Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The influence of improved land surface and soil data on mesoscale model predictions

Land surface characteristics play a critical role in the evolution of the planetary boundary layer of the atmosphere. Several key components of the land surface that significantly affect surface sensible heat and moisture fluxes include soil temperature and moisture, fractional vegetation coverage (σf ), and green leaf area index (LAI). The lack of observational data for accurate specification of these components in model initial conditions is one of the most difficult aspects in the evaluation of land surface models. Soil temperature and moisture measurements are unavailable in most areas and routine observations of σf and LAI are not available at high resolution, i.e., with pixel widths on the order of 1 km and daily updates. This gap in our observational capabilities seriously hampers the evaluation and improvement of land surface model parameterizations, since it is very likely that model errors are related to improper initial conditions as much as to inaccuracies in the model formulations. The Penn State–National Center for Atmospheric Research fifth-generation Mesoscale Model (MM5) version 3 (Dudhia 1993; Grell et al. 1994) implements a monthly climatology for fractional vegetation coverage and a constant leaf area index (LAI). Studies have shown that such coarse resolution data based solely on climatology are insufficient to capture the detailed surface characteristics necessary to properly initialize a land surface parameterization (e.g., Chang and Wetzel 1991; Crawford et al. 2001; Kurkowski et al. 2003). By using climatological values for land surface characteristics, the model does not account for short-term or annual variability in vegetation coverage and condition due to daily variations in rainfall, seasonal droughts, flooding, forest fires, irrigation, deforestation, desertification, crop harvesting, land usage, hail or tornado damage, and temporal variations in the growth and senescence of green vegetation. Modeling studies implementing near real-time land surface characteristics from satellite observations have shown great promise for improving forecasts (e.g., Crawford et
TBED based Chinese-English translation rule acquisition

Translation rules have long been applied in various machine translation systems and manual construction of the rule base still characterizes most commercial MTS development. To resolve the bottleneck of manual rule composition, we present a TBED based auto translation rule acquisition method for Chinese-English machine translation. Experiment results on "number-quantifier-noun" phrase translation indicate the good performance of the proposed method.
Assessing Information Quality of a Community-Based Encyclopedia

Effective information quality analysis needs powerful yet easy ways to obtain metrics. The English version of Wikipedia provides an extremely interesting yet challenging case for the study of Information Quality dynamics at both macro and micro levels. We propose seven IQ metrics which can be evaluated automatically and test the set on a representative sample of Wikipedia content. The methodology of the metrics construction and the results of tests, along with a number of statistical characterizations of Wikipedia articles, their content construction, process metadata and social context are reported.
“I Do Still Love the Taste”: Taste as a Reason for Eating Non-human Animals

Sensory experience is frequently evoked in literature, and this sometimes includes descriptions of tastes. After considering the effects of taste in a famous passage by Proust, we next discuss their biological and social basis. Then, using techniques from linguistics, and drawing upon data from a three-year project investigating language used about animals, we explore the role of taste in decisions about meat eating, as reflected in the discourse of food marketing, personal reflections in focus-group discussions, and other elicited material. Meat production has environmental consequences, but decisions about meat eating are driven predominately by symbolism, sensuous pleasure, and personal significance.
Spatially consistent 3D motion segmentation

3D motion segmentation is the task to cluster corresponding points in multiple (at least two) images, so that each cluster corresponds to a 3D motion in the underlying 3D scene. The problem can be divided into two stages: first, all motion models required to describe the scene have to be found. Second, each correspondence has to be assigned to the correct model. This paper is concerned with the second part. A natural procedure is to assign each correspondence to a motion, such that the a-posteriori likelihood of the description is maximized. However, this is not trivial, since the likelihoods of different correspondences are not independent: neighboring correspondences tend to belong to the same motion, a fact commonly referred to as "smoothness" or "spatial consistency". To account for this fact, we model the set of multiview correspondences as an irregular Markov random field (MRF). The MRF is then optimized with recent graph-based methods, and individual clique potentials are inspected for fine-grained outlier detection.
Race and the politics of educational exclusion: explaining the persistence of disproportionate disciplinary practices in an urban school district

ABSTRACT Educational research has established a link between zero tolerance disciplinary policies and increases in racial disproportionality in suspensions and expulsions of students of color. This article reports on a critical ethnography of Rivertown, a school district with urban characteristics, where we have been working with parents of color whose children are subjected to exclusionary discipline. Using the framework of Critical Race Theory in education, specifically Derrick Bell's interest-convergence principle, we argue that several interrelated barriers prevent movement toward racial equity: a culture of colorblindness and white fragility that silences race talk; contested definitions of the problem that obfuscate its racialized nature; and the persistence of a zero tolerance framework even with the implementation of a restorative justice pilot. We conclude by discussing our ongoing strategies for creating interest-convergence between White power-holders and communities of color in Rivertown.
Reliable router architecture with elastic buffer for NoC architecture

