Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Volcanic aerosols and interannual variation of high clouds

Interannual variability of high-level cloudiness (HC) is examined using global outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). Variations of HC are analyzed versus a measure of global stratospheric aerosol amount and an El Nino index. Volcanic aerosols are apparently associated with widespread increases of up to 10% in an OLR-based HC index. The most significant effects occurred in middle latitudes and persisted for several years after major eruptions. El Nino is found to be associated with decreased cloud activity in the subtropics. This study suggests that volcanic aerosols can significantly modify global cloudiness, and that stratospheric aerosol loading can be an important variable controlling the interannual variations of high level clouds and climate.
Linking the pacific meridional mode to ENSO: utilization of a noise filter.

Abstract A novel noise filter is used to effectively reduce internal atmospheric variability in the air–sea fluxes of a coupled model. This procedure allows for a test of the impact of the internal atmospheric variability on ENSO through its effect on the Pacific meridional mode (MM). Three 100-yr coupled experiments are conducted, where the filter is utilized to suppress internal atmospheric variability in 1) both the surface wind stress and the heat flux (fully filtered run), 2) only the surface heat flux (filtered-flux run), and 3) only the surface wind stress (filtered-wind run). The fully filtered run indicates that suppressing internal atmospheric variability weakens the MM, which in turn results in substantially reduced ENSO variability. ENSO is no longer phase locked to the boreal winter. The filtered-flux and filtered-wind experiments reveal that different types of noise affect ENSO in different ways. The noise in the wind stress does not have a significant impact on the MM and its relationship t.
A Multiscale Model of High-Frequency Trading

We propose and study a stylization of high frequency trading (HFT). Our interest is an order book which consists of orders from slow liquidity traders and orders from high-frequency traders. We would like to frame a model which is amenable to the (seemingly natural) mathematical toolkit of separation of scales and which can be used to address some of the larger issues involved in HFT. The main issue to which we address our model is volatility. An important question is how volatility is affected by HFT. In our stylized model, we show how HFT increases volatility, and can quantify this effect as a function of the parameters in our model and the separation of scales.
A CMOS 3.2 GB/s serial link transceiver, using PWM and PAM scheme

In this paper, a 3.2Gb/s serial link transceiver, in a 0. 35μm CMOS technology is presented. This serial link utilizes a new multi level pulse-width and pulse-amplitude modulation technique. By using PWM, clock is embedded in the encoded signals. Thus, in the receiver, a conventional PLL can easily extract the clock from the incoming data stream. The multilevel PAM scheme also reduces the symbol rate, as compared to a conventional 2-PAM system. In proposed architecture the minimum pulse width is equal to 4Tb/3. Due to a larger pulse width than the conventional NRZ, with pulse width of Tb, ISI can be improved. The multiphase output of a three stage ring oscillator VCO in the PLL can be used to modulate and demodulate the signal. A new charge pump circuit is also introduced to decrease the mismatch between up and down path. The jitter of recovered clock is 13.9 ps at 800 MHz. The transmitter and receiver power consumption is 200 and 35 mW, respectively.
Detection of obstruent consonant landmark for knowledge based speech recgonition system

Obstruent consonant landmarks are detected using spectral energy difference profiles. This study expands upon previous work by Liu. A[J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 3417‐3430, 1996]. The proposed algorithm detects four types of landmarks : [stop closure], [stop release], [fricative closure] and [fricative release], where affricates are detected by combining [stop closure], [fricative closure] and [fricative release]. In addition to finding abrupt changes in energy differences, we use energy contours, relative energy and spectral center of gravity differences. This method results in improved performance particularly for CV obstruents. Overall detection rates for stop closure and release are 76.9% and 85.7% for obstruent landmarks in TIMIT, and fricatives yield 82.2% and 83.6% respectively. For strident fricatives, the figures are 94.7% and 93.6%.
Application of a multi-processor SoC platform to high-speed packet forwarding

In this paper, we explore the requirements of emerging complex SoC's and describe StepNP, an experimental flexible, multi-processor SoC platform targeted towards communications and networking applications. We present the results of mapping an internet protocol (IPv4) packet forwarding application, running at 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s. We demonstrate how the use of high-speed hardware-assisted messaging and dynamic task allocation in the StepNP platform allows us to achieve very high processor utilization rates (up to 97%) in spite of the presence of high network-on-chip and memory access latencies. The inter-processor communication overhead is kept very low, representing only 9% of instructions.
The “Motor Band Sign:” Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

