Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Vegetation Fires in India Using Spatial Point Pattern Statistics Introduction Understanding the impact of fires requires detailed knowledge about where fires occur, how they are influenced by landscape biophysical factors and precise calculations of fire regime parameters

Understanding the impact of fires requires detailed knowledge about where fires occur, how they are influenced by landscape biophysical factors and precise calculations of fire regime parameters (Vazquez and Moreno, 2001). For the same, satellite remote sensing technology with its synoptic and repetitive coverage, provides valuable information on characterizing fires. For example, satellite images acquired by low spatial resolution sensors, such as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR), provide information at a scale from regional to global and with a high temporal resolution, on fire timing, frequency and extent (Stroppiana et al., 2003). In addition to remote sensing technology, geographic information system (GIS) is used increasingly for fire management studies. Because most of the fires quantified from satellite remote sensing datasets quantify fires in the form of event data, spatial point pattern statistics can be effectively used to quantify some of the fire characteristics. To quantify spatial patterns in fire occurrences, statistical methods can be integrated with GIS to answer several important questions such as: (1) How are the fire events distributed across different vegetation types, topographic gradients and geographical regions? (2) Are the fire distributions random? If not, how are they different from random pattern? (3) What is the spatial scale at which fire events cluster? As each fire event is the result of the certain spatial process at a given time and in a given space, the above questions have important implications for fire management. We addressed the above questions in the Indian region using ATSR satellite datasets for the year 2006.
An interdigitated back contact solar cell with high-current collection

Internal current-collection efficiencies greater than 90 percent and energy-conversion efficiencies of 18-percent at 30 suns have been measured on a laboratory version of the interdigitated back contact (IBC) solar cell. The quantum efficiency at 600 nm was greater than 90 percent which implies a minority carrier lifetime of greater than 350 µsec and a front surface recombination velocity of less than 30 cm/sec on the better devices. The processing steps on which the high-current collection in the IBC cell depends will be discussed.
Simple and robust self-healing technique for millimetre-wave amplifiers

A simple and robust self-healing technique for millimetre-wave (mm-wave) amplifiers is proposed. The self-healing technique can correct the operation frequency shifting of the amplifier (including its input and output impedance matching shifting) due to process, voltage, and temperature variations and modelling inaccuracy. A mm-wave amplifier with digitally controlled artificial dielectric transmission lines as fine frequency tuning components and an on-chip power detector as the frequency shifting detector has been implemented in 65 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor to verify the effectiveness of the technique. The operating frequency of five amplifier chips is calibrated by running the self-healing algorithm on a field-programmable gate array development board. On average, the gain of the amplifier is improved by 2.60 dB from 13.66 to 16.26 dB and the input matching is improved by 12.78 dB from −4.89 to −17.67 dB at 56 GHz after the proposed self-healing procedure.
Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate factors affecting imaging performances of compact scintillation gamma camera

In recent years, a new generation of compact gamma cameras, based on monolithic scintillation crystals, has become increasingly widespread. The main advantages of small FoV gamma cameras with respect to the standard ones are high portability, low cost and low weight, allowing several clinical applications, from scintimammography to intraoperative tumor localization. In gamma cameras based on continuous scintillation crystals, intrinsic Spatial Resolution (SR) is mainly affected by two factors: scintillation light collection efficiency and overall crystal thickness. The first affects the counting statistics, the latter impacts on the light distribution width. To fully investigate the potentiality of these devices we took advantage of Monte Carlo simulations as a valuable tool to physically characterize the imaging systems and to establish a priori reference values. GEANT4 toolkit allows to completely describe the phenomenon of light emission and propagation through the media, providing control to all second-order factors existing in real systems. Results show clearly that SR is dependent on the number of photoelectrons produced and on the light spread. Furthermore, the role of refractive index has been unambiguously identified as an important factor affecting light collection and consequently SR.
DETECTION OF NONCONSTANT LONG MEMORY PARAMETER

