Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lagoon Scale Processes in a Coastally Influenced Caribbean System: Implications for the Seagrass Thalassia testudinum

The Bocas del Toro archipelago in the Caribbean sea on the northwest coast of Panama has high annual rainfall (>3000 mm) and a mountainous watershed, resulting in high inflow of fresh water. The two main lagoons have different geologic structure and different inputs; while Bahia Almirante has carbon- ate sediment and a relatively small watershed, Laguna de Chiriqui has predominantly siliclastic sediment and a very large watershed. The region also has a long history of clearing and agriculture. The purpose of this research was to use the seagrass Thalassia testudinum as a bio-indicator of nutrient status of these lagoons, particularly to assess the extent and influence of mainland inputs of freshwater, nutrients and sediments. Leaf tissue nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as surface water quality and porewater nutrients, were mea- sured from 32 sites throughout the archipelago. The Bocas del Toro archipelago showed clear but relatively small differences in these parameters between the carbonate, moderate freshwater input Bahia Almirante and the siliclastic, high freshwater input Laguna de Chiriqui. No evidence of a mainland to offshore (Cayos Zapatillos) gradient in nutrient status was observed in T. testudinum meadows. Leaf tissue nitrogen (ca. 2.4%) and phosphorus (ca. 0.25%) as well as chlorophyll a concentrations were high throughout the archipelago and higher than many tropical seagrass dominated ecosystems of the Caribbean. It is likely that this is partly a result of the mountainous, volcanic watershed and high rainfall, but the influence of extensive agriculture and land clearing has yet to be explicitly determined.
Theoretical Treatment for Properties of Surfaces and Their Interplay with Bulk Properties of Crystals

It is demonstrated that there is an interconnection between surfaces, shapes, and bulk properties of macroscopic, crystalline materials. Thus, the requirement that no atom in the bulk shall experience a force from charges associated with the surface, a requirement formulated in terms of a generalized Tasker condition, leads to an interplay involving transfer of charge between different surfaces for a given sample. Through this mechanism, so‐called polar surfaces, often considered to be essentially unstable, can always be stabilized. Density functional theory slab calculations are carried out to obtain typical surface charges and associated bulk geometric displacements for an individual surface. Then the consequences of the interplay between surfaces are studied through one property that is usually considered a bulk property, namely the polarization / dipole moment per volume, and one property that is usually related to an individual surface, that is, heterogeneous catalytic activity. Model calculations illustrate the importance of charge transfer between surfaces in both cases. These calculations provide a guide for much more difficult ab initio computations that might be carried out in the future.
A novel mechanism for caterpillar-like locomotion using asymmetric oscillation

This paper presents a novel mechanism to implement caterpillar-like locomotion. First, the caterpillar-like locomotive pattern in nature is investigated and analyzed systematically. From a biological point of view, caterpillar locomotion can be abstracted as a body wave, called half wave. It is simple, but efficient. In this paper, a novel control mechanism, maintaining the half wave property, is integrated into an improved central pattern generator (CPG) model. For the first time, an asymmetric oscillation is employed on the model for gait generation. The movement is proved stable according to a kinematic analysis. Modulation is able to use to change the shape of the half wave during locomotion. A series of simulation shows the feasibility of using asymmetric oscillators for locomotion. Furthermore, the latest results obtained demonstrate that the proposed asymmetric locomotion mechanism is easy to implement while offering a satisfactory motion performance in on-site experiments.
Prediction of Common Surface Soil Properties Based on Vis-NIR Airborne and Simulated EnMAP Imaging Spectroscopy Data: Prediction Accuracy and Influence of Spatial Resolution

With the upcoming availability of the next generation of high quality orbiting hyperspectral sensors, a major step toward improved regional soil mapping and monitoring and delivery of quantitative soil maps is expected. This study focuses on the determination of the prediction accuracy of spectral models for the mapping of common soil properties based on upcoming EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program) satellite data using semi-operational soil models. Iron oxide (Fed), clay, and soil organic carbon (SOC) content are predicted in test areas in Spain and Luxembourg based on a semi-automatic Partial-Least-Square (PLS) regression approach using airborne hyperspectral, simulated EnMAP, and soil chemical datasets. A variance contribution analysis, accounting for errors in the dependent variables, is used alongside classical error measurements. Results show that EnMAP allows predicting iron oxide, clay, and SOC with an R2 between 0.53 and 0.67 compared to Hyperspectral Mapper (HyMap)/Airborne Hyperspectral System (AHS) imagery with an R2 between 0.64 and 0.74. Although a slight decrease in soil prediction accuracy is observed at the spaceborne scale compared to the airborne scale, the decrease in accuracy is still reasonable. Furthermore, spatial distribution is coherent between the HyMap/AHS mapping and simulated EnMAP mapping as shown with a spatial structure analysis with a systematically lower semivariance at the EnMAP scale.
BrAgriNews: Um Corpus Temporal-Causal (Português-Brasileiro) para a Agricultura

