Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Fate of Threatened Coastal Dune Habitats in Italy under Climate Change Scenarios

Coastal dunes worldwide harbor threatened habitats characterized by high diversity in terms of plant communities. In Italy, recent assessments have highlighted the insufficient state of conservation of these habitats as defined by the EU Habitats Directive. The effects of predicted climate change could have dramatic consequences for coastal environments in the near future. An assessment of the efficacy of protection measures under climate change is thus a priority. Here, we have developed environmental envelope models for the most widespread dune habitats in Italy, following two complementary approaches: an “indirect” plant-species-based one and a simple “direct” one. We analyzed how habitats distribution will be altered under the effects of two climate change scenarios and evaluated if the current Italian network of protected areas will be effective in the future after distribution shifts. While modeling dune habitats with the “direct” approach was unsatisfactory, “indirect” models had a good predictive performance, highlighting the importance of using species’ responses to climate change for modeling these habitats. The results showed that habitats closer to the sea may even increase their geographical distribution in the near future. The transition dune habitat is projected to remain stable, although mobile and fixed dune habitats are projected to lose most of their actual geographical distribution, the latter being more sensitive to climate change effects. Gap analysis highlighted that the habitats’ distribution is currently adequately covered by protected areas, achieving the conservation target. However, according to predictions, protection level for mobile and fixed dune habitats is predicted to drop drastically under the climate change scenarios which we examined. Our results provide useful insights for setting management priorities and better addressing conservation efforts to preserve these threatened habitats in future.
Water hydraulics - A novel design of spool-type valves for enhanced dynamic performance

Hydraulic systems provide the most powerful actuators available. In the last decades however, their use in mechatronic systems has decreased, mainly because of two factors: the nature of the actuators themselves (such as noise, cleanliness, size) and the ease of use of electric systems. Water hydraulics, which use water instead of oil as working medium, have several advantages and could not only improve the system performance but also the general acceptance of hydraulics. This paper addresses the flow force inside water hydraulic spool valves, which directly controls the dynamic performance of the entire system. Simulations have been carried out to study the efflux angles (strongly related to flow force) and anti-cavitation ability of different spool valves. In details, the effects of the geometry, opening width and the pressure drop on the efflux angles have been analyzed. The results show that: 1) the geometry and opening width exert significant influence on the efflux angles, while the pressure drop and cavitation have little effect; 2) The arc spool valve has good anti-cavitation ability, and it can increase the efflux angles greatly, thus improving performance. The results provide a basis for developing high performance, light weight and compact water hydraulic control valves for robot actuation systems.
Low voltage, high speed FinFET based 1-bit BBL-PT full adders

Feature size of CMOS technology continues to scale down; new devices like FinFET are experimented and proposed as an alternative device due to its superior characteristics. In this paper we have presented low voltage, high speed 1-bit full adder cells in Branch Based Logic and Pass Transistor (BBL-PT) logic by using FinFET model parameters. In BBL-PT full adder lies a drawback i.e. voltage step existed in sum output. That could be eliminated in the proposed logics by using the diode connected FinFET (D-FinFET) inverter, N-type FinFET inverter and modified current sink restorer structures. Proposed full adder circuits are compared with conventional adder circuits, and proposed circuits have demonstrated the good delay performance. The performance of proposed and other conventional full adder circuits are examined using Cadence and the model parameters of 180 nm CMOS technology with +1.2 V supply rail voltage and 20 nm FinFET model files with +0.6 V supply rail voltage with frequency 100 MHz.
Root Sparse Bayesian Learning for Off-Grid DOA Estimation

The performance of the existing sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) methods for off-grid direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is dependent on the tradeoff between the accuracy and the computational workload. To speed up the off-grid SBL method while remain a reasonable accuracy, this letter describes a computationally efficient root SBL method for off-grid DOA estimation, which adopts a coarse grid and considers the sampled locations in the coarse grid as the adjustable parameters. We utilize an expectation-maximization algorithm to iteratively refine this coarse grid and illustrate that each updated grid point can be simply achieved by the root of a certain polynomial. Simulation results demonstrate that the computational complexity is significantly reduced, and the modeling error can be almost eliminated.
How to count thumb-ups and thumb-downs?: an information retrieval approach to user-rating based ranking of items

It is a common practice among Web 2.0 services to allow users to rate items on their sites. In this paper, we first point out the flaws of the popular methods for user-rating based ranking of items, and then argue that two well-known Information Retrieval (IR) techniques, namely the Probability Ranking Principle and Statistical Language Modelling, provide a simple but effective solution to this problem.
What topics do Firefox and Chrome contributors discuss?

