Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Illicit Drugs by Direct Ablation of Solid Samples

Analysis of illicit drugs arises as an important field of work given the high social impacts presented by drugs in the modern society. Direct laser ablation of solid compounds allows their analysis without sampling or preparation procedures. For that purpose, an experimental set-up that combines laser ablation with time-of-flight mass spectrometry has been constructed very recently to perform studies on the mass spectra of such drugs as 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, commonly known as MDMA or ecstasy. Analysis of the observed fragmentation pattern in mass spectra may elucidate the ablation-induced photofragmentation phenomena produced, which differ from those previously observed with conventional ionization methods.
Ecosystemic Assessment of Surface Water Quality in the Virilla River: Towards Sanitation Processes in Costa Rica

Water quality information is essential supporting decision making in water management processes. The lack of information restricts, at some point, the implementation of adequate sanitation, which is still scarce in developing countries. In this study, an ecosystemic water quality assessment was conducted in the Virilla river in Costa Rica, in a section of particular interest for future sanitation development. It included the monitoring of physical, chemical, microbiological and benthic macroinvertebrate parameters from 2014 to 2016. Mutivariate statistics and water quality indexes were used for data interpretation. Results indicated that water quality decreased downstream towards more urbanised areas. Particularly, extreme values of phosphorous, nitrogen and E. coli were found. Sample sites were grouped in two clusters, which were consistent with land use. Benthic macroinverterbrates diversity was predominantly represented by Baetidae, Chironomidae, Leptohyphidae, Hydropsychidae, Simuliidae and Physidae. They were mostly influenced by water temperature, nitrite, ammonium, soluble reactive phosphorous, total solids, alkalinity, nitrate and total suspended solids. Three water quality indexes consistently showed the poor condition of the water body. The overall results indicate that the main sources of pollution in the river are likely to be wastewater discharges. Thus, special efforts should be undertaken regarding its regulation in the country.
A Semantic-based Personalized Retrieval System Using Individual Cognitive Structures

What you get is what you want”is undoubtedly an ideal objective of modern IR systems. Personalization is a kind of powerful mechanism to approach this objective. However, most current solutions for personalization focus on descriptions of user preferences from syntax level. In this paper, we propose a novel ICS (Individual Cognitive Structure)-based user’s personalization model and a semantic-based personalized information retrieval system by using ontology technologies. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our proposed model and system by comparisons of different approaches. Keyword Personalization, Individual Cognitive Structure, domain ontology, Information Retrieval.
THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS AND POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION SYMPTOMS AMONG ARAB‐BEDOUIN WOMEN IN SOUTHERN ISRAEL

Prevalence rates of postpartum depression (PPD) are 10 to 20% among various populations. Little is known about the characteristics of PPD among populations experiencing cultural transition. This study aimed to assess PPD symptoms (PPDS) prevalence and to identify risk factors unique to Arab‐Bedouin women in southern Israel.
Integration of Electric Vehicles in the Electric Power System

This paper presents a conceptual framework to successfully integrate electric vehicles into electric power systems. The proposed framework covers two different domains: the grid technical operation and the electricity markets environment. All the players involved in both these processes, as well as their activities, are described in detail. Additionally, several simulations are presented in order to illustrate the potential impacts/benefits arising from the electric vehicles grid integration under the referred framework, comprising steady-state and dynamic behavior analysis.
Impacts of ENSO on air‐sea oxygen exchange: Observations and mechanisms

Models and observations of atmospheric potential oxygen (APO ≃ O2 + 1.1 * CO2) are used to investigate the influence of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on air‐sea O2 exchange. An atmospheric transport inversion of APO data from the Scripps flask network shows significant interannual variability in tropical APO fluxes that is positively correlated with the Niño3. 4 index, indicating anomalous ocean outgassing of APO during El Niño. Hindcast simulations of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and the Institut Pierre‐Simon Laplace model show similar APO sensitivity to ENSO, differing from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory model, which shows an opposite APO response. In all models, O2 accounts for most APO flux variations. Detailed analysis in CESM shows that the O2 response is driven primarily by ENSO modulation of the source and rate of equatorial upwelling, which moderates the intensity of O2 uptake due to vertical transport of low‐O2 waters. These upwelling changes dominate over counteracting effects of biological productivity and thermally driven O2 exchange. During El Niño, shallower and weaker upwelling leads to anomalous O2 outgassing, whereas deeper and intensified upwelling during La Niña drives enhanced O2 uptake. This response is strongly localized along the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, leading to an equatorial zonal dipole in atmospheric anomalies of APO. This dipole is further intensified by ENSO‐related changes in winds, reconciling apparently conflicting APO observations in the tropical Pacific. These findings suggest a substantial and complex response of the oceanic O2 cycle to climate variability that is significantly (>50%) underestimated in magnitude by ocean models.
HABITAT HEALTH OF ILOILO RIVER - INSIGHTS FROM A STUDY ON BENTHIC COMMUNITY STRUCTURE

