Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Karadağ florası (Yusufeli, Artvin-Türkiye)

Bu calisma, Artvin ili Yusufeli ilcesinde bulunan Karadag Florasi’nin tespit edilmesi amaciyla 2014 ve 2015 yillari arasinda yapilmistir. Arastirma alani, Davis’in grid sistemine gore A9 karesinde yer almakta olup Holarktik bolgenin, Avrupa-Sibirya flora alaninin Oksin kesiminin Kolsik altkesiminde ve 612-2388 m yukseltiler arasinda yer almaktadir. Bu arastirmada 91 familya, 331 cinse iliskin toplam 493 adet takson saptanmistir. Bunlardan 1 takson Lycopodiophyta , 18 takson Pteridophyta , 474 takson ise Magnoliophyta bolumune iliskindir. Magnoliophyta bolumune iliskin taksonlardan 7’si Pinophytina , 467’si Magnoliophytina alt bolumunde bulunmaktadir. Arastirma alaninda en fazla takson iceren 5 familya sirasiyla; Asteraceae (60 takson), Poaceae (55 takson), Fabaceae (32 takson), Lamiaceae (28 takson) ve Rosaceae (21 takson). Bunlarin fitocografik bolgelere gore dagilimlari ise soyledir: 130’u (%26.4) Avrupa-Sibirya, 93’u (%18.9) Iran-Turan, 24’u (%4.9) Akdeniz ve cografi bolgesi bilinmeyip birden fazla bolgede yayilis gosterenler 246 adettir (%49,8). 352 taksonun hayat formlarina gore dagilim ve oranlari sirasiyla soyledir: Hemikriptofitler 121 takson (%24.5), kriptofitler 87 takson (%17.6), terofitler 51 takson (%10.3), fanerofitler 49 takson (%9.9) ve kamefitler 44 takson (%8.9) ve hayat formlari belirlenemeyen 141 adet takson bulunmaktadir. Arastirma alaninda 40 adet endemik ve 50 adet de endemik olamayan nadir bitki turu saptanmis olup endemizim orani %8.1’dir. IUCN tehlike kategorilerine gore endemik ve endemik olmayan 90 adet nadir taksonun tehlike durumu degerlendirilmistir.
MoEfication: Conditional Computation of Transformer Models for Efficient Inference

Transformer-based pre-trained language models can achieve superior performance on most NLP tasks due to large parameter capacity, but also lead to huge computation cost. Fortunately, we find by empirical study that, most inputs only activate a tiny ratio of neurons during inference. Hence, we explore to accelerate large-model inference by conditional computation based on the sparse activation phenomenon. We propose to transform a large model into its mixture-of-experts (MoE) version with equal model size, namely MoEfication. Model MoEfication consists of two steps: (1) splitting the parameters of feedforward neural networks (FFNs) into multiple parts as experts, and (2) building expert routers to decide which experts will be used for each input. To further improve the performance of MoEfied models, we can also finetune the models on downstream tasks, namely parameter calibration. Experimental results show that the MoEfied models can significantly reduce computation cost, e.g., only activating 20% FFN parameters of a 700-millionparameter model without performance degradation on several downstream tasks including text classification and reading comprehension.
The Independent LifeStyle AssistantTM (I.L.S.A.): Lessons Learned

The Independent LifeStyle Assistant (I.L.S.A.) is an agent-based monitoring and support system to help elderly people to live longer in their homes by reducing caregiver burden. I.L. S.A. is a multiagent system that incorporates a unified sensing model, situation assessments, response planning, real-time responses and machine learning. This paper describes the six-month study of the system we fielded in elders’ homes and the major we lessons learned during development.
Extant shore-platform stromatolite (SPS) assemblage