Firefox and Chrome are two very popular open source Web browsers, implemented in C/C++. This paper analyzes what topics were discussed in Firefox and Chrome bug reports over time. To this aim, we indexed the text contained in bug reports submitted each semester of the project history, and identified topics using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Then, we investigated to what extent Firefox and Chrome developers/contributors discussed similar topics, either in different periods, or over the same period. Results indicate a non-negligible overlap of topics, mainly on issues related to page layouting, user interaction, and multimedia contents.
Sensorless Force Estimation for Robots with Friction

This paper describes a method for estimating forces applied at the end effector of a robot without the need for force sensors. Servo motor currents and positions are used together with an accurate system model to estimate applied forces. The system model includes inertia, friction and position dependent force components. The signal processing techniques required to extract the force information from the servo motor data are detailed and experimental results from a SCARA robot presented.
DISPERSAL OF PROTOPLANETARY DISKS BY CENTRAL WIND STRIPPING

We present a model for the dispersal of protoplanetary disks by winds from either the central star or the inner disk. These winds obliquely strike the flaring disk surface and strip away disk material by entraining it in an outward radial-moving flow at the wind–disk interface, which lies several disk scale heights above the midplane. The disk dispersal time depends on the entrainment velocity, vd = ϵcs, at which disk material flows into this turbulent shear layer interface, where ϵ is a scale factor and cs is the local sound speed in the disk surface just below the entrainment layer. If ϵ ∼ 0.1, a likely upper limit, the dispersal time at 1 AU is ∼6 Myr for a disk with a surface density of 103 g cm−2, a solar mass central star, and a wind with an outflow rate and terminal velocity vw = 200kms−1. When compared with photoevaporation and viscous evolution, wind stripping can be a dominant mechanism only for the combination of low accretion rates (≲10−8 M☉ yr−1) and wind outflow rates approaching these accretion rates. This case is unusual since generally outflow rates are ≲0.1 of accretion rates.
A flow control framework for improving throughput and energy efficiency in CSMA/CA based wireless multihop networks

In a CSMA/CA based multihop wireless network, excessive interference at a receiver or a potential forwarding node causes severe blocking and reduction in throughput. The unbalanced interference forces the node to consume more time receiving packets rather than sending them, resulting in dropped packets due to buffer overflow. We discuss a novel flow control framework at the MAC layer for regulating the transmission and improving the overall throughput of multihop wireless networks based on CSMA/CA protocol. The framework prevents congestion, reduces packet loss and is attractive because per-flow information at each node is kept to a minimum. The techniques used to improve throughput include a hop-by-hop, hybrid rate and window based flow control scheme that paces the transmission of frames such that competition between frames originating from the same flow is reduced. Simulations show more than five fold improvement in throughput and energy cost over the existing scheme without flow control in some cases
Investigation of 3-Z-network boost converter for photovoltaic power generation system using MPPT control strategies

This paper investigates the performance of 3-Z-Network boost converter for a standalone Photovoltaic (PV) power generation system. This proposed converter integrates a single-switch with 3-Z-active Network by diodes, capacitors & inductors. The 3-Z structure of the converter improves the energy conversion efficiency with low switching losses and also reduces the shoot through problem. The different operating modes of this converter and the input-output responses have been analyzed. The Voltage gain (Gv) characteristic curve of this converter circuit has been studied for various duty cycle (D) and it is compared with conventional and Quadratic boost converters. The comparative result illustrates that the Voltage gain of the converter is more than the other boost converters. Further, this proposed converter is integrated with the Photovoltaic panel for promoting the green energy. The sun radiates more photons which are used to generate the electrical power. The solar energy has certain intermittency issues, not available at night and also during daytime there may be cloudy or rainy weather and partial shadow effects which affect the performance of the system. During, the Partial Shading Conditions (PSC) multiple peaks and multiple steps are accomplished in the photovoltaic characteristics curve. One way to improve the systems performance is by operating the PV system at its Maximum Power Point (MPP). Here, the Perturb and Observe (P&O), Incremental Conductance (IC) and Improved Incremental Conductance (IIC) algorithms have been incorporated and the simulations are carrying out under Psim-circuit environment to track the MPP. The simulation results show that the Improved Incremental Conductance algorithm overcomes the drawbacks of conventional algorithms where it fails to track the MPP effectively under PSC. The parameters of the PV module have been referred from the manufacturer datasheet (MS24250) for these analyzes.
On Template-Based Inference of Rich Invariants in Leon

We present an approach for inferring rich invariants involving user-defined recursive functions over numerical and algebraic data types. In our approach, the developer provides the desired shape of the invariant using a set of templates. The templates are quantifier-free affine predicates with unknown coefficients. We also provide an enumeration based strategy for automatically inferring some of the templates. We present a scalable counter-example driven algorithm that finds the unknown coefficients in templates and thus computes expressive inductive invariants. Our algorithm incrementally solves a set of quantified constraints involving recursive functions and data structures. We discuss several optimizations that make the approach scale to complex programs and present an empirical evaluation. Our implementation proves correctness properties as well as symbolic bounds on running times of recursive programs. For example, the implementation establishes that the time taken to insert into a red-black tree is bounded by the logarithm of its size.
Do Pantheistic, Theistic, and Deistic Views of God Moderate the Relationship Between Financial Strain and Physical Health Status?