This article deals with detection of a nonconstant long memory parameter in time series. The null hypothesis presumes stationary or nonstationary time series with a constant long memory parameter, typically an I (d) series with d > −. 5 . The alternative corresponds to an increase in persistence and includes in particular an abrupt or gradual change from I (d1) to I (d2), −. 5 < d1 < d2. We discuss several test statistics based on the ratio of forward and backward sample variances of the partial sums. The consistency of the tests is proved under a very general setting. We also study the behavior of these test statistics for some models with a changing memory parameter. A simulation study shows that our testing procedures have good finite sample properties and turn out to be more powerful than the KPSS-based tests (see Kwiatkowski, Phillips, Schmidt and Shin, 1992) considered in some previous works.
Stochastic volatility with an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process: An extension

In this paper, we reexamine and extend the stochastic volatility model of Stein and Stein (1991) where volatility follows a mean-reversion Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. Using Fourier inversion techniques we are able to allow for correlation between instantaneous volatilities and the underlying stock returns. A closed-form pricing Solution for European options is derived and some numerical examples are given.
Herpes Simplex Virus Glycoprotein D Targets a Specific Dendritic Cell Subset and Improves the Performance of Vaccines to Human Papillomavirus-Associated Tumors

Cervical cancer is a major public health problem and one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in women. Virtually all cases of cervical cancer, as well as a growing share of anal and head/neck tumors, are associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Despite the effectiveness, the available prophylactic vaccines do not benefit women with cervical lesions or cancer. Therefore, the search of new immunotherapeutic approaches to treat HPV-induced tumors is still a priority. The present study characterizes a therapeutic antitumor vaccine based on the genetic fusion of the Herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1) glycoprotein D (gD) with the E7 oncoprotein from HPV-16 (gDE7). Two subcutaneous doses of gDE7, admixed with poly (I:C), conferred complete and long-lasting therapeutic antitumor protection on mice previously challenged with tumor cells expressing the HPV-16 oncoproteins. The vaccine induced multifunctional E7-specific CD8+ T cells with cytotoxic activity and effector memory phenotype (CD44+ CD62Llow). In addition, gDE7 admixed with poly (I:C) vaccination controlled the expansion of tumor-induced regulatory T cells and myeloid-derived suppressor cells. More importantly, gDE7 activated mouse CD11c+ CD8α+ and human BDCA3+ dendritic cells (DC), specialized in antigen cross-presentation to CD8+ T cells, under in vitro conditions. These results indicated that the activation of a specific DC population, mediated by gD, improved the antigen-specific immune responses and the therapeutic performance induced by antitumor vaccines. These results open perspectives for the clinical testing of gDE7-based vaccines under the concept of active immunization as a tool for the therapeutic control of cancer. Mol Cancer Ther; 16(9); 1922–33. ©2017 AACR.
Dynamic Assessment of Intelligence Is a Better Reply to Adaptive Behavior and Cognitive Plasticity

In the present study, the author conducted 3 experiments to examine the dynamic testing of potential intelligence. She investigated the relationship between dynamic measures and other factors such as (a) static measures of intelligence (Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices Test [J. C. Raven, J. H. Court, & J. Raven, 1979] and the D48 [J. D. Black, 1961]) and (b) codifying speed, codifying accuracy, and school performance. The participants were kindergarten children (n = 150), primary school children (n = 287), and teenaged students (n = 198) who were all trained to master problem solving tests with dynamic measures of intelligence. The results showed that dynamic measures predict more accurately the relationships of codifying speed, codifying accuracy, and school performance.
Adaptive control of non-inverting buck-boost converter

This paper presents an approach to system identification and adaptive control of non-inverting buck-boost converter in presence of large signal changes, uncertainty of converter's component and effects of imperfect modeling. Feedback loops of DC-DC converter are typically designed conservatively so that the closed loop regulation and stability margins are maintained over pre-determined range of operating conditions. The proposed approach is capable of maintaining a high performance response without the instability issue of converter. In presence of uncertainty on parameters of DC-DC converter, a digital adaptive controller based on system identification and minimum degree pole placement is proposed. To verify the validity of the proposed digital controller, an experimental set-up is constructed for non-inverting buck boost converter and the fully digital adaptive control is implemented by a micro controller. The experimental results show that the capability of adaptive controller during different operating conditions.
Changes in uterine estrogen receptor and morphology in aging female rats.

