Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A tradeoff frontier for global nitrogen use and cereal production

Nitrogen fertilizer use across the world’s croplands enables high-yielding agricultural production, but does so at considerable environmental cost. Imbalances between nitrogen applied and nitrogen used by crops contributes to excess nitrogen in the environment, with negative consequences for water quality, air quality, and climate change. Here we utilize crop input-yield models to investigate how to minimize nitrogen application while achieving crop production targets. We construct a tradeoff frontier that estimates the minimum nitrogen fertilizer needed to produce a range of maize, wheat, and rice production levels. Additionally, we explore potential environmental consequences by calculating excess nitrogen along the frontier using a soil surface nitrogen balance model. We find considerable opportunity to achieve greater production and decrease both nitrogen application and post-harvest excess nitrogen. Our results suggest that current (circa 2000) levels of cereal production could be achieved with ∼50% less nitrogen application and ∼60% less excess nitrogen. If current global nitrogen application were held constant but spatially redistributed, production could increase ∼30%. If current excess nitrogen were held constant, production could increase ∼40%. Efficient spatial patterns of nitrogen use on the frontier involve substantial reductions in many high-use areas and moderate increases in many low-use areas. Such changes may be difficult to achieve in practice due to infrastructure, economic, or political constraints. Increases in agronomic efficiency would expand the frontier to allow greater production and environmental gains.
Simulation of the stopping behavior of industrial robots using a complementarity-based approach

The braking behavior of industrial robots is an important aspect for the hazard assessment of human-robot interaction involving high robot speeds. This paper proposes an adaptation of a complementarity-based treatment of friction forces [1] to the simulation of the stopping behavior of robots. A time-stepping scheme is used for integration. The system matrices are computed using an auto-coding scheme to allow rapid adaptation to arbitrary serial kinematic robots. The model is capable of handling the set-valuedness of the friction curve. Comparison of the model results with the measured braking behavior of an industrial robot shows that the general behavior of the model is correct. However, the agreement of model and measurement is still not satisfying. Better mass parameter values and functions for the brake moment are required. Simulations performed with the model suggest a strong and possibly hazardous decay of the stopping behavior for specific robot motions that is hard to predict without an appropriate model.
Decoding Population Responses inShort

We study, in the limit of short time epochs, the eeectiveness of stimulus reconstruction procedures in decoding the information contained in the responses of a neuronal population. We show, both analytically and with computer simulations, that, in the limit of short times, if the information extracted in the stimulus reconstruction is calculated by taking into account only the most likely stimulus in each trial, then almost all the information in the neuronal responses can be decoded. If instead the information extracted with decoding is computed using all the probabilities that each of the possible stimuli in the set was the actual one, then in this limit almost all the information in the responses is lost.
A Novel Tone Mapping Method for Image Contrast Enhancement

Contrast enhancement is probably one of the most important image processing technique due to its high impact on the image visual quality. There is very often encountered in practice that the captured image suffers from limited contrast due to various reasons. In such cases the visibility of the details from the captured scene is reduced. Among many proposed methods for image contrast enhancement the tone mapping approaches based on the image histogram are probably the most known due to their simplicity of implementation. In this paper we propose a novel histogram based method for image contrast enhancement. We present experimental results, performed on color images, to show the benefits of our approach compared with other existing implementations.
Verifiably anonymous data collection on web

In this paper, a new notion which we call verifiably anonymous data collection protocol is introduced and formalized in the client-server model where each respondent uses a web interface to communicate with a server operated by the data miner. A construction leveraging a combination of semantically secure double trap-door encryption and OR zero-knowledge proof system is proposed and analyzed, where data sent from a respondent Alice is first encrypted using her personal partial key; Alice then proves to the data miner that the resulted ciphertext is valid and is sent by one of respondents dynamically formed by the respondent without getting the consent or assistance of the other respondents. A rigorous proof of the soundness and the zero-knowledge property of our data collection protocol in the presence of malicious adversary is presented.
International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007 Particle Swarm Optimization and Voronoi Diagram for Wireless Sensor Networks Coverage Optimization

The focus of this study is the sensor coverage problem. It is a crucial issue in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), where a high coverage rate will ensure a high quality of service of the WSN. This paper proposes a new algorithm to optimize sensor coverage using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). PSO is chosen to find the optimal position of the sensors that gives the best coverage and Voronoi diagram is used to evaluate the fitness of the solution.
Impact of corpus size and quality on English-Bangla statistical Machine Translation system

