Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatio-temporal variation trends of satellite-based aerosol optical depth in China during 1980 e 2008

This paper analyzes TOMS AOD at 500 nm (1980e2001), along with MODIS data (2000e2008) at 550 nm to investigate variations at one-degree grid over eight typical regions in China and the trends in AODs, temporally and spatially. In contrast to recently reported global decrease in AOD over global ocean beginning around 1990, we find there virtually exists no apparent AOD transition in China for that: firstly no notable upward tendencies in AOD during 1980e1992 for the relative low value (þ0.001/decade), then during 1996e2001 a discernible ascending tendency with larger magnitude at 0.01/decade, and finally, since 2000, a weak upward trend with þ0. 004/decade. The large increases during 1996e2001 are presumably consequences of large increases in industrial activities and bear a strong resemblance to the long-term decreasing observations of incident solar radiation and cloud cover in China. Specifically, in late 1990’s, only in Taklimakan Desert a negative trend with a maximum magnitude of 0.04/decade is detected. However, over regions such as Jingjinji and Pearl River Delta influenced by industrial activities, positive tendencies at þ0.01/decade are observed. Seasonal patterns in the AOD regional long-term trend are evident. AODs exhibit generally similar seasonality and the summer dominates higher AOD value than the autumn. In particular, during the period 1980e2001, all the eight regions except Taklimakan Desert witness the maximum aerosols in winter while there is not such seasonality during the period 2000e2008. Geographically, we also document spatial patterns of AOD variations over China. Results reveal that no apparent upward trends in AOD (about 15% per decade) are observed in 1980’s, while beginning 1990 till 2008, both data (TOMS and MODIS) are indicative of a significant AOD increase across China, especially in 1990’s it is indeed the case, roughly in accordance with the overall trends at regional scale. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Re-examining the Transmission of Monetary Policy: What More Do a Million Observations Have to Say

In this paper we re–examine banks’ lending behavior taking into account changes in the stance of monetary policy in conjunction with changes in financial sector uncertainty. Using a very large data set covering all banks in the US between 1979–2000, we show that financial sector uncertainty plays an important role in banks’ lending decisions: for a given size classification, less liquid banks (and generally smaller banks) lend proportionally more than stronger counterparts in times of higher uncertainty. More importantly, we provide conclusive evidence that the bank lending channel is either nonexistent or at best not very important for the U.S. JEL: E44, E52, G32.
Bifidobacteria and Their Role as Members of the Human Gut Microbiota

Members of the genus Bifidobacterium are among the first microbes to colonize the human gastrointestinal tract and are believed to exert positive health benefits on their host. Due to their purported health-promoting properties, bifidobacteria have been incorporated into many functional foods as active ingredients. Bifidobacteria naturally occur in a range of ecological niches that are either directly or indirectly connected to the animal gastrointestinal tract, such as the human oral cavity, the insect gut and sewage. To be able to survive in these particular ecological niches, bifidobacteria must possess specific adaptations to be competitive. Determination of genome sequences has revealed genetic attributes that may explain bifidobacterial ecological fitness, such as metabolic abilities, evasion of the host adaptive immune system and colonization of the host through specific appendages. However, genetic modification is crucial toward fully elucidating the mechanisms by which bifidobacteria exert their adaptive abilities and beneficial properties. In this review we provide an up to date summary of the general features of bifidobacteria, whilst paying particular attention to the metabolic abilities of this species. We also describe methods that have allowed successful genetic manipulation of bifidobacteria.
Web Sites Automatic Summarization ©

Summarizing web pages and web sites is a challenging problem. While research in the area of automatic summarization has almost 50 years long history there are many open questions and web sites summarization is one of them. In this paper we represent preliminary results of our research of automatic web sites summarization methods. The goal of this work is to identify the limits of applicability of context-based approaches for web sites.
Implementing robots in hardware as a tool for integration

We suggest that integration in robotics research is facilitated and enhanced by the process of building embodied robots. It is in the translation of conceptual and simulated models into hardware that the integration takes place. Further, multiple techniques that address similar aspects of the same robotic task have to be merged to achieve good overall performance. In this paper we present two examples of successful integration and cross platform validation namely: 1. A walking and a wheeled robot used for planetary exploration (both used the same obstacle avoidance technique but the implementation was necessarily different) and, 2. Two robot helicopters (where behavior-based control used on the first robot is augmented using learning and enriched sensing on the second). The paper reports both case studies and discusses a list of lessons learned in the process of implementation.
Health insurance in Lao PDR: examining enrolment, impacts, and the prospects for expansion

