrocytes have been determinated in three different populations of feral pigeons (Columba livia; forma urbana and forma domestica), collected in Mitrovica town (situated close to smelter "Trepca", down closed in 2000 year ) and in rural area (Koshare willage ) . The blood lead level in feral pigeons from Mitrovica (forma urbana) was 3 times higher (149.6; 50.5 µg%) in comparison with that in feral pigeons from Mitrovica (forma domestica) and 27.7 times higher (5.4 µg% in comparison with pigeons from rural area. The Pb concentration of tibia of feral pigeons (froma urbana and forma domestica), from Mitrovica town was significantly higher (P<0.001) in comparison with control. The concentration of Zn in tibia of feral pigeons from Mitrovica town (forma urbana), was significantly higher (P<0.006) in comparison with control. The blood ALA-D activity of feral pigeons from Mitrovica town (forma urbana and froma domestica), was significantly inhibited in comparison with control. The blood ALA-D activity of feral pigeons -forma urbana from Mitrovica town was significantly inhibited (P<0.001) in comparison with the blood ALA-D activity of feral pigeons-forma domestica from Mitrovica town. The erythrocyte MN frequency of feral pigeons from Mitrovica was significantly higher (P <0.001) in comparison with controls. The smelter "Trepca" ten year after closed down pose a threat to the local environment, biota and people's health.
Strong Security for Network-Attached Storage

We have developed a scheme to secure network-attached storage systems against many types of attacks. Our system uses strong cryptography to hide data from unauthorized users; someone gaining complete access to a disk cannot obtain any useful data from the system, and backups can be done without allowing the super-user access to cleartext. While insider denial-of-service attacks cannot be prevented (an insider can physically destroy the storage devices), our system detects attempts to forge data. The system was developed using a raw disk, and can be integrated into common file systems. All of this security can be achieved with little penalty to performance. Our experiments show that, using a relatively inexpensive commodity CPU attached to a disk, our system can store and retrieve data with virtually no penalty for random disk requests and only a 15-20% performance loss over raw transfer rates for sequential disk requests. With such a minor performance penalty, there is no longer any reason not to include strong encryption and authentication in network file systems.
South Asian Integration: Prospects and Lessons from East Asia

In the context of the low levels of regional cooperation among South Asian countries when compared with the successful results from cooperation in East Asia (consisting of South East and East Asian countries), the objective of this paper is first to assess the prospects of cooperation among South Asian economies and then to draw lessons from East Asian regional experiments for South Asian regionalism for the betterment of these prospects. The main argument of the paper is that South Asia should adopt a twin-track approach: better integration within itself and better integration with rest of the world particularly East Asia. Both tracks would complement and supplement each other ensuring a greater chance of success.
Sea surface velocities from sea surface temperature image sequences: 2. Application to the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence area

An inverse variational model is applied to four exceptionally cloud-free sea surface temperature image sequences of the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence area for the purpose of estimating sea surface velocity fields. The velocity fields are constructed by minimizing a mixed layer integrated form of the heat balance equation while the horizontal divergence and vorticity of the flow field are controlled. The source terms involved in the heat balance are determined by fitting a polynomial to diurnal temperature variations as a function of temperature and longitude. A sensitivity study of the solution to perturbations of the weights imposed to the constraints on divergence and vorticity as well as of the representation of the source terms yields error fields associated with the velocity. A comparison of the estimated velocity fields with available concomitant in situ velocity measurements shows that the fields are realistic. Errors are of the order of 15–20% in magnitude and 20°–25° in direction. These errors fall within the error bars of 25–30% in magnitude and of 30°–35° in direction, except for the summer image series. Surface velocities of 0.5–0.6 m s−1 are obtained across the Malvinas Current. They are > 1 m s−1 in the frontal region, in the Brazil Current overshoot, and in warm and cold core rings and vary between 0.3 and 0.8 m s−1 in the Brazil Current. With some hypotheses on the vertical shear of the horizontal flow the transport of the Malvinas Current is estimated to be 25±5 Sv between 41° and 40°S.
Impact of the Minoan tsunami of Santorini: Simulated scenarios in the eastern Mediterranean

