Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Radiative and climatic effects of dust over West Africa, as simulated by a regional climate model

We used the Regional Circulation Model (RegCM) to investigate the direct effect of dust aerosol on climate over West Africa, with a specific focus on the Sahel region. First, we characterized the mechanisms linking dust radiative forcing and convective activity over Sahel and the net impact of dust on precipitation: The mean effect of dust over 11 summer seasons is to reduce precipitation over most of the Sahel region as a result of strong surface cooling and elevated diabatic warming inhibiting convection. However, on the very northern Sahel and in the vicinity of dust sources, a relative increase of precipitation is obtained as a result of enhanced diabatic warming in the lower atmosphere associated with high dust concentrations at low altitude. In the second part of the paper, we investigated the robustness of this signal with regards to different modeling conditions that are thought to be sensitive, namely the extension of the domain, the effect of dust on sea surface temperature, the land surface scheme, the convective scheme and the dust single scattering albedo. The simulated dust induced precipitation anomaly over West Africa is consistent and robust in these tests, but significant variations over the northern Sahel region are nevertheless pointed out. Among different factors, single scattering and surface albedo, as well as the nature of the convective scheme, have the greatest influence on the simulated response of West African climate to dust forcing
Analysis of Threats and Attacks Impacts on Smart Grid Networks

This paper introduces the results of theoretical and practical analysis of threats and attacks on Smart Grid networks. Authors introduce Smart Grid as a complex system composed from two basic subsystems. These subsystems have characteristics of pure data networks and grid networks. Due to the fact that these subsystems are interconnected into one complex Smart Grid system, it was necessary to conduct an analysis of their interrelations. A company focused on power distribution (located in the Czech Republic) was consulted about these relations and their influence on security. The paper also introduces analysis of reasons to conduct attacks on SG networks. Analysis also describes impacts of the most basic attacks on data networks, from the Smart Grid networks’ point of view. The main contribution of the analysis is its practical impact on functionality of the whole Smart Grid and verification of the results within the complete Smart Grid environment.
Characterization of porous surfaces with spatial point pattern analysis

Nowadays thermal plasma spray coating is widespread in automobile industry. For example, in the cylinder manufacturing process coatings are applied for friction reduction, wear and corrosion resistance. After the honing process, a coated surface exhibits porous microstructures, which are often characterized in order to understand functional correlations between key parameters of the pores and friction performance. In this paper, spatial point pattern analysis is used to investigate the pores’ distribution in a two dimensional space. Methods, such as nearest neighbor analysis and Ripley’s K-function, are used to conduct the experiments to analyze the observer’s pattern. Different edge correction methods in Ripley’s K-function are introduced. Confidence envelopes are simulated using the Monte Carlo method. Experimental results are presented to reveal the patterns of pores, where influences of the selected measurement area on the results are taken into account and further discussed.
Ammonolysis of gallium phosphide GaP to the nanocrystalline wide bandgap semiconductor gallium nitride GaN

The pnictogen-metathesis reaction of microcrystalline gallium phosphide GaP with ammonia NH3 at temperatures of 900–1150 °C for 6–60 hours afforded in one step nanocrystalline powders of the wide bandgap semiconductor gallium nitride GaN. A suitable choice of conditions including variations of reaction temperature/time and manual grinding or high energy ball milling of the substrate enabled control over distinct GaN particle morphologies, regularly shaped particles or nanowires, and average crystallite sizes up to a few tens of nanometers. Under the applied conditions, all by-products were conveniently removed as volatiles affording pure GaN nanopowders. In contrast to ammonolysis of the related cubic GaAs and cubic GaSb, which yielded mixtures of the hexagonal and cubic GaN polytypes, here, the nitride was made exclusively as the stable hexagonal variety. All this supported specific reaction pathways with thermodynamics solely controlling the ammonolytical conversion of the cubic GaP substrate to the hexagonal GaN product.
Faculty Development by Student Questionnaire Analysis: A Class Partition Problem

