Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Compensator-Based Output Feedback Controller Design for Uncertain Systems with Adjustable Robustness

A low-order dynamics compensator-based output feedback stabilization method for a class of uncertain linear MIMO systems with mismatched disturbances is presented. Since all the system states are not measurable, the proposed controller inherently has low-pass filter property in which it can successfully replace the derivative terms of the system output and hence effectively estimate the input disturbance. The control scheme proposed here can simultaneously consider the input saturation problem and obtain the desired performance. Although the system has unknown uncertainties and disturbances, the uniformly ultimate boundedness of system states in the closed-loop system is analytically shown using the Lyapunov method. Finally, two numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed scheme.
Do Images of the Male Body Within Advertising Impact Male Body Image?

New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Perspectives by an authorized editor of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact Scholarly.Communication@unh.edu. Recommended Citation Obray, Rachel (2023) "Do Images of the Male Body Within Advertising Impact Male Body Image? ," Perspectives: Vol. 15, Article 6. Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/perspectives/vol15/iss1/6
Decentralizing Development: Evidence from Government Splits

Changes in political boundaries aimed at devolving power to local governments are common in many countries. We examine the economic consequences of redistricting through the creation of smaller government units. Exploiting reforms that led to sharp variations in the number of government units in Brazil, we show that voluntary redistricting increases the size of the public sector, public services delivery, and economic activity in new local governments over the long-term. These benefits are not offset by losses elsewhere and are stronger in peripheral and remote backward areas that are neglected by their parent governments. We provide evidence that the decentralization of decision-making power boosts local development in disadvantaged areas beyond simply gains in fiscal revenues. *We thank Seema Jayachandran, Nancy Qian, and Chris Udry for their invaluable advice. We also thank Lori Beaman, Nicola Bianchi, Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah Boustan, Richard Bluhm, Mariana Carvalho, Alexandra Cirone, Henry Farber, Thomas Fujiwara, David Lee, Riccardo Marchingiglio, Alexandre Mas, Stelios Michalopoulos, Ameet Morjaria, Joris Mueller, Christopher Neilson, Paul Niehaus, Jacopo Ponticelli, Miguel Talamas, Edoardo Teso, Owen Zidar, and participants at the NU Development Lunch, Princeton University, UC San Diego (OMG, Joint Lunch, and GSRS), UCB, PUC-Rio, New Economic School, Universidad del Rosario, University of Mannheim, EESP, National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University, Brown University, and at many conferences for comments and suggestions. We thank Renan Holanda and Cláudio Júnior for excellent research assistance, and Rudi Rocha for kindly sharing data. Christiane gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Economics Department and the Prize Fellowship in Social Sciences at Princeton University. This paper replaces an earlier version in Dahis and Szerman (2021). †Department of Economics, Monash University. E-mail: ricardo.dahis@monash.edu. ‡Department of Economics, University College London. E-mail: c.szerman@ucl.ac. uk.
Analysis of ground-based polarimetric sky radiance measurements

A parametric analysis of sky radiance and polarization measurements based on a database of calculations indicated that there was information contained in the measurements that was not captured by the data base. We therefore developed an iterative algorithm for retrieving a size distribution and size resolved refractive indices of aerosols from cloud free measurements of polarized sky radiances. Preliminary results indicate that it is possible to retrieve a size resolved refractive index for a wide range of aerosol sizes, as well as an aerosol size distribution.
An Assessment of the Inﬂuences of Surface and Subsurface Water Level Dynamics in the Development of Gullies in Anambra State, Southeastern Nigeria

: Gully erosion–induced problems have been challenging the people and government of Anambra State in southeastern Nigeria for a long time. In spite of the numerous geoscientiﬁc and engineering studies so far conducted in the area, the underlying causes of these problems still remain poorly understood. In an attempt to contribute to the understanding of the underlying processes responsible for the persistent gully erosion problems in Anambra State, an integrated study utilizing hydrological, geomorphological,
Simulating the dust emissions and SOA formation over Northern Africa during the mid-Holocene Green Sahara period

Paleo-proxy data indicates that a "Green Sahara" thrived in Northern Africa during the early-to mid-Holocene (MH; 11,000 to 5,000 years before present), characterized by more vegetation cover and reduced dust emission. Utilizing a state-of-the-art atmospheric chemical transport model TM5-MP, we assessed the changes in biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) emissions, dust emission and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) concentration in Northern Africa during this period relative to the pre-industrial (PI) period. Our simulations show that dust emissions reduced from 280.6 Tg a -1 in the PI to 26.8 Tg a -1 in the MH, agreeing with indications from eight marine sediment records in the Atlantic Ocean. The northward expansion in Northern Africa resulted in an increase in annual emissions of isoprene and monoterpenes during the MH, around 4.3 and 3.5 times higher than that in the PI period, respectively, causing 1.9 times increase in the SOA surface concentration. The enhanced SOA surface concentration and decreased sulfate surface concentration counteracted each other, leading to a 17% increaseConcurrently, enhanced BVOC emissions consumed more hydroxyl radical (OH), resulting in less sulfate formation. This effect counteracted the enhanced SOA surface concentration, altogether leading to a 17% increase in the cloud condensation nuclei at 0.2% super saturation over Northern Africa. Our simulations provide consistent emission datasets of BVOCs, dust
Implicit Occupancy Flow Fields for Perception and Prediction in Self-Driving