We have simulated the impact of the tsunami generated by the Late Bronze Age (LBA) volcanic eruption of Santorini on the Eastern Mediterranean. Two different tsunami triggering mechanisms were considered: a caldera collapse and pyroclastic flows/surges entering the sea. Simulations include the “worst” input conditions in order to evaluate the maximum possible impacts, but also “lighter” input conditions, compatible with the lack of any tsunami trace on the Northern coasts of Crete. In all the simulations, tsunami propagation is mainly confined to the Southern Aegean. Outside the Aegean, the tsunami impact was negligible and not responsible for the slide‐slumping of fine‐grained pelagic and/or hemipelagic sediments considered the sources of the sporadically located sea‐deposits in the Ionian Sea and of the widespread megaturbidite deposits localized in the Ionian and Sirte Abyssal Plains.
Change in mass balance of polar ice sheets and sea level from high-resolution GCM simulations of greenhouse warming

Abstract For projecting future sea level, the mass-balance changes on Greenland and Antarctica are considered to be crucial. Promising tools for such estimates are general circulation models (GCM). Until recently, a major impediment was their coarse grid resolution (3°-6°) causing substantial uncertainties in the mass-balance calculations of the poorly resolved ice sheets. The present study is based on a new climate-change experiment of the highest resolution currently feasible (1.1 °) performed with the ECHAM4 T106 GCM, thereby increasing confidence in the projected mass-balance and sea-level changes. This new experiment, with doubled CO2 concentration, suggests that the mass gain in Antarctica due to increased accumulation exceeds the melt-induced mass loss in Greenland by a factor of three. The resulting mass-balance change on both ice sheets is equivalent to a net sea-level decrease of 0.6 mm a"1 under doubled CO2 conditions. This may compensate for a significant portion of the melt-induced sea-level rise from the smaller glaciers and ice caps, thus leaving thermal expansion as the dominant factor for sea-level rise over the next decades. This compensating effect, however, no longer applies should atmospheric CO2 concentration reach levels well above "doubled the present value". On the contrary, under these conditions, the greenhouse warming would become large enough to induce substantial melting also on the Antarctic ice sheet, thereby significantly accelerating global sea-level rise.
Mushrooms from two metal-contaminated areas in Norway: occurrence of metals and metallothionein-like proteins

This study tested the hypothesis that concentrations of metallothionein-like (MT-like) proteins in fruiting bodies of wild-growing macrofungi reflect exposure to the metals Cd, Cu and Zn. Screening for these proteins was done by taking 44 samples of seven species of macrofungi from two metal-polluted areas in Norway, namely Odda and Sulitjelma. Concentrations of Cd, Cu and Zn were measured in fruiting bodies and topsoil, the highest of which were observed in fruiting bodies – 126 μg g−1 for Cd, 427 μg g−1 for Cu and 396 μg g−1 for Zn. A large intra- and inter-specific heterogeneity in metal uptake was displayed between fruiting bodies from the same soils. Cd,Zn–MT-like proteins were detected in all samples, except one stipe of Boletus edulis, whereas only 72% of the samples contained detectable levels of Cu–MT-like proteins. However, concentrations of MT-like proteins did not reflect variations in metal concentrations. Low content of cysteine in Cd-binding protein fractions from Amanita muscaria collected in Odda indicates that no proteins of the metallothionein family were present in this species. Onthe contrary, these protein fractions share several characteristics with cadmium–mycophosphatins.
Unconventional resource evaluation and applied geophysics utilising LMR

