Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial heterogeneity effects on land surface modeling of water and energy partitioning

Abstract. Understanding the influence of land surface heterogeneity on surface water and energy fluxes is crucial for modeling earth system variability and change. This study investigates the effects of four dominant heterogeneity sources on land surface modeling, including atmospheric forcing (ATM), soil properties (SOIL), land use and land cover (LULC), and topography (TOPO). Our analysis focused on their impacts on the partitioning of precipitation (P) into evapotranspiration (ET) and runoff (R), partitioning of net radiation into sensible heat and latent heat, and corresponding water and energy fluxes. An initial set of 16 experiments were performed over the continental US (CONUS) using the E3SM land model (ELMv1) with different combinations of heterogeneous and homogeneous datasets. The Sobol' total and first-order sensitivity indices were utilized to quantify the relative importance of the four heterogeneity sources. Sobol' total sensitivity index measures the total heterogeneity effects induced by a given heterogeneity source, consisting of the contribution from its own heterogeneity (i.e., the first-order index) and its interactions with other heterogeneity sources. ATM and LULC are the most dominant heterogeneity sources in determining spatial variability of water and energy partitioning, mainly contributed by their own heterogeneity and slightly contributed by their interactions with other heterogeneity sources. Their heterogeneity effects are complementary, both spatially and temporally. The overall impacts of SOIL and TOPO are negligible, except TOPO dominates the spatial variability of R/P across the transitional climate zone between the arid western and humid eastern CONUS. Accounting for more heterogeneity sources improves the simulated spatial variability of water and energy fluxes when compared with ERA5-Land reanalysis dataset. An additional set of 13 experiments identified the most critical components within each heterogeneity source, which are precipitation, temperature, and longwave radiation for ATM, soil texture, and soil color for SOIL and maximum fractional saturated area parameter for TOPO.
A Multi-Objective Reconfiguration Scheme for Reliability and Energy Usage Enhancement of Distribution Systems in the Presence of Wind Turbines Using the MOHSA Optimization Algorithm

: The stochastic nature of the active power generated by wind turbines (WTs) has posed new challenges to the reliability assessment, load flow analysis, and reconfiguration process of distribution systems penetrated with WTs. In this paper, a new optimization approach has been presented to find the best configuration of the distribution system along with optimal locations of WTs. This is aimed at maximizing the reliability of the system, while energy losses are minimized. To this end, based on the graph theory and the system topology, a simple technique is proposed for finding minimal cut sets that could be used for calculating reliability indices. Furthermore, the multiple flow directions created in the presence of WTs cause difficulties in calculating reliability indices and in performing load flow analysis. Accordingly, a new concept called the independent reliability zone is introduced to overcome these problems. In this paper, the multi-objective harmony search algorithm, due to its suitability for multi-objective problems, is employed as a solution for solving the proposed optimization problem. The effect of the proposed approach has been evaluated on both test and real systems. The results show that using the proposed approach, a more practical solution is achieved for low-cost and reliable planning of the system in the presence of uncertainties in DGs.
Examining Cultural Drifts in Landscape Artwork Throughout History and Development

Research on cultural products suggest that there are substantial cultural variations between East Asian and Western landscape masterpieces from the 15 th to 19 th centuries and contemporary members’ landscape artwork (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan, & Nisbett, 2008), and that these cultural differences in drawing styles emerge around the age of 8 (Senzaki, Masuda, & Nand, 2014). However, culture is not static. To explore the dynamics of cultural change, research should be conducted from both historical and ontogenetic perspectives (Tomasello, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978). In this thesis, I examined (1) 17 th to 20 th century Japanese and Western landscape masterpieces, and (2) adolescent data in landscape artworks alongside findings from Senzaki et al.’s (2014) research on elementary school-aged children. The results demonstrated cultural variations in artworks and masterpieces, and “cultural drifts” (Herskovits, 1941; 1948) where at certain time periods cultural tendencies deviated from default cultural patterns but occasionally returned to its previous state. The bidirectional influence of culture and implications for furthering the discipline of cultural psychology will be discussed. (165 words)
Numerical Simulation of the Solidification Process of Nanofluids

The effects of mass transfer of the nanoparticles on the morphology of the solid-liquid interface and evolving concentration field during solidification of colloids have been reported. The numerical method that has been used was based on the one-fluid-mixture model. The model takes into account the thermal as well as the solutal convection effects. A differentially-heated square cavity was used in the simulation. The colloid was composed of a suspension of copper nanoparticles in water. The temperature difference between the hot and cold sides was 5 degrees centigrade and the loadings of the nanoparticles that have been used in the simulation were 1%, 5%, and 10% by mass. The solid-liquid interface for the case of nanofluid with 10 wt% of nanoparticles evolved from a planar shape at the beginning of the solidification process to a dendritic shape as the solidification process proceeds in time.
Graph Modelling of Musical Wind Instruments: A Method for Natural Frequencies Computation

