Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-Scale Summer Rainfall Variability Over China and its Long-Term Link to Global Sea Surface Temp

Multi-scale summer (Jun-Aug) rainfall variability over China and its long-term link to global sea surface temperature (SST) variability are studied for the period of 1955-1997. First, the dominant spatial and temporal patterns of the observed rainfall anomaly are studied by empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. By a wavelet transform, interannual and decadal-interdecadal variabilities as well as a trend are found, with different dominance, in the first two EOF modes. EOF1 shows a sudden shift in rainfall anomaly over China in the late 1970s, representing overall wetter conditions in central China and drier conditions in northern and southern China in the 1980s than the conditions in the 1960s. This sudden shift is associated with a quasi-in-phase reinforcement between bidecadal and quadridecadal variabilities. EOF2 represents an increasing trend in the rainfall anomaly in broad central and southern China, especially in the Yangtze River valley, without an apparent shift in the late 1970s. The lack of such a shift is associated with an out-of-phase partial cancellation between a bidecadal cycle and the trend around that time. Second, to understand the long-term rainfall variability that is linked to global SST variability, the singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis for the two fields is carried out. SVD1 links drought conditions in northern China and flood conditions in central China to an El Nino-like SST anomaly distribution. This mode shows both an apparent trend and a regime shift in the late 1970s, which do not coexist in the rainfall EOF modes. SVD2 links the rainfall anomaly in the area between the Yangtze River and the Yellow River and the opposite anomaly in southern China to a wave-like SST anomaly distribution in the eastern Pacific from tropics to extratropics. SVD3 links the rainfall anomaly in the Yangtze River valley to the SST anomaly in the western Pacific centered near 20°N 140°E. The rainfall variability in different areas of China that can be attributed to SST effects results from the interplay of the SVD modes. The most significant links found from SVD analysis are verified by cross-correlation functions. A scenario for a long-term link on the trend scale between the rainfall over China and global SST variabilities, through the associated large-scale circulation, is presented.
POLICY ARENA AID EFFECTIVENESS DISPUTED

There is a widespread perception among academic researchers and aid practitioners alike that empirical cross-country analysis fails to find any significant link between aid flows and growth, and that aid is successful only when associated with good policies in the recipient countries. These positions do not stand up to careful scrutiny of existing studies. In this paper, we oAer a re-examination of the literature on the aid- savings, aid-investment, and aid-growth relationships, and a comparative appraisal of more recent research contributions. Using an analytic framework for evaluating the empirical work, a coherent and positive picture of the aid-growth link emerges. There is a robust aid-growth link even in countries hampered by an unfavourable policy environment. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Inflation Measured Every Day Keeps Adverse Responses Away: Temporal Aggregation and Monetary Policy Transmission

Using daily inflation data from the Billion Prices Project [Cavallo and Rigobon (2016)], we show how temporal aggregation biases estimates of monetary policy transmission. We argue that the information mismatch between private agents and the econometrician —the source of temporal aggregation bias —is equally important as the more studied mismatch between private agents and the central bank (the “Fed information effect”). We find that the adverse response of daily inflation to high-frequency monetary policy shocks is short-lived, if present at all, in impulse responses from both local projections and an unobserved components model of inflation dynamics. To reconcile how one can obtain a sizable adverse response with monthly or quarterly data when only a limited adverse response exists at a higher frequency, we appeal to a simple monetary policy model and show how temporal aggregation bias can exacerbate initial impulse response functions. Because our modeling results are generic and macroeconomic indicators are published with a lag, we argue that temporal aggregation bias will be a key feature of the nascent field of high-frequency macroeconomics.
Feasibility and Safety of ERCP in the Treatment of Biliary Strictures after Liver Transplantation: With a Report of 37 Cases

