Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Cumulative Anomaly-Based Model for the Detection of Heavy Precipitation Using GNSS-Derived Tropospheric Products

In recent years, tropospheric products obtained from ground-based global navigation satellite system (GNSS) measurements, especially the zenith total delay (ZTD) and precipitable water vapor (PWV) estimates, have advanced their usages in meteorological applications such as the detection of precipitation events. Generally, a cumulative anomaly (CA) time series of any atmospheric variable, which represents the long-term departure of the variable from its “normal” cycle, is widely used for quantitatively estimating the variable’s variations in response to a weather event. In this study, a new cumulative anomaly-based model (NCAM) containing 14 variables, including not only PWV and ZTD values but also their respective six types of derivatives, for detecting heavy precipitation was developed. The 6-h CA time series of the variables were calculated based on the data of hourly precipitation records and time series of ZTD and PWV collected at the co-located HKSC–King’s Park (KP) stations over the eight-year period 2010–2017. The model was evaluated using the 14 variables’ CA time series to detect heavy precipitation events happened in the summer months over the period 2018–2019, and precipitation records in the same period were used as the reference. Results demonstrated that 99.1% of heavy precipitation was correctly detected by the NCAM with a lead time of 2.87 h, and the false alarm ratio (FAR) score resulting from the model was reduced to 22.4%. In addition, two case studies were also conducted to verify the effectiveness of the NCAM. These results all provide a promising direction for the application of using the CA time series of GNSS tropospheric products to the detection of heavy precipitation events.
Attacks and Countermeasures on Digital Watermarks: Classification, Implications, Benchmarks

Robustness against attacks is a major watermarking requirement. Absolute robustness against all possible attacks and their combinations may be impossible to achieve. In this paper, investigation made regarding the various attacks on the digital watermarking systems and its categorization. Attacks on digital watermarks must consider both watermark survival and the distortion of the attacked document. Theoretical analysis of watermark attacks gives many insights into the watermarking problem. Therefore, the paper is concluded with the practical implications of watermarking benchmarks and countermeasures. In fact, with appropriate design, fairly high robustness can be achieved, but it should be pointed out that robustness always has to be traded against watermark data rate and imperceptibility, and the optimum tradeoff depends on the application.
Attitudes towards COVID-19 contact tracing apps: a cross-national survey

To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, countries around the world have implemented a range of measures and virus containment strategies, including digital contact-tracing (DCT) in the form of smartphone apps. While early studies showed a high level of acceptability of such technologies, the adoption rates vary greatly between countries after contact-tracing apps became available to download. This cross-national user survey (n=871) aims to explore public attitudes and factors that affect user acceptability and adoption of contact-tracing apps in the USA, UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which employ similar underlying technology, but have uneven adoption rates. The results indicate interactions between public trust in actors and institutions communicating COVID-related information and releasing such technologies and installation decisions. Beyond the immediate case of contact tracing, our findings hold implications for the deployment and communicative framing of technology for public health and the public good and inform design of crisis response public health information systems.
Does Learning English Require Grit? Examining the Differential Effects on Grades in Core Subjects

Research indicates that beliefs on the locus of the primary source of learning can have negative effects on learning behaviors in school (Mercer & Ryan, 2011). To an increasing extent, young people in Sweden acquire English outside school through different cultural practices (Sundqvist & Sylvén, 2012). At the same time, students lack enthusiasm in English lessons, which can lead to a reduced investment of effort in the language classroom (Henry, 2014). However, learning a language requires both interest and effort. In psychological research, the capacity of showing consistency in interest and perseverance to achieve a goal, such as learning a language, is defined as grit (Duckworth et al., 2007). Studies investigating the association between grit and language achievement remain scarce. The present study contributes to filling this gap by investigating whether the effects of grit differ across different performance domains (i.e., English, Swedish and Mathematics). An additional purpose is to investigate whether there are differential effects of grit for subgroups of students with different SES, achievement levels, and gender. A total of 4646 compulsory school students born in 1992 were extracted from the Evaluation Through Follow-up Database (ETF). Multiple-group path analysis was used to examine the mechanisms of the grit facets (i.e., interest and perseverance) across time and subgroups. While both interest and perseverance predicted grades in Swedish and Mathematics, interest alone predicted grades in English. The low SES high achieving group also showed higher consistency in interest and perseverance than the other groups, indicating that grit could be more valuable in face of adversities.
A Dual-Polarimetric SAR Ship Detection Dataset and a Memory-Augmented Autoencoder-Based Detection Method

