Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cultivation of Naked Barley by Early Iron Age Agro-pastoralists in Xinjiang, China

ABSTRACT We report an archaeobotanical analysis of flotation samples taken from Shirenzigou, an Early Iron Age agro-pastoralist site dated between the fourth and first century BC, located on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, China. The charred macro-botanical assemblage is dominated by naked barley grains with a few broomcorn and foxtail millet grains. In the context of Trans-Eurasian exchange of cereal crops, southwest Asian crops (wheat and barley) and two Asian millets (broomcorn and foxtail) were introduced to Xinjiang a few centuries to a millennium before Shirenzigou was occupied. The choice of barley cultivation in preference to wheat and millet may have been possibly driven by the relatively extreme local environment and the scheduling requirements of mobile pastoralism. Barley is well suited to this environment, and the choice of naked barley in preference to hulled barley may have been driven by the whole grain tradition prevailing in East Asia.
L-Band Radiometer Observations of Soil Processes in Boreal and Subarctic Environments

The launch of the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission in November 2009 opened a new era of global passive monitoring at L-band (1.4-GHz band reserved for radio astronomy). The main objective of the mission is to measure soil moisture and sea surface salinity; the sole payload is the Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis. As part of comprehensive calibration and validation activities, several ground-based L-band radiometers, so-called ETH L-Band radiometers for soil moisture research (ELBARA-II), have been deployed. In this paper, we analyze a comprehensive set of measurements from one ELBARA-II deployment site in the northern boreal forest zone. The focus of this paper is in the detection of the evolution of soil frost (a relevant topic, e.g., for the study of carbon and methane cycles at high latitudes). We investigate the effects that soil freeze/thaw processes have on the L-band signature and present a simple modeling approach to analyze the relation between frost depth and the observed brightness temperature. Airborne observations are used to expand the analysis for different land cover types. Finally, the first SMOS observations from the same period are analyzed. Results show that soil freezing and thawing processes have an observable effect on the L-band signature of soil. Furthermore, the presented emission model is able to relate the observed dynamics in brightness temperature to the increase of soil frost.
Large data methods for multimedia

This tutorial describes techniques essential for searching the large multimedia databases that are now common on the Internet. There are up to 10 million songs in commercial music catalogues and over 300 million images stored in online photo services such as Flickr. How can we find the music, videos or images we want? How can we organize such large collections: find duplicates, create links between similar documents, extract and annotate semantic structures from complex audiovisual documents? Conventional methods for handling large data sets, such as hashing, get us part of the way, but those methods may not straightforwardly be used for similarity-based matching and retrieval in audiovisual document collections. On the other hand, several elaborate methods from multimedia retrieval are available for semantic document analysis. Unfortunately, those methods generally do not scale for large data sets. Instead, new classes of algorithms combining the best of the two worlds of large data methods and semantic analysis are needed to handle large multimedia databases. Innovative methods such as locality sensitive hashing, which are based on randomized probes, are the new workhorses. This tutorial covers methods for multimedia retrieval on large document collections. Starting with audio retrieval, we describe both the theory (i.e., randomized algorithms for hashing) and the implementation details (how do you store hash values for millions of songs? ). A special focus is on how to combine large data methods with semantically meaningful descriptors in order to facilitate efficient similarity-based retrieval. Besides audio, the tutorial also covers image, 3d motion and video retrieval.
Incremental imitation learning of context-dependent motor skills

Teaching motor skills to robots through human demonstrations, an approach called “imitation learning”, is an alternative to hand coding each new robot behavior. Imitation learning is relatively cheap in terms of time and labor and is a promising route to give robots the necessary functionalities for a widespread use in households, stores, hospitals, etc. However, current imitation learning techniques struggle with a number of challenges that prevent their wide usability. For instance, robots might not be able to accurately reproduce every human demonstration and it is not always clear how robots should generalize a movement to new contexts. This paper addresses those challenges by presenting a method to incrementally teach context-dependent motor skills to robots. The human demonstrates trajectories for different contexts by moving the links of the robot and partially or fully refines those trajectories by disturbing the movements of the robot while it executes the behavior it has learned so far. A joint probability distribution over trajectories and contexts can then be built based on those demonstrations and refinements. Given a new context, the robot computes the most probable trajectory, which can also be refined by the human. The joint probability distribution is incrementally updated with the refined trajectories. We have evaluated our method with experiments in which an elastically actuated robot arm with four degrees of freedom learns how to reach a ball at different positions.
Revised birth and fertility rates for the 1990s and new rates for Hispanic populations, 2000 and 2001: United States.