Background Liver transplantation (LT) is an effective treatment option for patients with end-stage liver disease; biliary complications are important cause of death in posttransplant patients. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) has an irreplaceable role in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with biliary tract disease. Methods The clinical data of patients with biliary strictures (BS) after LT treated with ERCP admitted to the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University from September 2016 to October 2021 were reviewed; the changes in temperature, bilirubin, and albumin before and after treatment and postoperative complications were analyzed. Results A total of 41 patients were included in the study, and biliary stents were successfully placed in 37 cases (90.2%), while 4 cases (9.8%) were unsuccessful due to complete BS. Patients with ERCP guided biliary stenting had a significant improvement in bilirubin index compared to the preoperative period (P < 0.05). 27 patients (73.0%) had complete relief of symptoms after 1 ERCP-guided treatment, and 10 patients (27.0%) developed BS again at different times after the first ERCP treatment, among which 8 patients developed BS again within 1 year after the first treatment and 2 patients developed BS again after 1 year after the first treatment. The incidence of endoscopy-related adverse events was 35.14%, with no serious adverse events. Conclusion ERCP-guided biliary stenting was an effective and safety treatment for BS after LT.
GENERIC: highly efficient learning engine on edge using hyperdimensional computing

Hyperdimensional Computing (HDC) mimics the brain's basic principles in performing cognitive tasks by encoding the data to high-dimensional vectors and employing non-complex learning techniques. Conventional processing platforms such as CPUs and GPUs are incapable of taking full advantage of the highly-parallel bit-level operations of HDC. On the other hand, existing HDC encoding techniques do not cover a broad range of applications to make a custom design plausible. In this paper, we first propose a novel encoding that achieves high accuracy for diverse applications. Thereafter, we leverage the proposed encoding and design a highly efficient and flexible ASIC accelerator, dubbed GENERIC, suited for the edge domain. GENERIC supports both classification (train and inference) and clustering for unsupervised learning on edge. Our design is flexible in the input size (hence it can run various applications) and hypervectors dimensionality, allowing it to trade off the accuracy and energy/performance on-demand. We augment GENERIC with application-opportunistic power-gating and voltage over-scaling (thanks to the notable error resiliency of HDC) for further energy reduction. GENERIC encoding improves the prediction accuracy over previous HDC and ML techniques by 3.5% and 6.5%, respectively. At 14 nm technology node, GENERIC occupies an area of 0.30 mm2, and consumes 0.09 mW static and 1.97 mW active power. Compared to the previous inference-only accelerator, GENERIC reduces the energy consumption by 4.1×.
Application of Hydraulic Transformer on Energy Saving for Boom System of Hybrid Hydraulic Excavator

Facing the energy crisis and environmental problems, saving energy of construction machinery, especially in the hydraulic excavator is very important. Regeneration of the potential energy is an effective solution to save energy. However, the conventional hybrid excavator can’t regenerate the potential energy. This paper proposes a new structure of boom system of hydraulic excavator as well as a control strategy. The focus of the paper is using hydraulic transformer to regenerate energy and reusing the regenerated energy. The simulation is carried out by the AMESim software. From the simulation results, this new system has a high efficiency for energy saving.
Terminating cycles for iterated difference values of five digit integers.

The Kaprekar Constant 6174 received attention a short time ago in Martin Gardner's Scientific American Section "Mathematical Games" (see [4]), and more recently in an article by H. Hasse and this author in the Grelles Journal (see [5]). Choose a to be any four-digit integer expressed in base 10 with not all digits equal. Let a' be the integer formed by arranging these digits in descending order, and let a" be the integer formed by arranging these digits in ascending order. Define T(a) = a' — a". Kaprekar observed that application of T starting with any four digit decadic integer a, with not all digits equal, will always lead to 6174; and 6174 remains invariant under T.
Prognostic Factors of Combined Periodontal and Endodontic Lesions: A Retrospective Study