Recently, universities are faced to introduce useful and eective programs for class management and to improve the quality of education. To perform these activities, student questionnaires are often used. By establishing a class model, we have evaluated student characteristics, the degree of satisfaction and final scores, and their relationships for a set of students or subsets of them. To improve the degree of satisfaction of the students and to increase the eectiveness of education, we are going to try to partition the students of the class into a few subclasses depending on their interested areas, levels, or motivation before beginning the class. Based on the probabilistic latent semantic indexing (PLSI) model, we developed new document classification and clustering methods. These methods show good performances for a small set of documents. Applying these methods to the students for the class: "Computer Engineering" at the second year of our department, we discuss on partition by the contents of topics into Class G (generalist): wide and shallow technical topics, and Class S (specialist): deep technical and professional topics, by only using the initial questionnaire. Although we know that most of all students do not decide their future jobs yet at their second academic year, we evaluate the dierence of partition of the classes between results given by an automatic partition method, those by student's own choice and those by estimated their jobs which they got after graduation from the university. Although the results obtained by the automatic partition method can not explain enough their jobs after graduation, it would be still useful to assist or guide the students. We show the eectiveness of the questionnaire by deriving the student implicit characteristics and we can obtain useful information which leads to faculty developments.
High achieving students and their experience of the pursuit of academic excellence

High achieving students are students who perform much better academically than their peers. While there are benefits to being a high achieving student such as receiving more support from teachers, they also encounter unique challenges such as increased frequency of bullying. Much of the research on this group of students is based on quantitative studies conducted on participants of Caucasian descent. It is suggested that obtaining a better understanding of these high achieving students could be achieved by making sense of their experiences through a qualitative approach. An individual's experiences and perceptions can be influenced by cultural factors and conducting research with an Asian population would help better understand how factors which are more strongly emphasized in Asian culture such as filial piety and obedience to parents contribute to the experiences of Asian high achieving students.
AN IN-MEMORY APPROACH TO SENTIMENT ANALYSIS BASED ON SAP HANA

Sentiment analysis (SA) is one of a number of fields in which "big data" requires processing. The term "sentiment" refers to the feelings, beliefs, emotions, and opinions that people express in relation to certain matters in written form, more often than not in online media such as social networks. Sentiment analysis can provide enterprises with valuable insights into, for example, how customers regard their products. When sentiments are collected from social networks over a period of time, the amount of data can indeed be "big". This paper describes and evaluates a lexicon-based SA solution, implemented as a prototype using SAP HANA. Sentiments are collected from Facebook and Google+, using a combination of tools including Microsoft Excel and the Power Query add-on to Excel. As HANA employs in-memory database technology, the calculation of sentiment values will be very fast. As a result of the sentiment analysis, five categories (from strong negative to strong positive), plus a category "sentiment not found", are filled with individual sentiments and, with the help of business intelligence tools, evaluated as well. SA results are made available on a user interface created using SAP's current interface technology, SAPUI5.
Large gain in air quality compared to an alternative anthropogenic emissions scenario

Abstract. During the last 30 years, significant effort has been made to improve air quality through legislation for emissions reduction. Global three-dimensional chemistry-transport simulations of atmospheric composition over the past 3 decades have been performed to estimate what the air quality levels would have been under a scenario of stagnation of anthropogenic emissions per capita as in 1980, accounting for the population increase (BA1980) or using the standard practice of neglecting it (AE1980), and how they compare to the historical changes in air quality levels. The simulations are based on assimilated meteorology to account for the year-to-year observed climate variability and on different scenarios of anthropogenic emissions of pollutants. The ACCMIP historical emissions dataset is used as the starting point. Our sensitivity simulations provide clear indications that air quality legislation and technology developments have limited the rapid increase of air pollutants. The achieved reductions in concentrations of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, black carbon, and sulfate aerosols are found to be significant when comparing to both BA1980 and AE1980 simulations that neglect any measures applied for the protection of the environment. We also show the potentially large tropospheric air quality benefit from the development of cleaner technology used by the growing global population. These 30-year hindcast sensitivity simulations demonstrate that the actual benefit in air quality due to air pollution legislation and technological advances is higher than the gain calculated by a simple comparison against a constant anthropogenic emissions simulation, as is usually done. Our results also indicate that over China and India the beneficial technological advances for the air quality may have been masked by the explosive increase in local population and the disproportional increase in energy demand partially due to the globalization of the economy.
Evaluation of the IAGOS-Core GHG package H2O measurements during the DENCHAR airborne inter-comparison campaign in 2011