Extant peritidal, micritic stromatolites and tufa are growing discontinuously along the southeast African Indian Ocean rocky peritidal zone. Microbialites are ubiquitous on this coast but only calcify when carbonate rich groundwater is present; if horizontal surfaces (shore platforms) are present stromatolites develop, if vertical surfaces are present tufa forms. Tufa and stromatolites are end members of a spectrum dictated by coastal topography. Extant shore-platform stromatolites (SPS) occur in very high wave energy settings, often around headlands, boulder beaches and/or beach ridges, storm swash-terraces and coastal dunes. Stromatolite growth is seen on soft coastlines but the preservation potential is very low/ zero. SPS are produced by mineral precipitation, not trapping and binding. SPS are developing in a mildly transgressive siliciclastic setting. Laminar and colloform stromatolite morphologies could be preserved in the geological record as micritic lenses on a palaeo-shore platform surface. SPS share many features with Precambrian stromatolites. Terraces associated with oceanic or lacustrine flooding surfaces should not be ignored when searching for potential stromatolite deposits on Mars.
Design of nanomaterials for a reduced toxicological impact and development of nanomaterials for utilization of CO2 by oxidation-reduction chemistry

This work is comprised of two distinct objectives: to study the nanotoxicity of complex nanomaterials and to develop nanomaterials for a process called chemical looping dry reforming (CLDR). For the first objective, nickel-containing nanomaterials (hollow Ni@SiO2, non-hollow hNi@SiO2, and Ni-SiO2) were assessed as environmental contaminants. We hypothesized that incorporation of a silica support would stabilize the nickel nanoparticle and hence mitigate its toxicity. An initial assessment of agglomeration and dissolution indicated that nhNi@SiO2 has smaller agglomerates, while Ni-SiO2 allows for greater nickel ion shedding into solution. A toxicity screening was also done by 5-day nanomaterial exposures with zebrafish embryos. High survival of the zebrafish suggested a low toxic potential for silica-structured nanomaterials. However, nhNi@SiO2 and Ni-SiO2 materials stood out as having either slightly higher deformations or altered motility trends at high doses, respectively. Finally, elevated uptake of nickel following particle exposure suggested the possibility of internalization of the nanoparticle agglomerates. While the toxic potential of complex nanomaterials was probed above, the potential value of such materials was also of interest. Hence, the efficacy of nanomaterials in a specific application was assessed as well. CLDR is a process in which CO2 reacts with a metal oxide to form CO. The metal oxide is regenerated back to a metal by reduction with a fuel (e.g., methane). The result is a cyclic process, which allows utilization of CO2 (a greenhouse gas) by conversion to CO. Fe-based materials were selected as the most suitable for the process and core-shell, Design of Nanomaterials for a Reduced Toxicological Impact and Development of Nanomaterials for Utilization of CO2 by Oxidation-Reduction Chemistry Michelle Najera, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 v composite, and surface deposited nanomaterials were developed. According to comparison in thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), iron utilization of the nanomaterials was in the order of Fe@CeO2 > Fe-CeO2 > Fe-Barium hexa-aluminate > hollow Fe@SiO2 > Fe@SiO2. Among these, only the ceria-supported materials underwent an adequate extent of reduction with methane to complete the cyclic process. The ceria-supported materials also had superior oxidation capacity. Lastly, performance of the surface deposited Fe-CeO2 in a fixed bed reactor was comparable that of the Fe@CeO2 material, leading us to conclude that there was no observable benefit to the use of complex and costly core-shell structures for the CLDR process.
Evaluation of Remotely Sensed and Reanalysis Soil Moisture Against In Situ Observations on the Himalayan‐Tibetan Plateau

