Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A three-dimensional topographic survey based on two-dimensional image information

A riverbed topographic survey is one of the most important tasks for river model experiments. To improve measurement efficiency and solve the riverbed interference problem in traditional methods, this study discussed two measurement methods that use digital image-processing technology to obtain topographic information. A new and improved approach for calibrating camera radial distortion, which comes from originally distorted images captured by our camera, was proposed to enhance the accuracy of image measurement. Based on perspective projection transformation, we described a 3D reconstruction method based upon multiple images, which is characterized by using an approximated maximum likelihood estimation method (AMLE) considering the first-order error propagation of the residual error to compute transformation parameters. Moreover, a theoretical derivation of 3D topography according to grey information from a single image was carried out. With the diffuse illumination model, assuming that the ideal grey value and topographic elevation value are positively correlated, we derived a novel closed formula to explain the relationship of 3D topographic elevation, grey value, grey gradient, and the solar direction vector. Experimental results showed that our two methods both have some positive advantages even if they are not perfect.
Self-Supervised Super-Plane for Neural 3D Reconstruction

Neural implicit surface representation methods show impressive reconstruction results but struggle to handle texture-less planar regions that widely exist in indoor scenes. Existing approaches addressing this leverage image prior that requires assistive networks trained with large-scale annotated datasets. In this work, we introduce a self-supervised super-plane constraint by exploring the free geometry cues from the predicted surface, which can further regularize the reconstruction of plane regions without any other ground truth annotations. Specifically, we introduce an iterative training scheme, where (i) grouping of pixels to formulate a super-plane (analogous to super-pixels), and (ii) optimizing of the scene reconstruction network via a super-plane constraint, are progressively conducted. We demonstrate that the model trained with superplanes surprisingly outperforms the one using conventional annotated planes, as individual super-plane statistically occupies a larger area and leads to more stable training. Extensive experiments show that our self-supervised super-plane constraint significantly improves 3D reconstruction quality even better than using ground truth plane segmentation. Additionally, the plane reconstruction results from our model can be used for auto-labeling for other vision tasks. The code and models are available at https://github.com/botaoye/S3PRecon.
Isolation and characterization of polyhydroxyalkanoate-producing bacteria from seawater samples (Tumaco)

Abstract. Introduction. Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is a useful, carbon-neutral polymer that can be produced from renewable carbon sources by microorganisms, making it a sustainable and environmentally friendly material. Currently, production of the biopolymer is not competitive in terms of cost and yield; however, production by different bacterial strains may provide economic viability, especially since substituting biodegradable plastics for nondegradable synthetic plastics has drawn interest from both academia and the commercial world. Objective. The aim of this work was to describe the isolation and partial characterization of PHA-producing bacteria isolated from five sites (gas stations) in coastal regions of Tumaco Island, Nariño-Colombia, and classify different physicochemical parameters of granules that show the production of the biopolymer. Materials and methods. A viable colony staining method using Nile red was used to preliminarily screen for PHA-producing bacteria. Colonies were isolated, characterized via biochemical, microbial, and molecular methods, and tested for antimicrobial susceptibility and fermentation. Results. More than thirty-eight strains were identified as potential PHA-positive isolates from this screening approach but, just one isolated was viable in PHA production (T2-25A). All isolates were resistant to metronidazole, ampicillin, trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole, cephalothin, ceftriaxone, and cefazolin, and 27.3 % of isolates were resistant to novobiocin. Conclusions. One promising PHA-producing isolate was obtained. Nevertheless, this information will complement future studies of the conditions necessary to produce PHA. Moreover, antibiotic resistance data have attracted attention, especially because of the origin of the source waters of the isolates.
Effect of Tranexamic Acid on the Reduction of Blood Loss in Craniosynostosis Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background: Although many published studies have investigated the benefits of tranexamic acid (TXA) in reducing perioperative bleeding, no large meta-analysis has been conducted to demonstrate its overall benefit. Methods: A systematic review was performed by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines. PubMed, Cochrane, Ovid, Embase, Web of Science, ClinicalTraisl.Gov, and Scopus databases were searched for articles reporting the benefit of TXA in reducing perioperative bleeding in craniosynostosis surgery from establishment through October 2022. The results of our meta-analysis were pooled across the studies using a random-effects model, and presented as a weighted mean difference with 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Results: The database search yielded 3207 articles, of which 27 studies with a corresponding number of 9696 operations were eligible. The meta-analysis included only 18 studies, accounting for 1564 operations. Of those operations, 882 patients received systemic TXA, whereas 682 patients received placebo (normal saline), no intervention, low dose TXA, or other control substances. This meta-analysis demonstrated a significant beneficial effect of TXA in reducing perioperative bleeding, particularly when compared with other controlled substances, with a weighted mean difference of −3.97 (95% CI = −5.29 to −2.28). Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the largest meta-analysis in the literature investigating the benefit of TXA in reducing perioperative blood loss in craniosynostosis surgery. We encourage implementing TXA-protocol systems in hospitals after the appraisal of the data presented in this study.
Motion from Shape Change