With the development of imaging and space-borne satellite technology, a growing number of multipolarized SAR imageries have been implemented for object detection. However, most of the existing public SAR ship datasets are grayscale images under single polarization mode. To make full use of the polarization characteristics of multipolarized SAR, a dual-polarimetric SAR dataset specifically used for ship detection is presented in this paper (DSSDD). For construction, 50 dual-polarimetric Sentinel-1 SAR images were cropped into 1236 image slices with the size of 256 × 256 pixels. The variances and covariance of both VV and VH polarization were fused into R,G,B channels of the pseudo-color image. Each ship was labeled with both a rotatable bounding box (RBox) and a horizontal bounding box (BBox). Apart from 8-bit pseudo-color images, DSSDD also provides 16-bit complex data for readers. Two prevalent object detectors R3Det and Yolo-v4 were implemented on DSSDD to establish the baselines of the detectors with the RBox and BBox respectively. Furthermore, we proposed a weakly supervised ship detection method based on anomaly detection via advanced memory-augmented autoencoder (MemAE), which can significantly remove false alarms generated by the two-parameter CFAR algorithm applied upon our dual-polarimetric dataset. The proposed advanced MemAE method has the advantages of a lower annotation workload, high efficiency, good performance even compared with supervised methods, making it a promising direction for ship detection in dual-polarimetric SAR images. The dataset is available on github.
Renga: A systems approach to facilitating inter-organizational network development

This article describes a consulting approach aimed specifically at facilitating development of intra- and inter-organizational networks, a business phenomenon of growing importance. This approach is called Renga, after the classical Japanese style of composing linked verse, with which it is shown to have several characteristics in common. The Renga approach has system-dynamics-based group model building at its core. The application of this approach is shown in a case study of four organizations striving for collaborative supply-chain management in the high-tech electronics industry. Managerial implications regarding strengths and limitations of this approach are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Problems in applying counterterrorism to prevent terrorism: Two decades of violence in Northern Ireland reconsidered

Abstract Revolutionaries and authorities in many places and at many times enter into a reciprocal terrorist/counterterrorist relationship that over time can become ritualistic in nature. The reciprocity between the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the British authorities is analyzed as a case in point to illustrate how each side can adapt or reciprocate to each move or countermove. The goals, organizational structure, recruitment, finance, weapons procurement, and community support of the PIRA are examined over a 20‐year period. In each category the PIRA has systematically evolved in reaction to counterterrorist policies pursued by the authorities. Likewise, the authorities have learned and adopted new counterterrorist techniques. Rather than militarily defeating one another, which is the goal of both terrorist and counterterrorist, the two sides seem locked in a ritualistic dance of death that can never end, because the adaptive capacities of each appear inexhaustible.
Hydrodynamic Characteristics of Submerged Impermeable and Seaside Perforated Semicircular Breakwaters

The semicircular breakwater (SBW) is one of the varieties of breakwaters, which has emerged recently. The world’s first semicircular breakwater has been constructed at Miyazaki port in Japan. The dynamic pressures due to regular waves exerted on a SBW with 7% of its seaside surface area with perforations were measured. The variations of dimensionless pressures for three different water depth (hw ) to total height of the model (ht ), ratios are presented and discussed in this paper. In addition, the reflection and transmission characteristics of the perforated SBW as a function of scattering parameter, ka is reported. The results on the above stated variables for a seaside perforated SBW are compared with the results for an impermeable SBW.Copyright © 2002 by ASME
Real-World Rates of Bleeding, Factor VIII Use, and Quality of Life in Individuals with Severe Haemophilia A Receiving Prophylaxis in a Prospective, Noninterventional Study

Regular prophylaxis with exogenous factor VIII (FVIII) is recommended for individuals with severe haemophilia A (HA), but standardised data are scarce. Here, we report real-world data from a global cohort. Participants were men ≥18 years old with severe HA (FVIII ≤ 1 IU/dL) receiving regular prophylaxis with FVIII. Participants provided 6 months of retrospective data and were prospectively followed for up to 12 months. Annualised bleeding rate (ABR) and FVIII utilisation and infusion rates were calculated. Differences between geographic regions were explored. Of 294 enrolled participants, 225 (76.5%) completed ≥6 months of prospective follow-up. Pre-baseline and on-study, the median (range) ABR values for treated bleeds were 2.00 (0–86.0) and 1.85 (0–37.8), respectively; the median (range) annualised FVIII utilisation rates were 3629.0 (1008.5–13541.7) and 3708.0 (1311.0–14633.4) IU/kg/year, respectively; and the median (range) annualised FVIII infusion rates were 120.0 (52.0–364.0) and 122.4 (38.0–363.8) infusions/year, respectively. The median (range) Haemo-QoL-A Total Score was 76.3 (9.4–100.0) (n = 289), ranging from 85.1 in Australia to 67.7 in South America. Physical Functioning was the most impacted Haemo-QoL-A domain in 4/6 geographic regions. Despite differences among sites, participants reported bleeding requiring treatment and impaired physical functioning. These real-world data illustrate shortcomings associated with FVIII prophylaxis for this global cohort of individuals with severe HA.
RELIABILITY OF PASSIVE LOWER LIMB FLEXIBILITY IN RUGBY SEVENS PLAYERS MEASURED WITH A NEW HAND HELD DYNAMOMETER: A PILOT STUDY

