Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of interactions between surface forcings in the development of a model-simulated polar low in Hudson Bay

A 30-km version of the Canadian Regional Climate Model is used to simulate a polar low developmentin early December 1988 over the Hudson Bay. This polar low is quantitatively analyzed in detail, in theinitial and mature stages of its development, in order to understand physically howsea surface conditionsinfluence this mesocyclone. This analysis is realized via the description of the effects of differentatmospheric forcings (i.e. thermal and vorticity advection, and turbulent and convective fluxes) on thepolar low development (called the direct effects) using the diagnostic equations of omega and vorticitytendency. Also, the effects of forcing interactions on subsequent cyclone development (called theindirect effects) is analyzed via the diagnostic equations of vorticity and thermal advection tendencies.In the early stage of development, a low-level cyclogenesis appears over the northwestern Hudson Bayessentially due to diabatic forcings in the context of low-level cold air advection. Progressively, thesynergetic effect of time rate of changes in advection terms, resulting from surface diabatic and stressforcings, favours low-level cyclogenesis and baroclinicity over open water near the sea-ice margin, whose shape is determinant for the deepening and tracking of the polar low. In the mature stage, thegrowth in advection terms becomes the main factor of cyclone intensification with the increase inlow-level convection. Forcings are maximum near the surface and differ substantially from the verticalstructure found in classical extratropical cyclones. In the upper troposphere they appear to play asecondary role in this polar low development. Finally, the polar low studied here is primarily the resultof combined forcing interactions near the sea-ice edge, which are responsible for vorticity and thermaladvection changes at low levels. It is also found that the indented sea-ice shape is a favourable factorfor the local surface cyclogenesis due to the formation of local Laplacians of diabatic and thermalforcings.
Perceived discrimination based on the symptoms of covid-19, mental health, and emotional responses–the international online COVISTRESS survey

Background Despite the potential detrimental consequences for individuals’ health and discrimination from covid-19 symptoms, the outcomes have received little attention. This study examines the relationships between having personally experienced discrimination based on the symptoms of covid-19 (during the first wave of the pandemic), mental health, and emotional responses (anger and sadness). It was predicted that covid-19 discrimination would be positively related to poor mental health and that this relationship would be mediated by the emotions of anger and sadness. Methods The study was conducted using an online questionnaire from January to June 2020 (the Covistress network; including 44 countries). Participants were extracted from the COVISTRESS database (Ntotal = 280) with about a half declaring having been discriminated due to covid-19 symptoms (N = 135). Discriminated participants were compared to non-discriminated participants using ANOVA. A mediation analysis was conducted to examine the indirect effect of emotional responses and the relationships between perceived discrimination and self-reported mental health. Results The results indicated that individuals who experienced discrimination based on the symptoms of covid-19 had poorer mental health and experienced more anger and sadness. The relationship between covid-19 personal discrimination and mental health disappeared when the emotions of anger and sadness were statistically controlled for. The indirect effects for both anger and sadness were statistically significant. Discussion This study suggests that the covid-19 pandemic may have generated discriminatory behaviors toward those suspected of having symptoms and that this is related to poorer mental health via anger and sadness.
Numerical analysis of heat and fluid flow in microchannel heat sink with triangular cavities

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in heat transfer enhancement using nanofluids in corrugated channels due current devices become smaller and smaller and are expected to perform better. The devices will create hot spot and generate more heat are related to the devices performance are better and inability of current heat sink to remove heat. So, the aim of this project is to stimulate the nanofluids flow in straight channel and corrugated microchannel using ANSYS software with certain specific parameters to be fixed or stated which are hydraulic diameter is 133.3 μm, Knudsen Number will be fixed when flow is continuum, Reynold number will be below than 1400, so that the flow in within laminar region, the inlet temperature will be 300 K, uniform heat flux 100W/cm2 and inlet velocity will be in the range of 1.0m/s to 4.5m/s. This research will describe the procedure of using ANSYS software and to analysis the heat enhancement, pressure drop, velocity contour of nanofluids happen in straight microchannel compared to triangular cavities microchannel. The analysis proved triangular cavities that using high volume fraction of nanofluid has better performance compared to straight channel with the same volume fraction of nanofluid because the triangular cavities microchannel have the highest nusselt number and lowest friction factor whereby these two factors become indicator to thermal performance.
Excitation of the Stoneley-Scholte wave at the boundary between an ideal fluid and a viscoelastic solid

