Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Waterdrop Removal From Hot-Rolled Steel Strip Surfaces Based on Progressive Recurrent Generative Adversarial Networks

Automated visual inspection (AVI) instrument of surface defects for hot-rolled steel strips is conventionally installed closely before the terminal crimping machine, where the adjacent upstream process is laminar spray cooling. Waterdrops, spreading more or less over the steel strip surface, often trigger false alarms, which is a quite common problem in AVI. Stimulated by the idea of image rain removal in visual enhancement field, this article considers the surface waterdrops, pseudodefects in essence, as a conceptual “rain-like layer. ” A targeted method, namely progressive recurrent generative adversarial network (PReGAN), is designed for active waterdrop tracking and fine-grained image inpainting. Meanwhile, a steel surface database (2400 raw images with the resolution of $1000\times1000$ ) captured from actual hot-rolling line is constructed for the first time for open evaluation of waterdrop removal. The experimental results indicate that images enhanced by the PReGAN perform the most informative and spotless, with 52.2073 peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and 0.9502 structural similarity (SSIM) index, when compared with four prestigious networks. Assisted by the PReGAN, the false alarms are proved to be reduced at least a half during the application tests using four traditional simple detection methods.
Impact of a fish farm on physical and chemical properties of sediment and water column in the middle Adriatic sea

This paper presents monitoring results of the impacts of a tuna breeding farm on physical and chemical parame-ters in sediment and water column. The results showed permanently more negative sediment redox-potential at the station under the cage than at the referential station, as well as higher organic carbon and total nitrogen sediment con-tent. The average sediment total phosphorus concentration (TP) in surface sediment for the station under the cage (G1) was 24.1± 7.9 µ mol g-1 d.w. , which is almost twofold higher than at the station 200 meters far from the cage (G2) and the referential station (REF) distanced 500 meters. These concentration values were similar to those recorded for highly eutrophicated bays in the Middle Adriatic area. SEDEX analysis showed an increased “ fish debris phos-phorus” concentration at the station under the cage (31% of TP concentration) in relation to G2 and REF station (20% and 12% of TP). This increase is directly influenced by fish farming activities (fish bones and fish tooth remains, origi-nated from uneaten fish food settled at the seabed).
Strength and Microstructural Assessment of Reconstituted and Stabilised Soft Soils with Varying Silt Contents

The study of the strength of reconstituted and stabilised soft soils is very important in geotechnical engineering. The soil particles, such as clay, sand, and silt play important roles in determining the behaviour of soils. The behaviour of clay and sand particles are unique; however, the behaviour of silt particles lie in a transitional form between sand and clay. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate (a) the effect of silt contents on the strength of soft soils; (b) the effect of silt content on the strength of cement-stabilised soft soils; and (c) the microstructure of the soft soil specimens stabilised by cement with varying particle size distribution. A series of tests consisting in consolidated, isotropic undrained (CIU) triaxial tests, unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests, and scanning electron microscope (SEM) images were conducted in this study to achieve these objectives. In conclusion, the relationship between the silt content and critical state behaviour of soft soils (both clay and silt particles) are proposed. For the cement-stabilised specimens, the unconfined compressive strength increases with the increase in silt content when the cement content is 10%. However, the UCS decreases with the increase in silt content when cement content is 30%. With cement content ranging from 15–25%, the UCS increases at first with the increase of silt content but decreases once the silt content reaches a ‘saturation’ point.
Predictors of parasocial interaction and relationships in live streaming