There has been a recent sharp increase in interest in academia and industry in applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to agricultural problems. Text mining and related natural language processing techniques, have been rarely used to tackle agricultural problems, and at the time of writing there was a single project in the Portuguese language. It is possible that the failure of researchers to use text mining techniques to analyze Portuguese texts to resolve agricultural problems may be due to a lack of freely available corpora. To correct the lack of a Portuguese language agriculture centric corpus we are releasing a Brazilian-Portuguese agricultural language resource, which is described by this paper. The corpus is partially non-contiguous and spans a time period from 1996 to 2016. It consists of news stories that have been scraped from Brazilian News sites that have been annotated with the following information types: causal, sentiment, named entities that include temporal expressions. The corpus has additional resources such as a: treebank, lists of frequent: unigrams, bigrams and trigrams, as well words or phrases that have been identified by journalists as either: ``important'' or domain specific. It is hoped that the release of this corpus will stimulate the adoption of text mining in agriculture in the Lusophonic research community.
Managing Distributed Product Development Projects: Integration Strategies for Time Zone and Language Barriers

Distributed product development projects encompass product and process development activities that span organizational and country boundaries. The increasing trend toward globalizing projects requires firms to coordinate development efforts made by team members from various functions within the firm, speaking multiple languages, and working in various time zones. We analyze qualitative data from 70 distributed product development projects that span 14 countries and involve cross-functional team members speaking 10 different languages. We find that commonly discussed integration strategies such as modular product designs and colocating team members by themselves are insufficient to coordinate project work. Rather, our field interviews suggest that firms invest in design information systems DIS with specific features to facilitate product design and empower their project managers to integrate the development efforts. Specifically, our interviews suggest that firms often modify the organization by "unifying" the engineering and purchasing functions into a single supply chain integrator function to increase the scope of responsibilities for these managers. We then test our hypotheses on the benefits of these strategies on project outcomes by using survey data from 55 distributed product development projects in 20 firms. Results indicate that the use of DIS is associated with higher quality and relationship performance when there are differences between focal and supplier firm personnel languages. Unifying engineering and purchasing functions into a supply chain integrator is associated with improved response time in the presence of time zone differences. We also find that a unifying strategy is associated with lower cost in the presence of language differences, but is also associated with a worsening of response time. These results provide guidance to product designers in organizations that must coordinate complex work across time zone barriers and languages. The results also provide guidance to researchers, by showing that different integration mechanisms may have differential effects across various coordination barriers and across multiple dimensions of project performance. We conclude by linking these results to integration mechanisms previously discussed in the coordination literature.
Experimental Analysis of Oil Film Pressure and Temperature on EN31 Alloy Steel Journal Bearing

The design and analysis of hydrodynamic journal bearings has a great attention to the engineers. Hydrodynamic lubrication is the most common method of lubrication of journal bearing. Emphasis has been given to design those bearings so as to avoid boundary lubrication between the bearing surfaces. To design these elements, the characteristics like load-carrying capacity, maximum pressure, eccentricity, lubricant viscosity and so on are to be predicted accurately. These parameters can be determined if the pressure within the clearance space between contact surfaces is known. In this method as the journal rotates, it takes a slightly eccentric position relative to the bearing. The eccentric rotation of the journal in the bearing acts somewhat like a rotary pump and generates a relatively high hydrodynamic pressure in the converging zone. The hydrodynamic pressure for a properly designed bearing is responsible for supporting the journal without allowing it to come in contact with bearing. This study deals with the development of suitable laboratory test rig, which can be helpful in determining the load capacity, pressure distribution of journal bearing at different speed, location of maximum film pressure and effect of lubricants on bearing performance. This paper deals with an experimental study of oil film pressure and temperature responses for journal parameters on EN31 alloy steel journal. The study on journal bearing comes under engineering tribology and as known that small improvement in the field of Tribology leads to better usage of energy.
A hybrid quantum memory–enabled network at room temperature

A hybrid quantum network integrates room-temperature atomic and all-optical memories for scalable quantum information processing. Quantum memory capable of storage and retrieval of flying photons on demand is crucial for developing quantum information technologies. However, the devices needed for long-distance links are different from those envisioned for local processing. We present the first hybrid quantum memory-enabled network by demonstrating the interconnection and simultaneous operation of two types of quantum memory: an atomic ensemble-based memory and an all-optical Loop memory. Interfacing the quantum memories at room temperature, we observe a well-preserved quantum correlation and a violation of Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Furthermore, we demonstrate the creation and storage of a fully-operable heralded photon chain state that can achieve memory-built-in combining, swapping, splitting, tuning, and chopping single photons in a chain temporally. Such a quantum network allows atomic excitations to be generated, stored, and converted to broadband photons, which are then transferred to the next node, stored, and faithfully retrieved, all at high speed and in a programmable fashion.
The Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT): Examining the effects of age on a new measure of theory of mind and social norm understanding