In west central Philippines, the monitoring of aquatic systems traditionally focused on dissolved oxygen values and biological oxygen demand, e.g. monitoring by the Environmental Monitoring Bureau around Panay Island. However, single or two factors are considered to be insufficient to assess habitat health precisely. In this paper, we investigated a benthic community and xamined their implications to habitat health of the Iloilo River. According to a prior benthic survey, warning signs pertaining to biotic, abiotic and community factors have been detected. The disturbed onditions in Iloilo River can be attributed to 3 factors; 1) its inherent topography, where bends serve as sinks for materials; 2) the lack of vigorous water exchange that promotes deposition and hinders complete flushing; and 3) the manner of utilization of the river by the local people. We thus concluded that: 1) monitoring for water parameters only is not enough to get a clear picture of habitat health; and 2) proposed that biotic components should be included for monitoring aquatic system.
Unifying Implicit and Explicit Feedback for Multi-Application User Interest Modeling

often interacts with multiple applications while working on a task. User models can be developed individually at each of the individual applications, but there is no easy way to come up with a more complete user model based on the distributed activity of the user. To address this issue, this research proposal studies the importance of combining various implicit and explicit relevance feedback indicators in a multi-application environment. It allows different applications used for different purposes by the user to contribute user activity and its context to mutually support users with unified relevance feedback. The novelty of this approach lies in the use of both implicit and explicit feedbacks to generate models of user interest and visualizations that direct user's attention to documents or documents components that match user's inferred interests. Often users move from one interest to another interest seamlessly while doing an information gathering task (21). This interest drift needs to be identified to discount the interest evidence obtained from user models that are no longer in use. From a high-level view, this research study emphasizes the exploitation of users' immediate and session-based context in multiple everyday applications. This proposal aims to explore an approach for this task using context from several everyday applications. A wide range of techniques have been applied to user interest modeling. Most systems examine the modeling problem in the context of use of a single application. This research proposal presents a multi-application modeling technique that combines implicit and semi-explicit feedback across multiple everyday applications. In the long run, this research study explores the value of feedback based on activity in content consumption and production applications for identifying relevant content.
Dynamic base-age invariant site index models for Scotch pine (Pinus silvestris L.) in Kastamonu Forest Regional Directorate

The precise predictions of forest site quality is important for operative forest management and essential for stratifying forest areas into productive classes, e.g. site classes. The estimations of site quality are significant input variable for forest growth and yield models. Many methods have been developed for estimating site index and constructing site index curves, Clutter et al. (1983) described three general methods having special importance in forest literature; (1) the guide curve method, (2) the parameter prediction method and (3) the difference equation methods. Cieszewski and Bailey (2000) introduced ‘the Generalized Algebraic Difference Approach (GADA)’, a generalization of the ADA. The generalized algebraic difference approach (GADA) can produce base-age invariant models with variable asymptotes, which are capable of describing a polymorphic family of growth curves. The dynamic site index models derived by GADA have shown better and more successful properties than the fixed base-age site index models in many studies. In this study, Data from stem analysis of 50 dominant trees were used to evaluate dynamic base-age invariant site index models derived from Bertalanffy-Richards and Hosfeld with Generalized Algebraic Difference Approach for Scotch pine ( Pinus silvestris L . ) stands located in Kastamonu Forest Regional Directorate. The site index model based on Bertalanffy-Richards produced the coefficient of determination with 0.90 and RMSE with 2.2949. The site index model based on Hosfeld produced the coefficient of determination with 0.89 and RMSE with 2.3854. These dynamic polymorphic site index models with multiple asymptotes are more successful in fulfilling all of desirable properties of height growth pattern than either anamorphic or single polymorphic models. Therefore, the new dynamic base-age invariant site index models developed based on GADA methodology can be recommended for dominant height prediction and forest site quality evaluations in these scotch pine stands.
OMCSNet: A Commonsense Inference Toolkit