The purpose of the current article was to explore parasocial phenomena in the unique and interactive context of live streaming. Specifically, the predictors of parasocial interactions (PSIs) and parasocial relationships (PSRs) were compared. In the past, the terms ‘parasocial interaction’ and ‘parasocial relationship’ have been used interchangeably, even though they are distinct constructs – which has confused researchers’ understanding of these phenomena. The current study aims to begin to disentangle our understanding of these two constructs by studying the predictors for each construct separately. An online survey was utilized to collect data on PSRs, PSIs, and various parasocial predictors that fell into three categories: streamer (source) characteristics, viewer characteristics, and behavioral (relationship) characteristics. Results indicate that streamer characteristics were the most important predictors of both PSIs and PSRs in the live streaming context, although characteristics of the viewer and relationship were also influential. These findings indicate that message sources can modify their content to encourage parasocial phenomena in their audience. This is encouraging, as research suggests that parasocial phenomena lead to many positive repercussions for the media and so are generally considered a goal of media personae.
Desempeño Académico de Estudiantes Universitarios con Ayudas Financieras: Una Revisión de Literatura

En los últimos años se ha observado un incremento significativo en la matrícula de estudiantes de menores ingresos a la universidad, dado el mayor financiamiento a través de becas y préstamos; sin embargo, la efectividad de estos programas no es tan clara considerando las bajas tasas de retención, persistencia y graduación. El presente estudio tiene como propósito identificar los efectos de las ayudas financieras sobre los indicadores de logros estudiantiles a través de una revisión sistemática de literatura internacional entre 2015 y 2020 para encontrar relaciones entre el desempeño de los estudiantes y las ayudas financieras que reciben. Los resultados demuestran que, en el caso de las becas, el efecto es positivo en los indicadores de rendimiento y graduación; empero, en el caso de los préstamos, el desempeño es heterogéneo y denota un estrés financiero para los estudiantes. Se concluye la necesidad de investigaciones futuras que determinen de manera consistente la significancia de los préstamos en los resultados académicos dada la gran inversión pública en este ámbito, y la vinculación del perfil de estudiantes e instituciones con el impacto de los programas de financiamiento, para contribuir a la selección de programas efectivos y la toma de decisiones de la política pública.
Assessment of CMIP6 Simulations over Tropical South America

This study assesses the performance of 46 global climate models of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Phase 6) - CMIP6 and selects better models in simulating the precipitation and the air temperature at 2 meters height climatology over tropical South America (SA) during the historical period (1996-2014). For this reason, some statistical measures are computed. A great number of models have a small bias when compared with observation, however, a lot of them have a poor performance in terms of the Willmott agreement index, which indicates a low performance in representing the temporal variability. Among the 46 models, E3SM-1-0, EC-Earth3, EC-Earth3-AerChem, EC-Earth3-Veg, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MPI-ESM1-2-LR and TaiESM1 have a better performance in reproducing SA climate. When the ensemble of the 7 models is compared with that 46 models, there is a reduction in the bias of the variables under study in some sectors of the SA. This indicates that the use of 7 models is enough for application in other studies. Avaliacao de Simulacoes do CMIP6 sobre a America do Sul Tropical R E S U M O Este estudo avalia o desempenho de 46 modelos climaticos globais do Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Fase 6) - CMIP6 e seleciona os que melhor simulam a climatologia da precipitacao e temperatura do ar a 2 metros de altura sobre a America do Sul (AS) tropical durante o periodo historico (1996-2014). Para isso, sao calculadas algumas medidas estatisticas. Enquanto a maioria dos modelos apresenta um vies aceitavel quando comparados com a observacao, muitos deles mostram uma baixa performance em termos do indice de concordância de Willmott, o que indica menor habilidade em representar a variabilidade temporal. Entre os 46 modelos, E3SM-1-0, EC-Earth3, EC-Earth3-AerChem, EC-Earth3-Veg, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MPI-ESM1-2-LR e TaiESM1 tem maior habilidade em reproduzir o clima da AS. Quando o ensemble desses 7 modelos e comparado com composto de 46 modelos, apresenta reducao no vies das variaveis em estudo em alguns setores da AS. Isso indica, que a utilizacao de 7 modelos e suficiente para aplicacao em outros estudos. Palavras-chave: CMIP6; America do Sul Tropical; validacao; variaveis atmosfericas
Left and Right Arcuate Fasciculi Are Uniquely Related to Word Reading Skills in Chinese-English Bilingual Children