OBJECTIVES This report presents revised birth and fertility rates for 1991-99, as well as previously published revised rates for 2000-2001, based on populations consistent with the April 1, 2000, census. Revised rates for Hispanic subgroups (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Hispanic) are also included in this report. Rates are presented by age, race, and Hispanic origin of mother; by age, race, Hispanic origin, and marital status of mother; by age and race of father; and by age of mother and by State. This report also presents new rates by age and Hispanic origin (subgroups) of mother for 2000 and 2001. The revised rates are compared with previously published rates that used July 1 population estimates based on the 1990 census. METHODS Populations for most rates were produced for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) under a collaborative arrangement with the U.S. Census Bureau. Populations for teenage subgroups 15-17 and 18-19 years by race and Hispanic subgroups were produced by NCHS. The populations reflect the results of the 2000 census. This census allowed people to report more than one race for themselves and their household members, and also separated the category for Asian or Pacific Islander persons into two groups (Asian and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander). These changes reflected the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) 1997 revisions to the standards for the classification of Federal data on race and ethnicity. Because only one race is currently reported in birth certificate data, the 2000 census populations were "bridged" to the single race categories specified in OMB's 1977 guidelines for race and ethnic statistics in Federal reporting, which are still in use in the collection of vital statistics data. RESULTS Revised population-based birth and fertility rates from 1991 to 1999, based on the 2000 census, are with few exceptions lower than the rates previously published based on populations projected from the 1990 census. As expected, the differences in rates for American Indians, Hispanics, and Asian or Pacific Islanders were considerable. However, revised rates for most other population subgroups (i.e., non-Hispanic whites and blacks) differed little from those previously published. Regardless of the magnitude, the differences between the 2000-based and 1990-based rates progressively diverged through time so that previously published trends were generally retained but lower. Because of this shift, especially for Hispanic women, the differentials in fertility among population subgroups remain, but were somewhat reduced.
Experimental Aspects of Synthesis

We discuss the problem of experimentally evaluating linear-time temporal logic (LTL) synthesis tools for reactive systems. We first survey previous such work for t he currently publicly available synthesis tools, and then draw conclusions by deriving useful schemes for future such evaluations. In particular, we explain why previous tools have incompatible scopes and semantics and provide a framework that reduces the impact of this problem for future experimental comparisons of such tools. Furthermore, we discuss which difficulties the compl ex workflows that begin to appear in modern synthesis tools induce on experimental evaluations and give answers to the question how convincing such evaluations can still be performed in such a setting.
The effect of chromium on the weldability and microstructure of Fe-Cr-Al weld cladding

Iron-aluminum-based weld cladding is currently being considered as corrosion-resistant coatings for boiler tubes in coal-fired power plants. Although these alloys could potentially be good coating candidates due to their excellent high-temperature corrosion resistance, Fe-Al weld cladding is susceptible to cracking due to hydrogen embrittlement at elevated aluminum concentrations. Additions of chromium to these iron-aluminum alloys have been shown to improve the corrosion resistance of the alloys and could potentially increase the lifetimes of the coatings. The current study investigated the effect of chromium on the hydrogen cracking susceptibility of Fe-Al weld cladding.
Topic oriented semantic parsing

Semantic parsing is still a challenging problem for open domain question answering. In semantic parsing, questions are mapped with their meaning representations. These representations are matched with feasible answers in knowledge bases. In Knowledge bases (e.g. Freebase), knowledge is stored in the form of Topics. For a successful answer extraction from Freebase, it is required to correctly identify the Topic node (or Topic word) of the question and retrieve every type and property associated with this Topic node. In this paper, a Topic Node Identification (TNI) algorithm is proposed for correctly identifying question Topic and Domain Word Identification (DWI) algorithm is proposed for correctly identifying domain of the Topic node. After domain identification the Topic node is further expanded for its all types and properties. Out of all types identified, one of the type and associated property is likely to be an answer of the question. TWI and DWI algorithms use techniques i.e. proposed rulebased and machine learning approach with the help of question dependency parser. Results of proposed approach outperform state of art approaches.
Orthorhombic Titanium Aluminides: Phases, Phase Transformations and Microstructure Evolution

Abstract The development of light weight high temperature materials with high strength and high creep resistance is strongly driven by turbine engine manufacturers. Titanium aluminides represent an important class of alloys, which provide a unique set of physical and mechanical properties that can lead to substantial payoffs in future aircraft engines. The class of orthorhombic titanium aluminides based on the intermetallic phase Ti2AlNb represents the youngest material emerging out of the group of titanium aluminides. The monolithic Ti2AlNb base material exhibits an attractive combination of low temperature ductility and high temperature tensile strength and creep resistance. The mechanical property profile and the high chemical compatibility of orthorhombic alloys with SiC fibers in titanium matrix composites make them also very attractive for high temperature use. In this paper the phases, phase transformations, and microstructure evolution by thermomechanical processing of orthorhombic alloys is described based on investigations of the Ti2AlNb base alloy Ti–22A1–25Nb (at.%). Thermomechanical processing was successful in producing equiaxed as well as defined coarse and fine grained lamellar microstructures. Depending on heat treatment two and three phase microstructures were produced, i. e. beside the ordered orthorhombic O phase, the ordered βo phase (B2) and the α2 phase (DO19) were determined.
GF: A Multilingual Grammar Formalism