This study collected soil moisture (SM) observations from 100 in situ observations and compared them with widely used SM estimations, derived from the Essential Climate Variables, European Reanalysis (ERA)‐Interim, the Modern‐Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, and Noah at spatial resolutions of 0.25° × 0.25°, 0.5° × 0.5°, and 1° × 1° during unfreezing and freezing periods. Results indicate that all estimations except ERA can depict the SM changes on the Himalayan‐Tibetan Plateau (HTP) well to some extent and Noah performs the best as a whole. In the Ngari region, however, SM estimations substantially overestimate SM observations. In the Naqu region, except ERA, SM estimations overestimate the SM amount during freezing periods but underestimate the SM amount during unfreezing periods. In Maqu, except ERA, SM estimations can characterize SM variations with substantial underestimation of SM during unfreezing periods, however, slight underestimation of SM during freezing periods. In space, the Modern‐Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications and Noah can evaluate the spatial distribution of SM better. The SM changes across most parts of the HTP are heavily influenced by precipitation changes. In addition, these changes in the western flank of the HTP are the combined result of snow and glacial melting and precipitation. Except in the western and northern regions, SM during unfreezing periods is usually higher than during freezing periods. Besides, evaluations can better describe SM changes at medium and large spatial scales than at small spatial scales. This study provides important basis for the selection of proper remote sensing and reanalysis SM data sets for the analysis of SM on the HTP.
Making Working Memory Work : A Computational Model of Learning in the Prefrontal Cortex and Basal Ganglia

The prefrontal cortex has long been thought to subserve both working memory (the holding of information online for processing) and “executive” functions (deciding how to manipulate working memory and perform processing). Although many computational models of working memory have been developed, the mechanistic basis of executive function remains elusive. In effect, the executive amounts to a homunculus. This paper presents an attempt to deconstruct this homunculus through powerful learning mechanisms that allow a computational model of the prefrontal cortex to control both itself and other brain areas in a strategic, task-appropriate manner. These learning mechanisms are based on structures in the basal ganglia (NAc, VTA, striosomes of the dorsal striatum, SNc) that can modulate learning in other basal ganglia structures (matrisomes of the dorsal striatum, GP, thalamus), which in turn provide a dynamic gating mechanism for controlling prefrontal working memory updating. Computationally, the learning mechanism is designed to simultaneously solve the temporal and structural credit assignment problems. The model’s performance compares favorably with standard backpropagation-based temporal learning mechanisms on the challenging 1-2-AX working memory task, and other benchmark working memory tasks. 2 Making Working Memory Work
3D color object reconstruction from 2D image sequences

We have developed an automatic system for 3D color reconstruction of real objects from 2D image sequences captured with a calibrated camera. The surface model is carved in an octree structure by using a shape from silhouette approach. The resulting 3D triangle mesh is obtained by a marching cube technique followed by a mesh decimation. The color related tasks of the whole system, such as object extraction and texture mapping, are addressed in the paper. We present a texture mapping strategy based on surface particles, It improves the texture quality by proper selection of the original color images yielding smooth color texture transitions both at triangle boundaries and within triangles. A particular care has been taken for the highlight removal problem. Reconstruction results demonstrate the attained quality.
Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success

This paper reviews the recent literature on measuring and boosting cognitive and noncognitive skills. The literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture character skills|personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. Their predictive power rivals that of cognitive skills. Reliable measures of character have been developed. All measures of character and cognition are measures of performance on some task. In order to reliably estimate skills from tasks, it is necessary to standardize for incentives, effort, and other skills when measuring any particular skill. Character is a skill, not a trait. At any age, character skills are stable across different tasks, but skills can change over the life cycle. Character is shaped by families, schools, and social environments. Skill development is a dynamic process, in which the early years lay the foundation for successful investment in later years. High-quality early childhood and elementary school programs improve character skills in a lasting and cost-effective way. Many of them beneficially affect later-life outcomes without improving cognition. There are fewer long-term evaluations of adolescent interventions, but workplace-based programs that teach character skills are promising. The common feature of successful interventions across all stages of the life cycle through adulthood is that they promote attachment and provide a secure base for exploration and learning for the child. Successful interventions emulate the mentoring environments offered by successful families.
Crustal evolution in the South Tianshan Terrane: Constraints from detrital zircon geochronology and implications for continental growth in the Central Asian Orogenic Belt

