Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microclimates of l'Aven d'Orgnac and other French limestone caves (Chauvet, Esparros, Marsoulas)

We assess the aerodynamics of the atmosphere in some limestone caves using a 5‐year monitoring of the Aven d'Orgnac system, shorter thermal vertical profiling experiments, and comparison with the time series from other French caves. In the first rooms, located under the Aven opening, our records indicate, for each year, a succession of a summer regime characterized by stable parameters (except for the perturbations introduced by tourist visits) and a winter regime, in which the inner air temperature drops and is highly correlated with that outside. Atmospheric composition suggests that during the winter regime the cave is ventilated by the outside air. We show that the onset of the winter regime is governed by a thermo‐convective instability involving the inflow of the outside cold and dense air. Atmospheric temperature and composition allow us to follow the stepwise progression of the winter regime toward the adjacent rooms.
Unsupervised Relation Disambiguation Using Spectral Clustering

This paper presents an unsupervised learning approach to disambiguate various relations between name entities by use of various lexical and syntactic features from the contexts. It works by calculating eigen-vectors of an adjacency graph's Laplacian to recover a submanifold of data from a high dimensionality space and then performing cluster number estimation on the eigenvectors. Experiment results on ACE corpora show that this spectral clustering based approach outperforms the other clustering methods.
Using Mathematical Modeling to Integrate Disease Surveillance and Global Air Transportation Data

Because of the relationship between the movement of populations and the spread of infectious diseases, it is important to understand and model mobility. Note that we focus here on the mobility of human populations; consideration of the movement of animal or vector populations is also critical but is beyond the scope of this work. Populations are increasingly mobile. Simplifying the situation to the extreme, mobility takes two major forms: migration and travel. Migration is mobility in the long term, where an individual changes their place of residence. Travel is a shorter term mobility, where an individual usually keeps the same place of residence. An intermediate form of consequence to public health is the case of migrant workers, both within and between countries. The main fluxes of immigration form a gradient from poorer to richer countries. For example, from 2002 to 2011, four countries each contributed more than 100,000 new permanent residents to Canada: China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines,
Hand Gestures for Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Dataset, Techniques &amp; Evaluation

Analysis of hand gestures in one-to-one tutoring gives a number of characteristics of social interaction and behavior between the tutor and the student. This analysis can not only aid in understanding the effectiveness of the learning methodology and developing new techniques for learning, but also help in developing intelligent and online tutoring systems. Although there exists a comprehensive literature on recognizing hand gestures, there is limited work on recognizing such gestures in the context of one-to-one tutoring systems. In this paper, we first introduce a new dataset that comprises a set of 2166 richly labeled video sequences of multiple subjects, showing 4 different classes of most prominent gestures in one-to-one tutoring. In addition to the dataset, two methods comprising appearance based cues and motion based cues are proposed and evaluated on this dataset. A detection accuracy of over 53% is achieved when the proposed techniques are validated across 6 different subjects, which can be used as a benchmark for future works that can employ the proposed datasets for hand gestures for one-to-one tutoring systems.
An evaluation of score-informed methods for estimating fundamental frequency and power from polyphonic audio

Robust extraction of performance data from polyphonic musical performances requires precise frame-level estimation of fundamental frequency (ƒ0) and power. This paper evaluates a new score-guided approach to ƒ0 and power estimation in polyphonic audio and compares the use of four different input features: the central bin frequencies of the spectrogram, the instantaneous frequency, and two variants of a high resolution spectral analysis. These four features were evaluated on four-part multi-track ensemble recordings, consisting of either four vocalists or bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, and violin (the Bach10 data set) created from polyphonic mixes of the monophonic tracks both with and without artificial reverberation. Score information was used to identify time-frequency regions of interest in the polyphonic mixes for each note in a corresponding aligned score, from which ƒ0 and power estimates were made. The approach was able to recover ground truth ƒ0 within 20 cents on average in reverberation and power within 5 dB for anechoic mixtures, but only within 10 dB for reverberant.
(Un)Predictability and Macroeconomic Stability

The ability of popular statistical methods, the Federal Reserve Greenbook and the Survey of Professional Forecasters to improve upon the forecasts of inflation and real activity from naive models has declined significantly during the most recent period of greater macroeconomic stability. The decline in the predictability of inflation is associated with a break down in the predictive power of real activity, especially in the housing sector. The decline in the predictability of real activity is associated with a break down in the predictive power of the term spread.
Fusing visual and tactile sensing for 3-D object reconstruction while grasping