Objective This study used a retrospective method to explore the relevant factors affecting the prognosis of periodontal-endodontic combined lesions. Methods According to the changes of subjective feelings and clinical indicators of affected teeth, selected patients were divided into an effective group and an ineffective group. The natural conditions (age, gender, and smoking status) of the patients and various clinical indicators at the initial and follow-up visits were collected, including the periodontal clinical indicators of the whole mouth and the clinical indicators of the affected teeth. The full-mouth periodontal clinical indicators include periodontal probing depth (PD), clinical attachment loss (CAL), sulcus bleeding index (SBI), and simplified oral hygiene index (OHI.S); clinical indicators of affected teeth include PD, CAL, SBI, mobility (TM), clinical crown-to-root ratio (CR), periapical index (PAI), and number of root canals. Results There were 74 cases of endodontic combined treatment, with a total of 86 teeth. There was no significant difference in age and gender ratio between the effective group and the ineffective group, and the proportion of smoking patients in the ineffective group was significantly higher than that in the effective group (P < 0.05). At the initial diagnosis, there was no significant difference in the clinical indicators of the whole mouth between the effective group and the ineffective group. After a combined endodontic treatment, the clinical indicators of the two groups were significantly improved (P < 0.01). There was no significant difference in other periodontal clinical indicators between the two groups. Conclusion The prognosis of nonsurgical treatment of periodontal and periodontal combined lesions is mainly correlated to the patient's oral hygiene maintenance, as well as the loss of attachment, the degree of loosening, the clinical crown-to-root ratio, the periapical index, and the number of root canals.
Radiation Use Efficiency and Weather Parameter Influence During Life Cycle of Soybean ( Glycine max . [L] Mirrll) Production as Well Accumulation of Dry Matter

: Soybean ( Glycine max. [L] Mirrll.) is one of the leguminous pulse grain and oil seed crops in tropical and sub-tropical regions of India. Field experiments conducted during Kharif in year 2004 at Anand (22° 35`N, 72° 55`E and 45.1 m above mean sea level) with direct seeded, monocroppingand three sowing dates with four levels of spacing. The results obtained during the course of study revealed that the solar radiation and intercepted photosynthetic active radiation had played a significant role in deciding the yield and sowing pattern of soybean. However, the weather variables had affected the crop growth, development and yield differently in different phenophases during its growing period. It was noticed that the conversion efficiency of incident PAR (IPAR) to dry matter production varied much with date of sowing and with four levels of spacing. The production of dry matter or productivity of soybean is corresponding responses to solar radiation.
H∞ Control with Transients for Singular Systems

In this paper, the problem of a generalized type of H∞ control is investigated for continuous‐time singular systems, which treats a mixed attenuation of exogenous inputs and initial conditions. First, a performance measure that is essentially the worst‐case norm of the regulated outputs over all exogenous inputs and initial conditions is introduced. A necessary and sufficient condition is obtained to ensure the singular system to be admissible and the performance measure to be less than a prescribed scalar. Based on the criterion a sufficient condition for the existence of a state‐feedback controller is established in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, the relationship between the performance measure and the standard H∞ norm of the system is provided. Two numerical examples are given to demonstrate the properties of the obtained results.
Effects of Iron Minerals on the Compressive Strengths and Microstructural Properties of Metakaolin-Based Geopolymer Materials

The current study aims to investigate the influence of iron minerals on the amorphous phase content, compressive strengths and the microstructural properties of the geopolymer materials. Geopolymer materials were prepared by the substitution of metakaolin by 10 and 20 wt. % of each iron mineral sample. Sodium waterglass from rice husk ash was used as a hardener, and metakaolin was used as an aluminosilicate source. The X-ray patterns show that the iron minerals denoted FR and FB are associated with hematite and magnetite, respectively. FY contains goethite together with a significant content of kaolinite and quartz. It is observed in the XRD patterns and FTIR absorption spectra that the additions of hematite, magnetite and goethite remain largely unreacted in the geopolymer binder. The compressive strengths of the related geopolymer composites show some significant variations indicating certain effects for mechanical stability obtained: 10 wt. % replacement of metakaolin by hematite increased the compressive strength from 51.1 to 55.5 MPa, while 20 wt. % hematite caused a decrease to 44.9 MPa. Furthermore, 10 and 20 wt. % replacement with FB revealed decreased values 47.0 and 40.3 MPa, respectively. It was also found that 10 and 20 wt. % of FY caused lower values of 30.9 and 39.1 MPa, respectively. The micrographs of geopolymer materials present some voids and cracks. The denser matrix is related to a superior gel formation producing a better glue between the crystalline additions. The unsubstituted geopolymer sample provides with about 50% the highest X-ray-amorphous content, whereas the substituted samples range between 35 and 45%, indicating systematically smaller gel contents without any clear trend with the compressive strength variation, however. The strength dependencies reveal more complex interaction between the gel and crystalline additions.
Economic Narratives and the Legitimacy of Foreign Direct Investments