Many aspects of the musical wind instruments behavior can be studied within the framework of 1D acoustic propagation. A common method is based on an analogy with electric transmission lines, in which the impedance is a central concept. The present work proposes a di ﬀ erent approach, based on results from mathematical modelling and analysis of repetitive structures such as networks of strings or beams. The method, that keeps at the one dimensional level, uses concepts and methods from graph theory for modelling the duct of wind instruments. A key point is a special matrix reformulation of the original wave equation on a graph. The focus is on natural frequencies computations for complex, piecewise cylindrical ducts. Examples with or without toneholes illustrate the method and its potential through symbolic computations. In the case of closed-open piecewise cylindrical resonators, the approach answers in a practical way a conjecture formulated twenty years ago by Dalmont and Kergomard, which is then replaced in the general framework of inverse spectral problems. An assertion of Benade is checked on one woodwind example.
An Analysis on Coronary Artery Disease Severity with Serum Adropin Level in Patients with Acute ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction

Objective Adropin is associated with energy balance in tissues and organs. The SYNTAX score (SS) is used to determine the severity of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between serum adropin levels and disease severity in STEMI patients. Materials and Methods Eighty-nine patients who underwent coronary angiography (CAG) for STEMI were included in the study. The STEMI patients were divided into two subgroups: Group 1(SS < 22) and Group 2 (SS ≥ 23). 43 patients who underwent CAG and had normal coronary arteries were included in the study as a control group. Results Groups 1 and 2 included more male participants than the control group (89.7% and 74.2% vs. 34.9%, respectively, p < 0.001). The smoking rate was higher in Groups 1 and 2 than in the control group (55.1% and 34.4% vs. 11.6%, respectively, p≤0.001). Serum adropin levels were lower in Group 1 than in the control group (147.3 ± 149.2 mg/L and 228.1 ± 253.3 ng/L, p = 0.03). Serum adropin levels were the lowest in Group 2 (87.8 ± 23.2 ng/L, 147.3 ± 149.2 ng/L, and 228.1 ± 253.3 ng/L, p = 0.004). Serum adropin levels were also negatively correlated with SS (r = -0.33, p = 0.002). In adropin levels SS;this the CAD.
Lifting the Veil on Hyper-parameters for Value-based Deep Reinforcement Learning

Successful applications of deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) combine algorithmic design and careful hyper-parameter selection. The former often comes from iterative improvements over existing algorithms, while the latter is either inherited from prior methods or tuned for the speciﬁc method being introduced. Although critical to a method’s performance, the effect of the various hyper-parameter choices are often overlooked in favour of algorithmic advances. In this paper, we perform an initial empirical investigation into a number of often-overlooked hyper-parameters for value-based deep RL agents, demonstrating their varying levels of importance. We conduct this study on a varied set of classic control environments which helps highlight the effect each environment has on an algorithm’s hyper-parameter sensitivity.
Effect of Areca nut on Helicobacter pylori -induced gastritis in mice

Areca nut (AN) chewing is a habit of humans in many countries in the Central, Southern and South-east Asia. It is strongly associated with the occurrence of oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal cancer as well as systemic inflammation. However, the association between AN intake and development of gastric lesion has not been identified yet. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of AN on gastric diseases using a mouse model for H. pylori infection. There were seven groups; mice fed with normal diet (ND), mice fed with 2.5% AN-containing diet (AD), mice fed with 200 ppm MNU-containing water (MNU), mice fed with normal diet and infected with H. pylori PMSS1 strain (ND/HP), mice fed with 2.5% AN-containing diet and infected with H. pylori PMSS1 strain (AD/HP), mice fed with 200 ppm MNU-containing water and infected with H. pylori PMSS1 strain (MNU/HP), and mice fed with 2.5% AN-containing diet, 200 ppm MNU-containing water and infected with H. pylori PMSS1 strain (AD/MNU/HP). Food intake and body weight gain were monitored weekly during experiments and mice were sacrificed at 10-week after the infection. After sacrifice, stomach weight, H. pylori colonization, and gastric inflammation were determined. The stomach weight was significantly increased in H. pylori -infected groups with the increase in H. pylori colonization, but the two groups showed no significant difference of the stomach weight and the colonization. In histological grading, mononuclear cells infiltration in AD/HP group was more severe than that in ND/HP group. These data suggest that chronic gastric inflammation was aggravated by AN treatment in H. pylori -induced gastric lesion. Furthermore, this animal model will be useful for future experiments to determine the effect of potential carcinogens on H. pylori -induced gastric lesions.
Plant regeneration by somatic embryogenesis in pine wood

