Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Three-dimensional finite element modeling of slip rate variations on faults caused by glacial interglacial changes in ice and water volumes

Abstract Paleoseismological data indicate that many active faults in different tectonic settings experienced variations in their slip rate after the last glacial period. Examples include the postglacial formed or reactivated Pärve and Stuoragurra reverse faults in northern Scandinavia (Lappland Fault Province), and faults being constantly active on a million year time scale like the Wasatch normal fault in the Basin and Range Province and the Dead Sea Transform fault. This work uses three-dimensional finite-element models to evaluate the response of individual faults to changes in surface load. The models consist of a lithosphere divided into an elastic upper crust, which contains the fault, a visco-elastic lower crust, and a visco-elastic lithospheric mantle. Gravity and isostasy are included in the models. By applying velocity boundary conditions, the models are deformed such that the faults develop as thrust, normal, or strike-slip faults in different experiments. A parameter study has been carried out to investigate the influence of parameters like e.g. the load thickness, the rheology, and the deformation rate on the slip rate evolution of a fault subjected to variations in the load on the Earth’s surface. The results of this study show that climate-controlled changes in the volumes of ice and water bodies on the Earth‘s surface considerably alter the state of stress in the crust. These stress changes are large enough to affect the slip rate of an active fault. In general, faulting is suppressed or decelerated during loading and accelerated during unloading.
Combined effect of the QBO and ENSO on the MJO

ABSTRACT This study investigates the combined effect of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) on the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO). The results show that the western Pacific MJO originating from the Indian Ocean during La Niña/QBO easterly years is stronger than that during El Niño years. This relation, however, disappears during La Niña/QBO westerly years. The reason is that ENSO and the QBO have different effects on each MJO event. For an El Niño year, there is only about one MJO event, and the QBO effect is small. During a La Niña/QBO easterly year, there are 1.7 MJO events, while during a La Niña/QBO westerly year, there are only 0.6 MJO events. El Niño can reinforce the MJO over the western Pacific because of the positive moisture advection of the El Niño mean state by MJO easterly wind anomalies. The QBO mainly affects the MJO over the Maritime Continent region by changing the high-cloud-controlled diurnal cycle; and the Maritime Continent barrier effect is enhanced during the QBO westerly phase because of the strong diurnal cycle. During El Niño years, even the MJO over the Maritime Continent is suppressed by the QBO westerly phase; the MJO can be reinforced over the western Pacific. During La Niña/QBO westerly years, the MJO over the Maritime Continent is suppressed because of the strong Maritime Continent diurnal cycle, and it is further suppressed over the western Pacific because of the lack of a reinforcement process. Graphical abstract
Development of a prioritisation tool for the updating of clinical guideline questions: the UpPriority Tool protocol

Introduction Due to a continuous emergence of new evidence, clinical guidelines (CGs) require regular surveillance of evidence to maintain their trustworthiness. The updating of CGs is resource intensive and time consuming; therefore, updating may include a prioritisation process to efficiently ensure recommendations remain up to date. The objective of our project is to develop a pragmatic tool to prioritise clinical questions for updating within a CG. Methods and analysis To develop the tool, we will use the results and conclusions of a systematic review of methodological research on prioritisation processes for updating and will adopt a methodological approach we have successfully implemented in a previous experience. We will perform a multistep process including (1) generation of an initial version of the tool, (2) optimisation of the tool (feasibility test of the tool, semistructured interviews, Delphi consensus survey, external review by CG methodologists and users and pilot test of the tool) and (3) approval of the final version of the tool. At each step of the process, we will (1) calculate absolute frequencies and proportions (quantitative data), (2) use content analysis to summarise and draw conclusions (qualitative data) and (3) draft a final report, discuss results and refine the previous versions of the tool. Finally, we will calculate intraclass coefficients with 95% CIs for each item and overall as indicators of agreement among reviewers. Ethics and dissemination We have obtained a waiver of approval from the Clinical Research Ethics Committee at the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Barcelona). The results of the study will be published in peer-reviewed journal and communicated to interested stakeholders. The tool could support the standardisation of prioritisation processes for updating CGs and therefore have important implications for a more efficient use of resources in the CG field.
Plagiarism Detection using ROUGE and WordNet