Statistical machine translation (SMT) evolves with the motivation of translating a text from source language to target language which employs the machine learning technique to a parallel corpus for producing a translation system exclusively automatic. We have developed Anubad[26], a phrase-based Bangla to English SMT on the top of the SMT model proposed in [1] which is publicly available on www.anubad. com. As the most challenging task for SMT system development is the designing of large parallel corpora as the translation quality significantly depends upon the corpus dimension and quality, Bangla parallel corpus suffers the same problem and fails to provide a standard translation till now. In this paper, through simulations, we provide a guideline for developing an English-Bangla bilingual corpus. Although in a phrase-based Statistical Machine Translation systems, more training data is generally better outcome, however, we deflect from this notion and according to our experimental results, we observed that quality of good corpus could significantly improve the Bangla to English translation quality. We have found better translation quality by employing our techniques and achieved effective improvements on NIST and BLEU scores.
Assibilation or analogy?: Reconsideration of Korean noun stem-endings

This paper discusses two approaches to the nominal stem-endings in Korean inflection including loanwords: one is the assibilation approach, represented by H. Kim (2001) and the other is the analogy approach, represented by Albright (2002 et sequel) and Y. Kang (2003b). I contend that the assibilation approach is deficient in handling its underapplication to the non-nominal categories such as verb. More specifically, the assibilation approach is unable to clearly explain why spirantization (s-assibilation) applies neither to derivative nouns nor to non-nominal items in its entirety. By contrast, the analogy approach is able to overcome difficulties involved with the assibilation position. What is crucial to the analogy approach is that the nominal bases end with t rather than s. Evidence of t-ending bases is garnered from the base selection criteria, disparities between t-ending and s-ending inputs in loanwords. Unconventionally, I dare to contend that normative rules via orthography intervene as part of paradigm extension, alongside semantic conditioning and token/type frequency.
Testing and Comparing Computational Approaches for Identifying the Language of Framing in Political News

The subconscious influence of framing on perceptions of political issues is well-document in political science and communication research. A related line of work suggests that drawing attention to framing may help reduce such framing effects by enabling frame reflection, critical examination of the framing underlying an issue. However, definite guidance on how to identify framing does not exist. This paper presents a technique for identifying frame-invoking language. The paper first describes a human subjects pilot study that explores how individuals identify framing and informs the design of our technique. The paper then describes our data collection and annotation approach. Results show that the best performing classifiers achieve performance comparable to that of human annotators, and they indicate which aspects of language most pertain to framing. Both technical and theoretical implications are discussed.
Cytochrome b Divergence between Avian Sister Species Is Linked to Generation Length and Body Mass

It is increasingly realised that the molecular clock does not tick at a constant rate. Rather, mitochondrial mutation rates are influenced by factors such as generation length and body mass. This has implications for the use of genetic data in species delimitation. It could be that speciation, as recognised by avian taxonomists, is associated with a certain minimum genetic distance between sister taxa, in which case we would predict no difference in the cytochrome b divergence of sister taxa according to the species' body size or generation time. Alternatively, if what taxonomists recognise as speciation has tended to be associated with the passage of a minimum amount of time since divergence, then there might be less genetic divergence between sister taxa with slower mutation rates, namely those that are heavier and/or with longer generation times. After excluding non-flying species, we analysed a database of over 600 avian sister species pairs, and found that species pairs with longer generation lengths (which tend to be the larger species) showed less cytochrome b divergence. This finding cautions against using any simple unitary criterion of genetic divergence to delimit species.
Towards an Integrated Aspect-Oriented Modeling Approach for Software Architecture Design

There is now an increasing agreement that aspects are not only an issue at the programming level, but also tend to arise at the requirements analysis and software architecture design. Unfortunately conventional software modeling approaches lack abstractions to support the modular representation of crosscutting concerns in such development stages. Hence, several researchers have proposed modeling techniques that primarily aim for modeling aspects at the early development phases. Each of these approaches seems to focus on specific issues in modeling aspects and have their own benefits and drawbacks. This paper focuses on the modular representation of aspects at the software architecture design, and provides an attempt to integrate the best practices of the existing aspect-oriented (AO) architectural approaches in a single general-purpose modeling language. The integration is based on a systematic comparison of four modeling techniques. The aspect-oriented architecture modeling approach is based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and presented using an illustrative example on concurrent versioning systems.
FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF BLOOD FLOW AND HEAT TRANSPORT IN THE HUMAN FINGER