Imparting commonsense knowledge to computers enables a new class of intelligent applications better equipped to make sense of the everyday world and assist people with everyday tasks. While previous attempts have been made to acquire and structure commonsense knowledge, they have either been inadequate in capturing the breadth of knowledge needed for the enterprise, or their complicated representation schemes have made them difficult to incorporate into applications. In this paper we describe OMCSNet, a freely available commonsense knowledge base that at once possesses great breadth of knowledge and that can be easily incorporated into applications. Built from the Open Mind Common Sense corpus, which acquires commonsense knowledge from a web-based community of instructors, OMCSNet is a semantic network of 280,000 items of commonsense knowledge, and a set of tools for making inferences using this knowledge. We describe the structure and contents of OMCSNet and its associated inference toolkit, review applications that have incorporated it, and evaluate and analyze this resource.
Monitoring Dressing Activity Failures through RFID and Video

Summary Background: Monitoring and evaluation of Activities of Daily Living in general, and dressing activity in particular, is an important indicator in the evaluation of the overall cognitive state of patients. In addition, the effectiveness of therapy in patients with motor impairments caused by a stroke, for example, can be measured through long-term monitoring of dressing activity. However, automatic monitoring of dressing activity has not received significant attention in the current literature. Objectives: Considering the importance of monitoring dressing activity, the main goal of this work was to investigate the possibility of recognizing dressing activities and automatically identifying common failures exhibited by patients suffering from motor or cognitive impairments. Methods: The system developed for this purpose comprised analysis of RFID (radio frequency identification) tracking and computer vision processing. Eleven test subjects, not connected to the research, were recruited and asked to perform the dressing task by choosing any combination of clothes without further assistance. Initially the test subjects performed correct dressing and then they were free to choose from a set of dressing failures identified from the current research literature. Results: The developed system was capable of automatically recognizing common dressing failures. In total, there were four dressing failures observed for upper garments and three failures for lower garments, in addition to recognizing successful dressing. The recognition rate for identified dressing failures was between 80% and 100%. Conclusions: We developed a robust system to monitor the dressing activity. Given the importance of monitoring the dressing activity as an indicator of both cognitive and motor skills the system allows for the possibility of long term tracking and continuous evaluation of the dressing task. Long term monitoring can be used in rehabilitation and cognitive skills evaluation.
Automatic 3D Facial Expression Recognition Based on a Bayesian Belief Net and a Statistical Facial Feature Model

Automatic facial expression recognition on 3D face data is still a challenging problem. In this paper we propose a novel approach to perform expression recognition automatically and flexibly by combining a Bayesian Belief Net (BBN) and Statistical facial feature models (SFAM). A novel BBN is designed for the specific problem with our proposed parameter computing method. By learning global variations in face landmark configuration (morphology) and local ones in terms of texture and shape around landmarks, morphable Statistic Facial feature Model (SFAM) allows not only to perform an automatic landmarking but also to compute the belief to feed the BBN. Tested on the public 3D face expression database BU-3DFE, our automatic approach allows to recognize expressions successfully, reaching an average recognition rate over 82%.
Are different Martian gully morphologies due to different processes on the Kaiser dune field?

Abstract We describe and compare the morphology and activity of two types of gullies with different orientations collocated on the Kaiser dune field in the southern hemisphere of Mars: large apron gullies and linear dune gullies. The activity of large apron gullies follows an annual cycle: (i) material collapse into the alcove (mid-autumn/late winter) as CO2 condenses; (ii) remobilization by mass flows (late winter); and (iii) continuous appearance of hundreds of ‘digitate flows’ on the fan (autumn/winter). We find that large apron gullies could form in hundreds of Martian years. In contrast, linear dune gullies are active briefly in late winter, when the CO2 frost disappears. Their activity is characterized by the extension of channels, the creation of pits and the darkening of the surface. Linear dune gullies are likely to form within one to tens of Martian years. We infer that insolation, which influences the depth to ground ice and the amount of volatile deposited, may be the factor differentiating large apron gullies and linear dune gullies. Sediment transport by CO2 sublimation is a good candidate for the activity observed in all of these features. However, linear gullies could also be formed by brine release when the temperature rises abruptly after the removal of the CO2 ice.
Grouping, pooling, and when bigger is better in visual crowding.

