Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global Sensitivity Analysis of a Dam Breaching Model: To Which Extent Is Parameter Sensitivity Case‐Dependent?

Failure of dams and dikes often leads to devastating consequences in protected areas. Numerical models are instrumental tools to assess flood risk and guide emergency management, but numerous uncertainties affect model outcomes. Identifying uncertain model input parameters that induce high uncertainties in model outputs is essential. This paper focuses on two model outputs: the maximum breach discharge and the time to reach this peak. Using our implementation of a simplified physically based dam breaching model developed by Wu (2016), a global sensitivity analysis was conducted based on Sobol indices of total order. Unlike in most previous studies, many different configurations (twenty‐seven), both at laboratory and field scales, were considered. For each of them, input variables were ranked according to the significance of the contribution of their uncertainty to the output variability, and the dependency between reference configurations and sensitivity analysis results was highlighted. Depending on the considered case study, input parameter uncertainties with the largest impact on output variability were different, and so was the magnitude of output uncertainties. We demonstrate that sensitivity analysis results obtained for a specific configuration cannot be transferred as it to other configurations. Finally, sensitivity and uncertainty quantification results were combined in a decision tree to determine which input parameter uncertainty is the most critical in each configuration and what standard deviation in the output variables is expected. The global sensitivity analysis procedure presented here may apply to a wide variety of models in environmental sciences.
Evaluation of the Potential Use of Oxy-Hydrogen Gas for the Treatment of Lactococcus garvieae Infected- Zebrafish in Hydrogen-Rich Water Aquarium

: This study aimed to evaluate the use of an oxy-hydrogen generator for preparing hydrogen-rich water (HRW) and studying its effects on the L. garvieae-affected zebrafish. 0, 10, 20, and 100% HRW were prepared to determine the effects of HRW on the mortality rate and gene expression levels of L. garvieae infected-zebrafish. After 48 hours of bacterial injection, the mortality rate of fish was 0, 0, 0, 66, 80
The Effects of Different Feeding Regimes on Body Composition, Gut Microbial Population, and Susceptibility to Pathogenic Infection in Largemouth Bass

This study investigated the effects of dietary commercial feed (n = 50,025 in triplicate, named group PF for soil dike pond, sampling n = 7; n = 15,000 in triplicate, WF for water tank, n = 8), iced fish (n = 50,025 in triplicate, PI, n = 7), and a combination of both (n = 50,025 in triplicate, PFI, n = 8) on different metabolic parameters of the largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides (0.67 ± 0.09 g, culture period from June 2017 to July 2018). Throughout the experimental period, different areas of water (including input water of the front, middle of the pond, and from the drain off at the back) and their mixed samples were simultaneously analyzed to find the source of the main infectious bacteria. Various feeding strategies may differentially affect body composition and shape the gut microbiota, but the mode of action has not been determined. Results showed that no significant differences were found in the growth performance except for the product yield using a different culture mode (PFI vs. WF). For muscle composition, the higher ∑SFA, ∑MUFA, ∑n-6PUFA, and 18:3n-3/18:2n-6 levels were detected in largemouth bass fed with iced fish, while enrichment in ∑n-3PUFA and ∑HUFA was detected in largemouth bass fed with commercial feed. For the gut microbiota, Fusobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Firmicutes were the most dominant phyla among all the gut samples. The abundance of Firmicutes and Tenericutes significantly decreased and later increased with iced fish feeding. The relative abundance of species from the Clostridia, Mollicutes, Mycoplasmatales, and families (Clostridiaceae and Mycoplasmataceae) significantly increased in the feed plus iced fish (PFI) group relative to that in the iced fish (PI) group. Pathways of carbohydrate metabolism and the digestive system were enriched in the commercial feed group, whereas infectious bacterial disease resistance-related pathways were enriched in the iced fish group, corresponding to the higher rate of death, fatty liver disease, and frequency and duration of cyanobacteria outbreaks. Feeding with iced fish resulted in more activities in the digestive system and energy metabolism, more efficient fatty acid metabolism, had higher ∑MUFA, and simultaneously had the potential for protection against infectious bacteria from the environment through a change in intestinal microbiota in the pond of largemouth bass culturing. Finally, the difference in feed related to the digestive system may contribute to the significant microbiota branch in the fish gut, and the input and outflow of water affects the intestinal flora in the surrounding water and in the gut, which in turn affects growth and disease resistance.
An Active Speaker Detection Method in Videos using Standard Deviations of Color Histogram