Pine wilt disease (PWD) is a severe threat to pine forests in East Asia. Screening and breeding 19 of resistant varieties is a very effective way to prevent and control PWD. However, no reliable somatic 20 embryogenesis system has yet been developed for the elite nematode-resistant Pinus thunbergii line. In 21 this study, we studied the plant regeneration via somatic embryogenesis of nematode-resistant P. 22 thunbergii . Initiation of embryogenic tissue was significantly affected by seed family ( p = 0.017), 23 immature zygotic embryo stage ( p = 0.032) and initiation medium ( p = 0.004). Seed family 37 was the 24 most favorable female parent for initiation of P. thunbergii . Furthermore, the initiation rate increased 25 from the pre-embryonic stage to the cleavage poly-embryonic stage. The optimal medium was I2, 26 containing 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (9 µM) and 6-benzyladenine (4.4 µM). A statistically 27 signiﬁcant interaction between cell line and subculture time (24 months) was observed in the inﬂuence 28 on proliferation rate, somatic embryo production and percentage germination ( p < 0.001). In this study, 29 the highest somatic embryo production was achieved using cell line 37-1 (1,983 somatic embryos/g fresh 30 weigh), with approximately 83.5% of somatic embryos germinating after transferring to germination 31 medium, of which 77.6% converted into plantlets.
Energy Efficiency of Quantized Neural Networks in Medical Imaging

The main goal of this paper is to compare the energy efficiency of quantized neural networks to perform medical image analysis on different processors and neural network architectures. Deep neural networks have demonstrated outstanding performance in medical image analysis but require high computation and power usage. In our work, we review the power usage and temperature of processors when running Resnet and UNet architectures to perform image classification and segmentation respectively. We compare Edge TPU, Jetson Nano, Apple M1, Nvidia Quadro P6000 and Nvidia A6000 to infer using full-precision FP32 and quantized INT8 models. The results will be useful for designers and implementers of medical imaging AI on hand-held or edge computing devices.
Challenges and benefits of quantifying irrigation through the assimilation of Sentinel-1 backscatter observations into Noah-MP

Abstract. In recent years, the amount of water used for agricultural purposes has been rising due to an increase in food demand. However, anthropogenic water usage, such as for irrigation, is still not or poorly parameterized in regional- and larger-scale land surface models (LSMs). By contrast, satellite observations are directly affected by, and hence potentially able to detect, irrigation as they sense the entire integrated soil–vegetation system. By integrating satellite observations and fine-scale modelling it could thus be possible to improve estimation of irrigation amounts at the desired spatial–temporal scale. In this study we tested the potential information offered by Sentinel-1 backscatter observations to improve irrigation estimates, in the framework of a data assimilation (DA) system composed of the Noah-MP LSM, equipped with a sprinkler irrigation scheme, and a backscatter operator represented by a water cloud model (WCM), as part of the NASA Land Information System (LIS). The calibrated WCM was used as an observation operator in the DA system to map model surface soil moisture and leaf area index (LAI) into backscatter predictions and, conversely, map observation-minus-forecast backscatter residuals back to updates in soil moisture and LAI through an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). The benefits of Sentinel-1 backscatter observations in two different polarizations (VV and VH) were tested in two separate DA experiments, performed over two irrigated sites, the first one located in the Po Valley (Italy) and the second one located in northern Germany. The results confirm that VV backscatter has a stronger link with soil moisture than VH backscatter, whereas VH backscatter observations introduce larger updates in the vegetation state variables. The backscatter DA introduced both improvements and degradations in soil moisture, evapotranspiration and irrigation estimates. The spatial and temporal scale had a large impact on the analysis, with more contradicting results obtained for the evaluation at the fine agriculture scale (i.e. field scale). Above all, this study sheds light on the limitations resulting from a poorly parameterized sprinkler irrigation scheme, which prevents improvements in the irrigation simulation due to DA and points to future developments needed to improve the system.
"I needed to solve their overwhelmness": How System Administration Work was Affected by COVID-19