Changes in uterine weight, morphology and estrogen receptor levels were studied in aging female rats. The uterine weight (534 ± 31 mg; mean ± SEM) in rats during early constant estrus at 12 months of age was comparable to that of young proestrous rats. A marked increase in uterine weight to 933 ± 135 mg occurred in late estrus at 24 months of age primarily as the result of an increase in the luminal fluid content. Histological examination of these uteri indicated the presence of tall proliferative luminal epithelium and thickened stromal and myometnial components, sug- gesting stimulation of the uterus by estrogen during constant estrus. A decrease in uterine weight to 344 ± 20 mg was observed in aging rats during persistent diestrus at 30 months of age. These uteri were characterized by low cuboidal luminal epithelia and secretory uterine stroma. Sponta- neous formation of decidual tissue was also detected in some rats. These observations suggested that the uterine tissue in persistent diestrous rats was probably under progestmn influence. Independent of the marked changes in uterine morphology in aging rats, an age related decrease in estrogen receptor content was detected in the uteri of the aging rats. Estrogen receptor content/ uterus decreased with increasing age from 8.0 pmoles in young proestrous rats at 4 months to 4.5, 3.1 and 1.1 pmoles in rats at 12, 24 and 30 months of age, respectively. Expressed as estrogen binding sites/cell, a similar age related decrease in receptor concentration was observed in aging rat uterus with a decrease from 9,300 sites/cell at 4 months to 5,200, 3,700 and 2,200 sites/cell in aging rats at 12, 24 and 30 months of age, respectively. In contrast, no age related change in the dissociation constant of nuclear estrogen receptor was detected (Kd 1.4 ± 0.5 X 10’ M). The present study demonstrates a decrease of uterine estrogen receptor content in female rats with advancing age. The marked decrease in uterine estrogen receptor in old rats may contribute to some adverse changes in uterine function resulting in an increased incidence of pregnancy failure.
Proposal of a Computer Vision System to Detect and Track Vehicles in Real Time Using an Embedded Platform Enabled with a Graphical Processing Unit

This paper presents a development proposal of a systemcapable of detecting, localizing and tracking vehicles inreal time using computer vision algorithms in an embeddedplatform for an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). This project will use a Flea3 monocular color camera fromPointGrey. The video will be processed using support vectormachines (SVM) and convolutional neural networks (CNN). These algorithms will be implemented in a Jetson TK1 developmentboard from Nvidia which has a 192-core KeplerGPU, a quad-core ARM Cortex A15, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GBof internal memory, and a set of basic peripherals for automotiveapplications. Finally, this project will use librariessuch as: CUDA, OpenCV, and CudNN which are optimizedfor the Jetson TK1 as well as the LibSVM and Caffe librariesto train SVM and CNN models.
The role of cytoplasmic polyadenylation element sequence on mRNA abundance in porcine embryogenesis

Development of a porcine germinal vesicle oocyte (GVO) to a 4-cell stage embryo occurs during a transcriptionally silent period when the oocyte/embryo relies on maternally derived mRNA to encode proteins required for development. Regulation of translation and degradation of maternal mRNA is thought to be partially dependent upon cytoplasmic polyadenylation elements (CPEs) within the 3! untranslated region of the mRNA. The goal of this study was to determine how CPE sites affect the abundance of mRNA during embryogenesis and parthenogenetic development, and how cordycepin, a 3! -deooxyadenosine (3! dA) which inhibits poly (A) tail formation, affects polyadenylation and transcript abundance. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from oocytes and 4-cell stage embryos were scanned for the presence of five consensus CPEs. Nineteen different transcripts containing one to three putative CPEs were selected and transcript abundance was determined in GVO, metaphase II, 2-cell and 4-cell stage embryos via real-time PCR; and the length of the poly (A) tail was determined by using a Poly (A) tail PCR (PAT) assay. Real time PCR was performed on three biological and two technical replicates for each stage. There
Mitochondrial ATP synthesis in permeabilized cells: assessment of the ATP/O values in situ.