As in many low- and middle-income countries, out-of-pocket payments by households account for a large share of health care spending in Lao PDR. These payments can deter use of services and increase the risk of financial catastrophe and impoverishment. Consequently, the Government of Laos is attempting to expand health insurance and . risk-protection coverage through four different schemes. This thesis examined two of those schemes: community-based health insurance (CBHI) and social health insurance (SHI). Using a conceptual framework that was developed based on the theoretical and empirical literature, three sub-studies were designed and implemented to explore: the determinants of household enrolment in CBHI; the determinants of enrolment of firms in SHI; and the impacts of CBHI enrolment on utilisation and financial protection. Data for the CBHI studies were collected using household and village surveys with 3000 households (14,804 individuals) in 87 villages, and six focus group discussions with members and non-members. In the SHI study, a survey was administered to 130 private firms. The CBHI and SHI studies employed a cross-sectional, case-comparison design and used a variety of econometric and qualitative methods in the analysis, including propensity score matching. The findings from the two enrolment studies identified various factors that drive and hinder enrolment in health insurance. The impact evaluation showed that CBHI had a positive effect on utilisation and financial protection, but given the low coverage of the scheme and low utilisation, the impacts on a population level are negligible. Moreover, the poor are the least likely to enrol and the poor who are enrolled incur higher out-of-pocket expenditures than the uninsured. The policy implications for Laos are discussed in the context of the international debate regarding the potential contributions of CBHI and SHI in national health financing strategies as countries progress towards universal coverage.
Hst hot jupiter transmission spectral survey: Detection of water in HAT-P-1b from WFC3 near-IR spatial scan observations

We present Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared transmission spectroscopy of the transiting hot-Jupiter HAT-P-1b. We observed one transit with Wide Field Camera 3 using the G141 low-resolution grism to cover the wavelength range 1.0871. 678 m. These time series observations were taken with the newly available spatial scan mode that increases the duty cycle by nearly a factor of two, thus improving the resulting photometric precision of the data. We measure a planet-to-star radius ratio of Rp/R =0.11709 0.00038 in the white light curve with the centre of transit occurring at 2456114.345 0.000133 (JD). We achieve S/N levels per exposure of 1840 (0.061 %) at a resolution of =19.2 nm (R 70) in the 1.1173 - 1.6549 m spectral region, providing the precision necessary to probe the transmission spectrum of the planet at close to the resolution limit of the instrument. We compute the transmission spectrum using both single target and dierential photometry with similar results. The resultant transmission spectrum shows a signicant absorption above the 5level matching the 1.4 m water absorption band. In solar composition models, the water absorption is sensitive to the 1 mbar pressure levels at the terminator. The detected absorption agrees with that predicted by an 1000 K isothermal model, as well as with that predicted by a planetary-averaged temperature model.
Unraveling the Functions of the Macroalgal Microbiome

Macroalgae are a diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic lower organisms and offer indispensable ecosystem services toward sustainable productivity of rocky coastal areas. The earlier studies have mainly focused on elucidation of the roles of the epiphytic bacterial communities in the ecophysiology of the host macroalga. However, mutualistic interactions have become topic of current interest. It is evident from recent studies that a fraction of epiphytic bacterial communities can be categorized as “core microbial species”, suggesting an obligate association. Epiphytic bacterial communities have also been reported to protect macroalgal surfaces from biofouling microorganisms through production of biologically active metabolites. Because of their intrinsic roles in the host life cycle, the host in turn may provide necessary organic nutrients in order to woo pelagic microbial communities to settle on the host surfaces. However, the precise composition of microbiomes and their functional partnership with hosts are hardly understood. In contrast, the microbial studies associated with human skin and gut and plants have significantly advanced our knowledge on microbiome and their functional interactions with the host. This has led to manipulation of the microbial flora of the human gut and of agricultural plants for improving health and performance. Therefore, it is highly imperative to investigate the functional microbiome that is closely involved in the life cycles of the host macroalgae using high-throughput techniques (metagenomics and metatranscriptomics). The findings from such investigations would help in promoting health and productivity in macroalgal species through regulation of functionally active microbiome.
Happiness in Nations