Current measures of social cognition have shown inconsistent findings regarding the effects of healthy aging. Moreover, no tests are currently available that allow clinicians and researchers to examine cognitive and affective theory of mind (ToM) and understanding of social norms within the same test. To address these limitations, we present the Edinburgh Social Cognition Test (ESCoT) which assesses cognitive and affective ToM and inter- and intrapersonal understanding of social norms. We examined the effects of age, measures of intelligence and the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) on the ESCoT and established tests of social cognition. Additionally, we investigated the convergent validity of the ESCoT based on traditional social cognition measures. The ESCoT was administered alongside Reading the Mind in Films (RMF), Reading the Mind in Eyes (RME), Judgement of Preference and Social Norm Questionnaire to 91 participants (30 aged 18–35 years, 30 aged 45–60 years and 31 aged 65–85 years). Poorer performance on the cognitive and affective ToM ESCoT subtests were predicted by increasing age. The affective ToM ESCoT subtest and RMF were predicted by gender, where being female predicted better performance. Unlike the ESCoT, better performance on the RMF was predicted by higher verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning abilities, while better performance on the RME was predicted by higher verbal comprehension scores. Lower scores on inter-and intrapersonal understanding of social norms were both predicted by the presence of more autism-like traits while poorer interpersonal understanding of social norms performance was predicted by increasing age. These findings show that the ESCoT is a useful measure of social cognition and, unlike established tests of social cognition, performance is not predicted by measures of verbal comprehension and perceptual reasoning. This is particularly valuable to obtain an accurate assessment of the influence of age on our social cognitive abilities.
Nighttime eating: commonly observed and related to weight gain in an inpatient food intake study.

BACKGROUND Nighttime food intake has rarely been studied in inpatient settings and only one study observed a relation between self-reported nighttime eating and weight gain. OBJECTIVE We investigated the prevalence of nighttime eating and its effect on weight change. DESIGN Healthy nondiabetic Pima Indians (n = 117; 67 M, 50 F) and whites (n = 43; 29 M, 13 F) were admitted to a clinical research unit. After consuming a standardized diet for 3 d, participants ate ad libitum from a computer-operated vending machine that recorded the time of food selection. Energy intake was calculated as mean kcal/d. Follow-up weight was available for 94 volunteers. RESULTS Fifty-five subjects (36%) were nighttime eaters (NEs; persons who ate between 2300 and 0500 on > or =1 of the 3 d). Prevalence was similar among whites and Pima Indians (37% and 35%, respectively). There were no significant differences in body mass index or percentage body fat between NEs and non-NEs. NEs consumed more calories per day (4758) than did non-NEs (4244; P = 0.02), but the percentage of calories from macronutrients did not differ. NEs consumed approximately 15% (690 kcal) of their daily energy during nighttime episodes. After control for baseline weight and follow-up time (x +/- SD: 3.4 +/- 1.8 y), NEs (n = 29) gained more weight (6.2 kg) than did non-NEs (n = 65; 1.7 kg; P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS Nighttime eating was common, and it predicted weight gain. It remains to be determined whether this behavior indicates abnormal sleep patterns leading to nighttime wakefulness and food intake in those prone to weight gain.
Combining Different Approaches to Improve Arabic Text Documents Classification

The objective of this research is to improve Arabic text documents classification by combining different classification algorithms. To achieve this objective we build four models using different combination methods. The first combined model is built using fixed combination rules, where five rules are used; and for each rule we used different number of classifiers. The best classification accuracy, 95.3%, is achieved using majority voting rule with seven classifiers, and the time required to build the model is 836 seconds. The second combination approach is stacking, which consists of two stages of classification. The first stage is performed by base classifiers, and the second by a meta classifier. In our experiments, we used different numbers of base classifiers and two different meta classifiers: Naive Bayes and linear regression. Stacking achieved a very high classification accuracy, 99.2% and 99.4%, using Naive Bayes and linear regression as meta classifiers, respectively. Stacking needed a long time to build the models, which is 1963 seconds using naive Bayes and 3718 seconds using linear regression, since it consists of two stages of learning. The third model uses AdaBoost to boost a C4.5 classifier with different number of iterations. Boosting improves the classification accuracy of the C4.5 classifier; 95.3%, using 5 iterations, and needs 1175 seconds to build the model, while the accuracy is 99.5% using 10 iterations and requires 1966 seconds to build the model. The fourth model uses bagging with decision tree. The accuracy is 93.7% achieved in 296 seconds when using 5 iterations, and 99.4% when using 10 iteration requiring 471 seconds. We used three datasets to test the combined models: BBC Arabic, CNN Arabic, and OSAC datasets. The experiments are performed using Weka and RapidMiner data mining tools. We used a platform of Intel Core i3 of 2.2 GHz CPU with 4GB RAM. The results of all models showed that combining classifiers can effectively improve the accuracy of Arabic text documents classification.
Thermally stable, highly efficient, ultraflexible organic photovoltaics