The South Tianshan Terrane (STT) is located in the boundary between the south‐western Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) and the Tarim Craton and is a key area for understanding the geologic and tectonic history of the craton and the orogenic belt. In this paper, we report detrital zircon ages from the Late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic clastic sedimentary rocks from the southern part of STT. In combination with the U–Pb ages for felsic igneous and meta‐igneous rocks exposed in the STT and adjacent tectonic units, we identify several distinct age populations. Provenance analysis suggests that the detrital zircon grains were predominately derived from the felsic magmatic rocks in the Tarim Craton and South Tianshan Terrane. The pre‐Neoproterozoic age populations may be associated with the early history of the Tarim Craton. Several pulses of Neoproterozoic magmatism are revealed by our dataset, presumably related to the assembly and break‐up of the supercontinent Rodinia. The 995 to 901 Ma detrital zircon grains were likely sourced from magmatic rocks associated with the assembly of Neoproterozoic Tarim to Australia. Among the age population of 886 to 752 Ma, the older group might be related to the subduction‐related magmatism after the assembly of Rodinia, and the younger one records a protracted magmatic event in a continental rift‐related setting associated with the break‐up of Rodinia. Two younger Neoproterozoic age populations (736 to 694 Ma and 665 to 610 Ma), showing narrow spreads with weak peaks, represent the waning stages of igneous activities related to the break‐up of Rodinia. Regarding the Palaeozoic evolution, together with other evidence, our data indicate a two‐stage subduction model for the SW Palaeo‐Asian Ocean. The 490 to 384 Ma age population corroborates the existence of Early Palaeozoic continental arc magmatism at the northern margin of Palaeozoic Tarim generated by the bidirectional subduction of the South Tianshan Ocean. After a ~30 My period of tectonomagmatic quiescence, the second stage is marked by the northward subduction of the South Tianshan Terrane during Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous. The final collision of Tarim and the south‐western CAOB likely occurred during the Late Carboniferous, followed by syn‐ and post‐collisional magmatism, as represented by the 320 to 265 Ma age population. Based on the detrital zircon ages in conjunction with the Hf isotopic features of zircons from Palaeozoic igneous rocks, our study does not support the model of large‐scale Phanerozoic net continental growth in the South Tianshan Terrane.
Learning to Hide Residual for Boosting Image Compression Supplementary Materials

We describe the training process of Strategy I in Algorithm 1. In each training iteration t, we sample a pair of uncompressed image IH and its compressed version IL from the training set. After adopting the pretrained weights θsim of the simulation network and randomly initialize the weights θe and θd for the encryption encoder E and the decryption decoder D, we then start to update these parameters using our objective function. Specifically, we first use the loss Lsim (Eq.(2) in the main paper) to update the parameters in the simulation network, namely:
Innovative Power of Health Care Organisations Affects IT Adoption: A bi-National Health IT Benchmark Comparing Austria and Germany. J Med Syst 2017; 41:33

Multinational health IT benchmarks foster cross-country learning and have been employed at various levels, e.g. OECD and Nordic countries. A bi-national benchmark study conducted in 2007 revealed a significantly higher adoption of health IT in Austria compared to Germany, two countries with comparable healthcare systems. We now investigated whether these differences still persisted. We further studied whether these differences were associated with hospital intrinsic factors, i.e. the innovative power of the organisation and hospital demographics. We thus performed a survey to measure the “perceived IT availability” and the “innovative power of the hospital” of 464 German and 70 Austrian hospitals. The survey was based on a questionnaire with 52 items and was given to the directors of nursing in 2013/2014. Our findings confirmed a significantly greater IT availability in Austria than in Germany. This was visible in the aggregated IT adoption composite score “IT function” as well as in the IT adoption for the individual functions “nursing documentation” (OR=5.98), “intensive care unit (ICU) documentation” (OR=2.49), “medication administration documentation” (OR=2.48), “electronic archive” (OR=2.27) and “medication” (OR=2.16). “Innovative power” was the strongest factor to explain the variance of the composite score “IT function”. It was effective in hospitals of both countries but significantly more effective in Austria than in Germany. “hospital size” and “hospital system affiliation” were also significantly associated with the composite score “IT function”, but they did not differ between the countries. Published as: Hüsers J, Hübner U, Esdar M, Ammenwerth E, Hackl WO, Naumann L, Lieber JD. Innovative Power of Health Care Organisations Affects IT Adoption: A bi-National Health IT Benchmark Comparing Austria and Germany. J Med Syst 2017; 41:33. 2 These findings can be partly associated with the national characteristics. Indicators point to a more favourable financial situation in Austrian hospitals; we thus argue that Austrian hospitals may possess a larger degree of financial freedom to be innovative and to act accordingly. This study is the first to empirically demonstrate the effect of “innovative power” in hospitals on health IT adoption in a bi‐national health IT benchmark. We recommend directly including the financial situation into future regression models. On a political level, measures to stimulate the “innovative power” of hospitals should be considered to increase the digitalisation of healthcare.
A Model-Based Assessment of Potential Impacts of Man-Made Reservoirs on Precipitation