Today1 there is increasing support for the idea that governments should aim at greater happiness for a greater number of citizens. Is this a mission impossible? The following questions arise in this context: (1) Is greater happiness in a nation feasible? (2) If so, can governments do much about it? (3) If so, what can governments do to raise happiness in their country? (4) How does the pursuit of happiness fit with other political aims? In this paper, I take stock of the available research findings on happiness that bear answers to these questions. To do this, I use a large collection of research findings gathered in the World Database of Happiness. These data show that greater happiness is possible, and indicate some ways to achieve this goal. The pursuit of public happiness fits well with several other policy aims.
An improvement of embedded zerotree wavelet coding based on compressed sensing

Embedded zero-tree wavelet (EZW) is a kind of image compression algorithm which provides high compression rates fast. In order to improve the quality of reconstructed image after decoding, in this research, we put forward an improvement of embedded zerotree wavelet coding and simulate this new algorithm. This method takes full advantages of the Compressed Sensing (CS) theory and EZW. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed method improved the quality of the unzipped image significantly.
State-space model identification and Kalman filtering for image sequence restoration

A novel image restoration method is proposed to resolve a problem that the traditional restoration method performs poorly when the kind of image degradation model from high- to low-resolution is unconfirmed. In this paper, the proposed method includes a conceptual frame of state space model (SSM) in order to achieve a general model for accurately estimating the high-resolution image sequence from its incomplete low-resolution observation sequence. Here the parameters of SSM are calculated by a statistic approach - maximum likelihood (ML) estimator. By using the most effective filter of SSM - Kalman filter to estimate, we find that the estimated image sequence is closer to the actual one than the bi-linear interpolation, so that the proposed method can be used to improve the restoration results.
TAC2010 Update Summarization and AESOP of ICL

For the guided summarization task of TAC 2010, we submitted two runs using the combination of manifold ranking score and aspects information. The only difference between these two runs is that one computes a score according to aspect information while the other one considers aspect coverage in each sentence. For the update summarization task, we adopt similar methods and simultaneously penalize the information overlap between docset B and docset A. For the AESOP task, we focused on No Models evaluation case and submitted three runs. The first one uses a simple linear combination of three ROUGE scores, including ROUGE-1, ROUGE-2 and ROUGE-SU4, with four human summaries as models. The other two methods extract term information from four human summaries, such as term frequency and model frequency, based on which we evaluate each automatic summary. The difference between these two runs is that one of them introduces more term information, such as bigram information.
A scalable multi-core aware software architecture for high-performance network monitoring

This paper proposes a high-performance network monitoring software architecture. The proposed architecture, named DashNMon, is able to employ multi-core CPUs in an efficient and scalable manner. Multi-core awareness is a distinguished property of this architecture. In spite of most existing cluster-based solutions, DashNMon can be used with common-off-the-shelf (COTS) multi-core CPUs. DashNMon is based on DashCap high-performance packet capture and transmission software solution, which we have recently introduced. Using the proposed architecture, it is possible to design and implement high-performance multi-threaded NIDSs or application-layer firewalls, completely in the user space and with better utilization of computational resources of multi-processor/multi-core systems. In this paper, after a brief overview of DashCap, we introduce the scalable software architecture of DashNMon and the results of the experiments carried out using a prototype web filter to benchmark its performance and scalability.
Patent Technology Competitor Group Analysis Method Based on IPC Yuan Fu

It is crucial to understand the technical groups of intra-industry and to master the competition in the field of technology. In order to provide valuable information for industry participants and policymakers, a process model for mining technical competitor groups based on IPC classification number is put forward. Firstly, the patent numbers under each IPC are counted for building feature vectors for competitors. Then, technical similarities between each pairs of competitors are computed. Finally, the LinLog graph clustering algorithm is carried out to discover three levels of groups, i.e. institution, province and country. To obtain patent data for this research, an acquisition system for Chinese patent data is developed. Experiments on the field of fuel cell is conducted and the results show the technique is helpful and effective.
A Vision-based System for Biomechanical Testing of Articular Cartilage

This paper presents a flexible, vision-based test setup to perform 3D measurements of thin, sheet-like structures and indentation trials to obtain geometric properties and stiffness maps of biological soft tissues. The system is utilized for in vitro testing of cartilage-bone plugs to acquire a “gold standard” which will be used to validate MRI measurements of cartilage properties.
Multiscale sulfate attack on sewer pipes : numerical study of a fast micro-macro mass transfer limit

