Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Boundary Layer and Surface Verification of the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh, Version 3

While numerical weather prediction models have made considerable progress regarding forecast skill, less attention has been paid to the planetary boundary layer. This study leverages High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) forecasts on native levels, 1-s radiosonde data, and (primarily airport) surface observations across the conterminous United States. We construct temporally and spatially averaged composites of wind speed and potential temperature in the lowest 1 km for selected months to identify systematic errors in both forecasts and observations in this critical layer. We find near-surface temperature and wind speed predictions to be skillful, although wind biases were negatively correlated with observed speed and temperature biases revealed a robust relationship with station elevation. Above ≈250 m above ground level, below which radiosonde wind data were apparently contaminated by processing, biases were small for wind speed and potential temperature at the analysis time (which incorporates sonde data) but became substantial by the 24-h forecast. Wind biases were positive through the layer for both 0000 and 1200 UTC, and morning potential temperature profiles were marked by excessively steep lapse rates that persisted across seasons and (again) exaggerated at higher elevation sites. While the source or cause of these systematic errors are not fully understood, this analysis highlights areas for potential model improvement and the need for a continued and accessible archive of the data that make analyses like this possible.
A-Priori Calibration of a Structured Light Underwater 3D Sensor

In this study, we introduce a new calibration method for underwater optical stereo scanners. It uses air calibration, additional underwater parameters, and extended camera modeling. The new methodology can be applied to both passive photogrammetric and structured light three-dimensional (3D) scanning systems. The novel camera model uses a variable principal distance depending on the radial distance to the principal point instead of two-dimensional distortion functions. This allows for an initial improvement of 3D reconstruction quality. In a second step, certain underwater-specific parameters—such as refraction indices, glass thickness, and view-port distances—are determined. Finally, a correction function for the entire measurement volume can be obtained from a few underwater measurements. Its application further improves the measurement accuracy. Measurement examples show the performance of the new calibration method in comparison to current underwater calibration strategies. A discussion of the possibilities and limits of the new calibration method and an outlook for future work complete this work.
Mental health among Vietnamese urban late adolescents: The association of parenting styles

The aim of this study was to explore the correlation between parental styles and mental problems among Vietnamese high school students. In total, 16.4 percent of 757 eligible participants reported mental difficulties. Findings showed that being female and in grade 12 were risk factors to mental problems while living in Hue city was likely as a protective factor. The father’s warmth reduced the risk of having mental problems among adolescents, while an overprotective mother increased the risk. There was no correlation between authoritarianism of both mother and father and mental difficulties. These results suggest that a parenting program for parents might reduce the risk of mental problems among Vietnamese youth.
Lexical Processing of Nouns and Verbs at 36 Months of Age Predicts Concurrent and Later Vocabulary and School Readiness

ABSTRACT Children’s lexical processing speed at 18 to 25 months of age has been linked to concurrent and later language abilities. In the current study, we extend this finding to children aged 36 months. Children (N = 126) participated in a lexical processing task in which they viewed two static images on noun trials (e.g., an ear of corn and a hat), or two dynamic video clips on verb trials (e.g., a woman stretching and the same woman clapping), and heard an auditory prompt labeling one of them (e.g., “Where is she stretching? ”). They also participated in standard assessments of language and school readiness. The results indicated that lexical processing speed (i.e., how long they required to look to the labeled image or scene) was associated with measures of concurrent receptive vocabulary, as well as receptive vocabulary and school readiness two years later, although the associations are weaker than for younger children.
Recentadvances in the propertiesand synthesis of bilayer graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides

In the past few years, considerable progress has been made on the controlled synthesis of bilayer van der Waals (vdW) materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which are of interest due to their attractive optical and electronic properties. A variety of methods have been developed to synthesize bilayer vdW materials. This review is devoted to recent advances in the properties and synthesis of bilayer graphene (BLG) and TMDs. We emphasize the intriguing properties of BLG and TMDs, depending on their composition, stacking configurations, and twisting angles. The large-scale chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of BLG and TMDs with large domain size, high quality, and strong interlayer coupling is highlighted. We then expand the discussion to the current understanding of the growth mechanisms of BLG by CVD and synthetic methods of bilayer TMDs. Finally, the crucial challenges of BLG synthesis and our perspective of the future of bilayer TMDs will be laid out for potential applications of vdW materials.
Effect of Hemidesmus indicus root extract on the blood glucose level in alloxan induced diabetic rats