Significance We have developed an ultraflexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) that achieves sufficient thermal stability of up to 120 °C and a high power conversion efficiency of 10% with a total thickness of 3 μm. By combining an inherently stable donor:acceptor blend as the active layer and ultrathin substrate and barriers with excellent thermal capability, we were able to overcome the trade-offs between efficiency, stability, and device thickness. The ultraflexible and thermally stable OPV can be easily integrated into textiles through the commercially available hot-melt process without causing performance degradation, thereby presenting great potential as a ubiquitous and wearable power source in daily life. Flexible photovoltaics with extreme mechanical compliance present appealing possibilities to power Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and wearable electronic devices. Although improvement in thermal stability is essential, simultaneous achievement of high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and thermal stability in flexible organic photovoltaics (OPVs) remains challenging due to the difficulties in maintaining an optimal microstructure of the active layer under thermal stress. The insufficient thermal capability of a plastic substrate and the environmental influences cannot be fully expelled by ultrathin barrier coatings. Here, we have successfully fabricated ultraflexible OPVs with initial efficiencies of up to 10% that can endure temperatures of over 100 °C, maintaining 80% of the initial efficiency under accelerated testing conditions for over 500 hours in air. Particularly, we introduce a low-bandgap poly(benzodithiophene-cothieno[3,4-b]thiophene) (PBDTTT) donor polymer that forms a sturdy microstructure when blended with a fullerene acceptor. We demonstrate a feasible way to adhere ultraflexible OPVs onto textiles through a hot-melt process without causing severe performance degradation.
Pharmacologic inhibition of epigenetic modification reveals targets of aberrant promoter methylation in ewing sarcoma

Ewing sarcoma (ES), a highly aggressive tumor of children and young adults, is characterized most commonly by an 11;22 chromosomal translocation that fuses EWSR1 located at 22q12 with FLI1, coding for a member of the ETS family of transcription factors. Although genetic changes in ES have been extensively researched, our understanding of the role of epigenetic modifications in this neoplasm is limited.
Tailoring thermal properties of functional materials

Thermal conductivity (κ) plays an essential role in functional devices. In some cases, high value is required to transfer heat efficiently. In others, low κ assists in maintaining a temperature gradient necessary for device operation. It is profitable to design materials where one can tune κ in a broad range according to its function. Beyond functionality, κ is a fundamental property of matter, and a fantastic probe to assess vibrational dynamics and electronic structure in condensed matter. In conjunction with other transport properties such as electrical resistivity and thermoelectric power, κ promotes a deeper understanding of the electronic and vibrational structure of materials. In the present Thesis, careful experimental determination of the transport coefficients of a variety of systems over a broad temperature range (4−300 K) let me unveil subtle interactions between phonons and/or electrons. The insights gained from an accurate interpretation of these properties empowers us to engineer and fine-tune the functionality of materials for applications. I first investigate the thermoelectric properties of nickel-based high-entropy alloys (HEAs), believed to host unconventional effects arising from the high level of site-disorder in their crystalline structure. Anomalous resistivity with a low temperature coefficient validates the disordered nature of HEAs. The Seebeck coefficient, reported for the first time for HEAs, is surprisingly low. In the quest to understand transport in HEA, I have discovered that ironnickel alloys exhibit a promising thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) of 0.1 at room temperature. One way to further increase ZT is to decrease κ (in FeNi alloys or other materials) is by texturing the material. Aluminium foams are systems of choice to observe the effect of a modified structure on the thermoelectric properties. Tailoring of the bubbles’ size is demonstrated by applying an external acoustic force in the foaming process. Moreover, the influence of the macroand microstructure of the foams on thermoelectric properties is discussed. The best example for tuning κ by texturing is anatase titanium dioxide (TiO2). κ was varied over three orders of magnitude by adjusting its oxygen contents and by texturing it into a foam, aerogel-like structure. I identified a new, strong diffusion mechanism of heat by polarons, created as a consequence of oxygen vacancies. Furthermore, anatase nanowires organized into foams result in an unprecedented low κ= 0.014 W/Km at room-temperature. Doping this anatase foam heralds promising applications, in particular in thermoelectricity. An oxide which has an intrinsically nanoporous structure reminding that of a foam, is