Abstract The predicted properties of the Stoneley–Scholte wave, deduced from a previous theoretical study, are experimentally verified at the boundary between an ideal fluid and a viscoelastic solid, respectively represented by water and synthetic resins (PVC and B2900). In particular, it is quantitatively shown that the damping of the energy of the interface wave increases with the distance from the interface and with the distance of propagation. The method of generation of the Stoneley–Scholte wave is based on the association of a shear wave transducer with a solid wedge. The method, previously developed for the ideal fluid/elastic solid interface, is here adapted for the boundary between water and a viscoelastic solid.
Ordering of microwrinkle patterns by compressive strain

We describe a reversible response of complex wrinkle patterns on Pt-coated elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane to lateral compressive strain. The complex wrinkle stripe patterns composed of convex and concave parts with an almost constant wavelength of 1.1 \ensuremath{\mu}m are ordered in the strain direction and return to the original ordering with hysteresis when the strain is relaxed. The ordered domains grow via the rearrangement of the stripe orientation of neighbors, merge with each other, and finally cover a large area of the surface as strain increases.
Effects of year-round stocking rate and stocking method systems on performance of cow-calf pairs in the gulf coast region of the United States1

ABSTRACT The present research is the second phase (2 yr) of a multiyear cow-calf project examining the effect of stocking method, i.e., continuous and rotational, and fixed stocking rate on beef-cattle production. Two sets of 4 adjacent pastures, each containing a mixed warm-season, perennial grass sod [common bermudagrass, Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. ; dallisgrass, Paspalum dilatatum Poir. ], were overseeded to ‘Marshall’ annual ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) in the autumn of 2 consecutive years. Within each set of 4 pastures, 1 of the following grazing treatments was randomly assigned each pasture: rotationally stocked (8 paddocks) at a low, medium, or high stocking rate (RL, RM, and RH) and continuously stocked at a moderate stocking rate (CM). Low, medium, and high stocking rates were 1.25, 2, and 2.75 cows/ha. Brangus cow-calf pairs were stocked on treatment pastures in March 2004. Mean cow BW was greater for RL compared with RM (P 0.20) for the RM versus RH (522 kg) and the RM versus CM (530 kg) stocking-treatment comparisons. Calf-adjusted 205-d BW was similar for all treatment contrasts. Pasture weaning BW differed between the RL versus RM (P
On Sparse Regression LDPC Codes

Iterative decoding of graph-based codes and sparse recovery through approximate message passing (AMP) are two research areas that have seen monumental progress in recent decades. Inspired by these advances, this article introduces sparse regression LDPC codes (SR-LDPC codes) and their decoding. Sparse regression codes (SPARCs) are a class of error correcting codes that build on ideas from compressed sensing and can be decoded using AMP. In certain settings, SPARCs are known to achieve capacity; yet, their performance suffers at finite block lengths. Likewise, low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes can be decoded efficiently using belief propagation and can also be capacity achieving. This article introduces a novel concatenated coding structure that combines an LDPC outer code with a SPARC-inspired inner code. Efficient decoding for such a code can be achieved using AMP with a denoiser that performs belief propagation on the factor graph of the outer LDPC code. The proposed framework exhibits performance improvements over SPARCs and standard LDPC codes for finite block lengths and results in a steep waterfall in error performance, a phenomenon not observed in uncoded SPARCs.
Neural Codec Language Models are Zero-Shot Text to Speech Synthesizers

We introduce a language modeling approach for text to speech synthesis (TTS). Specifically, we train a neural codec language model (called Vall-E) using discrete codes derived from an off-the-shelf neural audio codec model, and regard TTS as a conditional language modeling task rather than continuous signal regression as in previous work. During the pre-training stage, we scale up the TTS training data to 60K hours of English speech which is hundreds of times larger than existing systems. Vall-E emerges in-context learning capabilities and can be used to synthesize high-quality personalized speech with only a 3-second enrolled recording of an unseen speaker as an acoustic prompt. Experiment results show that Vall-E significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art zero-shot TTS system in terms of speech naturalness and speaker similarity. In addition, we find Vall-E could preserve the speaker's emotion and acoustic environment of the acoustic prompt in synthesis. See https://aka.ms/valle for demos of our work.
Proton FLASH Irradiation Platform for Small Animal Setup at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital

The purpose of this study was to create a platform for conducting small animal proton FLASH irradiation at a research-specific therapy center using an auxiliary proton beam line. A dose monitoring system was implemented to provide real-time irradiation dose and dose rate time structure information, utilizing a transmission ionization chamber (TIC), a plastic scintillator-based beam position monitor, and a poor man faraday cup (PMFC). Both the TIC and PMFC were equipped with a custom-made fast-reading current integral electronics device, allowing for real-time dose monitoring with a resolution of 0.5 ms. Experimental testing showed that the maximum dose that could be delivered to the target in a single pulse of 230-MeV protons was approximately 20 Gy, during a pulse period of 199 ms, at a dose rate of 100 Gy/s. The establishment of a dedicated proton research platform at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital has enabled investigation of the biological effects of FLASH irradiation on small animals. The final setup data serves as a useful reference for both planning future experiments and improving the facility for beam users. This study’s achievement provides a valuable foundation for further research on proton FLASH irradiation, potentially offering new insights into its applications for cancer treatment.
Nonuniqueness of time-dependent-dielectric-breakdown distributions

The time-dependent-dielectric-breakdown (TDDB) distributions measured on a series of identical oxides at the same voltages have been shown to depend on the resistance and capacitance of the measurement test equipment. The TDDB distributions were shifted to shorter times if the impedance of the test equipment was lowered and/or the capacitance of the test equipment was raised. The lower resistances and higher capacitances allowed the nonshorting early electric breakdowns to develop into shorting, thermal, dielectric breakdowns.
R\'enyi entropies for one-dimensional quantum systems with mixed boundary conditions

We present a general method for calculating Rényi entropies in the ground state of a one-dimensional critical system with mixed open boundaries, for an interval starting at one of its ends. In the conformal field theory framework, this computation boils down to the evaluation of the correlation function of one twist field and two boundary condition changing operators in the cyclic orbifold. Exploiting null-vectors of the cyclic orbifold, we derive ordinary differential equations satisfied by these correlation functions. In particular we obtain an explicit expression for the second Rényi entropy valid for any diagonal minimal model, but with a particular set of mixed boundary conditions. In order to compare our results with numerical data for the Ising and three-state Potts critical chains, we also identify and compute the leading finite size corrections. 1 ar X iv :2 30 1. 02 12 4v 1 [ co nd -m at . s ta tm ec h] 5 J an 2 02 3
Some more Fano threefolds with a multiplicative Chow-K\"unneth decomposition

A BSTRACT . We exhibit several families of Fano threefolds with a multiplicative Chow–K¨unneth decomposition, in the sense of Shen–Vial. As a consequence, a certain tautological subring of the Chow ring of powers of these threefolds injects into cohomology. As a by-product of the argument, we observe that double covers of projective spaces admit a multiplicative Chow–K¨unneth decomposition.
Time-reversal invariant finite-size topology

We report finite-size topology in the quintessential time-reversal (TR) invariant systems, the quantum spin Hall insulator (QSHI) and the three-dimensional, strong topological insulator (STI): previously-identified helical or Dirac cone boundary states of these phases hybridize in wire or slab geometries with one open boundary condition for finite system size, and additional, topologically-protected, lower-dimensional boundary modes appear for open boundary conditions in two or more directions. For the quasi-one-dimensional (q(2-1)D) QSHI, we find topologically-protected, quasi-zero-dimensional (q(2-2)D) boundary states within the hybridization gap of the helical edge states, determined from q(2-1)D bulk topology characterized by topologically non-trivial Wilson loop spectra. We show this finite-size topology furthermore occurs in 1T'-WTe2 in ribbon geometries with sawtooth edges, based on analysis of a tight-binding model derived from density-functional theory calculations, motivating experimental investigation of our results. In addition, we find quasi-two-dimensional (q(3-1)D) finite-size topological phases occur for the STI, yielding helical boundary modes distinguished from those of the QSHI by a non-trivial magneto-electric polarizability linked to the original 3D bulk STI. Finite-size topological phases therefore exhibit signatures associated with the non-trivial topological invariant of a higher-dimensional bulk. Finally, we find the q(3-2)D STI also exhibits finite-size topological phases, finding the first signs of topologically-protected boundary modes of codimension greater than 1 due to finite-size topology. Finite-size topology of four or higher-dimensional systems is therefore possible in experimental settings without recourse to thermodynamically large synthetic dimensions.
Large time behavior of semilinear stochastic partial differential equations perturbed by a mixture of Brownian and fractional Brownian motions

We study the trajectorywise blowup behavior of a semilinear partial diﬀerential equation that is driven by a mixture of multiplicative Brownian and fractional Brownian motion, modeling diﬀerent types of random perturbations. The linear operator is supposed to have an eigenfunction of constant sign, and we show its inﬂuence, as well as the inﬂuence of its eigenvalue and of the other parameters of the equation, on the occurrence of a blowup in ﬁnite time of the solution. We give estimates for the probability of ﬁnite time blowup and of blowup before a given ﬁxed time. Essential tools are the mild and weak form of an associated random partial diﬀerential equation.
High-level semantic feature matters few-shot unsupervised domain adaptation