In this study, the effect of a single dose of Hemidesmus indicus root extract (HiRe) on the blood glucose level in alloxan (150mg/kg b.w, ip) induced diabetic rates was evaluated. Blood was collected from the tail vein in rats at zero time and after drug administration in 1st, 2nd and 4th hour and 24 hour to examine the effect. HiRe at 250 and 1000mg / kg was used for the study. Glibenclamide (3mg / kg, p.o) was used as the standard drug. The study clearly showed that single dose of HiRe had significantly protected the glucose level in alloxan induced diabetic rates at 1st, 2nd and 4th hour and even after 24hr, with respect to that of control animals. The results of the study reveal that HiRe possess significant antidiabetic activity in single dose study, suggesting the potential role of this plant as antidiabetic drug. The effect was partly ascribed to the free radical scavenging activity of HiRe. Thus, we conclude that Hemidesmus indicus possesses profound beneficial effects in preventing diabetic related abnormalities by lowering the sugar level as normal. Key words: Diabetics mellitus; Hemidesmus indicus; antioxidants; alloxan.
Characterization of two complete mitochondrial genomes of Pterocryptis anomala (Siluridae) and its phylogeny and cryptic diversity

Pterocryptis anomala (Siluridae) is an endemic fish species that is distributed in the drainage basins of Southern China. In this study, we reported the complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of two P. anomala specimens from different rivers using next-generation sequencing. The gene composition and the structural arrangement of the mitogenomes were similar to those of most other teleosts, although we examined a longer length of control region in these mitogenomes than that in most of published Siluridae mitogenomes. Phylogenetic analyses combining our novel sequences with published mitogenomes and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequences indicated the monophyly of Pterocryptis and a sister relationship between species P. anomala and P. cochinchinensis. However, the monophyly of Pterocryptis was not very robust as a limited number of species were included in our analyses. Additionally, we uncovered that a hidden diversity might occur in P. anomala populations. The likely causes for this cryptic diversity might be the geologic movements of intense uplift of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau and evolution of Asian monsoons, as well as low vagility of P. anomala. Our results yielded crucially important insights into the genetic resources, phylogeny and diversity of this endemic species.
Elastic Actuator Design Based on Bending of Cylindrical Beam for Robotic Applications

The lack of suitable actuators has hampered the development of high-performance machines or robots that can compete with living organisms in terms of motion, safety, and energy efficiency. The adaptation properties of biological systems to environmental variables—for example, the control performance of biological muscle with variable stiffness properties—exceeds the performance of mechanical devices. The variable stiffness characteristics of elastic actuators are different from the operating principle of conventional solids. Although there has been a lot of work on the design of elastic actuators in recent years, a low-cost and compact elastic actuator that can be used in place of standard rigid servo actuators is not yet available. In this study, a standard servo motor has been transformed into an elastic actuator by an elastic coupling attached to the gear system. The elastic coupling consists of four small steel beams with a cylindrical cross section placed on the circular disk, and the stiffness of the actuator is adjusted by varying the clutch length of the cylindrical beams. In this study, this innovative design is explained, then the equations expressing the variation of the torsional stiffness of the cylindrical beams with the coupling length and solutions of these equations are given. The experimental results are presented to show the ability of the proposed actuator to control position and regulate the stiffness independently.
Mind-wandering in people with hippocampal amnesia

Subjective inner experiences, such as mind-wandering, represent the fundaments of human cognition. While the precise function of mind-wandering is still debated, it is increasingly acknowledged to have influence across cognition on processes such as future planning, creative thinking and problem-solving, and even on depressive rumination and other mental health disorders. Recently, there has been important progress in characterizing mind-wandering and identifying the neural networks associated with it. Two prominent features of mind-wandering are mental time travel and visuo-spatial imagery, which are often associated with the hippocampus. People with amnesia arising from selective bilateral hippocampal damage (‘hippocampal amnesia’) cannot vividly recall events from their past, envision their future or imagine fictitious scenes. This raises the question of whether the hippocampus plays a causal role in mind-wandering and if so, in what way. Leveraging a unique opportunity to shadow people with hippocampal amnesia for several days, we examined, for the first time, what they thought about spontaneously, without direct task demands. We found that they engaged in as much mind-wandering as control participants. However, whereas controls thought flexibly and creatively about the past, present and future, imagining vivid visual scenes, hippocampal amnesia resulted in thoughts primarily about the present comprising verbally-mediated semantic knowledge. These findings expose the hippocampus as a key pillar in the neural architecture of mind-wandering and also reveal its impact beyond memory, placing it at the heart of human mental life. Significance statement Humans tend to mind-wander about 30-50% of their waking time. Two prominent features of this pervasive form of thought are mental time travel and visuo-spatial imagery, which are often associated with the hippocampus. To examine whether the hippocampus plays a causal role in mind-wandering, we examined the frequency and phenomenology of mind-wandering in patients with selective bilateral hippocampal damage. We found that they engaged in as much mind-wandering as controls. However, hippocampal damage changed the form and content of mind-wandering from flexible, episodic, and scene-based to abstract, semanticized, and verbal. These findings expose the hippocampus as a key pillar in the neural architecture of mind-wandering and reveal its impact beyond memory, placing it at the heart of our mental life.
Export market orientation, marketing capabilities and export performance of SMEs in an emerging market: a resource-based approach