In this work, we propose to reconstruct a complete 3-D model of an unknown object by fusion of visual and tactile information while the object is grasped. Assuming the object is symmetric, a first hypothesis of its complete 3-D shape is generated from a single view. This initial model is used to plan a grasp on the object which is then executed with a robotic manipulator equipped with tactile sensors. Given the detected contacts between the fingers and the object, the full object model including the symmetry parameters can be refined. This refined model will then allow the planning of more complex manipulation tasks. The main contribution of this work is an optimal estimation approach for the fusion of visual and tactile data applying the constraint of object symmetry. The fusion is formulated as a state estimation problem and solved with an iterative extended Kalman filter. The approach is validated experimentally using both artificial and real data from two different robotic platforms.
The Development of Multimedia Delivery Channels for Financial Services at Barclays Bank

The convergence of four industries, namely the computer, TV and broadcasting, telecommunications and print/publishing industries into a multimedia industry brings much trubulence into the organisational domain and leads to considerable organisational redesign. This study shows some evidence how the deployment of multimedia information systems changes the nature of business processes within Barclays bank and leads to new products, services and enables the organisation to change delivery channels to reach their customers. Barclays sees video-on-demand as the model for a range of new multimedia services which will transform retail and wholesale banking over the next few years. Among the possible implications of multimedia IS are a virtual end to branch banking and its replacement by multimedia kiosks and Interactive television.
Twists and turns of determining amyloid type and amyloid-related organ damage: discordance and clinical skepticism in the era of proteomic typing

Abstract Systemic immunoglobulin light-chain primary amyloidosis (AL) is the most common type of systemic amyloidosis. Recent advances in AL amyloidosis include the use of definitive proteomic typing, confirming the type of amyloid in patients with two possible amyloid-forming proteins. Laser microdissection followed by mass spectrometry (LMD/MS) can correctly identify the amyloid type with over 95% sensitivity and specificity. We report the case of a 68-year-old man with a history of IgA lambda monoclonal gammopathy and peripheral neuropathy who was diagnosed with pelvic nodal and psoas amyloidosis. The amyloid was found to be AL kappa type by LMD/MS. While LMD/MS has been effective in distinguishing among AL, secondary amyloidosis and hereditary forms of amyloidosis, our case demonstrates that typing can also identify unusual instances of discordance between light chain isotypes associated with clonal processes.
Charged nano-domes and bubbles in epitaxial graphene

For the first time, new epitaxial graphene nano-structures resembling charged ‘bubbles’ and ‘domes’ are reported. A strong influence, arising from the change in morphology, on the graphene layer’s electronic, mechanical and optical properties has been shown. The morphological properties of these structures have been studied with atomic force microscopy (AFM), ultrasonic force microscopy (UFM) and Raman spectroscopy. After initial optical microscopy observation of the graphene, a detailed description of the surface morphology, via AFM and nanomechanical UFM measurements, was obtained. Here, graphene nano-structures, domes and bubbles, ranging from a few tens of nanometres (150–200 nm) to a few μm in size have been identified. The AFM topographical and UFM stiffness data implied the freestanding nature of the graphene layer within the domes and bubbles, with heights on the order of 5–12 nm. Raman spectroscopy mappings of G and 2D bands and their ratio confirm not only the graphene composition of these structures but also the existence of step bunching, defect variations and the carrier density distribution. In particular, inside the bubbles and substrate there arises complex charge redistribution; in fact, the graphene bubble–substrate interface forms a charged capacitance. We have determined the strength of the electric field inside the bubble–substrate interface, which may lead to a minigap of the order of 5 meV opening for epitaxial graphene grown on 4H-SiC face-terminated carbon.
Unit Commitment Problem Using Fuzzy Logic Controlled Genetic Algorithm

-The fuzzy logic has been applied in combination with Genetic Algorithm (GA) to solve the unit commitment problem (UCP). For smooth and better convergence in GA, the crossover probability and mutation rate are adjusted by fuzzy logic strategy leading to an improved GA technique termed as Fuzzy Logic Controlled Genetic Algorithm (FLCGA). An FLCGA for determining the solution for this UCP has been discussed in this paper. The main aim is the minimization of overall cost of the power generation while satisfying a set of system constraints. This proposed technique provides good results compared, and it will be reasoned in this paper.
A reliable power management scheme for consistent hashing based distributed key value storage systems