A self-driving vehicle (SDV) must be able to perceive its surroundings and predict the future behavior of other traffic participants. Existing works either perform object detection followed by trajectory forecasting of the detected objects, or predict dense occupancy and flow grids for the whole scene. The former poses a safety concern as the number of detections needs to be kept low for efficiency reasons, sacrificing object recall. The latter is computationally expensive due to the high-dimensionality of the output grid, and suffers from the limited receptive field inherent to fully convolutional networks. Furthermore, both approaches employ many computational resources predicting areas or objects that might never be queried by the motion planner. This motivates our unified approach to perception and future prediction that implicitly represents occupancy and flow over time with a single neural network. Our method avoids unnecessary computation, as it can be directly queried by the motion planner at continuous spatio-temporal locations. Moreover, we design an architecture that overcomes the limited receptive field of previous explicit occupancy prediction methods by adding an efficient yet effective global attention mechanism. Through extensive experiments in both urban and highway settings, we demonstrate that our implicit model outperforms the current state-of-the-art. For more information, visit the project website: https://waabi.ai/research/implicito.
Coastal climate variability in Northeast Greenland and the role of changing sea ice and fjord ice

The climate in Northeast Greenland is shaped by complex topography and interaction with the cryosphere. To capture this complexity, we use an observational dataset from the Zackenberg region (ZR), (Northeast Greenland) to investigate the local and large-scale factors that determine the slope temperature gradients (STGs) i.e., the temperature gradient along the mountain slope. A synthesis of automated weather stations, reanalysis, and regional climate model were used. Our results show that the surface type and near fjord-ice condition are the dominating factors governing the temporal 15 evolution of the STGs in the ZR. Considering large-scale drivers of STG, we find that shallow, i.e., more positive (inversions) or less negative than the mean condition, STGs are associated with a positive anomaly in geopotential height at 500 hPa and surface pressure over East Greenland. A strong connection between fractional sea-ice cover (SIF) in the Greenland Sea and the terrestrial climate of the ZR is found. Evidently, a positive SIF anomaly coincides with shallow STG since the temperature at the bottom of the valley decreases more than at the top. For example, the mean STG varies by ~4 ºC 20 km -1 for a corresponding ~27 % change in SIF. Changing temperatures and precipitation patterns related to SIF variability also affect the surface mass balance (SMB) of the nearby A. P. Olsen Ice Cap. During summer, days with high SIF are associated with a positive SMB anomaly in the ablation area (~16 mm w.e. day -1 ; indicating less melt) and a negative anomaly
Price Delegation with Learning Agents

Many firms delegate pricing decisions to sales agents that directly interact with customers. A premise behind this practice is that sales agents can gather informative signals about the customer’s valuation for the good of interest. The information acquired through this interaction with the customer can then be used to make better pricing decisions. We study the underlying principal-agent problem that arises in such situations. In this setting, the agent can exert costly effort to learn a customer’s valuation and then decide on the price to quote to the customer, whereas the firm needs to offer a contract to the agent to induce its desired joint learning and pricing behavior. We analyze two versions of this problem: a base model where there is a single customer and a single good, and a generalization where there are multiple customers and limited inventory of the good. For both problems, we find a family of contracts whose payoffs can approach first-best payoffs arbitrarily closely even if the agent has limited liability, that is, garners nonnegative payments in all states of the world, and shed light on the structure and implementation of such contracts. Under reasonable assumptions, these contracts can be implemented with commissions that are convex increasing in revenues up to some cap. These contracts continue to perform well under practical adjustments such as commissions with a revenue-sharing structure. This paper was accepted by Itai Ashlagi, revenue management and market analytics. Supplemental Material: The e-companion and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023. 4939 .
Impacts of reducing scattering and absorbing aerosols on the temporal extent and intensity of South and East Asian summer