With the arrival of digital era and Internet, the lack of information control provides an incentive for people to freely use any content available to them. Plagiarism occurs when users fail to credit the original owner for the content referred to, and such behavior leads to violation of intellectual property. Two main approaches to plagiarism detection are fingerprinting and term occurrence; however, one common weakness shared by both approaches, especially fingerprinting, is the incapability to detect modified text plagiarism. This study proposes adoption of ROUGE and WordNet to plagiarism detection. The former includes ngram co-occurrence statistics, skip-bigram, and longest common subsequence (LCS), while the latter acts as a thesaurus and provides semantic information. N-gram co-occurrence statistics can detect verbatim copy and certain sentence modification, skip-bigram and LCS are immune from text modification such as simple addition or deletion of words, and WordNet may handle the problem of word substitution.
Development of a Framework for Risk-Based Integrated Safety Audit to Enhance Construction Safety Performance

Presently, there is a notable surge in infrastructure development, leading to a heightened occurrence of accidents within the construction sector. This trend has positioned the construction industry as one of the most accident-prone areas compared to other sectors. This suggests that the current construction safety audit procedures have not proven effective in preventing accidents. Typically, audits are conducted primarily during the construction phase, with infrequent assessments during the design phase. According to the Szymberski theory, actions taken during the design phase significantly influence the occurrence of accidents more than those taken during construction. Previous research has discussed a lot about safety management systems. However, it has not discussed how to assure the quality of its implementation. Considering this, the research aims to (a) identify the processes, elements, activities, sub-elements, objectives, criteria, and risks associated with construction safety audits and (b) formulate an integrated, risk-based audit process covering both the design and construction phases. This qualitative research employed the Delphi method to gather insights from construction safety experts, and the developed audit process utilized a risk management approach. The resulting audit process integrates principles from ISO 19011:2018 and Regulation of the Minister of Public Works and Housing Number 10 of 2021. The findings revealed 34 activities in audit program management, 34 activities in audit implementation, and 32 sub-elements in audit criteria. These components are incorporated into a comprehensive construction safety audit framework, organizing audit processes, activities, and criteria. This framework underscores that improving construction safety performance is not solely confined to the construction phase but extends to the design phase as well. The audit results serve as a foundation for continuous improvement, aiding in enhancing safety performance and preventing accidents within the construction industry. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2024-010-03-08 Full Text: PDF
Tipping points in Texas rivers

Anticipating geomorphic tipping points requires that we learn from the past. Major geomorphic changes in coastal plain rivers of Texas resulting in river metamorphosis or regime shifts were identified and the major driving factors determined. Eleven such transformations – possible tipping points – were identified from contemporary observations, historical records, and Quaternary reconstructions. Two of the tipping points (between general aggrading and degrading valley states) are associated with reversals in a fundamental system control (sea‐level). One (stable or aggrading versus degrading channels) is associated with an abrupt change in sediment supply due to dam construction, and two others (changes from meandering to anastomosing channel patterns, and different anastomosis styles) are similarly related to changes in sediment supply and/or transport capacity, but with additional elements of historical contingency. Three tipping points are related to avulsions. One, from a regime dominated by re‐occupation of former channels to one dominated by progradation into flood basins, is driven by progressive long‐term filling of incised valleys. Another, nodal avulsions, is triggered by disturbances associated with tectonic uplift or listric faults. The third, avulsions and related valley metamorphosis in unfilled incised valleys, is due to fundamental dynamical instabilities within the fluvial system. This synthesis and analysis suggests that geomorphic tipping points are sometimes associated with general extrinsic or intrinsic (to the fluvial system) environmental change, independent of any disturbances or instabilities. Others are associated with natural (e.g. tectonic) or human (dams) disturbances, and still others with intrinsic geomorphic instabilities. This suggests future tipping points will be equally diverse with respect to their drivers and dynamics. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DETERMINATION OF TAX AVOIDANCE PRACTICES

To enhance tax revenue, the government is continuously working towards strengthening the tax sector's contribution to funding state expenses. However, a major hurdle in achieving the desired tax earnings is the prevalence of tax avoidance practices. This research aims to delve into the influence of company size, leverage, and sales growth on tax avoidance in f&b firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2018 to 2022. The study examines company size, leverage, and sales growth as independent variables, while tax avoidance serves as the dependent variable. The analysis encompasses 84 f&b firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during the specified period, with a sample size of 26 companies selected through purposive sampling. The data was analyzed using multiple regression tests with the aid of SPSS 18 software. The findings of this study reveal that company size does not significantly impact tax avoidance. However, leverage exhibits a positive effect on tax avoidance, whereas sales growth demonstrates a negative effect on tax avoidance.
Measurement of harmonic distortion in microwave photodetectors