A 60-year-old woman presented with a two-year history of progressive asymmetric painless weakness. In the first year, symptoms were limited to the left leg, and the clinical findings were felt to be consistent with a focal upper motor neuron disorder. In the second year, similar weakness appeared in the right leg, then to both arms. The patient also reported increasing dysarthria and dysphagia. There was no history of trauma or family history of neurological disease. When examined in 2010 (at the time of MRI), the patient had a normal mental status. The only cranial nerve dysfunction was a spastic dysarthria and increased gag reflex. There was mild atrophy of the left leg. Infrequent fasciculations were noted in both arms and both legs. There was a spastic quadriparesis that was more pronounced on the left side. Weakness was graded as more severe in the legs (Medical Research Council grades in the range of 4/5 proximally, 2-3/5 distally) than in the arms (mostly Medical Research Council grade 4-/5). There was diffuse hyperreflexia, with bilateral ankle clonus, although plantar responses were bilaterally flexor on repeated assessments. The sensory examination was normal. Motor and sensory nerve conduction studies were within normal limits, with the exception of reduced median nerve compound muscle action potential amplitude. Monopolar electromyelograph showed patchy abnormalities in keeping with active denervation (positive sharp waves, fibrillations, reduced recruitment) in the biceps, triceps, and tibialis anterior muscles. In the gastrocnemius and first dorsal interosseus, there were abnormalities suggesting chronic reinnervation (large amplitude, long duration motor unit potentials). Other muscles showed decreased voluntary activation. Fasciculation potentials were noted in three muscles. The following blood tests were normal or negative: complete blood count, electrolytes, renal and liver function studies, Venereal Disease Research Laboratory, antinuclear antibodies, and HIV serology. Visual evoked potential latencies, ordered when demyelinating disease was an initial consideration, were also normal. MRI of the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine showed no significant central stenosis or abnormal cord signal. At the time of her 2010 MRI study, the patient was felt to have motor neuron disease with a predominantly upper motor neuron clinical picture. She was classified as clinically probable ALS according to Revised El Escorial criteria. 6 The patient was still alive four years after her 2010 MRI, though she had progressed to anarthria and marked quadriparesis, requiring a wheelchair for ambulation and support for all activities of daily life.
Reusing Simulated Evacuation Behaviour in a Game Engine

Virtual environments have been used to develop fire evacuation training systems which benefit from high levels of graphical realism and various interaction methods. However, virtual environment-based fire evacuation training systems often have limited non player character (NPC) behaviours as realistic fire evacuation models are difficult to build as they require accurate fire science, for example the impact of poisonous gases, smoke, and heat on human behaviour. One solution is the reuse of fire evacuation modelling tools to drive NPC behaviours in virtual environments built with gaming technology. In this paper, a pipeline is proposed to embed human behaviour, based on realistic fire science knowledge, into virtual evacuation training systems. The pipeline starts with 3D building models and extracts simulated human behaviour from fire evacuation simulator tools and then integrates these behaviours into NPC movement scripts for use in a game engine. A case study is presented with 3D modelling in SketchUp, simulated behaviour in FDS + Evac and NPC scripts in Unity3D. Consistent evacuation time was found on overall egress time in both FDS+Evac and Unity3D. A scalability analysis of environment complexity showed a linear increase in evacuation time by scenario scale in Unity3D and FDS+Evac.
Patient-specific computational haemodynamics: generation of structured and conformal hexahedral meshes from triangulated surfaces of vascular bifurcations

Measuring the blood flow is still limited by current imaging technologies and is generally overcome using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) which, because of the complex geometry of blood vessels, has widely relied on tetrahedral meshes. Hexahedral meshes offer more accurate results with lower-density meshes and faster computation as compared to tetrahedral meshes, but their use is limited by the far more complex mesh generation. We present a robust methodology for conformal and structured hexahedral mesh generation – applicable to complex arterial geometries as bifurcating vessels – starting from triangulated surfaces. Cutting planes are used to slice the lumen surface and to construct longitudinal Bezier splines. Afterwards, an isoparametric transformation is used to map a parametrically defined quadrilateral surface mesh into the vessel volume, resulting in stacks of sections which can then be used for sweeping. Being robust and open source based, this methodology may improve the current standard in patient-specific mesh generation and enhance the reliability of CFD to patient-specific haemodynamics.
New approach to texture saliency based on intrinsic relationship among texture features