The human finger is said to be the extension of the brain and can convey the information on mechanical, thermal, and tissue damaging. The quantitative prediction of blood flow rate and thermal generation are of great importance for diagnosing blood circulation illness and for the noninvasive measurement of blood glucose. In this study, we developed a coupled thermofluid model to simulate blood flow in large vessels and living tissue. The finite element (FE) model to analyze the blood perfusion and heat transport in the human finger was developed based on the transport theory in porous media. With regard to the blood flow in the large arteries and veins, the systemic blood circulation in the upper limb was modeled based on the one-dimensional flow in an elastic tube. The blood pressure and velocity in each vessel were first computed and the corresponding values for the large vessels in the finger were subsequently transferred to the FE model as the boundary conditions. The realistic geometric model for the human finger was constructed based on the MRI image data. After computing the capillary pressure and blood velocity in the tissue, the temperatures in the large vessels and the tissue of the finger were computed simultaneously by numerically solving the energy equation in porous media. The computed results are in favorable agreement with the available data. It is believed that this analysis model will have extensive applications in the prediction of peripheral blood flow, temperature variation, and mass transport.
Deola: A System for Linking Author Entities in Web Document with DBLP

In this paper, we present Deola, an Online system for Author Entity Linking with DBLP. Unlike most existing entity linking systems which focus on linking entities with Wikipedia and depend largely on the special features associated with Wikipedia (e.g., Wikipedia articles), Deola links author names appearing in the web document which belongs to the domain of computer science with their corresponding entities existing in the DBLP network. This task is helpful for the enrichment of the DBLP network and the understanding of the domain-specific document. This task is challenging due to name ambiguity and limited knowledge existing in DBLP. Given a fragment of domain-specific web document belonging to the domain of computer science, Deola can return the mapping entity in DBLP for each author name appearing in the input document.
Cyclicality in the Fiscal Policy of Nepal

This paper examines discretionary fiscal policy response to the business cycle of Nepal using annual time series ranging from 1975 to 2013. The Cyclically Adjusted Balance (CAB) of overall budget balance is utilized as a measure of discretionary fiscal actions and the output gap a measures of business cycles. Graphical depiction of the CAB accompanied with the output gap shows that the government of Nepal has been pursuing counter-cyclical fiscal policy in the post liberalization period and pro-cyclical in the pre-liberalization period. In line with the recent empirical finding that only counter-cyclical fiscal policy is capable in performing stabilization function, this paper found that the fiscal stimulus of the government of Nepal has also been adding aggregate demand during downturns (bad time) and withdrawing demand during upturns (good time) as envisaged by counter-cyclical discretionary fiscal policy. The counter-cyclicality as such is strong during 2000s whereas there is mild pro-cyclicality during the period 2011-13. For computing CAB, this paper assumes unitary elasticity of revenue with respect to output gap and zero expenditure elasticity with respect to output gap. The output gap has been estimated based on the trend component of the GDP using Kalman filter method. Factors like stronger institutions and sound macroeconomic policies might overcome recent pro-cyclicality of Nepal and allows room for counter-cyclical fiscal policy in the future. Similarly, the phenomenon of high fluctuations in the fiscal impulse over time indicates uncertain and inconsistent fiscal stance of the government. It demands for focus more on automatic stabilizers rather than more discretionary fiscal actions by broadening tax bases and social safety nets.
Eurographics/ Ieee-vgtc Symposium on Visualization 2010 Dynamic Multi-view Exploration of Shape Spaces

Statistical shape modeling is a widely used technique for the representation and analysis of the shapes and shape variations present in a population. A statistical shape model models the distribution in a high dimensional shape space, where each shape is represented by a single point. We present a design study on the intuitive exploration and visualization of shape spaces and shape models. Our approach focuses on the dual-space nature of these spaces. The high-dimensional shape space represents the population, whereas object space represents the shape of the 3D object associated with a point in shape space. A 3D object view provides local details for a single shape. The high dimensional points in shape space are visualized using a 2D scatter plot projection, the axes of which can be manipulated interactively. This results in a dynamic scatter plot, with the further extension that each point is visualized as a small version of the object shape that it represents. We further enhance the population-object duality with a new type of view aimed at shape comparison. This new " shape evolution view " visualizes shape variability along a single trajectory in shape space, and serves as a link between the two spaces described above. Our three-view exploration concept strongly emphasizes linked interaction between all spaces. Moving the cursor over the scatter plot or evolution views, shapes are dynamically interpolated and shown in the object view. Conversely , camera manipulation in the object view affects the object visualizations in the other views. We present a GPU-accelerated implementation, and show the effectiveness of the three-view approach using a number of real-world cases. In these, we demonstrate how this multi-view approach can be used to visually explore important aspects of a statistical shape model, including specificity, compactness and reconstruction error.
Robust texture representation by using binary code ensemble