AbstractLand-use land-cover change (LULCC) plays an important role in weather and climate systems. Human modifications of land cover include building reservoirs and thus creating artificial lakes for multipurpose use. In this research, the authors have completed a Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model–based assessment of impacts of two large parallel lakes on precipitation. This area is located in the western part of the states of Kentucky and Tennessee and known as the Land between the Lakes (LBL). To determine the impacts, this study has replaced the lakes with grass, deciduous forests, and bare soil and conducted model simulations for three precipitation events of different magnitudes.The analysis suggests that precipitation increased in some cases and reduced in others. One of the key impacts of LULCC in the LBL area is the relocation of precipitation cells and also the timing of precipitation. Local precipitation amounts increased or decreased with these relocations. In summary, establishment .
Evaporative Implications of Dry‐Air Outbreaks Over the Northern Red Sea

We investigate the impacts of westward wind events on the Red Sea evaporation using the 35‐year second Modern‐Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications reanalysis and a 2‐year‐long record of in situ observations from a heavily instrumented air‐sea interaction mooring. These events are common during boreal winter, and their effects are similar to cold‐air outbreaks that occur in midpolar and subpolar latitudes. They cause extreme heat loss from the sea, which is dominated by latent heat fluxes. Different from cold‐air outbreaks, the intensified heat loss is due to the low relative humidity as we show through latent heat flux decomposition. Rainfall is negligible during these events, and we refer to them as dry‐air outbreaks. We also investigate the general atmospheric circulation pattern that favors their occurrence, which is associated with an intensified Arabian High at the north‐central portion of the Arabian Peninsula—a feature that seems to be an extension of the Siberian High. The analyses reveal that the westward winds over the northern Red Sea and the winter Shamal winds in the Persian Gulf are very likely to be part of the same subsynoptic‐scale feature. The second Modern‐Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications reanalysis indicates that the occurrence of westward wind events over the northern Red Sea has grown from 1980 to 2015, especially the frequency of large‐scale events, the cause of which is to be investigated. We hypothesize that dry‐air outbreaks may induce surface water mass transformation in the surface Red Sea Eastern Boundary Current and could represent a significant process for the oceanic thermohaline‐driven overturning circulation.
The dynamics of earthquake precursors controlled by effective friction

SUMMARY Many large earthquakes are preceded by slow slip and foreshock sequences. These precursory phenomena activate the hypocentral region of the main-shock fault. However, slow slip events and earthquake swarms do not systematically lead to large earthquakes and cannot be considered for short-term prediction. Understanding what controls the occurrence and the dynamics of precursors on tectonic faults is of critical importance to improve seismic hazard assessment. This study shows how frictional heterogeneity on a ﬁnite planar fault can explain the different fault behaviours preceding a large earthquake in a uniﬁed manner. It is demonstrated that under heterogeneous conditions, four different regimes of earthquake nucleation occur. All of them are characterized by slow slip acceleration, but only one involves a growing foreshock activity. The transitions between the different regimes, and the fault slip history preceding the main-shock are in the four regimes controlled by effective friction parameters, and by a fracture mechanics criterion involving the characteristic wavelength of heterogeneity. The effective friction theory developed here for earthquake nucleation may have major implications in the understanding of other fault processes under heterogeneous conditions, such as dynamic rupture or episodic slow slip events.