We revisited texture saliency, took it to color images, introduced it to airborne remote sensing image processing and then deduced an objective evaluation to local and global saliency. We proposed a model to implement saliency computation, decomposed input image into three channels, cut down the computational expense to the lowest level, extracted texture saliency from the different channels respectively, combined them in an innovative way, and then detected the saliency hierarchy. Distinct from previous approaches in the domain, our method based on biological model and had clear physical meaning. Our method could robustly work no matter how complex the input images were.
Adaptive Multiple Subtraction in the 2D Wavelet Transform Domain

B040 Adaptive Multiple Subtraction in the 2D Wavelet Transform Domain I. Ahmed* (BP) K.H. Matson (BP) & Z. Yu (BP) SUMMARY In SRME the multiples are predicted by convolving the data by itself. It is a common practice in the industry to use Least-Squares adaptive subtraction in the space-time domain to match the predicted multiples to the multiples in the data. The existing Least-Squares adaptive subtraction in the space-time domain though quite robust does have some limitations. This paper will try to address some of those limitations by doing the Least-Squares adaptive subtraction in the 2D Wavelet-Transform domain. EAGE 69
Measurement of Fe(II) in surface water of the equatorial Pacific

The distribution of Fe(II) in euphotic waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean was examined with novel in situ sampling and analytical methodology. Dissolved Fe(II) was isolated and preconcentrated, at depth, with a ligand-exchange Chromatographic technique and then determined spectrophotometrically. The distribution of Fe(II) in the upper 100 m was both temporally and spatially variable but generally exhibited maxima near the surface and often at depths with higher concentrations of Chl a. The concentration of Fe(II) varied from below the detection limit of 0.12 to 0.53 nmol kg-‘. Exposure of equatorial Pacific water to simulated sunlight in the laboratory resulted in similar Fe(II) concentrations, suggesting that photochemical reduction may be an important source for Fe(II) in these waters. Field measurements indicate that Fe(II) may comprise a significant fraction of the Fe present in euphotic ocean waters, which typically contain < 1 . O nmol kg-’ of dissolved Fe. The presence of detectable steady state concentrations of Fe(II) is believed to be the result of faster rates of photochemical and(or) biological reduction of Fe(III), relative to rates of Fe(II) oxidation by oxygen, peroxides, and other oxidants.
11C‐PE2I and 18F‐Dopa PET for assessing progression rate in Parkinson's: A longitudinal study

18F‐dopa PET measuring aromatic l‐amino acid decarboxylase activity is regarded as the gold standard for evaluating dopaminergic function in Parkinson's disease. Radioligands for dopamine transporters are also used in clinical trials and for confirming PD diagnosis. Currently, it is not clear which imaging marker is more reliable for assessing clinical severity and rate of progression. The objective of this study was to directly compare 18F‐dopa with the highly selective dopamine transporter radioligand 11C‐PE2I for the assessment of motor severity and rate of progression in PD.
Cognitive Reorganization during Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period: An Evolutionary Perspective

Where the non-human animal research investigating reproduction-induced cognitive reorganization has focused on neural plasticity and adaptive advantage in response to the demands associated with pregnancy and parenting, human studies have primarily concentrated on pregnancy-induced memory decline. The current review updates Henry and Rendell's 2007 meta-analysis, and examines cognitive reorganization as the result of reproductive experience from an adaptationist perspective. Investigations of pregnancy-induced cognitive change in human females may benefit by focusing on areas, such as social cognition, where a cognitive advantage would serve a protective function, and by extending the study duration beyond pregnancy into the postpartum period.
The lithification of a sandy environment

Kinchega National Park is located in semi-arid western New South Wales and like much of this sand plain country contains no local stone sources. Lithic material for tool production required transportation for a minimum distance of 40 kilometres. A recent survey of the surface archaeology has shown that many large pebbles and cobbles occur across the landscape. These are mainly of silcrete and quartzite which are also the most common raw materials represented in the flake industry. I argue that these cobbles were imported to serve as multi-function utilities, being used variously as ‘portable quarries’ for obtaining stone for knapping purposes, as grindstones for seed or ochre and also as anvils for breaking materials including, presumably, other stone. Possible strategies for the importation and distribution of the cobbles over the landscape are discussed. While they occur as surface material and cannot be confidently dated, it is considered most likely that their importation began during the late Pleistocene.
A Methodology for Automatic Term Recognition

The topic of automatic term recognition (ATR) is of great interest especially with the growth of NLP systems, which are passing from the development stage to the application stage. The application of NLP technology involves customlsing systems towards specific needs, particularly in specialised domains (sublanguages) which form the main target of the technology~ There is thus an urgent need for high quality, large scale collections of terminologies (with associated linguistic information) for use in NLP system dictionaries.
Urinary sodium excretion predicts blood pressure response to spironolactone in patients with resistant hypertension independent of aldosterone status