Abstract. As part of the DENCHAR (Development and Evaluation of Novel Compact Hygrometer for Airborne Research) inter-comparison campaign in northern Germany in 2011, a commercial cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) based gas analyzer (G2401-m, Picarro Inc., US) was installed on a Learjet to measure atmospheric water vapor, CO2, CH4, and CO. The CRDS components were identical to those chosen for integration aboard commercial airliners within the IAGOS (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System) project. Since the quantitative capabilities of the CRDS water vapor measurements were never evaluated and reviewed in detail in a publication before, the campaign allowed for an initial assessment of the long-term IAGOS water vapor measurements by CRDS against reference instruments with a long performance record (Fast In-situ Stratospheric Hygrometer (FISH) and CR-2 frost point hygrometer (Buck Research Instruments L.L.C., US), both operated by Research Centre Jülich). For the initial water calibration of the instrument it was compared against a dew point mirror (Dewmet TDH, Michell Instruments Ltd., UK) in the range from 70 000 to 25 000 ppm water vapor mole fraction. During the inter-comparison campaign the analyzer was compared on the ground over the range from 2 to 600 ppm against the dew point hygrometer used for calibration of the FISH reference instrument. A new, independent calibration method based on the dilution effect of water vapor on CO2 was evaluated. Comparison of the in-flight data against the reference instruments showed that the analyzer is reliable and has a good long-term stability. The flight data suggest a conservative precision estimate for measurements made at 0.4 Hz (2.5 s measurement interval) of 4 ppm for H2O < 10 ppm, 20 % or 10 ppm (whichever is smaller) for 10 ppm < H2O < 100 ppm, and 5 % or 30 ppm (whichever is smaller) for H2O > 100 ppm. Accuracy of the CRDS instrument was estimated, based on laboratory calibrations, as 1 % for the water vapor range from 25 000 ppm down to 7000 ppm, increasing to 5 % at 50 ppm water vapor. Accuracy at water vapor mole fractions below 50 ppm was difficult to assess, as the reference systems suffered from lack of data availability.
Critical Thinking Ability and Vocabulary Learning Strategy Use: The Case of EFL Learners in an ESL Context

Critical thinking is considered important in the field of education due to its possible effects on language learning. Therefore, the reasons behind the success and failure of language learners have provoked researchers to examine different aspects of the language learning process. Moreover, improving learners’ critical thinking ability in the course of learning will enable students to rely on their own decisions and thoughts regarding the strategies and techniques that they would want to employ in learning the language. This paper reports the findings from a mixed-method study of 75 postgraduate students’ critical thinking ability and vocabulary learning strategy use, as well as comparing the critical thinking score of proficient and less proficient students. Data were collected using Schmitt’s vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire, California critical thinking skills test and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed a statistically significant relationship between learners’ critical thinking ability and vocabulary learning strategies.
Étude du frottement et de l'usure d'acier à outils de travail à chaud

Dans toutes les operations de mise en forme, le frottement joue un role determinant sur la qualite des produits obtenus. La duree de vie des outillages est limitee par les endommagements qui se developpent en surface. Ce travail constitue une contribution visant a decrire le comportement et predire l'usure en frottement d'acier pour outil de travail a chaud. Un premier travail experimental a permis de mettre en evidence les mecanismes pilotant l'usure a chaud de l'acier a outils. L'influence de la temperature d'essai, de la geometrie des eprouvettes et de l'etat de surface de l'acier a outils sur le frottement et l'usure a ete etudiee. Un cycle d'endommagement a alors ete imagine ou la deformation plastique de la surface du pion pilote l'usure par perte de cote. Une etape de validation des hypotheses conduisant au cycle d'endommagement a ete menee. Cette validation s'appuie sur de nombreux travaux bibliographiques et un travail experimental complementaire. Enfin, un modele d'endommagement a ete identifie. Ce modele s'appuie sur un critere de rupture par effet rochet. Cela traduit un cumul de la deformation plastique a la surface du pion avant l'emission de debris. Une modelisation numerique du frottement a ete necessaire pour acceder a tous les parametres du modele d'usure. Les predictions fournies par le modele ont ete comparees aux resultats obtenus lors des essais interrompus.
Introduction to vector-processing techniques for multi-component seismic exploration