This study assessed the within-day reliability of five passive lower extremity flexibility measures using a unique hand held dynamometer (HHD) that simultaneously detects dynamic force applied via a force pad and alteration in orientation in space between start and end points of range of motion via a tilt sensor. Hip extensor flexibility in the passive straight leg raise, hip internal and external rotation and hip flexion in two Modified Thomas test positions were conducted on 21 elite male athletes from a rugby sevens training squad using the HHD. There was very good to excellent within-day reliability for the flexibility measures ICC 0.79-0.96 and standardised typical error 0.21-0.48. The HHD facilitated a consistent applied force across trials for each player helping to provide high within-day reliability for the flexibility measures.
Performance simulaton of surface miners with varied machine parameters and rock conditions: Some investigations

Application of surface miners is gaining popularity in different surface mines of India due to the wide range of advantages offered by them. More than 100 surface miners are operating in India in different coal, limestone and bauxite mines today. For new start-ups, however, it is imperative to select appropriate specifications of surface miner considering the rock/rockmass properties for a given production target and chip size. The emphasis of this paper is on performance estimation of different available models of surface miner with varied machine parameters and rock conditions for facilitating the selection of a particular model for a given production requirement. From the review of literature, it was found that the specific energy required to cut the rock is predominantly influenced by uniaxial compressive strength of rock and the same can be determined through laboratory investigations. The current study envelops the development of an approach for the estimation of theoretical production capacity of surface miner along with simulation studies for achieving a particular cut size. The theoretical production capacity of a few surface miners, based on their respective specifications was analysed and found to range from 264 to 5865 m 3 /h for the chip size varying from 50 to 175 mm. The suggested approach can be useful to draw appropriate specifications of surface miner for a given production. Instantaneous cutting rate was observed to be high for rock strength less than 50 MPa. Pick consumption was also arrived at in different mines. The suggested approach was also illustrated with a case study followed by validation.
Temperature-Induced Precipitation of V2O5 in Vanadium Flow Batteries—Revisited

The maximum operation temperature of the vanadium solution in vanadium flow batteries is typically limited to 40 °C to prevent the damaging thermal precipitation of V2O5. Therefore, the operation of batteries at high ambient temperatures is an important aspect to tackle for stationary storage. In the present work, a comprehensive study of the high temperature stability of redox solutions for vanadium flow batteries was performed. In particular, focus was placed on a comparison between batch and in operando precipitation experiments. It was found that, despite being a widely used method in the literature, caution should be taken when assessing the precipitation through capacity fade due to the large influence of external oxidation and cycling parameters, plausibly leading to an incorrect interpretation of the results. The in operando experiments consistently show a precipitation temperature almost 10–20 °C higher than in the batch tests at a 100% state of charge for the same time lapse.
Energy based control system designs for underactuated robot fish propulsion

Energy Based Control System Designs for Underactuated Robot Fish Propulsion Daniel Thomas Roper In nature through millions of years of evolution fish and cetaceans have developed fast efficient and highly manoeuvrable methods of marine propulsion. A recent explosion in demand for sub sea robotics, for conducting tasks such as sub sea exploration and survey has left developers desiring to capture some of the novel mechanisms evolved by fish and cetaceans to increase the efficiency of speed and manoeuvrability of sub sea robots. Research has revealed that interactions with vortices and other unsteady fluid effects play a significant role in the efficiency of fish and cetaceans. However attempts to duplicate this with robotic fish have been limited by the difficulty of predicting or sensing such uncertain fluid effects. This study aims to develop a gait generation method for a robotic fish with a degree of passivity which could allow the body to dynamically interact with and potentially synchronise with vortices within the flow without the need to actually sense them. In this study this is achieved through the development of a novel energy based gait generation tactic, where the gait of the robotic fish is determined through regulation of the state energy rather than absolute state position. Rather than treating fluid interactions as undesirable disturbances and ‘fighting’ them to maintain a rigid geometric defined gait, energy based control allows the disturbances to the system generated by vortices in the surrounding flow to contribute to the energy of the system and hence the dynamic motion. Three different energy controllers are presented within this thesis, a deadbeat energy controller equivalent to an analytically optimised model predictive controller, a H∞ disturbance rejecting controller with a novel gradient decent optimisation and finally a error feedback controller with a novel alternative error metric. The controllers were
Data and progress in peace and conflict research