Active Speaker Detection (ASD) is a process that predicts who the speaker is amongst those whose faces appear in a video (if any) at any given point in time within the recorded video. This work presents a novel algorithm capable of detecting the active speakers in each video using the standard deviations of Color Histograms (CHs) computed at the mouth region from one frame to another. This paper relies on the assumption that the lips of an active speaker are in motion. They open and close and thus reveal the inner parts of the mouth, like the tongue, teeth, and the vocal cavity which are of diverse colors in the process of talking. It is possible to use already existing algorithms to detect the mouth region. This region can be analyzed during the speaking process for the changes in color activity, and this can be used to predict whether a user is speaking or not. If a person is not speaking, the lips are at rest the CH of such mouth regions such candidates would be stable. As a result, the standard deviations of such regions would be negligible. A threshold can be experimentally determined which is thus capable of predicting if a person is speaking or otherwise. This paper explores 53 online videos from Channels TV station, these videos were employed in the creation of 250 video clips. Each clip is between 15 to 60 seconds with a total of 3.6 hours. Each video contained the faces of at most two speakers in no particular order. Sometimes, only one of the speakers' faces appears, at other times both appear in the duration of the video. The status of the speakers whether active or not was manually labeled to be used for the performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm. This method was able to predict the active speakers with an accuracy of 99.19%.
DETERMINAÇÃO DO ALBEDO DE SUPERFÍCIE EM ÁREAS IRRIGADAS DO PROJETO JAÍBA (MINAS GERAIS), MEDIANTE IMAGENS LANDSAT 5 - TM

O presente estudo teve como objetivo determinar o albedo de areas irrigadas do projeto Jaiba. A area de estudo encontra-se localizada no Norte de Minas Gerais, entre as coordenadas UTM de 595204 e 626309 E e 8308401 e 8341257 N. Na elaboracao do trabalho foram utilizadas imagens TM do Satelite Landsat 5, orbita/ponto 219/70, obtidas nos dias 31 de janeiro, dia Juliano 31 (DJ31), 21 de abril (DJ111), 24 de junho (DJ175), 10 de julho (DJ191) e 12 de setembro (DJ255), todas do ano de 2011. A determinacao do albedo de superficie foi realizada segundo os procedimentos do algoritmo SEBAL ( Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land ), que se baseia na radiância dos canais refletivos do TM. A pesquisa obteve valores de albedo de superficie dos dias 31 e 111 para o rio Sao Francisco na ordem de 9 a 13%, associados ao aumento da carga de sedimentos provocado pela estacao chuvosa. Os resultados do albedo de vegetacao nativa foram os que demonstraram maior variacao, apresentando valores na ordem de 9 a 16%. Este resultado pode estar associado a dinâmica que as estacoes do ano imprimem na vegetacao e na pastagem, sendo que o dia 255 apresentou maior variacao no periodo analisado, periodo este correspondente ao de estiagem. Os valores observados nas areas irrigadas foram na ordem de 16 a 23%, enquanto os valores de vegetacao degradada, pastagem e solo exposto variaram na ordem de 23 a 32%, sendo estes coerentes com os encontrados na literatura.
Different Types of Survey-Based Environmental Representations: Egocentric vs. Allocentric Cognitive Maps