ABSTRACT Companies in emerging markets have found that exporting is the most popular mode of entry in international business. However, popularity does not necessarily equate to successful export performance. This study applies the Resource-Advantage (R-A) theory as the platform to understand why some export companies perform better than others. Using survey data of 346 small and medium-sized Turkish exporters, results suggest that both export market orientation and marketing capabilities have direct positive effects on export performance. Moreover, competition intensity weakened the effects of export market orientation on export performance.
Learning Word and Sub-word Vectors for Amharic (Less Resourced Language)

— The availability of pre-trained word embedding models (also known as word vectors) empowered many tasks in natural language processing, leading to state-of-the-art performance. A key ingredient to the successful application of these distributed word representations is the existence of large curated corpora to train them and use the pre-trained models in downstream tasks. In this paper, we describe how we trained such quality word representations for one of less-resourced Ethiopian languages, Amharic. We used several offline and online data sources and created 100, 200, and 300-dimension word2vec and FastText word vectors. We also introduced new word analogy dataset to evaluate word vectors for Amharic language. In addition, we created Amharic sentence piece model, which can be used to decode and encode words for subsequent NLP tasks. Using this SentencePiece model, we created Amharic sub-word word2vec embedding with 25, 50, 100, 200, and 300 dimensions trained over our large curated dataset. Finally, we evaluate our pre-trained word vectors on both intrinsic word analogy and extrinsic downstream natural language processing task. The result shows promising performance for both intrinsic and extrinsic evaluations as compared to previously released model.
Dependence of spatial scale in landscape associations with cause‐specific predation of snowy plover nests

Understanding relationships between habitat and ecological processes often depends on the spatial scale at which the landscape is measured. A common objective in studies of avian nesting ecology is to link habitat characteristics with nest predation for generating potential conservation and management strategies aimed at increasing avian reproductive success. Yet scale dependence likely plays a considerable role in these assessments, particularly when multiple species of nest predators are present. We identi ﬁ ed nest predators of snowy plovers, a ground-nesting shorebird, and modeled predator-speci ﬁ c hazard rates of nest mortality in relation to the landscape at multiple spatial scales (200 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2.5 km, and 5 km) and at the nest site. We used a Bayesian latent indicator approach for weighting the in ﬂ uence of habitat across spatial scales and to gain insight into the hierarchical nature of how speci ﬁ c predators responded to the landscape when preying upon plover nests. We did not identify a common spatial scale that best predicted nest predation by all predators, though our results indicated that unfragmented playa and marsh habitats at large spatial scales reduced nest predation by all nest predators. Land cover features including grass, shrubs, human development, and open water elicited variable responses depending on the predator group, and predator groups responded at different spatial scales. Further, the spatial con ﬁ guration of nests (nest dispersion) in ﬂ uenced nest predation by common ravens Corvus corax and foxes (kit fox Vulpes macrotis and red fox Vulpes vulpes ), suggesting that certain predators develop a search image for nests. Our results illustrate that clarifying complex relationships between nest predation and habitat characteristics requires the incorporation of predator identity and scale dependence. Thus, management and conservation plans aiming to increase avian productivity by altering or restoring habitats will likely bene ﬁ t from consideration of predator-speci ﬁ c patterns at multiple spatial scales.
Asymmetric liquid flow control polarization reconfigurable cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna for wireless communications

This paper introduces a cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) with three reconfigurable polarization cases using liquid flow control. The CDRA volume has two pairs of drilling cylindrical holes with unsymmetrical radii and positions from the CDRA center along the two orthogonal diagonals. The liquid is flowing alternately in one‐cylindrical hole pair and is extracted from the other for polarization control. The two hole pairs radii and locations are optimized for minimum axial ratio (AR) of 1.5 dB at 5.8 GHz. Four polarization cases are achieved for left‐hand circular (LHCP), right‐hand circular (RHCP), and linear polarization (LP). The insertion of air holes pair in case (A) and case (B) widens the bandwidth (BW) to 1.28 GHz with high gain of 6.6 dBi in θ = 0, ϕ = 0 direction. The sequential rotation array arrangements are employed for circular polarization BW enhancement. Three arrangements are investigated. To improve the AR BW arrangement (III) introduces an improvement of 2 GHz compared with 60 MHz for the single CDRA element with a peak gain of 13.3 dBi.
Exogenous Gibberellic Acid Advances Reproductive Phenology and Increases Early-Season Yield in Subtropical Blackberry Production