We highlight how efforts to collect systematic data on conflict have helped foster progress in peace and conflict research. The Journal of Peace Research has played a key role in these developments, and has become a leading outlet for the new wave of disaggregated conflict data. We survey progress in the development of conflict data and how this interacts with theory development and progress in research, drawing specifically on examples from the move towards a greater focus on disaggregation and agency in conflict research. We focus on disaggregation in three specific dimensions, namely the resolution of conflict data, agency in conflict data, and the specific strategies used in conflict, and we also discuss new efforts to study conflict processes beyond the use of violence. We look ahead to new challenges in conflict research and how data developments and the emergence of ‘big data’ push us to think harder about types of conflict, agency, and the ‘right’ level of aggregation for querying data and evaluating specific theories.
Naturally occurring oligosaccharin secreted by rose cells into their suspension culture medium

In recent years it has become apparent that the plant cell wall can act as a source of signalling molecules. Fragments of the complex polymers which make up the cell wall can be detected by the plant cell and initiate various responses. These range from initiation of defence responses to influencing the action of growth regulators and controlling morphogenesis. At present there is a shortage of information regarding the extent to which such biologically active oligosaccharides, termed oligosaccharins, occur in vivo. To address this issue I analysed spent culture medium from plant cell suspension cultures for the presence of naturally occurring oligosaccharides. A potential oligosaccharin was purified from the spent culture medium of rose (Rosa sp.) cells. The oligosaccharide was analysed to determine its structure and bioassays were performed to determine whether it possessed biological activity. The oligosaccharide was purified by anion exchange chromatography, gel permeation chromatography and HPLC. Its structure was determined by paper chromatography, HPLC and NMR and found to be a trisaccharide: cL—D-mannopyranosyl-( l-4)-a-D-glucuronopyranosy1-( 1—*2)-myo-inositol (Man-G1cA-Ins). It accumulated in the culture medium at a steady rate between 6 and 19 days after sub-culturing to reach a concentration of 0.8 jig m1'. Use of the radiolabelled Man[14C]G1cA-Ins revealed no turnover of the oligosaccharide by the cells. Man-G1cA-Ins was found to be able to inhibit the incorporation of L-[U-14C]leucine into acid precipitable proteins in rose cells when presented to the cells at a concentration of 10 1.0 jig m11, but was without effect on the uptake of the amino acid. It was also able to induce the formation of an acid resistant product of L-[U-'4C]phenylalanine
The Effectiveness of a Nonguided Mindfulness App on Perceived Stress in a Nonclinical Dutch Population: Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Mindfulness has become increasingly popular, and positive outcomes have been reported for mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in reducing stress. These findings make room for innovative perspectives on how MBIs could be applied, for instance through mobile health (mHealth). Objective The aim of this study is to investigate whether a nonguided mindfulness mobile app can decrease perceived stress in a nonclinical Dutch population over the course of 8 weeks, with follow-up at 6 months. Methods A randomized controlled trial was performed to compare an experimental group that made use of a structured 8-week mHealth mindfulness program and a control group after 8 weeks, with follow-up after 6 months. Participants were recruited via a national television program. The primary outcome measure was perceived stress as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale, secondary outcomes were symptoms of burnout (measured using the visual analog scale [VAS]) and psychological symptoms (measured using the Four-Dimensional Symptom Questionnaire [4DSQ] at follow-up). Outcomes were analyzed using a multilevel regression model. Results At baseline, 587 respondents were included. Results showed no postintervention differences between groups for the level of perceived stress. With regard to the secondary outcome measures, the VAS for emotional exhaustion and physical exhaustion showed significantly lower scores for the experimental group after 8 weeks (P=.04 and P=.01, respectively), but not at follow-up. There were no differences between groups for psychological symptoms measured using the 4DSQ. Conclusions These findings do not support our hypothesis that using the mindfulness app would reduce stress levels. However, our findings related to diminished exhaustion at 8 weeks are encouraging and require further investigation. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05246800; https://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT05246800
Distributed Small-Signal Stability Conditions for Inverter-Based Unbalanced Microgrids

The proliferation of inverter-based generation and advanced sensing, controls, and communication infrastructure has facilitated the accelerated deployment of microgrids. A coordinated network of microgrids can maintain reliable power delivery to critical facilities during extreme events. Low-inertia offered by the power-electronics-interfaced energy resources, however, can present significant challenges to ensuring stable operation of the microgrids. In this work, distributed small-signal stability conditions for inverter-based microgrids are developed that involve the droop-controller parameters and the network parameters (e.g. line impedances, loads). The distributed closed- form parametric stability conditions derived in this work can be verified in a computationally efficient manner, facilitating the reliable design and operations of networks of microgrids. Dynamic phasor models have been used to capture the effects of electromagnetic transients. Numerical results are presented, along with PSCAD simulations, to validate the analytical stability conditions. Effects of design choices, such as the conductor types, and inverter sizes, on the small-signal stability of inverter- based microgrids are investigated to identify interpretable stable/unstable region estimates.