The goal of the current study was to show the existence of distinct types of survey-based environmental representations, egocentric and allocentric, and provide experimental evidence that they are formed by different types of navigational strategies, path integration and map-based navigation, respectively. After traversing an unfamiliar route, participants were either disoriented and asked to point to non-visible landmarks encountered on the route (Experiment 1) or presented with a secondary spatial working memory task while determining the spatial locations of objects on the route (Experiment 2). The results demonstrate a double dissociation between the navigational strategies underlying the formation of allocentric and egocentric survey-based representation. Specifically, only the individuals who generated egocentric survey-based representations of the route were affected by disorientation, suggesting they relied primarily on a path integration strategy combined with landmark/scene processing at each route segment. In contrast, only allocentric-survey mappers were affected by the secondary spatial working memory task, suggesting their use of map-based navigation. This research is the first to show that path integration, in conjunction with egocentric landmark processing, is a distinct standalone navigational strategy underpinning the formation of a unique type of environmental representation—the egocentric survey-based representation.
Z-99 SEISMIC INTERFEROMETRY, TIME-REVERSAL AND RECIPROCITY

Seismic interferometry is the process of generating new seismic responses by cross-correlating seismic observations at different receiver locations. A first version of this principle was derived by Claerbout [2], who showed that the reflection response of a horizontally layered medium can be synthesized from the autocorrelation of its transmission response. Later he conjectured a similar principle for cross-correlations of 3-D wave fields. In a similar fashion, Schuster [5] introduced the principle of interferometric imaging, i.e. forming an image of the subsurface from cross-correlated seismic traces. Wapenaar et al. [6, 8] used a one-way reciprocity theorem of the correlation type to derive relations between reflection and transmission responses of arbitrary 3-D inhomogeneous media. These relations form a basis for seismic interferometry and they prove Claerbout’s conjecture. Moreover, despite the differences in assumptions, these relations show a strong resemblance with those of Weaver and Lobkis [9] and Derode et al. [3, 4] for the retrieval of the Green’s function from cross-correlations of wave fields in closed and open systems, respectively. Derode et al. [3, 4] derive their expressions for the Green’s function retrieval using physical arguments, exploiting the principle of time reversal invariance of the acoustic wave equation and source-receiver reciprocity. Their approach can be seen as the ‘physical counterpart’ of our derivation based on a reciprocity theorem of the correlation type, which implicitly also makes use of time reversal invariance. The relation between these two approaches is discussed in this paper.
Efficacy of Modified Endoscopic Dacryocystorhinostomy in the Treatment of Chronic Dacryocystitis

Background: Untreated chronic dacryocystitis (CD) can lead to serious ocular complications. Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the efficacy of modified endoscopic dacryocystorhinostomy (DCR) in the treatment of CD and the effects on ocular surface, inflammatory response, and immune function of patients. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted to examine the clinical data of 110 patients (110 eyes) with CD who visited The First People's Hospital of Wenling, China, from July 2018 to February 2021, and they were divided into a conventional group (62 patients and 62 eyes underwent conventional DCR) and modified group (48 patients and 48 eyes received modified endoscopic DCR). The perioperative indexes, efficacy, and complications of the two groups were compared, and the changes in ocular surface, inflammatory response, and immune function of the patients before and 3 months after the surgery were observed. Results: The intraoperative bleeding, hospitalization cost, and 12-h postoperative visual analogue scale (VAS) score were lower, while the operative time and hospitalization time were shorter in modified group than in the conventional group (P<0.05). The total treatment efficacy was higher (91.67%) in the modified group than in the conventional group (72.58%), and the recurrence rate was lower in the modified group (4.17%) than in the conventional group [16.13%, P<0.05]. The ocular surface symptom scores, Schirmer I test, tear break-up time, degree of tear overflow scores were lower in the modified group than in the conventional group at 3 months postoperatively (P<0.05); soluble interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, CD8+ levels were lower, and CD3+, CD4+, CD4+/CD8+ levels were higher in the modified group than in the conventional group at 3 months postoperatively (P<0.05). At 3 months postoperatively, the scores of activity impairment, general health, and visual status on the National Eye Institute 25-Item Visual Function Questionnaire were higher in the modified group than those in the conventional group (P<0.05). The overall complication rate in the modified group (8.33%) was not different from that in the conventional group [14.52%, P>0.05]. Conclusion: Modified DCR has the advantages of short operation time, less trauma, less pain and fewer complications, and is conducive to improving ocular surface function, reducing inflammatory response, and improving immune function and quality of life of patients.
Filtering of Markov renewal queues, III: semi-Markov processes embedded in feedback queues