GF (Grammatical Framework) is a grammar formalism designed for dealing with many languages simultaneously. A multilingual GF grammar has a language-independent abstract syntax that deals with pure tree structures, and a set of language-dependent concrete syntaxes that specify how the trees are expressed in different languages. Multilingual grammars formalize the idea that the same grammatical categories (such as noun phrases and verb phrases) and syntax rules (such as predication) can appear in different languages. They are also a powerful tool for natural language engineering, used for applications ranging from a translator of mathematical exercises to a dialogue system usable for talking with devices in a car. As a programming language, GF has constructs inherited from functional programming languages, an optimizing grammar compiler and code generation into several other formats. The most ambitious multilingual grammar is the GF Resource Grammar Library, which implements the main grammar rules of 12 languages. This library enables non-linguist programmers to build linguistically correct applications. It is at the same time a linguistic experiment showing how far one can go in sharing structure between languages.
Visuo-Haptic Interface for Teleoperation of Mobile Robot Exploration Tasks

With the spread of low-cost haptic devices, haptic interfaces appear in many areas in the field of robotics. Recently, haptic devices have been used in the field of mobile robot teleoperation, where mobile robots operate in unknown and dangerous environments performing particular tasks. Haptic feedback is shown to improve operator perception of the environment without, however, improving exploration time. In this paper, we present a haptic interface that is used to teleoperate a mobile robot in exploring polygonal environments. The proposed visuo-haptic interface is found to improve navigation time and operator perception of the remote environment. The human-operator can simultaneously select two different commands, the first one being set as "active" motion command, while the second one is set as a "guarded" motion type of navigation command. The user can feel a haptic equivalent for both types of teleguidance motion commands, and can also observe in real-time the sequential creation of the remote environment map. Comparative evaluation experiments show that the proposed system makes the task of remote navigation of unknown environments easier
Genetic structure of brown trout, Salmo trutta L., at the southern limit of the distribution range of the anadromous form

Genetic variation at 33 protein loci was investigated in 41 wild brown trout populations from four river basins in Galicia (northwest Spain) to analyse the amount and distribution of genetic diversity in a marginal area, located in the distribution limit of the anadromous form of this species. The genetic diversity detected within populations (H between 0 and 6%) lies within the range quoted for this species in previous reports. The Miño, the most southern river basin analysed, showed a significantly lower genetic diversity and the highest genetic differentiation among the river basins studied. The hierarchical gene diversity analysis showed high population differentiation in a restricted area (GST = 27%), mostly due to differences among populations within basins (GSC = 22%). The reduction of GST observed when the isolated samples were excluded from the analysis (GST = 17%) showed the importance of habitat fragmentation on the heterogeneity detected. Gene flow among populations was comparatively evaluated by three indirect methods, which in general revealed low figures of absolute number of migrants per generation, slightly higher than 1. The gene flow among basins reflected a positive relationship with geographical distance. This trend was confirmed by the significant correlation observed between geographical and genetic distances, including all population pairs, which suggests a component of isolation by distance in brown trout genetic structure. Nevertheless, the nonsignificant intrabasin correlation demonstrates the complexity of genetic relationships among populations in this species. The model of genetic structure in brown trout is discussed in the light of the results obtained.
The globular cluster systems of NGC 3258 and NGC 3268 in the Antlia cluster

The Antlia galaxy cluster is the third nearest galaxy cluster after Virgo and Fornax. We used the wide-field MOSAIC camera of the 4-m CTIO telescope to search in the brightest cluster galaxies for globular cluster systems, which were detected in the two larger ellipticals - NGC 3258 and NGC 3268. These galaxies each contain several thousand clusters; NGC 3258 more than NGC 3268. The color distributions of the globular cluster systems are clearly bimodal. The peak colors agree with those of other ellipticals. The radial number density profiles of the globular cluster systems are indistinguishable for the two galaxies and no dierence in the distribution of red and blue clusters - as observed in other elliptical galaxies - can be seen. The light profile of NGC 3268 appears to be similar to that of NGC 1399, the central galaxy of the Fornax cluster. NGC 3258 has a light profile which is steeper at large radii. Both galaxies exhibit color gradients, becoming bluer outwards. In NGC 3268, the color and morphology in the inner 3 00 indicate the presence of an inner dusty disk. The globular cluster systems closely trace the galaxy light in the studied radial regime. The elongation of the cluster systems of both galaxies is approximately aligned at large radii with the connecting axis of the two galaxies. We find specific frequencies within a radial range of 4 0 of S N= 3:0 2:0 for NGC 3268 and S N= 6:0 2:5 for NGC 3258. As a byproduct resulting from surveying our wide-field frames, we describe a strange absorption feature in the Antlia spiral galaxy NGC 3269, which we argue might be a tiny galactic dust cloud projected onto NGC 3269.
Price Discovery through Crude Palm Oil Futures : An Economic Evaluation