In crowding, perception of a target is strongly deteriorated by nearby elements. Crowding is often explained by pooling models predicting that adding flankers increases crowding. In contrast, the centroid hypothesis proposes that adding flankers decreases crowding--"bigger is better. " In foveal vision, we have recently shown that adding flankers can increase or decrease crowding depending on whether the target groups or ungroups from the flankers. We have further shown how configural effects, such as good and global Gestalt, determine crowding. Foveal and peripheral crowding do not always reveal the same characteristics. Here, we show that the very same grouping and Gestalt results of foveal vision are also found in the periphery. These results can neither be explained by simple pooling nor by centroid models. We discuss when bigger is better and how grouping might shape crowding.
Spaceborne sar imaging of coastal ocean phenomena

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) observes the large-scale ocean surface wind field. With SAR instruments, we can actively monitor phenomena in the coastal ocean and marine atmospheric boundary layer at very high spatial resolution (on the order of tens of meters) in all weather conditions day and night. SAR observations are particularly useful in coastal regions where clouds are usually present, causing observation problems for visible and infrared sensors. SAR sensors onboard the RADARSAT-1/2, ENVISAT, ALOS, and other satellites can provide swath coverage of about 100 to 450 km, wide enough to cover oceanic and atmospheric meso-scale features. SAR has long been used to monitor the ocean surface wind field, vessel locations, oil spills, sea state, and sea ice at NOAA. In this paper, we present several case studies.
The importance of explicit chain representation in protein folding models: An examination of ising‐like models

A class of models that represents a protein chain as a sequence of “folded” and “unfolded” residues has recently been used to correlate rates and mechanisms of protein folding with the protein native structure. In order to better understand the conditions under which these “Ising‐like” models apply, we compare results from this model to those obtained from an off‐lattice model which uses the same potential function. We find that Ising‐like models by construction impose folding via a highly sequential nucleation‐condensation mechanism, which in turn leads to more rugged energy landscapes, fewer “pathways” to the native state, and in the specific case examined here, the cold shock protein A from Escherichia coli, a qualitative difference in the most likely order of events in folding. Proteins 2003;53:740–747. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Distribution of Path Durations in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks and Path Selection

We investigate the issue of path selection in multihop wireless networks with the goal of identifying a scheme that can select a path with the largest expected duration. To this end, we first study the distribution of path duration. We show that, under a set of mild conditions, when the hop count along a path is large, the distribution of path duration can be well approximated by an exponential distribution even when the distributions of link durations are dependent and heterogeneous. Second, we investigate the statistical relation between a path duration and the durations of the links along the path. We prove that the parameter of the exponential distribution, which determines the expected duration of the path, is related to the link durations only through their means and is given by the sum of the inverses of the expected link durations. Based on our analytical results, we propose a scheme that can be implemented with existing routing protocols and select the paths with the largest expected durations. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme using ns-2 simulation.
A complex mechatronic system: from design to application

Progress in mobile robotics requires the researchers to access and improve all modules that compose the robot, from low-level mechanical components to high-level reasoning systems. The paper presents the development process of the robots built at the Autonomous Systems Lab, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland. Starting from the mechanical and electrical design up to the application, we show the challenges that needed to be faced as well as the solutions that have been devised. The description covers aspects like the operating system and framework, because of its role in the overall safety and dependability of the whole software system, the research as a precondition for innovative products, and the man-machine interface, which is indispensable for conveying information to the user as well as allowing the user to interact with the robot. The issues that have been faced stem from the hierarchical, layered construction of a complex mechatronic product, where the operation of the machine depends on the smooth cooperation of each layer. In the same way, the overall safety is undermined by the least reliable piece building the system.
Dual effect of Mesorhizobium loti T3SS functionality on the symbiotic process.

Mesorhizobium loti MAFF303099 has a functional type III secretory system (T3SS) involved in the nodulation process on Lotus tenuis and Lotus japonicus. Four putative M. loti T3SS effectors (Mlr6358, Mlr6331, Mlr6361, and Mlr6316) have been previously described, and it has been demonstrated that the N-terminal regions of Mlr6361 and Mlr6358 mediate the secretion via a T3SS. Here, we demonstrate the capacity of Mlr6316 and Mlr6331 N-terminal regions to direct the secretion of a translational fusion to a reporter peptide through T3SS. By using single, double, and triple mutants, we demonstrated the positive and negative participation of some of these proteins in the determination of competitiveness on Lotus spp. Low competitiveness values correlated with low nodulation efficiency for a mutant deficient in three of the putative M. loti effectors. Our data suggest that the net effect of M. loti T3SS function on symbiotic process with Lotus results from a balance between positive and negative effects.