The vast majority of reductions in aerosol emissions are projected to take place in the near future; however, 15 associated impacts on the large-scale circulation over the populated Asian monsoon region remain uncertain. Using the stateof-the-art UK Earth System Model version 1 (UKESM1), this study examines the response of the South Asian and East Asian summer monsoon (SASM and EASM) to idealized reductions in anthropogenic emissions of carbonaceous aerosols and SO2. The analysis focuses on changes in the monsoon temporal extent and intensity of precipitation following decreases in either scattering (SCT), absorbing (ABS) aerosols, or decreases in both. For SCT, the combination of the early transition of land-sea 20 thermal contrast and sea level pressure gradient during the pre-monsoon season together with the late transition in the postmonsoon season associated with the tropospheric warming, advances the monsoon onset but delays its withdrawal, which leads to an extension of the summer rainy season across South and East Asia. The northward shift of the upper-tropospheric Asian jet forced by the SCT reduction causes the anomalous convergence of tropospheric moisture and low-level ascent over northern India and eastern China. The intensification of the South Asian High (SAH) due to the warming over land also contributes to 25 the dynamic instability over Asia. These changes enhance the rainy season of these regions in boreal summer. Reductions in absorbing aerosol act in the opposite sense, making the Asia's rainy season shorter and weaker due to the opposite impacts on land-sea contrast, Asian jet displacement and SAH intensity. With reductions in both SCT and ABS aerosol together the monsoon systems intensify, as the overall impact is dominated by aerosol scattering effects and results in the strengthening of monsoon precipitation and 850-hPa circulation. Although aerosol scattering and absorption play quite different roles in the 30 radiation budget, their effects on the monsoon precipitation seem to add almost linearly. Specifically, the patterns of monsoonrelated large-scale responses from reducing both SCT and ABS together are similar to the linear summation of separate effect of reducing SCT or ABS alone, despite of the inherent nonlinearity of the atmospheric systems. Our findings suggest that https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-407 Preprint. Discussion started: 28 March 2023 c © Author(s) 2023. CC BY 4.0 License.
RECONSTRUCTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSCRIPTOME REGULATORY NETWORK OF CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM TYPE A3 STR. LOCH MAREE

Clostridium botulinum type A3 str. Loch Maree is a clinically important strain that produces botulinum neurotoxin type A3 and causes foodborne, infant, and wound botulism worldwide. Studying the mechanism underlying the virulence of this organism is imperative to understand its antibacterial resistance and discovering new drugs or inhibitors. The biochemical and molecular characteristics of this organism have been intensively studied, but their gene regulatory mechanisms are unclear. Hence, we reconstructed the transcriptional regulatory network from the complete genome of this organism and analyzed interactive genes from the identified hub module using a knowledge-based bottom-up approach. The biological reliability, topological properties, and robustness of the regulatory network model were validated with network parameters, followed by gene ontology terms and literature support. The reconstructed regulatory network consisted of 12 transcriptional regulators associated with 2369 coding genes. ResD, SpoOA, ComK, CcpC, DinR, DegU, CitT, CodY, GerE, GltC, GltR, IolR, and LevR were identified as transcriptional regulators from this organism homologous to Bacillus subtilis 168. These regulators have been shown to control beta-lactamase, methyl-accepting chemotaxis protein, DNA replication protein DnaD, sensor histidine kinase, and putative membrane proteins of this organism. This study also predicted all possible promoter sites in regulated genes and their associated molecular functions. We conclude that a global regulatory network model of this organism provides insights into its growth physiology and virulence elicitation in the human intestinal environment.
Functional central limit theorems for ARCH(∞) models

In this paper, we study ARCH( ∞ ) models with either geometrically decaying coe ﬃ cients or hyperbolically decaying coe ﬃ cients. Most popular autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH)-type models such as various modiﬁed generalized ARCH (GARCH) ( p , q ), fractionally integrated GARCH (FIGARCH), and hyperbolic GARCH (HYGARCH). can be expressed as one of these cases. Su ﬃ cient conditions for L 2 -near-epoch dependent (NED) property to hold are established and the functional central limit theorems for ARCH( ∞ ) models are proved.
Alternate Birth Strategies

Abstract Community birth is defined as birth that occurs outside the hospital setting. Birthing in a birth center can be safe for certain patient populations. Home birth can also be safe in well-selected patient with a well-established transfer infrastructure should an emergency occur. Unfortunately, many areas of the United States and the world do not have this infrastructure, limiting access to safe community birth. Immersion during labor has been associated with decreased need for epidural and pain medication. Delivery should not occur in water due to concerns for infection and cord avulsion. Umbilical cord non-severance (also called lotus birth) and placentophagy should be counseled against due to well-documented risks without clear benefit. Birth plans and options should be regularly discussed during pregnancy visits.
Harnessing genome-wide genetic diversity, population structure and linkage disequilibrium in Ethiopian durum wheat gene pool