Router is the basic building block of the interconnection network. In this paper, new router architecture with elastic buffer is proposed which is reliable and also has less area and power consumption. The proposed router architecture is based on new error detection mechanisms appropriate for dynamic NoC architectures. It considers data packet error detection, correction and also routing errors. The uniqueness of the reliable router architecture is to focus on finding error sources accurately. This technique differentiates permanent and transient errors and also protects diagonal availabilities. Input and output buffers in router architectures are replaced by elastic buffers. Routers spend considerable area and power for router buffer. In this paper the proposed router architecture replaces FIFO buffers with the elastic buffers in order to reduce area, and power consumption and also to have better performance.
Consequences of a Maternal High-Fat Diet and Late Gestation Diabetes on the Developing Rat Lung

Rationale Infants born to diabetic or obese mothers are at risk of respiratory distress and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN), conceivably through fuel-mediated pathogenic mechanisms. Prior research and preventative measures focus on controlling maternal hyperglycemia, but growing evidence suggests a role for additional circulating fuels including lipids. Little is known about the individual or additive effects of a maternal high-fat diet on fetal lung development. Objective The objective of this study was to determine the effects of a maternal high-fat diet, alone and alongside late-gestation diabetes, on lung alveologenesis and vasculogenesis, as well as to ascertain if consequences persist beyond the perinatal period. Methods A rat model was used to study lung development in offspring from control, diabetes-exposed, high-fat diet-exposed and combination-exposed pregnancies via morphometric, histologic (alveolarization and vasculogenesis) and physiologic (echocardiography, pulmonary function) analyses at birth and 3 weeks of age. Outcomes were interrogated for diet, diabetes and interaction effect using ANOVA with significance set at p≤0.05. Findings prompted additional mechanistic inquiry of key molecular pathways. Results Offspring exposed to maternal diabetes or high-fat diet, alone and in combination, had smaller lungs and larger hearts at birth. High-fat diet-exposed, but not diabetes-exposed offspring, had a higher perinatal death rate and echocardiographic evidence of PPHN at birth. Alveolar mean linear intercept, septal thickness, and airspace area (D2) were not significantly different between the groups; however, markers of lung maturity were. Both diabetes-exposed and diet-exposed offspring expressed more T1α protein, a marker of type I cells. Diet-exposed newborn pups expressed less surfactant protein B and had fewer pulmonary vessels enumerated. Mechanistic inquiry revealed alterations in AKT activation, higher endothelin-1 expression, and an impaired Txnip/VEGF pathway that are important for vessel growth and migration. After 3 weeks, mortality remained highest and static lung compliance and hysteresis were lowest in combination-exposed offspring. Conclusion This study emphasizes the effects of a maternal high-fat diet, especially alongside late-gestation diabetes, on pulmonary vasculogenesis, demonstrates adverse consequences beyond the perinatal period and directs attention to mechanistic pathways of interest. Findings provide a foundation for additional investigation of preventative and therapeutic strategies aimed at decreasing pulmonary morbidity in at-risk infants.
Parallel Query Processing on the Grid

Database queries offer an easy-to-use declarative manner for describing complex data management tasks. Query processing technologies have been evolving for decades; however the emergence of the Grid creates a new setting in which novel research issues and challenges have arisen. This chapter discusses how Gridoriented and/or service-based query processors differ from traditional ones, and focuses on three complementary research issues, namely, how to schedule parallel database queries over non-dedicated, distributed resources; how to mitigate the impact of increased data transfer cost; and how to perform load balancing in this new setting. In addition, we discuss how parallel spatio-temporal query processing techniques can be applied to a Grid environment. The discussion revolves around the development of the OGSA-DQP system, which is a pioneer open-source servicebased query processing system that enables parallel query execution over Grid resources, and the way some of the most prominent issues about its performance were addressed. The unique characteristics of the scheduling problem of arbitrarily parallel queries over heterogeneous resources have motivated the development of a new hill-climbing algorithm. For the problems of increased data transmission cost and load balancing, due to the highly volatile conditions, techniques founded on control theory are examined. The emphasis of this chapter is on both the description of a real Grid-enabled parallel query processor and the presentation of the different approaches to tackling each of the afore-mentioned problems including the limitations of the current state-of-the-art solutions.
Pharmacophore-Based Similarity Scoring for DOCK