Abstract Whether reading in different writing systems recruits language-unique or language-universal neural processes is a long-standing debate. Many studies have shown the left arcuate fasciculus (AF) to be involved in phonological and reading processes. In contrast, little is known about the role of the right AF in reading, but some have suggested that it may play a role in visual spatial aspects of reading or the prosodic components of language. The right AF may be more important for reading in Chinese due to its logographic and tonal properties, but this hypothesis has yet to be tested. We recruited a group of Chinese-English bilingual children (8.2 to 12.0 years old) to explore the common and unique relation of reading skill in English and Chinese to fractional anisotropy (FA) in the bilateral AF. We found that both English and Chinese reading skills were positively correlated with FA in the rostral part of the left AF-direct segment. Additionally, English reading skill was positively correlated with FA in the caudal part of the left AF-direct segment, which was also positively correlated with phonological awareness. In contrast, Chinese reading skill was positively correlated with FA in certain segments of the right AF, which was positively correlated with visual spatial ability, but not tone discrimination ability. Our results suggest that there are language universal substrates of reading across languages, but that certain left AF nodes support phonological mechanisms important for reading in English, whereas certain right AF nodes support visual spatial mechanisms important for reading in Chinese.
Reduction of Device Operating Temperatures with Graphene-Filled Thermal Interface Materials

The majority of research into few layer graphene (FLG) thermal interface materials (TIM) concerns the direct quantification of innate composite properties with much less direct analysis of these materials in realistic applications. In this study, equilibrium temperatures of engineered device substitutes fixed to passive heat sink solutions with varying FLG concentration TIMs are experimentally measured at varying heat dissipation rates. A custom, precisely-controlled heat source’s temperature is continually measured to determine equilibrium temperature at a particular heat dissipation. It is found that altering the used FLG TIM concentrations from 0 vol.% to as little as 7.3 vol.% resulted in a decrease of combined TIM and passively-cooled heat sink thermal resistance from 4.23∘C/W to 2.93∘C/W, amounting to a reduction in operating temperature of ≈108∘C down to ≈85∘C at a heat dissipation rate of 20 W. The results confirm FLG TIMs’ promising use in the application of device heat dissipation in a novel, controllable experimental technique.
Temporal sampling and role of flux measurements for subsurface heterogeneous characterization in groundwater basins using hydraulic tomography

Accurate characterization of heterogeneity in groundwater basins is crucial to the sustainable management of groundwater resources. This study explores the temporal sampling issues and the role of flux measurements in the characterization of heterogeneity in groundwater basins using numerical experiments. The experiments involve a digital basin imitating the groundwater basin of the North China Plain (NCP), where the groundwater exploitation reduction program is ongoing. Using the experiments, we champion that the reduction program could collect groundwater level information induced by operational variations of existing pumping wells at different locations in the basin. Such a dataset could serve as a basin‐scale hydraulic tomography (HT) to characterize the basin‐scale heterogeneity cost‐effectively. Both steady‐state and transient‐state inversion experiments demonstrate the advantage of HT surveys in characterizing basin‐scale heterogeneity over conventional pumping tests at fixed well locations. Additionally, head data at the early, intermediate, and late time from well hydrographs should be selected for the HT analysis to maximize HT's power and save computational costs. When accurate geological zones are incorporated in prior information, flux measurements significantly improve parameter estimates based on conventional pumping tests. However, their effects are less noticeable for long‐term HT surveys in such basin‐scale aquifers without fissures or fractures. This basin‐scale tomographic survey example serves a guide for field data collection and optimization of the analysis of future basin‐scale HT.
Why Do People Work? An Empirical Test of Hybrid Work Orientations