Inadequate winter chill causes poor and erratic budbreak in blackberry (Rubus L. subgenus Rubus Watson), limiting the commercial production in subtropical climates. We examined the effects of exogenous gibberellic acid (GA3) on the reproductive phenology, fruit number, yield, and fruit quality of three blackberry cultivars (‘Natchez’, ‘Navaho’, and ‘Ouachita’) grown under subtropical climatic conditions in two consecutive growing seasons. A single spray application of GA3 at 0 or 49 g·ha−1 was performed when plants were dormant in late December to late January. Exogenous GA3 advanced the onset of budbreak by 12 to 82 days, flowering by four to 20 days, and fruit ripening by 0 to 15 days. When pooling across the cultivars, it also increased early-season yield by 83% to 276% in two consecutive growing seasons and total-season yield by 60% in the second growing season. Among the cultivars, the yield responses to GA3 were most consistent in ‘Ouachita’, with early-season yield increasing by up to 499%. The average berry weight and soluble solids concentration were slightly reduced by GA3, but these reductions were not consistent in the two growing seasons and the impact on overall fruit marketability was small. These results suggest that exogenous GA3 is an effective bud dormancy breaking compound for blackberry, and it could be an important adaptation tool for subtropical blackberry production.
Condensin and Chromatin Mediated X Chromosome Architecture in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Dosage compensation is a specialized gene regulatory mechanism which equalizes X-linked gene expression between sexes. In Caenorhabditis elegans, dosage compensation is achieved by the activity of the dosage compensation complex (DCC). The DCC localizes to both X chromosomes in hermaphrodites to downregulate gene expression by half. The DCC contains a subcomplex (condensin IDC) similar to the evolutionarily conserved condensin complexes which play fundamental roles in chromosome dynamics during mitosis and meiosis. Therefore, mechanisms related to mitotic chromosome condensation have been long hypothesized to mediate dosage compensation. However experimental evidence was lacking.
Microfluidic Engineering for Ultrasensitive Molecular Analysis of cells

The main focus of this research was the development of microfluidic technology for ultrasensitive and fast molecular analysis of cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay followed by next generation sequencing serves as the primary technique to characterize the genomic locations associated with histone modifications. However, conventional ChIP-seq assay requires large numbers of cells. We demonstrate a novel microfluidics-based ChIP-seq assay which dramatically reduced the required cell number. Coupled with next generation sequencing, the assay permitted the analysis of histone modifications at the whole genome from as few as ~100 cells. Using the same device, we demonstrated that MeDIPseq with tiny amount of DNA (<5ng) generated high quality genome-wide profiles of DNA methylation. Off-chip sonication often leads to sample loss due to multiple tube transferring. In addition, conventional sonicators are not able to manipulate samples with small volume(<100μl). We developed a novel microfluidic sonicator, which is able to achieve on-chip DNA/chromatin shearing into ideal fragment size (100~600bp) for both chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP). The integrated on-chip sonication followed by immunoprecipitation (IP) reaction can significantly reduce sample loss and contamination. Simple and accessible detection methods that can rapidly screen a large cell population with single cell resolution have been seriously lacking. We demonstrate a simple protocol for detecting translocation of native proteins using a common flow cytometer which detects fluorescence intensity without imaging. Using our approach, we successfully detected the translocation of native NF-κB (an important transcription factor) at its native expression level and examine the temporal dynamics in the process. Droplets with encapsulated beads and cells have been increasingly used for studying molecular and cellular biology. However, a mixed population of droplets with an uneven number or type of encapsulated particles is resulted and used for screening. We developed a fluorescence-activated microfluidic droplet sorter that integrated a simple deflection mechanism. By passing droplets through a narrow interrogation channel, the encapsulated particles were detected individually. The microcontroller conducted the computation to determine the number and type of encapsulated particles in each droplet and made the sorting decision. Our results showed high efficiency and accuracy for sorting and enrichment.
Differences of Private Equity Determinants: Country-level Evidence from Europe

This paper deals with private equity determinants w i hin the European Union, based on data covering 11 years and 20 countries. W e investigate driving forces of private equity activity in terms of the level of country maturity. The cluster analysis using Ward’s method is performed suggestin g three different clusters of countries with similar properties, to provide be tter country assessment than geographical distribution. We use panel data techni ques to study 26 possible determinants of private equity activity. The study reveals the macroeconomic factors, labour market, and business environment ha ve a significant impact on investment activity in countries, but the expected positive effect of the stock market was not confirmed. Furthermore, the differences b tween private equity determinants in individual clusters have been observe d. While the positive impact of innovation prevails in the more developed countr ies, there is also a negative effect of the interest rate. The less developed cou ntries tend to be more endangered by the crowding-out effect of government expe nditures and strong property rights protection rather than socio-political stabi lity and tax burden.