The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic made working from home -- wherever working remotely is possible -- the norm for what had previously been office-based jobs across the world. This change in how we work created a challenging situation for system administrators (sysadmins), as they are the ones building and maintaining the digital infrastructure our world relies on. In this paper, we examine how system administration work changed early in the pandemic from sysadmins' personal perspectives, through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. We find that sysadmins faced a two-sided crisis: While sysadmins' own work environment changed, they also had to react to the new situation and facilitate stable options to work online for themselves and their colleagues, supporting their users in adapting to the crisis. This finding embeds into earlier work on the connection between IT (security) work and the notion of 'care', where we substantiate these earlier findings with results from a repeatable method grounded in coordination theory. Furthermore, while we find that sysadmins perceived no major changes in the way they work, by consecutively probing our interviewees, we find that they did experience several counter-intuitive effects on their work. This includes that while day-to-day communication became inherently more difficult, other tasks were streamlined by the remote working format and were seen as having become easier. Finally, by structuring our results according to a model of coordination and communication, we identify changes in sysadmins' coordination patterns. From these we derive recommendations for how system administration work can be coordinated, ranging beyond the immediate pandemic response and the transition to any 'new normal' way of working.
Inference to the Best Explanation, Bayesianism and the problem of logical constraints

Many philosophical accounts of scientific theory comparison take as a starting point competition between mutually exclusive alternative hypotheses. However, in scientific inquiry, it often appears that hypotheses which are in competition with one another are not mutually exclusive. For example, a hypothesis which postulates just one cause of a particular event may compete with a hypothesis which postulates a conjunction of causes. It appears that the conjunctive hypothesis does not exclude the single-cause hypothesis, but rather entails it, since the single-cause hypothesis may be seen as a special case of the conjunctive hypothesis. The apparent existence of logical relations between competing hypotheses then presents a problem for models of scientific inference which assume that competing theories are mutually exclusive. I call this the ‘problem of logical constraints’. The problem has been raised in slightly different guises for both for Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism. In this paper, I show how taking a hierarchical view of theory comparison allows us to resolve this problem. Scientific theory evaluation takes place at multiple levels, with more general theories competing against each other at higher levels and more specific hypotheses competing at lower levels. Higher-level theories can be seen as mutually exclusive alternatives, even while logical relations are respected at lower levels.
Effects of Seasonal and Diel Variations in Thermal Stratification on Phytoplankton in a Regulated River

Thermal stratification is an important driver shaping phytoplankton community and their habitat condition in freshwater ecosystems. However, studies on river stratification have been restricted to rivers below dams or reservoirs affected by their water release and lacked examination of diel stratification and its impact on phytoplankton, in particular. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the degree of thermal stratification, its environmental drivers, and the response of water quality and phytoplankton community against stratification in the mid-lower reach of the Nakdong River, whose morphology has been highly modified, including the construction of eight weirs. We implemented vertical temperature profiling at three study sites, both seasonally and diurnally. From this data, we calculated three stratification indices: relative water column stability (RWCS), Schmidt stability (S), and maximum temperature gradient (Max). These indices showed that most sites experienced diel stratification during summer (mean = RWCS 74.3, S 41.5 J m−2, Max 0.9 °C m−1). Principal component analysis showed that stratification significantly led to seasonal and diel variations in the water environment. Solar radiation and air temperature were positive controllers, while a negative controller (in this case, the river flow rate) existed only for diel variation in the stratification. The seasonal shifts in phytoplankton community structure were either insensitive or showed a limited response to the stratification indices. In summer, Microcystis cell abundance and accumulation into the surface water was positively affected by the diel variations in the stratification indices and thermocline instead of with other temperature and nutrient variables. Overall, the results suggest that the river has summer stratification, which is involved in amplifying cyanobacterial bloom intensity. Without a suppressing factor, summer stratification is expected to be recurrent in the river, and thus mitigating the developed stratification is needed by promptly regulating the river flow.
Genetic susceptibility to radiation-related thyroid cancer: a systematic review.

The first study establishing exposure to ionizing radiations (IR) as a risk factor for differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) was published 70 years ago. Given that radiation exposure causes direct DNA damage, genetic alterations in the different DNA repair mechanisms are assumed to play an important role in long-term IR induced DNA damage prevention. Individual variations in DNA repair capacity may cause different reaction to damage made by IR exposure. The aim of this review is to recapitulate current knowledge about constitutional genetic polymorphisms found to be significatively associated with DTC occurring after IR exposure. Studies were screened online using electronic databases, only fully available articles, studies performed among irradiated population or taking radiation exposure as adjustment factors and showing significative results are included. Nine articles were identified. Ten variants in/near to genes in six biological pathways, namely thyroid activity regulations, generic transcription, RET signaling, ATM signaling and DNA repair pathways were found to be associated with radiation-related DTC in these studies. Only seven variants were found to be in interaction with IR exposure in DTC risk. Most of these variants are also associated to sporadic DTC and are not specific to IR related DTC. In the published studies, no data on children treated with radiotherapy is described. In conclusion, more studies carried out on larger cohorts or on case-control studies with well documented individual radiation dose estimations are needed to get a comprehensive picture of genetic susceptibility factors involved in radiation-related DTC.