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to see if a pantheistic view of God (i.e., God is all around us in nature), a theistic view of God (i.e., God is the creator of the universe who protects us), and a deistic view of God (i.e., God created the universe and then left people to fend for themselves) moderate the relationship between chronic financial strain and three measures of health (self-rated health, the number of chronic conditions, and functional disability). The data come from a recent nationwide survey of adults of all ages (N = 2,768). The findings suggest that neither pantheistic nor theistic views of God offset the effects of financial strain on any of the health outcomes. In contrast, the data further reveal that the relationship between ongoing economic difficulties and all three health outcomes is more pronounced for study participants who have a deistic view of God.
Olorin: combining gene flow with exome sequencing in large family studies of complex disease

Motivation: The existence of families with many individuals affected by the same complex disease has long suggested the possibility of rare alleles of high penetrance. In contrast to Mendelian diseases, however, linkage studies have identified very few reproducibly linked loci in diseases such as diabetes and autism. Genome-wide association studies have had greater success with such diseases, but these results explain neither the extreme disease load nor the within-family linkage peaks, of some large pedigrees. Combining linkage information with exome or genome sequencing from large complex disease pedigrees might finally identify family-specific, high-penetrance mutations. Results: Olorin is a tool, which integrates gene flow within families with next generation sequencing data to enable the analysis of complex disease pedigrees. Users can interactively filter and prioritize variants based on haplotype sharing across selected individuals and other measures of importance, including predicted functional consequence and population frequency. Availability: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/resources/software/olorin Contact: olorin@sanger.ac.uk
Adaptive Distributed MIMO Multi-hop Networks with Optimized Power and Time Allocation

Distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multi-hop relaying is a promising technology to achieve highquality end-to-end (e2e) link performance by providing cooperative diversity. The application of low-complexity spacetime codes offers improved coverage, data rates, and reliability. However, efficient transmission protocols and enhanced resource allocation schemes are required to exploit these advantages. Specifically, low-complexity adaptive schemes and power control strategies should be designed, thereby achieving robust and costefficient e2e communications. In this paper an adaptive multihop transmission scheme is presented, where one relay stops forwarding the message if it is in outage and the remaining relays adapt to a new space-time code. For this adaptive scheme the e2e outage probability is derived and the optimum resource allocation strategy that reduces the total transmit power while satisfying the given e2e Quality-of-Services (QoS) requirement is presented. In addition to this optimum joint power and time allocation a nearoptimal closed-form solution based on several approximations is derived. By simulation results significant power savings for the adaptive approach in comparison to a non-adaptive scheme and the quality of the near-optimum solution are demonstrated.
Size Segregation and Convection

The size segregation of granular materials in a vibrating two-dimensional container is investigated using molecular dynamics. We find that the rising of larger particles is accompanied by the existence of convection cells even in the case of the lowest possible frequencies. The convection can, however, also be triggered by the larger particle itself. The possibility of rising through this mechanism strongly depends on the depth of the larger particle.
Towards Structural Natural Language Formalization: Mapping Discourse to Controlled Natural Language

The author describes a conceptual study towards mapping grounded natural language discourse representation structures to instances of controlled language statements. This can be achieved via a pipeline of preexisting state of the art technologies, namely natural language syntax to semantic discourse mapping, and a reduction of the latter to controlled language discourse, given a set of previously learnt reduction rules. Concludingly a description on evaluation, potential and limitations for ontology-based reasoning is presented.
Graphene and beyond-graphene 2D crystals for next-generation green electronics

In this paper, we first review the impressive properties of two-dimensional (2D) nanocrystals, primarily graphene and beyond-graphene 2D crystals, such as transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and then highlight some applications uniquely enabled by these materials for designing next-generation low-power and low-loss “green electronics”. Key challenges of 2D crystals relevant to such applications are discussed as well.
A Workflow-Based Non-intrusive Approach for Enhancing the Survivability of Critical Infrastructures in Cyber Environment