The use of an offset phase-lock heterodyne system with a large dynamic range (>110 dB) for measuring photodetector (PD) harmonic distortion out to microwave frequencies is discussed. Up to 40 harmonics and second-harmonic levels only 17.8 dB below the fundamental were observed in high-speed PDs with only 1.7 mW incident. Measurements of harmonic power versus incident optical power are reported, along with associated PD bandwidth reduction. <<ETX>>
INTEGRATION OF SPATIAL INFORMATION WITH COLOR FOR CONTENT RETRIEVAL OF REMOTE SENSING IMAGES

There is rapid increase in image databases of remote sensing images due to image satellites with high resolution, commercial applications of remote sensing & high available bandwidth in last few years. The problem of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) of remotely sensed images presents a major challenge not only because of the surprisingly increasing volume of images acquired from a wide range of sensors but also because of the complexity of images themselves. In this paper, a software system for content-based retrieval of remote sensing images using RGB and HSV color spaces is presented. Further, we also compare our results with spatiogram based content retrieval which integrates spatial information along with color histogram. Experimental results show that the integration of spatial information in color improves the image analysis of remote sensing data. In general, retrievals in HSV color space showed better performance than in RGB color space.
Machine Learning Prediction of Fetal Health Status from Cardiotocography Examination in Developing Healthcare Contexts

Reducing neonatal mortality is a critical global health objective, especially in resource-constrained developing countries. This study employs machine learning (ML) techniques to predict fetal health status based on cardiotocography (CTG) examination findings, utilizing a dataset from the Kaggle repository due to the limited comprehensive healthcare data available in developing nations. Features such as baseline fetal heart rate, uterine contractions, and waveform characteristics were extracted using the RFE wrapper feature engineering technique and scaled with a standard scaler. Six ML models—Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting (GB), Categorical Boosting (CB), and Extended Gradient Boosting (XGB)—are trained via cross-validation and evaluated using performance metrics. The developed models were trained via cross-validation and evaluated using ML performance metrics. Eight out of the 21 features selected by GB returned their maximum Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) score of 0.6255, while CB, with 20 of the 21 features, returned the maximum and highest MCC score of 0.6321. The study demonstrated the ability of ML models to predict fetal health conditions from CTG exam results, facilitating early identification of high-risk pregnancies and enabling prompt treatment to prevent severe neonatal outcomes.
Towards Contextual Task Patterns for Smart Meeting Rooms

The main idea of smart environments is to deliver proper assistance to the resident users while performing their daily life tasks. Thus, task models are convenient as a starting point for developing applications for those environments, as they give the developer the opportunity to focus on the users and their tasks. In such an environment, mutual dependencies between different types of entities are taking place and affecting the way the user is executing the tasks. Therefore, other models (e.g. device model, location model .etc.) have to be developed and linked to the task model in order to truly illustrate how the tasks are executed in those environments. Due to the increasing number of models and the dependencies among them, modeling an interactive application to be operated in such an environment is a tedious and overwhelming process. In this paper, we present an attempt to overcome the modeling complexity by fostering the concept of reuse on a high level of abstraction using task patterns. We extend the former definition of task patterns by integrating the environmental preconditions and effects within the pattern structure in order to maximise the benefit of the usage of those patterns.
GPU Acceleration of Pyrosequencing Noise Removal

Amplicon Noise [1], an updated version of Py-ronoise [2], is a tool for removing noise from metagenomic data recorded by a 454 pyrosequencer. Amplicon Noise has shown to be effective in reducing overestimation of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and chimera detection. Amplicon-Noise's noise removal method relies on clustering a large set of short sequences read by the sequencer. The DNA sequencing algorithm requires the computation of O(n2 ) pair wise distances using a global sequence alignment method. Each sequence consists of a few hundred base pairs and a typical dataset contains 104 sequences, making the clustering computation extremely expensive. In this paper we describe of GPU kernel implementation of the most computationally expensive module in the Amplicon Noise software package, SeqDist. With our GPU workstation (Intel Core i7 980 @ 3.33GHz + 3 x NVIDIATesla C2070) and a typical 454 dataset, our implementation achieves a 8.6X (CUDA-SeqDist) speedup with a single GPU when compared with a 12 MPI ranks of the original tools running on the CPU alone. With three GPUs, we achieve a2.1X further speedup over the single GPU version, yielding a total speedup of 18.3X. We measure the throughput of our kernel to be 1.4 giga floating-point cell updates per second(GFCUPS) with a single GPU and 2.9 GFCUPS with 3 GPUs, where GFCUPS refers to the unique method by which the score matrix must be updated in the specialized alignment algorithm used in Amplicon Noise.
Independent Effects of a Herbivore’s Bacterial Symbionts on Its Performance and Induced Plant Defences