We consider motion effected by shape change. Such motions are ubiquitous in nature and the human made environment, ranging from single cells to platform divers and jellyfish. The shapes may be immersed in various media ranging from the very viscous to air and nearly inviscid fluids. In the absence of external forces these settings are characterized by constant momentum. We exploit this in an algorithm which takes a sequence of changing shapes, say, as modeled by an animator, as input and produces corresponding motion in world coordinates. Our method is based on the geometry of shape change and an appropriate variational principle. The corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations are first order ODEs in the unknown rotations and translations and the resulting time stepping algorithm applies to all these settings without modification as we demonstrate with a broad set of examples.
Effects of Time Constraints and Search Results Presentation on Web Search

Everybody experiences time constraints in their day­to­day lives. These time constraints may induce stress, possibly influencing our judgment abilities and behavior. In contemporary daily life, search en­ gines are regularly consulted to look for information online with searchers commonly experiencing time constraints in the web search process. With an increasing percentage of the global population having access to the internet and thus a search engine, more people will experience being time­constrained during the search process. The generally unfavorable consequences of these time constraints have been examined in vari­ ous stages of the search process. Despite the importance of this issue, how the design of the web page showing the search results, or the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), may benefit in time­ constrained web searches constitutes a substantial and important knowledge gap that this work aims to address. Concretely, we investigate how different time constraints influence task performance and search behavior. Consequently, we aim to determine to what extent various SERP interfaces are sus­ ceptible to the effects of time constraints. We also want to know how different SERP interfaces impact user experience and we examine to what extent affinity for technology interaction moderates the rela­ tionship between time constraint and task performance. We aim to address these questions through a crowdsourced 4 (SERP interfaces) × 4 (time con­ straints) between­subjects factorial design user study in which participants are tasked with searching the web to find a list of arguments supporting or opposing a controversial topic. To examine to what extent user interfaces are susceptible to the effects of time constraints, participants make use of a mock search system displaying one of four SERP interfaces depending on the experimental condition: a list interface (baseline, traditional interface), a grid interface, a list­like interface without the snippet, and an interface with the snippet placed to the right of other data. The used time constraints are 2, 5, and 8 minutes in addition to a condition without a time constraint. The effects of SERP interfaces and time constraints are evaluated in terms of task performance metrics, search behavior, and user experience. Results have shown that task performance is considerably decreased by stricter time constraints. Also, as time constraints tightened, the rate at which participants issued queries increased. Exploratory results suggest this comes as the cost of reduced depth to which individuals click on results in the ranked list. As for the interaction between SERP interfaces and time constraints, SERP interfaces have not been found to be susceptible to the effects of time constraints. Interestingly, user experience was neither worsened nor improved because of the experimental SERP interfaces and affinity for technology interaction was not found to play a moderating role in the relationship between time constraints and task performance.
Democratization and Infrastructure Investment

Does electoral accountability discipline public spending? After the fall of Suharto, Indonesia held local elections for the first time in decades. I study how this democratization a↵ected the spatial allocation of public investment in healthcare infrastructure. Using the staggered rollout of new hospitals, clinics, and subclinics over time, I estimate a spatial demand system for healthcare that allows me to quantify the surplus generated by any given allocation of facilities. I find that the actual allocation generates only 60% of achievable surplus. Facilities do not go to areas that need them most, especially prior to democratization. To understand why, I model the spatial allocation decision as a dynamic discrete choice problem, and I estimate the government’s objective function by revealed preference. On one hand, I find that Suharto-era biases toward certain areas, such as those within the patronage network, are substantially lower after democratization. On the other hand, spillover e↵ects are less internalized as districts become more focused on their own constituents. The first e↵ect dominates, and democratization decreases misallocation overall.
Not All Data are Created Equal: Data and Pointer Prioritization for Scalable Protection Against Data-Oriented Attacks