Objective: Resistant hypertension (RHTN), blood pressure (BP) at least 140/90 mmHg despite using at least three different medications, including a diuretic, is associated with high dietary sodium and hyperaldosteronism. Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists are recommended for treatment of RHTN, however, BP response to these agents varies widely. In the current analysis, we assessed predictors of BP response to spironolactone in patients with RHTN. Methods: We retrospectively evaluated the BP response to adding spironolactone 12.5–25 mg to existing medications. A favorable BP response was defined as a reduction in SBP of at least 10 mmHg. Tested variables included baseline characteristics and biochemical parameters. Results: A total of 79 patients with RHTN were included in the analysis. Evaluated patients were more likely women (53.2%) and African-American (55.8%); were generally obese (76%) and were prescribed an average of four antihypertensive medications. Baseline SBP was 153.6 ± 22.3 mmHg; addition of spironolactone resulted in a mean reduction of 15.5 ± 20.7 mmHg. Patients with high urinary sodium excretion (≥200 mEq/24 h) had a significantly greater BP reduction compared with patients with normal excretion (<200 mEq/24 h) (P = 0.008). Multivariable analysis identified 24 h urinary sodium excretion as a significant predictor of BP response (P = 0.021) after controlling for potential confounders, including primary aldosteronism. Conclusion: The antihypertensive effect of spironolactone is positively related to urinary sodium excretion regardless of aldosterone status. These findings suggest that mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists may be of preferential benefit in counteracting the BP effects of high dietary sodium.
Fast 6D pose from a single RGB image using Cascaded Forests Templates

This paper presents a method for 6D pose estimation from a single RGB image for complex texture-less objects. This class of objects are common in any environment but still challenging to deal with. This is due to the fact that the distribution of surface brightness makes difficult to compute interest points or appearance-based descriptors. Here we propose a novel part-based method using an efficient template matching approach where each template independently encodes the similarity function using a Forest trained over the templates. Moreover, accuracy is even more incremented by using a cascade of the learned forest. These templates forests together with the simplicity of the computed image features allow a quick estimate of the pose achieving real-time performance. Performance are demonstrated both on synthetic and real images with known ground truth.
Personalizing Social Influence Strategies in a Q&A Social Network

Research has shown that persuasive technologies are more effective when they are personalized. Persuasive strategies work differently for various people; hence a one size fits all approach may not bring about the desired change in behavior or attitude. This paper contributes to personalization in question and answer (Q&A) social networks by exploring the possibility of personalizing social influence strategies based on the computer programming skill level and the highest level of education of users. In particular, this paper explores the susceptibility of users in Stack Overflow, a Q&A social network, to social support influence strategies for novice and expert computer programmers. In addition, we explore if first degree holders respond to the social support influence strategies the same way graduate degree holders do. Using a sample size of 282 Stack Overflow users, we constructed four models using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) and carried out multi-group analysis between these models. The results of our analysis show that social facilitation significantly influences cooperation for novice programmers, but not for expert programmers. In addition, social learning does not significantly influence the persuasiveness of the system for expert programmers compared to users who are novice in computer programming. For the users grouped according to their highest level of education, social learning influenced cooperation among the graduate degree holders and competition influenced the graduate degree holders to continue using the system. The result of this study can provide useful guidelines to social network developers that can be used in implementing personalized influence strategies in Q&A social communities.
Seminar in Collaborative Intelligence : Reasoning using Neural Networks

Reason and inference require process as well as memory skills by humans. Neural networks are able to process tasks like image recognition (better than humans) but in memory aspects are still limited (by attention mechanism, size). Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and it’s modified version LSTM are able to solve small memory contexts, but as context becomes larger than a threshold, it is difficult to use them. The Solution is to use large external memory. Still, it poses many challenges like, how to train neural networks for discrete memory representation, how to describe long term dependencies in sequential data etc. Most prominent neural architectures for such tasks are Memory networks: inference components combined with long term memory and Neural Turing Machines: neural networks using external memory resources. Also, additional techniques like attention mechanism, end to end gradient descent on discrete memory representation are needed to support these solutions. Preliminary results of above neural architectures on simple algorithms (sorting, copying) and Question Answering (based on story, dialogs) application are comparable with the state of the art. In this paper, I explain these architectures (in general), the additional techniques used and the results of their application.