We have developed a method to assess the actual mitochondrial ATP synthesis in cells (fibroblasts and Ehrlich ascites tumor cells). This method relies on gentle permeabilization of the cells, inhibition of nonmitochondrial ATP synthesis systems (glycolysis and adenylate kinase), and the inhibition of all ATPase activities (ATP hydrolysis) by decreasing the cytosolic magnesium concentration with EDTA. We have simultaneously measured the rate of respiration, and the ATP/O values obtained with this method are similar to those obtained with isolated mitochondria using the same respiratory substrates. This method is highly appropriate for dealing with small amounts of tissue such as human biopsies.
Fragility of happiness moderates the influence of negative predictors of subjective well-Being

ABSTRACT Background and Objectives: Valuing happiness, negative life circumstances, and neuroticism have been found to negatively predict subjective well-being (SWB). It was hypothesized that holding fragility of happiness beliefs (the belief that happiness is fleeting and may easily turn into less favorable states) would moderate the relationships between these predictors and SWB. Methods: The sample consisted of 338 Korean participants who responded to an online survey (Mage = 26.19). Multiple regression with centered variables was used to test the hypotheses. Results: Consistent with the hypotheses, the results showed that fragility of happiness had an exacerbating effect on these negative associations. That is, the negative relationships between the predictors and SWB were stronger for individuals who reported higher fragility of happiness. Conclusions: These results indicate that people’s notions of the nature of well-being may come to exacerbate the impact of negative predictors of SWB.
Arrival angle estimation in non-Gaussian noise

This paper considers the problem of estimating the direction of arrival of plane waves from sensor array data. It is shown through a multivariate generalization of Whittle's inequality that the least squares estimator and its subspace-based approximations are inefficient when the noise distribution is non-Gaussian. In order to improve efficiency, two computationally elegant extensions of the MUSIC algorithm are suggested. Computer simulations indicate that the proposed methods perform much better than MUSIC for non-Gaussian noise, while the performances of all the three methods are comparable for Gaussian noise. <<ETX>>
Adaptive vector LUM smoother

A new vector approach, the adaptive vector LUM smoother for color images is presented. The novelty of the proposed method lies in the two-stages adaptive choice of the estimate, where in the first filter stage (N+1)/2 outputs with all smoothing levels done by the vector LUM smoother with window size N are generated. In the next filter stage, one of (N+1)/2 possible samples is adaptively selected to determine the filter output depending on the local information, by the filter window. Thus, the proposed method provides an optimal estimate in the sense of objective criteria. In addition, the filter output is constrained to be a sample from an input set that cannot result in color artifacts.
Fully-integrated passive threshold-compensated PMOS rectifier for RF energy harvesting

This paper presents an RF-DC rectifier for radio frequency energy harvesting applications. The proposed passive multi-stage RF-DC rectifier uses standard PMOS transistors to allow individual bulk biasing without the requirement of deep nwell technology. The RF-DC conversion circuit is based on passive threshold self-compensated topology. A design strategy to enhance the input voltage range and to optimize the power conversion efficiency is presented. Designed and simulated in IBM 130-nm CMOS technology, the proposed 915-MHz rectifier shows improved output voltage and power conversion efficiency compared to recent works. When driving a 1-MΩ load, the RF-DC power conversion unit is able to supply 1-V output with an input power of -22 dBm (6.3 μW) and obtains an efficiency of 11.4% at -16.1 dBm (24.5 μW) while supplying 2-V to the output.
An Enhancement of Clustering Technique using Support Vector Machine Classifier