In the 1990s, the primary focus of the international investment regime shifted from the restriction and regulation towards the promotion and attraction of foreign companies. Dominant accounts in the international political economy literature emphasize the role of interests and institutions in explaining this policy shift but pay little attention to their legitimation. This article argues that transformations in dominant economic discourses—and in particular the rise of the competitiveness narrative—played an important role in granting legitimacy to this U-turn in international economic affairs. To test the argument, the article focuses on the impact of the differential changes in the portrayal of greenfield and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) inward foreign direct investments (IFDI) in economic discourses in the UK before and after the rise of the competitiveness narrative. In line with the theoretical argument, findings indicate that individuals who passed their early adulthood in a period in which the narrative of economic statism was still prevalent hold notably more skeptical views of M&A IFDI even though they are otherwise not more opposed to investments from abroad. A causal mediation analysis lends further empirical support to the argument.
Highly-flexible wide angle of incidence terahertz metamaterial absorber

We present the design, fabrication, and characterization of a metamaterial absorber which is resonant at terahertz frequencies. We experimentally demonstrate an absorptivity of 0.97 at 1.6 terahertz. Importantly, this free-standing absorber is only 16 microns thick resulting in a highly flexible material that, further, operates over a wide range of angles of incidence for both transverse electric and transverse magnetic radiation.
Effect of Prior Cheilectomy on Outcomes of First Metatarsophalangeal Joint Fusion for Treatment of Hallux Rigidus

Background: Patients with hallux rigidus who do not experience significant pain relief after cheilectomy often require a conversion to metatarsophalangeal (MTP) fusion. However, it is unclear whether the previous cheilectomy affects outcomes of the subsequent fusion. The aim of this study was to compare patient-reported outcomes and complications in patients undergoing MTP fusion for hallux rigidus between patients with a history of cheilectomy and those undergoing a fusion as a primary procedure. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients who underwent MTP fusion who had preoperative and minimum 1-year postoperative Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) scores. Patients were divided into a “primary MTP fusion” cohort and a “prior cheilectomy” cohort based on their history of a previous cheilectomy. Preoperative, postoperative, and improvement in PROMIS scores, along with rates of complications including nonunion, infection, interphalangeal (IP) joint pain, and removal of hardware were compared between groups. Results: The prior cheilectomy group had significantly lower preoperative physical function scores than the primary MTP fusion group (P < .05). Postoperatively, the prior cheilectomy group had worse physical function (P < .017) and global physical health (P < .017) scores. However, there were no significant differences in pre- to postoperative change in PROMIS scores. There were no significant differences in rates of nonunion (P = .99), infection (P = .99), or hardware removal (P = .99). More patients in the prior cheilectomy group had IP joint pain (P = .034). Conclusion: This study found that a prior cheilectomy may not affect serious complication rates of a subsequent fusion, but it may be associated with worse baseline function. Overall, our results suggest that a prior failed cheilectomy does not influence the amount of improvement in function and pain from MTP fusion. Level of Evidence: Level III, retrospective cohort study.
Optimisation de placement des puits