Data-oriented attacks are becoming increasingly realistic and effective against the state-of-the-art defenses in most operating systems. These attacks manipulate memory-resident data objects (data and pointers) without changing the control ﬂow of a program. Software and hardware-based countermeasures for protecting data and pointers suffer from performance bottlenecks due to excessive instrumentation of all data objects. In this work, we propose a Data and Pointer Prioritization (DPP) framework utilizing rule-based heuristics to identify sensitive memory objects automatically from an application and protect only those sensitive data utilizing existing countermeasures. We evaluate the correctness of our framework using the Linux Flaw Project dataset, Juliet Test Suite, and ﬁve real-world programs (used for demonstrating data-oriented attacks). Our experiments show that DPP can identify vulnerable data objects from our tested applications by prioritizing as few as only 3–4% of total data objects. Our evaluation of the SPEC CPU2017 Integer benchmark suite shows that DPP-enabled AddressSanitizer (ASan) can improve performance (in terms of throughput) by ∼ 1.6x and reduce run-time overhead by ∼ 70% compared to the default ASan while protecting all the prioritized data objects.
DESIGNING A FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING THE ONLINE KNOWLEDGE-SHARING BEHAVIOR OF ACADEMIC STAFF

The main objective of this paper is to identify the factors that influence academic staff's digital knowledgesharing behaviors in Ethiopian higher education. A structural equation model was used to validate the research framework using survey data from 210 respondents. The collected data has been analyzed using Smart PLS software. The results of the study show that trust, self-motivation, and altruism are positively related to attitude. Contrary to our expectations, knowledge technology negatively affects attitude. However, reward systems and empowerment by leaders are significantly associated with knowledgesharing intentions.Knowledge-sharing intention, in turn, was significantly related to digital knowledgesharing behavior. The contributions of this study are twofold. The framework may serve as a roadmap for future researchers and managers considering their strategy to enhance digital knowledge sharing in HEI. The findings will benefit academic staff and university administrations.The study will also help academic staff enhance their knowledge-sharing practices.
Layout Generation as Intermediate Action Sequence Prediction

Layout generation plays a crucial role in graphic design intelligence. One important characteristic of the graphic layouts is that they usually follow certain design principles. For example, the principle of repetition emphasizes the reuse of similar visual elements throughout the design. To generate a layout, previous works mainly attempt at predicting the absolute value of bounding box for each element, where such target representation has hidden the information of higher-order design operations like repetition (e.g. copy the size of the previously generated element). In this paper, we introduce a novel action schema to encode these operations for better modeling the generation process. Instead of predicting the bounding box values, our approach autoregressively outputs the intermediate action sequence, which can then be deterministically converted to the final layout. We achieve state-of-the-art performances on three datasets. Both automatic and human evaluations show that our approach generates high-quality and diverse layouts. Furthermore, we revisit the commonly used evaluation metric FID adapted in this task, and observe that previous works use different settings to train the feature extractor for obtaining real/generated data distribution, which leads to inconsistent conclusions. We conduct an in-depth analysis on this metric and settle for a more robust and reliable evaluation setting. Code is available at this website.
A landscape-scale assessment of tropical mammals reveals the effects of habitat and anthropogenic disturbance on community occupancy

With biodiversity facing unparalleled threats from anthropogenic disturbance, knowledge on the occurrences of species and communities provides for an effective and fast approach to assess their status and vulnerability. Disturbance is most prominent at the landscape-level, for example through habitat loss from large-scale resource extraction or agriculture. However, addressing species responses to habitat changes at the landscape-scale can be difficult and cost-ineffective, hence studies are mostly conducted at single areas or habitat patches. Moreover, there is a relative lack of studies on communities, as opposed to focal species, despite the former may carry more comprehensive information. Here, we used a multi-region, multi-species hierarchical occupancy model to study a meta-community of mammals detected by camera traps across five distinct areas within a heterogeneous landscape in Tanzania, and aimed to assess responses to human disturbance and environmental variables. Estimated species richness did not vary significantly across different areas, even though these held broadly different habitats. Moreover, we found remarkable consistency in the positive effect of distance to human settlements, a proxy for anthropogenic disturbance, on community occupancy. The positive effect of body size and the positive effect of proximity to rivers on community occupancy were also shared by communities. Results yield conservation relevance because: (1) the among-communities consistency in responses to anthropogenic disturbance, despite the heterogeneity in sampled habitats, indicates that conservation plans designed at the landscape-scale may represent a comprehensive and cost-efficient approach; (2) the consistency in responses to environmental factors suggests that multi-species models are a powerful method to study ecological patterns at the landscape-level.
The effect of roasting on the aroma, bioactive peptides and the functional properties of yellow nutsedges (Cyperus esculentus)