The present study analyzed whether one’s work orientation can be organized into work orientation profiles beyond the three pure orientations of job, career, and calling. We tested the existence of these hybrid work orientations in a sample of 959 adults aged from 18 to 71 years old (M = 40.61, SD = 9.54). A cluster analysis showed that the best result consisted of four profiles: “Career-Calling”, “Career-Job”, “Pure Job”, and “Indifference”. Theoretical and practical implications of profile approach to the study of work orientations are discussed at the end.
Ethnic belonging, traditional cultures and intercultural access: the discursive construction of older immigrants’ ethnicity and culture

ABSTRACT Older people with a migration background are a continuously increasing population group in Germany. This increase has led to a heightened awareness of the socioeconomic situation, access to health care and social services available for older immigrants in politics, research and health care institutions. Previous research indicates that generalisations about older immigrants, e.g. as a social problem group, are common in academic research and policy publications. Furthermore, the focus on ethnicity seems to homogenise older immigrants under their ethnic difference, instead of acknowledging cultural and ethnic diversity. This discourse analysis investigates 43 publications from health care or older age-related organisations, government reports, city council or municipal documents and articles from health and care-related magazines published in Germany between 2000 and 2019. The methodology is guided by a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse to examine knowledge constructions of ageing/older age, older immigrants and cultural/ethnic classifications. I demonstrate how ethnicity and culture of older immigrants are stereotyped and portrayed as traditional and family-oriented and support is presented as situated in informal private networks. At the same time, a general consensus is that intercultural approaches should be encouraged as important strategies to improve access to health care and social services.
CGFNet: Cross-Guided Fusion Network for RGB-T Salient Object Detection

RGB salient object detection (SOD) has made great progress. However, the performance of this single-modal salient object detection will be significantly decreased when encountering some challenging scenes, such as low light or darkness. To deal with the above challenges, thermal infrared (T) image is introduced into the salient object detection. This fused modal is called RGB-T salient object detection. To achieve deep mining of the unique characteristics of single modal and the full integration of cross-modality information, a novel Cross-Guided Fusion Network (CGFNet) for RGB-T salient object detection is proposed. Specifically, a Cross-Scale Alternate Guiding Fusion (CSAGF) module is proposed to mine the high-level semantic information and provide global context support. Subsequently, we design a Guidance Fusion Module (GFM) to achieve sufficient cross-modality fusion by using single modal as the main guidance and the other modal as auxiliary. Finally, the Cross-Guided Fusion Module (CGFM) is presented and serves as the main decoding block. And each decoding block is consists of two parts with two modalities information of each being the main guidance, i.e., cross-shared Cross-Level Enhancement (CLE) and Global Auxiliary Enhancement (GAE). The main difference between the two parts is that the GFM using different modalities as the main guide. The comprehensive experimental results prove that our method achieves better performance than the state-of-the-art salient detection methods. The source code has released at: https://github.com/wangjie0825/CGFNet.git.
Accumulation of Potentially Toxic Metals in Egyptian Alluvial Soils, Berseem Clover (Trifolium alexandrinum L.), and Groundwater after Long-Term Wastewater Irrigation