It is well known that microbial pathogens and herbivores elicit defence responses in plants. Moreover, microorganisms associated with herbivores, such as bacteria or viruses, can modulate the plant’s response to herbivores. Herbivorous spider mites can harbour different species of bacterial symbionts and exert a broad range of effects on host-plant defences. Hence, we tested the extent to which such symbionts affect the plant’s defences induced by their mite host and assessed if this translates into changes in plant resistance. We assessed the bacterial communities of two strains of the common mite pest Tetranychus urticae. We found that these strains harboured distinct symbiotic bacteria and removed these using antibiotics. Subsequently, we tested to which extent mites with and without symbiotic bacteria induce plant defences in terms of phytohormone accumulation and defence gene expression, and assessed mite oviposition and survival as a measure for plant resistance. We observed that the absence/presence of these bacteria altered distinct plant defence parameters and affected mite performance but we did not find indications for a causal link between the two. We argue that although bacteria-related effects on host-induced plant defences may occur, these do not necessarily affect plant resistance concomitantly.
Exploring motion-based touchless games for autistic children's learning

Our understanding of the effectiveness of motion-based touchless games for autistic children is limited, because of the small amount of empirical studies and the limits of our current knowledge on autism. This paper offers two contributions. First, we provide a survey and a discussion of the existing literature. Second, we describe a field study that extends the current body of empirical evidence of the potential benefits of touchless motion-based gaming for autistic children. Our research involved five autistic children and one therapist in the experimentation of a set of Kinect games at a therapeutic center for a period of two and a half months. Using standardized therapeutic tests, observations during game sessions, and video analysis of over 20 hours of children's activities, we evaluated the learning benefits in relationship to attentional skills and explored several factors in the emotional and behavioral sphere. Our findings show improvements of the considered learning variables and help us to better understand how autistic children experience motion-based touchless play. Overall, our research sheds a light on the opportunities offered full body touchless games for therapy and education of these special users.
Stability analysis for yield and its attributing traits in advanced breeding lines of rabi sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench)

An experiment was carried out involving twenty three advanced breeding lines along with two checks M 35-1 and Muguthi during rabi season 2012-13 at four locations. Observations were recorded on 10 different characters viz., plant height (cm), stem diameter (cm), ear head length (cm), ear head diameter (cm), days to 50 per cent flowering, days to maturity, 100 seed weight (g), fodder yield per plot (kg), seed yield per plot (kg), and lodging percentage. The pooled analysis of variance revealed that mean sum of squares due to genotypes was significant for ear head diameter, days to 50 per cent flowering, days to maturity and fodder yield, indicating presence of considerable amount of variability in the genotypes. The mean sum of square due to environment + (genotypes x environment) was significant for plant height, ear head length (cm), ear head diameter (cm), days to 50 per cent flowering, fodder yield per plot (kg), seed yield per plot (kg), and lodging percentage characters except stem diameter, days to maturity and 100 seed yield. On the basis of stability parameters a four genotypes viz., GS-6 (2364 kg/ha), GS-16 (2454 kg/ha), GS-22(2775 kg/ha) and GS-23(2978 kg/ha) were found most stable over Gulbarga, Raichur, Bellary and Malnoor environments of Hyderabad Karnataka region.
Towards a ‘Long View’: Historical Perspectives on the Scaling and Replication of Social Ventures

Abstract Social ventures are now widely regarded as playing an essential role in addressing persistent and pervasive societal challenges. This insight has prompted an active search for readily scaleable and replicable business models. However, relatively little consideration has been given to the longer term growth and performance of these hybrid organizational forms. This paper examines how historically informed research might enhance our understanding of growth processes. It considers the conceptualization of organizational growth in social ventures and the relevance of prevailing constructs. The explanatory potential of ‘long-view’ approaches is examined by applying three constructs (opportunity recognition, entrepreneurial adjustment and institutional structure) in a comparative historical analysis of two British social ventures.
Static Electromagnetic Field Computation by Conformal Mapping in Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines

In modern servo drives or electrical drives for positioning, torque pulsation, tangential forces and ripple torque are undesirable effects. These parasitic effects are due to the presence of higher time and space harmonics in the air gap flux density. This paper presents a time-effective method to compute the radial and tangential field components under load and no-load condition by conformal mapping in the frequency domain. The proposed method is applied to a surface mounted permanent magnet synchronous machine, and compared to numeric results obtained by nonlinear FEA. The analytical results obtained by the conformal mapping are shown to be in good agreement to the finite element simulations.