In this paper, we present a robust texture representation by exploring an ensemble of binary codes. The proposed method, called Locally Enhanced Binary Coding (LEBC), is training-free and needs no costly data-to-cluster assignments. Given an input image, a set of features that describe different pixel-wise properties, is first extracted so as to be robust to rotation and illumination changes. Then, these features are binarized and jointly encoded into specific pixel labels. Meanwhile, the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) operator is utilized to encode the neighboring relationship. Finally, based on the statistics of these pixel labels and LBP labels, a joint histogram is built and used for texture representation. Extensive experiments have been conducted on the Outex, CUReT and UIUC texture databases. Impressive classification results have been achieved compared with state-of-the-art LBP-based and even learning-based algorithms.
His...Asp catalytic dyad of ribonuclease A: structure and function of the wild-type, D121N, and D121A enzymes.

The side chains of histidine and aspartate residues form a hydrogen bond in the active sites of many enzymes. In serine proteases, the His.Asp hydrogen bond of the catalytic triad is known to contribute greatly to catalysis, perhaps via the formation of a low-barrier hydrogen bond. In bovine pancreatic ribonuclease A (RNase A), the His.Asp dyad is composed of His119 and Asp121. Previously, site-directed mutagenesis was used to show that His119 has a fundamental role, to act as an acid during catalysis of RNA cleavage [Thompson, J. E. , and Raines, R. T. (1994) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 116, 5467-5468]. Here, Asp121 was replaced with an asparagine or alanine residue. The crystalline structures of the two variants were determined by X-ray diffraction analysis to a resolution of 1.6 A with an R-factor of 0.18. Replacing Asp121 with an asparagine or alanine residue does not perturb the overall conformation of the enzyme. In the structure of D121N RNase A, Ndelta rather than Odelta of Asn121 faces His119. This alignment in the crystalline state is unlikely to exist in solution because catalysis by the D121N variant is not compromised severely. The steady-state kinetic parameters for catalysis by the wild-type and variant enzymes were determined for the cleavage of uridylyl(3'-->5')adenosine and poly(cytidylic acid), and for the hydrolysis of uridine 2',3'-cyclic phosphate. Replacing Asp121 decreases the values of kcat/Km and kcat for cleavage by 10-fold (D121N) and 10(2)-fold (D121A). Replacing Asp121 also decreases the values of kcat/Km and kcat for hydrolysis by 10(0. 5)-fold (D121N) and 10-fold (D121A) but has no other effect on the pH-rate profiles for hydrolysis. There is no evidence for the formation of a low-barrier hydrogen bond between His119 and either an aspartate or an asparagine residue at position 121. Apparently, the major role of Asp121 is to orient the proper tautomer of His119 for catalysis. Thus, the mere presence of a His.Asp dyad in an enzymic active site is not a mandate for its being crucial in effecting catalysis.
Clustering RDF Databases Using Tunable-LSH

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a W3C standard for representing graph-structured data, and SPARQL is the standard query language for RDF. Recent advances in Information Extraction, Linked Data Management and the Semantic Web have led to a rapid increase in both the volume and the variety of RDF data that are publicly available. As businesses start to capitalize on RDF data, RDF data management systems are being exposed to workloads that are far more diverse and dynamic than what they were designed to handle. Consequently, there is a growing need for developing workload-adaptive and self-tuning RDF data management systems. To realize this vision, we introduce a fast and efficient method for dynamically clustering records in an RDF data management system. Specifically, we assume nothing about the workload upfront, but as SPARQL queries are executed, we keep track of records that are co-accessed by the queries in the workload and physically cluster them. To decide dynamically (hence, in constant-time) where a record needs to be placed in the storage system, we develop a new locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) scheme, Tunable-LSH. Using Tunable-LSH, records that are co-accessed across similar sets of queries can be hashed to the same or nearby physical pages in the storage system. What sets Tunable-LSH apart from existing LSH schemes is that it can auto-tune to achieve the aforementioned clustering objective with high accuracy even when the workloads change. Experimental evaluation of Tunable-LSH in our prototype RDF data management system, chameleon-db, as well as in a standalone hashtable shows significant end-to-end improvements over existing solutions.