Pharmacophore modeling incorporates geometric and chemical features of known inhibitors and/or targeted binding sites to rationally identify and design new drug leads. In this study, we have encoded a three-dimensional pharmacophore matching similarity (FMS) scoring function into the structure-based design program DOCK. Validation and characterization of the method are presented through pose reproduction, crossdocking, and enrichment studies. When used alone, FMS scoring dramatically improves pose reproduction success to 93.5% (∼20% increase) and reduces sampling failures to 3.7% (∼6% drop) compared to the standard energy score (SGE) across 1043 protein–ligand complexes. The combined FMS+SGE function further improves success to 98.3%. Crossdocking experiments using FMS and FMS+SGE scoring, for six diverse protein families, similarly showed improvements in success, provided proper pharmacophore references are employed. For enrichment, incorporating pharmacophores during sampling and scoring, in most cases, also yield improved outcomes when docking and rank-ordering libraries of known actives and decoys to 15 systems. Retrospective analyses of virtual screenings to three clinical drug targets (EGFR, IGF-1R, and HIVgp41) using X-ray structures of known inhibitors as pharmacophore references are also reported, including a customized FMS scoring protocol to bias on selected regions in the reference. Overall, the results and fundamental insights gained from this study should benefit the docking community in general, particularly researchers using the new FMS method to guide computational drug discovery with DOCK.
Reduced Expression of A-Type Potassium Channels in Primary Sensory Neurons Induces Mechanical Hypersensitivity

A-type K+ channels (A-channels) are crucial in controlling neuronal excitability, and their downregulation in pain-sensing neurons may increase pain sensation. To test this hypothesis, we first characterized the expression of two A-channels, Kv3.4 and Kv4.3, in rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Kv3.4 was expressed mainly in the nociceptive DRG neurons, in their somata, axons, and nerve terminals innervating the dorsal horn of spinal cord. In contrast, Kv4.3 appeared selectively in the somata of a subset of nonpeptidergic nociceptive DRG neurons. Most Kv4.3(+) DRG neurons also expressed Kv3.4. In a neuropathic pain model induced by spinal nerve ligation in rats, the protein levels of Kv3.4 and Kv4.3 in the DRG neurons were greatly reduced. After Kv3.4 or Kv4.3 expression in lumbar DRG neurons was suppressed by intrathecal injections of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides, mechanical but not thermal hypersensitivity developed. Together, our data suggest that reduced expression of A-channels in pain-sensing neurons may induce mechanical hypersensitivity, a major symptom of neuropathic pain.
An Application of Machine Learning to Native Advertisements

Machine learning algorithms are applied to data aggregated from the internet to classify webpages as native advertisements or core content. Four different classifiers are employed: logistic regression, Poisson naive Bayes, multinomial naive Bayes, and support vector machine. The features are selected using a threshold based on the mutual information statistic; additionally, the tf-idf and tf-bns transformations are applied to the training set. Principal component analysis is examined as an a priori feature reduction algorithm. The reduction in the dimensionality of the training set through principal component analysis is found to increase the test error of the logistic regression classifier to an unacceptable level. The tf-idf and tf-bns transformations are found to successfully improve the quality of the classifiers. The logistic regression classifier is shown to produce the lowest test error of all the classifiers examined.
Cleft sentences and reconstruction in child language

Abstract:This study examines it-clefts in four- and five-year-old English-speaking children using a truth-value judgment task. The goal was to find out whether children (i) observe principle C in clefts like It was Spot that he brushed and (ii) access bound-variable interpretations in clefts like It was her pig that every girl carried, despite the lack of c-command between relevant elements in the surface representation. Our experimental finding was that children behave like adults. This suggests that children do not rely solely on the word order of sentences encountered in their linguistic input, but use mechanisms made available by innate linguistic knowledge for interpretation.
Unification in the Description Logic

Unification in Description Logics (DLs) has been proposed as an inference service that can, for example, be used to detect redundancies in ontologies. The inexpressive Description Logic EL is of particular interest in this context since, on the one hand, several large biomedical ontologies are defined using EL. On the other hand, unification in EL has recently been shown to be NP-complete, and thus of significantly lower complexity than unification in other DLs of similarly restricted expressive power. However, the unification algorithms for EL developed so far cannot deal with general concept inclusion axioms (GCIs). This paper makes a considerable step towards addressing this problem, but the GCIs our new unification algorithm can deal with still need to satisfy a certain cycle restriction.
Relationships between food resources, foraging patterns and reproductive success in the water pipit, Anthus sp. spinoletta