La quantite d’hydrocarbures recuperes peut etre considerablement augmentee si un placement optimal des puits non conventionnels a forer, peut etre trouve. Pour cela, l’utilisation d’algorithmes d’optimisation, ou la fonction objectif est evaluee en utilisant un simulateur de reservoir, est necessaire. Par ailleurs, pour des reservoirs avec une geologie complexe avec des heterogeneites elevees, le probleme d’optimisation necessite des algorithmes capables de faire face a la non-regularite de la fonction objectif. L’objectif de cette these est de developper une methodologie efficace pour determiner l’emplacement optimal des puits et leurs trajectoires, qui offre la valeur liquidative maximale en utilisant un nombre techniquement abordable de simulations de reservoir.Dans cette these, nous montrons une application reussie de l’algorithme “Covariance Matrix Adaptation - Evolution Strategy” (CMA-ES) qui est reconnu comme l’un des plus puissants optimiseurs sans-derives pour l’optimisation continue. Par ailleurs, afin de reduire le nombre de simulations de reservoir (evaluations de la fonction objectif), nous concevons deux nouveaux algorithmes. Premierement, nous proposons une nouvelle variante de la methode CMA-ES avec des meta-modeles, appele le nouveau-local-meta-modele CMA-ES (nlmm-CMA), ameliorant la variante deja existante de la methode local-meta-modele CMA-ES (lmm-CMA) sur la plupart des fonctions de benchmark, en particulier pour des tailles de population plus grande que celle par defaut. Ensuite, nous proposons d’exploiter la separabilite partielle de la fonction objectif durant le processus d’optimisation afin de definir un nouvel algorithme appele la partiellement separable local-meta-modele CMAES (p-sep lmm-CMA), conduisant a une reduction importante en nombre d’evaluations par rapport a la methode CMA-ES standard.Dans cette these, nous appliquons egalement les algorithmes developpes (nlmm-CMA et p-sep lmm-CMA) sur le probleme de placement des puits pour montrer, a travers plusieurs exemples, une reduction significative du nombre de simulations de reservoir necessaire pour trouver la configuration optimale des puits. Les approches proposees sont revelees prometteuses en considerant un budget restreint de simulations de reservoir, qui est le contexte impose dans la pratique.Enfin, nous proposons une nouvelle approche pour gerer l’incertitude geologique pour le probleme d’optimisation de placement des puits. L’approche proposee utilise seulement une realisation, ainsi que le voisinage de chaque configuration, afin d’estimer sa fonction objectif au lieu d’utiliser multiples realisations. L’approche est illustree sur un cas de reservoir de benchmark, et se revele etre en mesure de capturer l’incertitude geologique en utilisant un nombre reduit de simulations de reservoir.
Fine Structure and Distribution of Antennal Sensilla of the Predatory Clerid Beetle, Thanasimus lewisi (Coleoptera: Cleridae)

ABSTRACT The predatory clerid beetle Thanasimus lewisi (Jacobson) (Coleoptera: Cleridae) is an important predator of bark beetles (Scolytidae) and has been used in China for the biological control of the larch bark beetle Ips subelongatus Motschulsky and the spruce bark beetle Ips typographus Linnaeus. In this study, the number, external morphology and distribution of antennal sensilla of T. lewisi were determined using scanning electron microscopy. The filiform antennae of both sexes of both species consist of the scape, pedicel, and nine flagellomeres. Two types of sensilla chaetica (SC1 and SC2), four types of sensilla basiconica (SB1, SB2, SB3 and SB4), two types of sensilla trichodea (ST1 and ST2), and Böhm's bristles (BB) were identified according to the morphology and fine structure of each type of sensilla in both sexes. No difference in shape, structure, sensilla distribution and typology was observed between the sexes. The density of sensilla was greater on the last 3 than on the first 8 segments. SC1, SC2, ST1 and ST2 occurred on all antennal segments in both sexes. SB1, SB2 and SB3 were absent on the first 4 segments of the antennae in both sexes. SB4 were found only on the last 2 segments of the antennae. BB only occurred on the scape and pedicel. The distal antennal sensilla of T. lewisi had notably more sensilla than proximal ones in type and number, indicating this is the main area to detect environmental stimuli for feeding or oviposition. These structures likely have roles in the host locating and habitat searching behavior of adult T. lewisi and suggest future studies on the olfaction and host location behavior of T. lewisi and other coleopteran predators.