We present two multiscale reaction-diffusion (RD) systems modeling sulfate attack in concrete structures (here: sewer pipes). The systems are posed on two different spatially separated scales. The only difference between them is the choice of the micro-macro transmission condition. We explore numerically the way in which the macroscopic Biot number Bi M connects the two reaction-diffusion scenarios. We indicate connections between the solution of the "regularized" system (with moderate size of Bi M ) and the solution to the "matched" system (with blowing up size of Bi M ), where Henry's law plays the role of the micro-macro transmission condition.
Process models for the software development and performance engineering tasks

This research paper investigates and evaluates the currently available process models for software development with respect to representation of software performance engineering (SPE) tasks. The deficits identified point to the need to expand existing process models to include this task. On the basis of an process model for object-oriented development, a so called PM-OOPE is proposed to illustrate the subject, which allocates necessary SPE activities to the development process in a phase-related manner. "Support processes" required to implement these activities are also identified. The support processes take account of the necessary organisational framework, identification of the resources required for SPE activities based on risk analysis, applicable SPE methods, and performance related informations needed to carry out the task.
Social Work in Rural New South Wales School Settings: Addressing Inequalities Beyond the School Gate

ABSTRACT Children and young people in rural Australia experience disadvantage compared with metropolitan counterparts, with low educational attainment and disengagement from schooling being linked to poorer health outcomes. Schools are an existing contact point between individuals and health services. However, these health services are often overburdened and have limited scope to address broader social issues and teaching staff are focused on achieving curriculum outcomes. Embedding social workers within schools may provide an avenue for supporting students, yet social workers are rarely present in New South Wales public schools. This paper describes a study to determine teachers’ understanding of the socioeconomic issues faced by school students, and the role of the social work profession in addressing such issues as part of the early stages of establishing a Social Work in Schools (SWiS) project. Eighteen semistructured interviews were undertaken with teachers across four rural Australian schools. Participants identified their awareness of potential risk factors that could lead to educational disengagement, reflected on their own limitations in dealing with these broader health presentations given their teaching focus, and provided insights into their understanding of the potential role of social workers. IMPLICATIONS Rural and remote school children in Australia are at risk of reduced educational attainment and disengagement due to low socioeconomic status (SES), geographical location, parental education and employment, and family dysfunction. Social workers should advocate for the role they can play within rural school communities to assist in ameliorating the impact of socioeconomic factors on a student’s capacity to engage in learning. Partnerships between schools and social work field education may facilitate the growth of social work in schools in New South Wales.
FES Gait Re‐education: The Swing Phase Estimation

This paper presents the use of multiple sensors for walking assessment and provision of cognitive feedback during early re‐education of incomplete spinal cord injured (SCI) humans. The paper is focused on the swing phase estimation as an important part of the Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) gait re‐education system for incomplete spinal cord injured persons. The proposed sensory system comprises four accelerometers, one gyro placed at the shank of the paretic leg, and two goniometers placed at the knee and ankle joints, respectively. The data from the sensors are input in the mathematical algorithm applied for swing quality estimation. The output from the algorithm is a numerical value. The calculated output is divided into three levels, each defining the swing quality in terms of good, sufficient, and poor. This information is provided to the patient as an auditory signal. The patient is taught to maximize his efforts to improve the quality of walking, that is, to move the more affected leg in a way that will generate the auditory output corresponding to the level “good”.
A multicast routing algorithm for overlay network built on leased lines

Overlay networks have been recently developed to support multicast framework. Specially, overlay architectures based on proxies and leased lines can provide applications with optimal performance in terms of bandwidth, reliability, delay guarantee, etc. In this paper, we propose a balanced multicast routing algorithm for these proxy-based overlay architectures to utilize the network resources efficiently while keeping the delay guarantee for each multicast session. We first model the routing problem as a diameter-constraint Steiner tree problem. Then, a balanced solution which takes both the cost and diameter into account is proposed. Extensive simulations show that our multicast routing algorithm provides superior performance with respect to other heuristics.
Individual differences and stability of dynamics among self-concept clarity, impatience, and negative affect

ABSTRACT Self-concept clarity (SCC) is associated with behavioral and emotion regulation, although the nature of this link is unclear. SCC may serve as a self-regulatory resource or it may be a product of well-regulated behaviors and emotions. In two studies using experience sampling among undergraduates (n = 46 and n = 36), we investigate whether models representing relationships among SCC, impatience, and negative affect (NA) states conform to these theories, are similar across individuals, and are stable across a one-month period. Results reveal substantial variation between persons in these dynamic relationships, suggesting that multiple SCC-relevant regulatory processes exist. These patterns were not stable from one month to the next, but changes in them related to changes in stress, suggesting higher-order regulation of these dynamics.