Over the last decade the oil and gas industry has delivered conceptual and technical changes that have entirely changed the fundamentals of natural gas supply in North America. Underpinning the step change in natural gas reserves and market ready supplies has been the change in the perception of fine-grained, organic rich rocks (i.e. shales - although of course not all shales are organic rich). No longer are such rocks viewed only as source and seal candidates, but also as source rock reservoirs or shale gas plays. Although the geological continuity of shale gas plays have led to the production-line style operations seen across North America in mature unconventional plays, it is not “factory-style” efficiency improvements in isolation that allow the economic exploitation of shale gas. The large number of fit-for-purpose technologies, introduced by operators and service companies, has been critical in increasing production while keeping costs flat and/or reducing costs and time to production. 3D seismic data play a key role in unconventional developments as a unique look-ahead dataset. The role of seismic, however, has evolved to be far more than simply a tool for mapping major structures. For example, through AVO inversion we are able to make predictions regarding elastic properties of the formations of interest. The integration of AVO inversion data with engineering and rock physics data is providing new avenues of data exploitation. Seismic data are also being used to predict closure stress and stress anisotropy, which can be calibrated with data and analysis from hydraulic fracturing. Additionally, the integration of surface seismic data with microseismic provides a means of fine-tuning the estimation of stimulated rock volume.
Removing the fat from your posterior samples with margarine

Bayesian workﬂows often require the introduction of nuisance parameters, yet for core science modelling one needs access to a marginal posterior density. In this work, we use masked autoregressive ﬂows and kernel density estimators to encapsulate the marginal posterior, allowing us to compute marginal Kullback– Leibler divergences and marginal Bayesian model dimensionalities in addition to generating samples and computing marginal log probabilities. We demonstrate this in application to topical cosmological examples of the Dark Energy Survey, and global 21-cm signal experiments. In addition to the computation of marginal Bayesian statistics, this work is important for further applications in Bayesian experimental design, complex prior modelling and likelihood emulation. This technique is made publicly available in the pip-installable code MARGARINE .
Low-Temperature Alteration at the World-Class LaRonde Penna Archean Au-Rich Volcanogenic Massive Sulfide Deposit, Abitibi Subprovince, Quebec, Canada: Evidence from Whole-Rock Oxygen Isotopes

The oxygen isotope composition of 169 whole-rock samples from the world-class LaRonde Penna Au-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit range from 6.5 to 22.0‰. Fractional crystallization from basalt to rhyolite accounts for a variation of approximately 2‰ in primary whole-rock δ 18O values. The remaining variance in whole-rock δ 18O values found at LaRonde Penna must therefore be ascribed to water-rock exchange with hydrothermal fluids. The metamorphosed, hydrothermally altered host rocks have been subdivided according to mineralogical assemblages, which display weak covariance with δ 18O values and whole-rock geochemical alteration indices. Water-rock equilibrium exchange models indicate that the high δ 18O values that characterize the LaRonde Penna deposit are compatible with low-temperature (~150oC) hydrothermal alteration at high water-rock oxygen atomic ratios (1–50). Zones of lower δ 18O values stratigraphically beneath the principal ore lens (20 North) indicate local zones of higher temperature hydrothermal alteration. The oxygen isotope composition of the hydrothermal fluid is estimated to have been ~5‰, as a consequence of mixing between seawater ( δ 18O ~0‰) and a component of magmatic water degassed from the volcanic and intrusive rocks associated with the LaRonde Penna deposit.
A review of terrestrial radar interferometry for measuring surface change in the geosciences

This paper presents a review of the current state of the art in the use of terrestrial radar interferometry for the detection of surface changes related to mass movement. Different hardware‐types and acquisition concepts are described, which use either real or synthetic aperture for radar image formation. We present approaches for data processing procedures, paying special attention to the separation of high resolution displacement information from atmospheric phase variations. Recent case studies are used to illustrate applications in terrestrial radar interferometry for change detection. Applications range from detection and quantification of very slow moving (millimeters to centimeters per year) displacements in rock walls from repeat monitoring, to rapid processes resulting in fast displacements (~50 m/yr) acquired during single measurement campaigns with durations of only a few hours. Fast and episodic acting processes such as rockfall and snow avalanches can be assessed qualitatively in the spatial domain by mapping decorrelation caused by those processes. A concluding guide to best practice outlines the necessary preconditions that have to be fulfilled for successful application of the technique, as well as in areas characterized by rapid decorrelation. Empirical data from a Ku‐band sensor show the range of temporal decorrelation of different surfaces after more than two years for rock‐surfaces and after a few seconds to minutes in vegetated areas during windy conditions. The examples show that the displacement field can be measured for landslides in dense grassland, ice surfaces on flowing glaciers and snowpack creep. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Rethinking the Encoding of Satellite Image Time Series