The reduced availability of water resources in Egypt has imposed the need to intensify the use of wastewater for crop irrigation in the alluvial soils. Relevant effects can derive from contents of potentially toxic metals (PTMs) in supply resources soils, crops, and groundwater in these areas. For this reason the PTM content has to be monitored to evaluate and minimize health hazards. Therefore, in this context, two areas of the SE Nile Delta subjected to 25 year of wastewater irrigation, using agricultural drainage water (ADW) and mixed wastewater (MWW) were chosen and compared with a nearby site irrigated with Nile freshwater (NFW). At each of the three sites, ten samples of irrigation water, topsoil, berseem clover (Trifolium alexandrinum L.) plants, and seven groundwater samples were collected and analyzed for Cr, Co, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Zn. Results indicate that the total contents of Co, Cu, Ni, and Zn in soils collected from the three sampling sites and Pb in the MWW-irrigated soils were higher than their average natural contents in the earth’s crust, indicating potential risks. The DTPA-extractable contents of Cu in the three sites, in addition to Pb and Zn in the MWW-irrigated soils, exceeded the safe limits. The MWW-irrigated soils showed a considerable degree of metal contamination, while the NFW- and ADW-irrigated soils showed moderate and low levels of contamination, respectively. The contents of the six PTMs in the three sites showed low individual ecological risks, except for Pb in the MWW-irrigated soils that showed a moderate risk; however, the overall ecological risk remained low in all samples. The values of Co, Cu, and Ni in berseem shoot in addition to Pb from the MWW-irrigated soils were over the maximum permissible levels for animal feeding. Values of root-to-shoot translocation factor were lower than 1.0 for Cr, Co and Ni but higher than 1.0 for Cu, Pb, and Zn. Berssem plant is a good candidate for phytofiltration of Cr, Co and Ni, while for extracting Cu, Pb and Zn from polluted soils. The groundwater samples collected from the three sampling sites showed lower metal concentrations than the safe limits for drinking standards. Further remediation studies should be taken into account to alleviate potential environmental and health-related risks when using supply resources different from freshwater.
Becoming Family Farmers: The Contribution of the Existential Ontological Perspective to the Social Learning for Sustainability Theory

This research examines social learning for sustainability (SLfS), particularly in its social dimension. Few studies have discussed or advanced on the ontological issues of SLfS relating to who social actors are becoming. This study aims to describe and analyze how the process of SLfS facilitates Brazilian families who were at the base of the social pyramid (no income) to change the status from landless campers to family farmers with land moving up four levels in the social pyramid over a decade. The research is qualitative interpretative, based on narratives from semi-structured interviews with 16 social actors and document analysis. The results show the meaning of learning professional ways of being family farmers from an existential ontological perspective.
Bismut type derivative formulae and gradient estimate for multiplicative SDEs with fractional noises

In this article, we study multiplicative SDE with fractional noise in a suitable sense, which can be regarded as a fractional Gruschin type process. Using the transfer principle and fractional integral and derivative operators, two kinds of Bismut type derivative formulae are established in this non-Markovian context under incompatible conditions. As an application, an explicit gradient estimate is derived.
Looking through the mirror: representativeness of the Italian party system before the 2018 General Election

The use of the Internet and communication technologies has dramatically increased in recent times. This change has affected every aspect of political life, with electoral campaigns and parties making no exception. One of the most significant advancements on the theme is the spread of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). These tools are developed before elections to match users’ policy preferences to those of the parties running. By looking at the dataset created with the answers of the users of an Italian VAA, Navigatore Elettorale, this study aims at understanding the representativeness of the six main parties running in the 2018 General Election. Through the development of a Representative Deficit Index, the study will also assess the key policy areas in which each of these parties performed best in the eyes of the electorate. The finding shows a diversified pattern of (in)successes for each of the parties, with some unexpected results.
A review on theranostic applications of iodine nanoparticles: Recent findings and perspectives

Application of nanoparticles have in the core of researchers attention for both imaging and therapy of cancers. This review article aimed to prepare an outline on recent applications of iodine nanoparticles (INPs) as theranostic agents in both diagnosis and therapies. Among various strategies are used in treatment of cancers, radiotherapy with radiopharmaceutical agents especially radioisotope of iodine displays satisfactory results for numerous types of cancers. In recent years, new investigations were done in order to develop the novel structure of INPs. These nanoprobes could act as efficient theranostic purposes. Iodine nanoparticles may be applied in nuclear medicine imaging and may be effective with mega voltage (MV) photons in cancer therapy, but this remains to be tested with different cancer cells. By using INPs, effective steps can be taken in the future in both diagnosis and treatment of cancers. This review emphasized the recent research findings on the application of INPs in medical imaging and therapeutic of cancers. The current challenges and the perspectives for their future applications were also represented and discussed.