In Part I (Hunter) a study of feedback queueing models was initiated. For such models the queue-length process embedded at all transition points was formulated as a Markov renewal process (MRP). This led to the observation that the queue-length processes embedded at any of the ‘arrival', ‘departure', ‘feedback', ‘input', ‘output' or ‘external' transition epochs are also MRP. Part I concentrated on the properties of the embedded discrete-time Markov chains. In this part we examine the semi-Markov processes associated with each of these embedded MRP and derive expressions for the stationary distributions associated with their irreducible subspaces. The special cases of birth-death queues with instantaneous state-dependent feedback, M/M/1/N and M/M/1 queues with instantaneous Bernoulli feedback are considered in detail. The results obtained complement those derived in Part II (Hunter) for birth-death queues without feedback.
Quantum Coherence in Electrical Circuits

This thesis studies quantum coherence in macroscopic and mesoscopic dissipative electrical circuits, including LC circuits, microwave resonators, and Josephson junctions. For the LC resonator and the terminated transmission line microwave resonator, second quantization is carried out for the lossless system and dissipation in modeled as the coupling to a bath of harmonic oscillators. Stationary states of the linear and nonlinear resonator circuits as well as the associated energy levels are found, and the time evolution of uncertainty relations for the observables such as flux, charge, current, and voltage are obtained. Coherent states of both the lossless and weakly dissipative circuits are studied within a quantum optical approach based on a Fokker-Plank equation for the P-representation of the density matrix which has been utilized to obtain time-variations of the averages and uncertainties of circuit observables. Macroscopic quantum tunneling is addressed for a driven dissipative Josephson resonator from its metastable current state to the continuum of stable voltage states. The Caldeira-Leggett method and the instanton path integral technique have been used to find the tunneling rate of a driven Josephson junction from a zero-voltage state to the continuum of the voltage states in the presence of dissipation. Upper and lower bounds are obtained for the tunneling rate at the intermediate loss and approximate closed form expressions are derived for the overdamped and underdamped limits.
Acute kidney injury in patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure: clinical significance and management

Acute-on-chronic-liver failure (ACLF) refers to a phenomenon in which patients with chronic liver disease develop multiple organ failure due to acute exacerbation of underlying liver disease. More than 10 definitions of ACLF are extant around the world, and there is lack of consensus on whether extrahepatic organ failure is a main component or a consequence of ACLF. Asian and European consortiums have their own definitions of ACLF. The Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver ACLF Research Consortium does not consider kidney failure as a diagnostic criterion for ACLF. Meanwhile, the European Association for the Study of the Liver Chronic Liver Failure and the North American Consortium for the Study of End-stage Liver Disease do consider kidney failure as an important factor in diagnosing and assessing the severity of ACLF. When kidney failure occurs in ACLF patients, treatment varies depending on the presence and stage of acute kidney injury (AKI). In general, the diagnosis of AKI in cirrhotic patients is based on the International Club of Ascites criteria: an increase of 0.3 mg/dL or more within 48 hours or a serum creatinine increase of 50% or more within one week. This study underscores the importance of kidney failure or AKI in patients with ACLF by reviewing its pathophysiology, prevention methods, and treatment approaches.
Comparing Machine Learning Techniques for Predictions of Motorway Segment Crash Risk Level