Web surfing is very essential task of daily life for any professional person they search information regarding their field. But to get exact required information from ocean internet of data have become complex task. To manage files and information properly document clustering is a good approach. Clustering method divides text information into subgroup on basis of content based similarity. Document clustering reduces searching effort and fulfils human interest information looking for. It groups similar files together to minimize the search time and complexity. This paper gives new clustering method based on hybrid XNOR function to find degree of similarities within any two documents. Resultant similarity used for document clustering by applying SVM classifier for learning network. This paper introduces new method for document clustering by use of similarity matrix calculation and this matrix is passed for training SVM network for upcoming document classification. The results show the effectiveness of proposed work.In this paper, we describe the formatting guidelines for IJCA Journal Submission.
Fluorescence microscopic morphometry of functioning blood vessels and adrenergic nerves in myocardium

The purpose of this study was to quantify the percent volume of actively functioning blood vessels in five dogs subjected to ligation of the left anterior descending artery and to localize catecholamine‐containing nerve terminals in the same tissue blocks. Radioactive microspheres were injected to determine the extent of flow reduction in the ischemic zone. After 1 or 3 hr of occlusion, thioflavin‐S (0.125 ml/Kg of a 4% solution) was injected intravenously 15 sec prior to removal of the heart. Tissue samples were reacted with paraformaldehyde to visualize catecholamine‐containing nerve terminals prior to embedding in paraffin. The percent volume of blood vessels labeled with thioflavin‐S was quantitated in tissue sections using a point‐counting technique in which a small dot from a video screen was projected through an image‐projecting tube and moved by computer control over the image of the fluorescent tissue. In the nonischemic zone, the mean blood flow determined by the microsphere technique was 1.29 ml/min/g ± 0.48 (SD), and the mean volume percent of thioflavin‐labeled vessels was 12.67 ± 3.30. In the ischemic and border zone areas, there was wide range of flow reduction, and there was a significant correlation between the blood flow measured with microspheres and the percent volume of thioflavin‐labeled blood vessels (R = 0.80, P < 0.001). In the nonischemic zone, both blood vessels and catecholamine‐containing nerve terminals were visible; however, in the ischemic zone, few labeled vessels were seen, although nerve terminals were often present. A method has been presented here in which blood flow can be predicted microscopically in a small sample of tissue using a unique method of point counting of fluorescent tissue sections.
Outsourcing, Product Quality, and Contract Enforcement

Does outsourcing compromise product quality? Does sound contract enforcement alleviate this concern? We offer a simple model to illustrate how outsourcing leads to lower product quality and how contract enforcement helps mitigate this problem. These theoretical predictions are borne out of a survey of 2,400 firms in China conducted by the World Bank in 2003.
Synthetic aperture based on plenoptic cameras for seeing behind occlusion

In this paper, a synthetic aperture imaging algorithm is proposed to see the object behind occlusion based on plenoptic cameras. Depth estimated from the plenoptic image is used to filter out feature points on occlusions. Two handshake principal is proposed to pair feature points from central sub-aperture image with those from other sub-aperture images. Homography transformations are derived among the sub-aperture images to project other sub-aperture images to the central one. By averaging the images after projection, a synthetic aperture image is generated to smear out the occlusions. Comparing with existing works, the proposed algorithm provides synthetic aperture image with higher sharpness and clearer de-occlusion effect.
A modified process anomaly detection using Boolean function

This paper proposes a process anomaly detection method using Boolean function to discover whether a running process is compromised. This method combines the results of multiple detectors to avoid the single detector's limitation of inadequate training and therefore poor generalization performance. It aims at higher true positive rate and lower false positive rate in the detection. Traditional hidden Markov model is used and improved to describe the process, so that we can tell what normality is and what anomaly is. A simplified Boolean function is utilized to improve the efficiency. Two algorithms are proposed to evaluate and improve the detector's performance. And it turns out to be satisfying with high true positive rate and low false positive rate in the simulation.