Distributed key value storage systems are among the most important types of distributed storage systems currently deployed in data centers. Nowadays, enterprise data centers are facing growing pressure in reducing their power consumption. In this paper, we propose GreenCHT, a reliable power management scheme for consistent hashing based distributed key value storage systems. It consists of a multi-tier replication scheme, a reliable distributed log store, and a predictive power mode scheduler (PMS). Instead of randomly placing replicas of each object on a number of nodes in the consistent hash ring, we arrange the replicas of objects on nonoverlapping tiers of nodes in the ring. This allows the system to fall in various power modes by powering down subsets of servers while not violating data availability. The predictive PMS predicts workloads and adapts to load fluctuation. It cooperates with the multi-tier replication strategy to provide power proportionality for the system. To ensure that the reliability of the system is maintained when replicas are powered down, we distribute the writes to standby replicas to active servers, which ensures failure tolerance of the system. GreenCHT is implemented based on Sheepdog, a distributed key value storage system that uses consistent hashing as an underlying distributed hash table. By replaying 12 typical real workload traces collected from Microsoft, the evaluation results show that GreenCHT can provide significant power savings while maintaining a desired performance. We observe that GreenCHT can reduce power consumption by up to 35%–61%.
Thinking Like a Duck: Fall Lake Use and Movement Patterns of Juvenile Ring-Necked Ducks before Migration

The post-fledging period is one of the least studied portions of the annual cycle in waterfowl. Yet, recruitment into the breeding population requires that young birds have sufficient resources to survive this period. We used radio-telemetry and generalized estimating equations to examine support for four hypotheses regarding the drivers of landscape scale habitat use and movements made by juvenile ring-necked ducks between the pre-fledging period and departure for migration. Our response variables included the probability of movement, distances moved, and use of different lake types: brood-rearing lakes, staging lakes, and lakes with low potential for disturbance. Birds increased their use of staging areas and lakes with low potential for disturbance (i.e., without houses or boat accesses, >100 m from roads, or big lakes with areas where birds could sit undisturbed) throughout the fall, but these changes began before the start of the hunting season and their trajectory was not changed by the onset of hunting. Males and females moved similar distances and had similar probabilities of movements each week. However, females were more likely than males to use brood-rearing lakes later in the fall. Our findings suggest juvenile ring-necked ducks require different lake types throughout the fall, and managing solely for breeding habitat will be insufficient for meeting needs during the post-fledging period. Maintaining areas with low potential for disturbance and areas suitable for staging will ensure that ring-necked ducks have access to habitat throughout the fall.
The Impact of Information Technology Investments on Firm Performance and Evaluation: Evidence from Newly Industrialized Economies

The impact of information technology (IT)investments on firm performance has been the subject of active research in recent years. However, findings of almost all studies are based on data collected in the United States. Little work has been done elsewhere to validate these results and to see if they are applicable across national boundaries. In this study, we fill this gap by comparing four newly-industrialized economies (NIEs) with regard to the impact of IT capital on business performance. Secondary data collected from various sources are used to assess the impact over the period from 1983 to 1991. Findings based on four business measures and a market valuation model based on Tobin's q are reported. While the current results are consistent with work done in the United States in general, discrepancies among the four NIEs are observed. Combined with findings from previous work, three pieces of evidence seem to emerge that are generally observed across country boundaries. First, IT investment is not correlated with shareholder's return. Second, there is little evidence that the level of computerization is valued by the market in developed and newly-developed countries. Third, there is no consistent measurement of IT investment as indicated by the mixed results across different performance ratios. Modeling and measurement concerns expressed in previous U.S.-based studies are also observed in our comparative study. Our findings provide a starting point to accumulate a body of comparative studies for the development of a theory that links IT investment, firm performance, and macro factors such as national technology policy in an integrated framework.
A robust statistic method for classifying color polarity of video text

Video text extraction and recognition are prerequisite tasks for video indexing and retrieval. Color polarity classification of video text is very important to these tasks. Most existing text extraction methods assume that the text color is always light (or dark). Obviously, this assumption restricts the application of these methods to some specific domains. Only a few methods can detect the color polarity on condition that the background is clear. However, many real video texts have various appearances and complex backgrounds that existing methods cannot handle. This paper proposes a statistic color polarity classification method that is robust to various background complexities, font styles, stroke widths, and languages. We discover the intrinsic relationships between text edges and background edges, and then develop an efficient measurement to detect the color polarity. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a much higher accuracy, 98.5%, than existing methods.
Financial Risk Management in Infrastructure Energy Projects

Risk is a concern for any project whereas infrastructure energy projects are considered more sensitive. The complication of such projects is deepened by great deal of required capital, lots of interfaces and diversified stakeholders. While capital is of the essence, its provision could be done through 'project finance' or 'traditional finance'. The two streams of lending are elaborated while the prominence of risk management is justified in the context. Thereafter risk factors affecting energy projects are detailed and result of a survey from Iranian managers are briefed i.e. 'Host country risk', 'Weak feasibility study' and 'Unclear regulation' are among the most effective risk factors.
Effects of Ranolazine on Cloned Cardiac Kv4.3 Potassium Channels