The focus of this paper is on vulnerabilities which exist in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Cyber attacks targeting weaknesses in these systems can seriously degrade the survivability of a critical system. Detailed here is a non-intrusive approach for improving the survivability of these systems without interruption of their normal process flow. In a typical SCADA system, unsafe conditions are avoided by including interlocking logic code on the base system. This prevents conflicting operations from starting at inappropriate times, and provides corrective action or graceful shut-down of the system when a potentially unsafe condition is detected. If this code or these physical devices are manipulated remotely, the system can fail with unpredictable results. In the proposed approach, a workflow is constructed on a system outside of the attack path and separate from the process under control. The workflow is a combination of the functional behavior of a SCADA system and a model generated by cyber attack scenarios in that system. A cause and effect relationship of commands processed by the SCADA system is simulated in the workflow to help detect malicious operations. The workflow then contain functional and survivability knowledge of the underlying system. Failures induced by the introduction of malicious logic will be predicted by simulating the fault in the workflow. Modeling these modes of failure will be valuable in implementing damage control. This model is event driven and conducts simulation externally, hence does not interfere with normal functionality of the underlying systems.
Coriandrum sativum and Lavandula angustifolia Essential Oils: Chemical Composition and Activity on Central Nervous System

The aims of this study are to determine the chemical composition of Lavandula angustifolia Mill. and Coriandrum sativum L. essential oils, to evaluate their cytotoxic effects in SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cells, to investigate whether an alteration of adenylate cyclase 1 (ADCY1) and of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) expression can take part in the molecular mechanisms of the essential oils, and to study their possible neuronal electrophysiological effects. The essential oils were obtained by hydrodistillation, and studied by GC and GC-MS. In the oils from L. angustifolia and C. sativum, linalool was the main component (33.1% and 67.8%, respectively). SH-SY5Y cells were incubated with different concentrations of essential oils and of linalool. Cell viability and effects on ADCY1 and ERK expression were analyzed using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide MTT and Western blotting, respectively. Variation in cellular electrophysiology was studied in primary cultures of rat cortical neurons with a multi-electrode array (MEA)-based approach. The essential oils and linalool revealed different cytotoxic activities. Linalool inhibited ADCY1 and ERK expression. Neuronal networks subjected to L. angustifolia and C. sativum essential oils showed a concentration-dependent inhibition of spontaneous electrical activity.
A Method for Training RBF Neural Networks Based on Population Migration Algorithm

This paper proposes a new global optimization technique in which combines population migration algorithm (PMA) and radial basis function (RBF) neural networks learning algorithm for training RBF neural network. Compared with the traditional RBF training algorithm, the simulation results show that the method has a higher accuracy in a stringency and works well in avoiding sticking in local minima.
Apprentissage de l'informatique et acquisition de compétences citoyennes des lycéen-ne-s. Approche comparative France - Québec - Israël

Notre these a pour objectif d'alimenter le debat sur l'opportunite de la place de la science informatique et ses aspects propedeutiques dans un curriculum pedagogique de l'enseignement general. La citoyennete est un concept fondateur des objectifs de nombre de systemes educatifs, en France notamment. Nous avons place l'objet de notre etude au niveau de cette citoyennete. L'etude de la science informatique au lycee contribue-t-elle a l'apprentissage d'une forme de citoyennete des jeunes dans leur parcours d'etudes secondaires ? Le terme de citoyennete etant par essence polysemique, il convient d'en analyser la typologie des differents registres avant d'apporter un cadre conceptuel. Notre approche initiale met en relief les composantes citoyennes de deux approches complementaires. L'une issue de Condorcet et d'une citoyennete eclairee, l'autre sous-tendue dans les objectifs du B2i francais et du socle commun de connaissances, de competences et de culture, dans leur rapport direct a l'education de cette citoyennete moderne. Cette approche typologique ciblee nous suggere une forme de citoyennete « numerique » elargie, a un « MetaCitoyen » (Kolesnikov 2014). Notre recherche analyse trois systemes educatifs contrastes : France, Israel et Canada (Quebec). L'education apparait comme l'un des indicateurs forts d'une citoyennete eclairee dans nombre de publications scientifiques. En moyenne, dans les pays de l'OCDE, on observe un engagement civique et social (ECS) superieur chez les individus instruits (Putnam 2000) ; (OCDE 2007; OCDE 2010). Comprendre le monde dans lequel nous vivons et les enjeux de la societe en charge de sa gestion sont au centre de la reflexion citoyenne. Notre recherche a pour objectif de determiner les points saillants de chaque systeme, les eventuelles tensions et leur impact sur la construction citoyenne de leurs eleves. Les resultats compares devraient alimenter notre reflexion sur la pertinence de la place de la science informatique dans les curricula de l'enseignement secondaire.