Representation learning of Satellite Image Time Series (SITS) presents its unique challenges, such as prohibitive computation burden caused by high spatio-temporal resolutions, irregular acquisition times, and complex spatio-temporal interactions, leading to highly-specialized neural network architectures for SITS analysis. Despite the promising re-sults achieved by some pioneering work, we argue that satisfactory representation learning paradigms have not yet been established for SITS analysis, causing an isolated island where transferring successful paradigms or latest advances from Computer Vision (CV) to SITS is arduous. In this paper, we develop a unique perspective of SITS processing as a direct set prediction problem, inspired by the recent trend in adopting query-based transformer decoders to streamline the object detection or image segmentation pipeline, and further propose to decompose the representation learning process of SITS into three explicit steps: collect
Market Dominance as a Precursor of a Firm's Failure: Emerging Technologies and the Competitive Advantage of New Entrants

New entrants in many industries are able to challenge the business of historically dominant firms. In many markets, dominant players have pursued pricing and service policies that, although once highly effective, now make their markets attractive targets for aggressive new entrants. The entrants' strategies rely on lower overhead costs, new technologies, alternative distribution channels, and the active targeting of profitable customers. Several factors will make it possible for entrants to attack dominant players; simplistic historical pricing mistakes or policies of promising or providing universal service will make it attractive for new entrants to attack. Restrictions on the flexibility of incumbents--both externally and internally imposed--may make it difficult for dominant players to defend themselves effectively against attack by more flexible entrants with cream-skimming strategies and newer technology. We develop a set of alternatives for incumbent firms facing increasing "contestability" in their markets and the threat of agile entrants.
Mechanisms for the variability of dense water pathways in the Nordic Seas

[1] Interannual changes in simulated flow fields of the Nordic Seas are analyzed with respect to their dynamic causes and consequences regarding the flow of dense water from the Nordic Seas into the subpolar North Atlantic across the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland Ridge. The simple case of pure density-driven outflow with closed northern boundaries shows that dense water mainly originates in the northern Lofoten Basin and flows southward in three branches, namely along the Norwegian continental slope, along the Mohn and Jan Mayen Ridges, and a weak current along the east Greenland continental slope. Adding variable exchange through Fram Strait shows a strengthening of the most western branch and strong recirculations that may reverse the other two branches. For this case, we find in-phase modulation of the Denmark Strait overflow (DSO) by a changing Fram Strait supply and a Faroe-Shetland transport that is in opposite phase. The scaling of this relation provides a potential explanation of recently observed DSO changes. However, details of the changes in the simulated pathways suggest, in accord with the size of the prescribed varying Fram Strait supply, basin-wide wind stress curl and local convection, which feeds water from different source regions into the outflow pathways, as the primary cause for the upstream flow field reorganizations.
Debris Flow on Prismatic Open Channel

Reviews on the yield strength and viscosity of the interstitial clay slurry in debris flow prove that ordinary debris flow may be modeled as a dilatant fluid in which the intergranular forces dominate. Theoretical velocity distributions in dilatant fluid compare well with the experimental results when the value of a numerical constant is appropriately selected. The longitudinal profile of the lobate snout is satisfactorily analyzed by applying the theory of one-dimensional translation wave on an open channel, where the resistance coefficient is a function of concentration, depth, and grain diameter. A remarkable segregation of particles, in which the larger ones move upwards, occurs in debris flow due to the effects of collisions of particles. The accumulation of boulders in the front part of debris flow is a result of the faster transportation of the larger particles in the upper layer of the flow than that of the smaller ones in the lower layer.