This paper examines the forward pricing efficiency of the local crude palm oil (CPO) futures market. In an efficient market, the relevant signal to be used by -the producers, traders and processors is simply the futures price. The forward pricing efficiency is measured in terms of the forecasting ability of Malaysian crude palm oil futures price on physical price. The relative predictive power of futures price is compared with the various forecasts estimated from proven forecasting techniques like moving average, exponential smoothing, Box Jenkins and econometric. The relative predictability of futures price as a forecast for spot prices during various months before delivery is also measured.
On 2D 4-finger frictionless optimal grasps

The paper deals with the determination of optimal force-closure grasps for 2D polygonal objects. The problem is analyzed and some intrinsic properties of grasps are determined. The approach is applied to the determination of the position of a fourth finger given the positions of three other fingers. Moreover, the range of solutions that allow the force-closure property as well as the optimal value are analytically determined, checking only four points in the worst case. The algorithm has been implemented and numerical examples are included in the paper.
Fulfilling the vision of fully autonomic peer-to-peer systems

A peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed system is a network of collectors, providers and consumers of resources. In order to be autonomic, peers may be provided with an internal structure being dynamically adjusted by an adaptive plan which determines successive re-configurations in response to the environment. To address this challenging problem, we have introduced the Adaptive Autonomic Framework, that allows to turn any P2P network in a complex adaptive system. In this paper we present the performance analysis of an AEF-based architecture for Grid Computing.
Terminal Impact Angle Constraint Guidance With Dual Sliding Surfaces and Model-Free Target Acceleration Estimator

In this paper, a new guidance law based on the variable structure system theory and an associated model-free target acceleration estimator are proposed. The composite guidance-estimation law is designed to intercept constant-velocity and maneuvering targets by missiles at a desired terminal impact angle. Specifically, the scenario of intercepting the targets with speed-disadvantaged missiles, which has not been studied in detail in the literature available, is considered in this paper. A multiple solution problem for the terminal impact angle and a final line-of-sight angle is clarified in this paper. To solve this problem, the generalized variable structure theory is used and an additional sliding mode surface is introduced in the proposed guidance law, by which missiles can reach a wider range of the final impact angle. In addition, the nonsingular terminal sliding mode control method is applied so that the states of the guidance dynamic system are finite time convergent. In order to intercept maneuvering targets, a Kriging-based model-free finite impulse response filter is employed. Based on this filter, this paper puts forward some improvements, including a data preprocessing method and a parameter offline tuning method by the simulated annealing algorithm. In this way, a model-free target acceleration estimator with strong practicality in engineering is proposed. The stability condition of the proposed composite guidance-estimation law is obtained via the Lyapunov theorem. Finally, simulation results in different initial intercepting scenarios are presented to validate the advantage of the proposed guidance law and target acceleration estimator.
A simplified chromatin dispersion (nuclear halo) assay for detecting DNA breakage induced by ionizing radiation and chemical agents

Abstract Methods for visualizing DNA damage at the microscopic level are based on treatment of cell nuclei with saline or alkaline solutions. These procedures for achieving chromatin dispersion produce halos that surround the nuclear remnants. We improved the fast halo assay for visualizing DNA breakage in cultured cells to create a simplified method for detection and quantitative evaluation of DNA breakage. Nucleated erythrocytes from chicken blood were selected as a model test system to analyze the production of nuclear halos after treatment with X-rays or H2O2. After staining with ethidium bromide or Wright's methylene blue-eosin solution, nuclear halos were easily observed by fluorescence or bright-field microscopy, respectively, which permits rapid visualization of DNA breakage in damaged cells. By using image processing and analysis with the public domain ImageJ software, X-ray dose and H2O2 concentration could be correlated well with the size of nuclear halos and the halo:nucleus ratio. Our results indicate that this simplified nuclear halo assay can be used as a rapid, reliable and inexpensive procedure to detect and quantify DNA breakage induced by ionizing radiation and chemical agents. A mechanistic model to explain the differences between the formation of saline or alkaline halos also is suggested.