Motorways are typically the safest road environment in terms of injury crashes per million vehicle kilometres; however, given the high severity of crashes occurring therein, there is still space for road safety improvements. The objective of this study is to compare the classification performance of five machine learning techniques for predictions of crash risk levels of motorway segments. To that end, data on crash risk levels, driving behaviour metrics, and road geometry characteristics of 668 motorway segments were exploited. The utilized dataset was divided into training and test subsets, with a proportion of 75% and 25%, respectively. The training subset was used to train the models, whereas the test subset was used for the evaluation of their performance. The response variable of the models was the crash risk level of the considered motorway segments, while the predictors were various road design characteristics and naturalistic driving behaviour metrics. The techniques considered were Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and K-Nearest Neighbours. Among the five techniques, the Random Forest model achieved the best classification performance (overall accuracy: 89.3%, macro-averaged precision: 89.0%, macro-averaged recall: 88.4%, macro-averaged F1 score: 88.6%). Moreover, the Shapley additive explanations were calculated in order to assist with the interpretation of the model’s outcomes. The findings of this study are particularly useful as the Random Forest model could be used as a highly promising proactive road safety tool for identifying potentially hazardous motorway segments.
A Review of the Application of Natural and Synthetic Scaffolds in Bone Regeneration

The management of bone defects is complicated by the presence of clinical conditions, such as critical-sized defects created by high-energy trauma, tumour resection, infection, and skeletal abnormalities, whereby the bone regeneration capacity is compromised. A bone scaffold is a three-dimensional structure matrix serving as a template to be implanted into the defects to promote vascularisation, growth factor recruitment, osteogenesis, osteoconduction, and mechanical support. This review aims to summarise the types and applications of natural and synthetic scaffolds currently adopted in bone tissue engineering. The merits and caveats of natural and synthetic scaffolds will be discussed. A naturally derived bone scaffold offers a microenvironment closer to in vivo conditions after decellularisation and demineralisation, exhibiting excellent bioactivity, biocompatibility, and osteogenic properties. Meanwhile, an artificially produced bone scaffold allows for scalability and consistency with minimal risk of disease transmission. The combination of different materials to form scaffolds, along with bone cell seeding, biochemical cue incorporation, and bioactive molecule functionalisation, can provide additional or improved scaffold properties, allowing for a faster bone repair rate in bone injuries. This is the direction for future research in the field of bone growth and repair.
Paternal help in larval release of three mudskipper species

Abstract After the discovery of aerial embryonic incubation in mudskippers, it was found that the male induces larval hatching by removing the air from the egg-chamber so that the eggs immerse in water. Do the adults provide additional support to the newly hatched larvae to help them leave the life-endangering hypoxic water inside the burrow? This paper compares 18 hatching events of 3 species: dusky gilled mudskipper, Pearse´s mudskipper and slender mudskipper. After air removal 3 different burrow-shape dependent strategies of paternal help for larval burrow leaving were observed: (1) very frequent diving toward the burrow shaft or into the egg-chamber to generate turbulences that can help to propel the larvae toward the water surface; (2) tail-undulation to create a water current out of the burrow that would take along the hatched larvae; and (3) intake of larvae into the paternal mouth, subsequently spitting them out to expel them from the burrow.
Multi-dimensional ROC Analysis with Decision Trees *

In this paper, we review the fundamental aspects of cost-sensitive learning and ROC analysis, highlighting the limitations of current approaches for problems with more than two classes and proposing some extensions and alternatives. In particular we address these problems for decision tree learners, although most of the results can be extended to other classifier systems. Among the new proposals included in this paper, we highlight two alternative representations for ROC curves that can be used for multidimensional problems, and new measures for evaluating cost matrix irregularity. We also discuss the problems of extending previous theoretical results on the efficient re-assignment of classes of a two-class rule-based model to multi-class problems and we outline some directions for covering a multidimensional ROC space.