The effects of ranolazine, an antianginal drug, on potassium channel Kv4.3 were examined by using the whole-cell patch-clamp technique. Ranolazine inhibited the peak amplitude of Kv4.3 in a reversible, concentration-dependent manner with an IC50 of 128.31 μM. The activation kinetics were not significantly affected by ranolazine at concentrations up to 100 μM. Applications of 10 and 30 μM ranolazine had no effect on the fast and slow inactivation of Kv4.3. However, at concentrations of 100 and 300 μM ranolazine caused a significant decrease in the rate of fast inactivation, and at a concentration of 300 μM it caused a significant decrease in the rate of slow inactivation, resulting in a crossover of the current traces during depolarization. The Kv4.3 inhibition by ranolazine increased steeply between −20 and +20 mV. In the full activation voltage range, however, no voltage-dependent inhibition was found. Ranolazine shifted the voltage dependence of the steady-state inactivation of Kv4.3 in the hyperpolarizing direction in a concentration-dependent manner. The apparent dissociation constant (Ki) for ranolazine for interacting with the inactivated state of Kv4.3 was calculated to be 0.32 μM. Ranolazine produced little use-dependent inhibition at frequencies of 1 and 2 Hz. Ranolazine did not affect the time course of recovery from the inactivation of Kv4.3. The results indicated that ranolazine inhibited Kv4.3 and exhibited a low affinity for Kv4.3 channels in the closed state but a much higher affinity for Kv4.3 channels in the inactivated state.
Purification of Arboviruses Grown in Tissue Culture

Discussion and Summary Arboviruses (Chikungunya, dengue type 1, and Japanese encephalitis) cultivated in monolayer cultures of BHK-21 cells grown with Eagle's MEM supplemented with bovine serum albumin were purified by the following procedures: The viruses were precipitated from infectious tissue culture fluids by zinc acetate (0.05 M) and were resuspended in saturated ethylenediaminetetraacetate. The suspension was filtered through a Sephadex G200 [(lower) 10 cm]-Sepharose 6B [(upper) 40 cm] column (2.5 cm in diam) by upward elution. The filtrate was concentrated in a collodion bag in vacuo. The final step was sucrose density gradient centrifugation. The procedures were comparatively short and straightforward, and about 100 to 500 times purification factors were obtained consistently. The CHIK virus preparation after the sucrose density gradient centrifugation was demonstrated as a single peak, the infectivity and HA activity coinciding with each other; whereas the DEN-1 and JE viruses were shown to be heterogeneous. The problems of whether such a difference reflects some basic characteristics of groups A and B viruses need further investigation. Electron microscopic pictures of the preparations revealed spherical particles of (mμ): 50 to 60 (CHIK), 50 to 55 (DEN-1), and 45 to 50 (JE). These images are compatible, in general, with those previously reported by Igarashi et al. (CHIK virus) (13, 14); Matsumura and Hotta (DEN-1 virus) (15); Smith et al. (DEN-2 virus) (16); Takaku et al. (JE virus) (17); and Nozima et al. (JE virus) (18); although the origin of the viruses and the purification methods are not necessarily the same. The present purification procedures can probably be applied with success to other arboviruses in general. Further studies on the biochemical and biophysical nature of the purified virions are underway and will be reported later.
CTLA-4 Gene Polymorphisms in Tunisian Patients

mune disorder of multifactorial etiology with a polygenic mode of inheritance. A recent report has demonstrated that there is a linkage and an association between the genetic markers of the CTLA-4 gene on chromosome 2q33 and GD. In order to confirm this association in a Tunisian population, three polymorphisms of the CTLA-4 gene were analyzed: the first is at the 2318 position from the ATG start codon consisting of a C/T change; the second is in position 49 of exon 1, which lies in the A/G transition; and the third is in the 3* untranslated region with variant lengths of the dinucleotide (AT)n repeat. The genomic DNA from 144 patients with GD and 205 healthy individuals was genotyped after specific polymerase chain reaction amplification. Comparative analysis using a x test showed a weak yet significant difference in allele frequencies of the A/G dimorphic marker between patients and controls (P < 0.05), and a significant increase of A/A homozygous individuals among patients (21.53 vs 12.7%, P 5 0.02, odds ratio (OR) 5 1.89) was found. Analyses of CTLA-4 A/G polymorphism with respect to sex showed a significant difference in A/A genotypes between female patients and controls (OR 5 2.14; 95%, 1.13 < OR < 4.04, P < 0.05). The distribution of CTLA-4 (AT)n allele frequencies differed between patients and controls (x 5 38.18, 20 degrees of freedom, P 5 0.0084) and the highest OR was found with the CTLA-4 (AT)-224-bp allele (OR 5 6.43, 1.7 < OR < 28.64; P 5 0.001). In conclusion, these results show that the CTLA-4 gene, or one closely associated with it, confers susceptibility to GD in a Tunisian population.