A basic but rarely tested assumption in optimal foraging theory is that positive relationships exist between the foraging pattern of an animal, its short-term benefits in feeding, and its long-term fitness. We present evidence for these relationships for a central place foraging situation. We studied the foraging behavior of adult water pipits (Anthus sp. spinoletta) feeding nestlings in an Alpine habitat near Davos, Switzerland, with the following results: (1) searching effort decreases with increasing distance from the nest, (2) the amount of prey and the proportion of large items brought to the nest increases with increasing foraging distance, (3) water pipits do not forage according to habitat availability, but prefer vegetation types with the highest food density (mainly grass and herbs) and avoid those with the lowest, and (4) this selectivity is only expressed when the birds forage more than 50 m from the nest, i.e., usually outside the territory. Among the several potential interpretations of these results, the most parsimonious is that foraging decisions are based on profitability, i.e., on the net energy gain per time unit. Additionally, we found that food conditions translate into fitness: the number of fledglings per nest is related positively to the average prey biomass at the foraging place and negatively to the average distance between the foraging place and the nest. Maximum economic distances, which were predicted from this food-fitness relationship, agreed well with the actual foraging distances observed. This suggests a dose connection between foraging decisions and fitness. In addition to the theoretical issues, some conservation issues are also briefly discussed.
Incoherent OFDMA for multimode passive optical home and office networks

In this paper a novel concept of the multimode fiber-based passive optical network utilizing orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) is presented. Usage of multimode fibers ensures effective optical beat interference mitigation, thus making wavelength control in the uplink not necessary. Several experimental results confirming proper operation and good performance of the proposed solution are provided. The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission was tested in both the baseband and pass band of the multimode fiber. Several issues related to the proposed solution were addressed, namely, optical beat interference, modal noise, and the frequency response fluctuations of the multimode fiber links.
A novel acceleration profile for the motion control of capsubots

In this paper, a novel four-step acceleration profile is proposed for the inner mass (moving part) of a capsubot (capsule robot) system that works on the principle of the internal force-static friction. By using the acceleration profile of the inner mass the capsubot system can move in a given desired direction. Optimum selection of the different parameters of the acceleration profile is investigated considering the design constraints. Comparison of the simulation results with previous proposed profiles demonstrates its superiority. A novel encapsulated capsubot has been developed utilizing the acceleration profile in a self-contained format.
The cultural context of dying: Hawai’ian death conceptions and the gender divide

People ascribe a different meaning to dying and, therefore, approach their own death or grief for the other in various ways. Such approaches are the product of the intersection of people’s identities and experience; these go part and parcel with the way individuals view the world. Consequently, to be cared for when dying or grieving requires concrete knowledge and understanding of own identities from the professionals’ perspectives. In this premise, by means of a survey (n=55) and interviewing (n=10), the present paper reports on empirical data from Hawai`i about death conceptions and the gender divide. The study concludes that men and women share many conceptions about death but differ based on what constitutes normative grief and how it is expressed. This information adds to the knowledge held by helping professions like social work, counselling and psychology, with the aim to advance evidence that informs practice with the dying and/or bereaved from this background.
SLIM: network decongestion for storage systems

We introduce SLIM, a hybrid storage system that uses disks within data center racks to implement persistent caches for storage area networks (SANs). SLIM leverages compression and block overwrites to reduce traffic on data center oversubscribed network links and to improve performance for low-cost SANs. We evaluate SLIM using various micro-benchmarks and industry standard benchmarks. Our results show that SLIM reduces network storage traffic by 40%- 90% and significantly increases application performance in bandwidth-constrained environments.
The Spatial Structure of Bubble Pinch-Off

We have previously found [J. Eggers, M. A. Fontelos, D. Leppinen, and J. H. Snoeijer, Phys. Rev. Lett. , 98 (2007), 094502] that the pinch-off of a gas bubble in an inviscid environment is controlled by scaling exponents which are slowly varying in time. To leading order, these results did not require the spatial profile of the interface near break-up. Here we refine our previous analysis by computing the entire shape of the neck. The neck shape is characterized by similarity functions that are also slowly varying on a logarithmic scale. We compare these results to experiments and find agreement within the experimentally accessible range. More detailed confirmation of the asymptotic analysis is provided by the excellent agreement with numerical simulations of the bubble pinch-off.
Recent progress in prosodic speaker verification

We describe recent progress in the field of prosodic modeling for speaker verification. In a previous paper, we proposed a technique for modeling syllable-based prosodic features that uses a multinomial subspace model for feature extraction and within-class covariance normalization or linear discriminant analysis for session variability compensation. In this paper, we show that performance can be significantly improved with the use of probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) for session variability compensation. This system does not require score normalization. We report an equal error rate below 7% on a NIST 2008 task. To our knowledge, this is the best reported result to date for a prosodic system for speaker recognition. Fusion of this system with a state-of-the-art acoustic baseline system yields 10% relative improvement in the new detection cost function (DCF) as defined by NIST.