In few-shot unsupervised domain adaptation (FS-UDA), most existing methods followed the few-shot learning (FSL) methods to leverage the low-level local features (learned from conventional convolutional models, e.g., ResNet) for classification. However, the goal of FS-UDA and FSL are relevant yet distinct, since FS-UDA aims to classify the samples in target domain rather than source domain. We found that the local features are insufficient to FS-UDA, which could introduce noise or bias against classification, and not be used to effectively align the domains. To address the above issues, we aim to refine the local features to be more discriminative and relevant to classification. Thus, we propose a novel task-specific semantic feature learning method (TSECS) for FS-UDA. TSECS learns high-level semantic features for image-to-class similarity measurement. Based on the high-level features, we design a cross-domain self-training strategy to leverage the few labeled samples in source domain to build the classifier in target domain. In addition, we minimize the KL divergence of the high-level feature distributions between source and target domains to shorten the distance of the samples between the two domains. Extensive experiments on DomainNet show that the proposed method significantly outperforms SOTA methods in FS-UDA by a large margin (i.e., ~10%).
DepthP+P: Metric Accurate Monocular Depth Estimation using Planar and Parallax

Current self-supervised monocular depth estimation methods are mostly based on estimating a rigid-body motion representing camera motion. These methods suffer from the well-known scale ambiguity problem in their predictions. We propose DepthP+P, a method that learns to estimate outputs in metric scale by following the traditional planar parallax paradigm. We first align the two frames using a common ground plane which removes the effect of the rotation component in the camera motion. With two neural networks, we predict the depth and the camera translation, which is easier to predict alone compared to predicting it together with rotation. By assuming a known camera height, we can then calculate the induced 2D image motion of a 3D point and use it for reconstructing the target image in a self-supervised monocular approach. We perform experiments on the KITTI driving dataset and show that the planar parallax approach, which only needs to predict camera translation, can be a metrically accurate alternative to the current methods that rely on estimating 6DoF camera motion.
The Evolutionary Computation Methods No One Should Use

The center-bias (or zero-bias) operator has recently been identified as one of the problems plaguing the benchmarking of evolutionary computation methods. This operator lets the methods that utilize it easily optimize functions that have their respective optima in the center of the feasible set. In this paper, we describe a simple procedure that can be used to identify methods that incorporate a center-bias operator and use it to investigate 90 evolutionary computation methods that were published between 1987 and 2022. We show that more than half (47 out of the 90) of the considered methods have the center-bias problem. We also show that the center-bias is a relatively new phenomenon (with the first identified method being from 2012), but its inclusion has become extremely prevalent in the last few years. Lastly, we briefly discuss the possible root causes of this issue.
Peace Dividends: The Economic Effects of Colombia's Peace Agreement

The last decades have seen a resurgence of armed conflict around the world, renewing the need for durable peace agreements. In this paper, I evaluate the economic effects of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the largest guerrilla group in the country, the FARC, putting an end to one of the longest and most violent armed conflicts in recent history. Using a difference-indifference strategy comparing municipalities that historically had FARC presence and those with presence of a similar, smaller guerrilla group, the ELN, before and after the start of a unilateral ceasefire by the FARC, I establish three sets of results. First, violence indicators significantly and sizably decreased in historically FARC municipalities. Second, despite this large reduction in violence, I find preciselyestimated null effects across a variety of economic indicators, suggesting no effect of the peace agreement on economic activity. Furthermore, I use a sharp discontinuity in eligibility to the government’s flagship business and job creation program for conflict-affected areas to evaluate the policy’s impact, also finding preciselyestimated null effects on the same economic indicators. Third, I present evidence that suggests the reason why historically FARC municipalities could not reap the economic benefits from the reduction in violence is a lack of state capacity, caused both by their low initial levels of state capacity and the lack of state entry postceasefire. These results indicate that peace agreements require complementary investments in state capacity to yield an economic dividend. *I thank Michael Callen for his guidance and support throughout the project. I thank Gharad Bryan, Robin Burgess, Edward Davenport and seminar participants at the London School of Economics and the ACES Summer School for helpful comments. I acknowledge financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council. ar X iv :2 30 1. 01 84 3v 1 [ ec on . G N ] 4 J an 2 02 3 “My country celebrates and welcomes these (Sustainable Development) Goals, because we are aware that they are also necessary conditions for building peace and, in turn, peace in Colombia will have very high economic, social and environmental dividends. It will be a virtuous circle. ” – Juan Manuel Santos, then President of Colombia, to the UN in 2015.