Yanyang Liu, Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (HNAAS), China; Landraces are an important genetic source for transferring valuable novel genes and alleles required to enhance genetic variation. Therefore, information on the gene pool’s genetic diversity and population structure is essential for the conservation and sustainable use of durum wheat genetic resources. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess genetic diversity, population structure, and linkage disequilibrium, as well as to identify regions with selection signature. Five hundred (500) individuals representing 46 landraces, along with 28 cultivars were evaluated using the Illumina Infinium 25K wheat SNP array, resulting in 8,178 SNPs for further analysis. Gene diversity (GD) and the polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.13–0.50 and 0.12–0.38, with mean GD and PIC values of 0.34 and 0.27, respectively. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) revealed 353,600 pairs of significant SNPs at a cut-off (r2 > 0.20, P < 0.01), with an average r2 of 0.21 for marker pairs. The nucleotide diversity (π) and Tajima’s D (TD) per chromosome for the populations ranged from 0.29–0.36 and 3.46–5.06, respectively, with genome level, mean π values of 0.33 and TD values of 4.43. Genomic scan using the Fst outlier test revealed 85 loci under selection signatures, with 65 loci under balancing selection and 17 under directional selection. Putative candidate genes co-localized with regions exhibiting strong selection signatures were associated with grain yield, plant height, host plant resistance to pathogens, heading date, grain quality, and phenolic content. The Bayesian Model (STRUCTURE) and distance-based (principal coordinate analysis, PCoA, and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean, UPGMA) methods grouped the genotypes into five subpopulations, where landraces from geographically non-adjoining environments were clustered in the same cluster. This research provides further insights into population structure and genetic relationships in a diverse set of durum wheat germplasm, which could be further used in wheat breeding programs to address production challenges sustainably.
Vehicle detection from airborne LiDAR point clouds based on a decision tree algorithm with horizontal and vertical features

ABSTRACT The object-based point cloud analysis (OBPCA) method has been used for vehicle detection from airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds with a relatively simple process and exhibits a degree of accuracy as high as that of a three-dimensional point cloud-based detection scheme. However, it only utilizes horizontal features of the segmented point clouds, and it uses thresholds established by heuristic observation and experience. In this article, we present a novel method for vehicle detection from airborne LiDAR point clouds based on a decision tree algorithm with horizontal and vertical features. It calculates the horizontal and vertical features for segments created by the filtering and segmentation processes, and it establishes a vehicle detection model by training a decision tree classifier with horizontal and vertical features of the segments. Our experiment shows that our proposed method outperforms the previous method in terms of recall and precision by 13.14% and 30.02%, respectively.
Mass Partitioning in Fragmenting Tin Sheets

We experimentally study the mass partitioning of a fragmenting liquid sheet formed after the impact of a ns-laser pulse on a tin microdroplet, and its dependence on laser pulse energy and droplet size. We present the temporal evolution of individual liquid fractions: the sheet and its bounding rim, ligaments protruding from the rim, and droplets shed by the ligaments, applying machine learning to analyze sub-resolution fragments. Our results show that the temporal evolution of the mass partitioning between the sheet, rim, ligaments, and fragments is independent of the deformation Weber number—following Wang and Bourouiba [J. Fluid Mech. 935 , A29 (2022)] for the analogous droplet-pillar impact case, extending the work to larger Weber numbers and to a system where the timescale of deformation is fully decoupled from impact. The full mass partitioning is accounted for by quantifying the further contributions unique to the laser-droplet impact case: that of a centrally located mass remnant, and the mass ablated by the laser pulse. These ﬁndings can be employed to optimize the mass utilization of the liquid tin that is used as target material in the production of extreme ultraviolet light for nanolithography.
Modified Dunn Technique for Unstable Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis: A Midterm Single Center Experience

Objective To evaluate the safety and reproducibility of the surgery for unstable slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE) through the modified Dunn technique in a single center cohort from Brazil. Methods We retrospectively analyzed a cohort of patients submitted to this procedure by a single surgeon who was a hip preservation specialist. Demographic data and radiographic angles were evaluated for the relative risk (RR) of avascular necrosis (AVN) using a log-binomial regression model with simple and random effects. Results Among the 30 patients (30 hips) with a mean age of 11.79 years at the time of the operation, there were 17 boys and 18 left hips, which were operated on in a mean of 11.5 days after the slip. The mean follow-up was of 38 months. The preoperative Southwick angle averaged 60.69° against 4.52° postoperatively ( p < 0.001). A larger preoperative slip angle was associated with the development of AVN (RR: 1.05; 95% confidence interval [95%CI]: 1.02–1.07; p < 0.01). The overall AVN rate was of 26.7%. Function was good or excellent in 86% of uncomplicated hips, and poor in 87.5% of the partients who developed AVN, as graded by the Harris Hip Score. There was no statistical relationship between epiphyseal bleeding and AVN development ( p = 0.82). Conclusion The modified Dunn technique is associated with restoration of the femoral alignment and function after unstable SCFE, when uncomplicated. Moreover, it was shown to be reproducible in our population, with a rate of 26% of femoral head necrosis.