ABSTRACT The transformation of yellow nutsedges into nutritional flour and snack food could be important for expanding consumption and enriching the variety of products. This paper used peeled yellow nutsedges as raw materials to explore the effect of roasting on antioxidant capacity, active ingredients, and aroma. The results showed that the antioxidant capacity, DPPH (2,2-Diphenyl−1-picrylhydrazyl) free radical scavenging rate and ABTS+ (2,2’-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline−6-sulfonate)) scavenging rate were significantly improved after baking compared with the control, but the hydroxyl-free radical scavenging rate was not obvious. A total of 6 kinds antimicrobial peptides with high scores were detected, including 2 kinds in the roasted group and four kinds in the control group. ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors, dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitors, antimicrobial peptides, antioxidant peptides and blood–brain barrier peptides were changed by roasted treatment. The processing can enhance the kinds of esters from 4 to 8 compared with non-roasted group.
A mathematical review of the analysis of the betaplane model and equatorial waves

This review paper is devoted to the presentation of recent progress in the mathematical analysis of equatorial waves. After a short presentation of the physical background, we present some of the main mathematical results related to the problem. More precisely we are interested in the study of the shallow water equations set in the vicinity of the equator: in that situation the Coriolis force vanishes and its linearization near zero leads to the so-called betaplane model. Our aim is to study the asymptotics of this model in the limit of small Rossby and Froude numbers. We show in a first part the existence and uniqueness of bounded (strong) solutions on a uniform time, and we study their weak limit. In a second part we give a more precise account of the asymptotics by characterizing the possible defects of compactness to that limit, in the framework of weak solutions only. These results are based on the studies [6]-[8] on the one hand, and [11] on the other.
The Genetic Diversity of Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae) in China and Neighboring Countries: A Review From Published Studies

Abstract For more than a decade, various research groups have tracked the population genetics of the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) in China and neighboring countries using mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) DNA. Although most research has reported high levels of mtDNA variation, to date no efforts have been made to integrate and compare the results from these studies simultaneously. Here, we show that: 1) despite the fact that a large portion of the sampling effort has focused on the Yunnan province beginning in 2005, each subsequent study recovers only a small number of previously sampled haplotypes; 2) new haplotypes of B. dorsalis remain to be found, a projection of new haplotypes versus the number of individuals sampled suggest that sampling the species mtDNA diversity is far from reaching an asymptote; 3) it is unlikely that the observed genetic variation is the result of NUMTs (nuclear mitochondrial DNA), as most differences between haplotypes are silent substitutions; and 4) although all studies employed the 3′ end of COI, the length of COI fragment sequenced differs among studies, making comparisons challenging. Therefore, we offer these results with the caveat that mtDNA diversity might be underestimated in China.
Successful management of 3 dogs with colonic pythiosis using itraconzaole, terbinafine, and prednisone

Abstract Gastrointestinal (GI) pythiosis is a severe and often fatal disease in dogs that traditionally has been poorly responsive to medical treatment. Although aggressive surgical resection with wide margins is the most consistently effective treatment, lesion location and extent often preclude complete resection. Recently, it has been suggested that the addition of anti‐inflammatory doses of corticosteroids may improve outcome in dogs with nonresectable GI pythiosis. This report describes 3 dogs with colonic pythiosis in which complete resolution of clinical signs, regression of colonic masses, and progressive decreases in serological titers were observed after treatment with itraconazole, terbinafine, and corticosteroids. This treatment protocol represents a promising treatment for dogs with GI pythiosis in which surgical intervention is not feasible.
Examining of crossover instructional strategy toward biology students’ academic performance in secondary schools

The study investigated how the crossover instructional strategy (CIS) affected secondary school students' biology academic performance in Onitsha Education zone. The non-randomized control group design, a quasi-experimental research strategy, was used in the study. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to choose 52 Senior Secondary Year Two (SS2) students (21 boys and 31 girls) from the 5,132 biology students in the zone. A coin toss was used to assign the sampled students, who were enrolled in two intact classes, to the control (10 males and 15 girls) or experimental (11 boys and 16 girls) groups at random. The researchers created a 50-item biology achievement test (BAT), which has a reliability coefficient of 0.81. The results demonstrated that CIS increased biology students' academic success more than the Conventional Lecture Method (CLM). Biology student academic achievement was unaffected by gender either alone or in combination with the teaching strategies. The research found that CIS is a cutting-edge educational strategy that actively involves students in the learning process in both formal and informal settings, helping them retain biology concepts and ultimately improve their academic performance. In accordance with the findings, the study recommended that biology teachers implement CIS in schools to improve students' biology achievement.