Conventional multi-component seismic analysis simply relies on appropriate component selection to provide P-and S-wave images. However, this ignores the potential cross-contamination of P-wave energy on the horizontal components, and S-wave energy on the vertical component that may occur in certain geological situations. Where wavefield cross-contamination occurs, there is potential to achieve cleaner P- and S-wave images by more fully exploiting the true vector nature of multi-component seismic data. Vector processing for exploration-scale data typically combines frequency and slowness information, together with particle motion, to distinguish different wave types. Three such multi-trace, multi-component wavefield separation schemes, termed MUSIC, rvVSA and PBVI, are considered here. These vector techniques all utilise a parametric approach whereby wavefield slowness and polarisation are modelled simultaneously in the frequency domain. The PBVI algorithm is considered to be the most generally useful of the three algorithms. Synthetic and ocean-bottom data examples are used to demonstrate practical issues relating to the use of these vector separation schemes. In cases where there is significant cross-contamination, vector wavefield separation produces P- and S-wave records that differ significantly from the vertical and horizontal components, respectively. Where cross-contamination is less problematic, production vector processing is not warranted. In these cases, however, vector processing still provides valuable quantitative validation of the natural-separation assumption.
A Proposed PAPR and BER Reduction Method For 4G-LTE- SCFDMA Using The Multiwavelet Transform

Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SCFDMA) has been endorsed in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard for the uplink technique. It is enticing much advantage due to its capability to give lower bit error rate (BER) and peak to average power ratio (PAPR) as compared with the downlink system in LTE. In this paper an improved SCFDMA is proposed which built on the Multiwavelet Transform (MWT) instead of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The results demonstrate that the new modified SCFDMA gives lower BER and decrease the PAPR in all cases when change parameters such as roll off factor, subcarrier mapping and modulation type under the LTE channel model.
The Biological Basis of Performativity of Identity - Linking Scientific Evidence to Social Theory

Identity is the essence of performance and performance is the essence of identity. Without identity our performance does not assume any cultural significance. Our relative identity allows our performance to be located in the socio-cultural space. Our identity forms the foundation for the discursive significance of our performance. However, our identity is not unique, it is established by performing a pre-existing script. The biological basis of identity can be understood by applying learning theories and by analyzing how these leant behavior is embedded in our neuronal network in the brain and how these behavior patterns are controlled by psychological factors to result in the identity we observe. Recent developments in the fields of neuroscience and functional neuro imaging have enabled us to study objectively the process of neural mechanisms and map areas of brain that are involved in learning various behavior patterns. These neuronal networks and the neuro transmitters play a key role in memory and behavior of animals. Aby studying the particular pattern of behavior and the brain area that mediates that behavior it will be possible to determine neuronal networks that control core identity characteristics and that control other less important characteristics. With the emergence of studies in neuroplasticity the possibility of relearning behaviors through new neuronal pathways may open new avenues to treat conditions that affect identity. Understanding the biological basis of identity will lead to widening of research area and better understanding of the concept.
Profile of exudative pleural effusion in the region of Bhuj people

Background: Exudative pleural effusions are a common diagnostic problem in clinical practice, as the list of causes is quite exhaustive, although sometimes they can be inferred from the clinical picture. In the West the most common cause is Para pneumonic effusions followed by malignancy, while in India it is tubercular effusion followed by malignant effusion. Despite the availability of various tests, there is a need for deﬁning the best diagnostic and cost-effective approach to quickly diagnose and treat exudative pleural effusions. The objectives are to conduct a clinical and etiological study of exudative pleural effusion, to evaluate biochemical proﬁle, cytological proﬁle and radiological proﬁles of exudative pleural effusion.Methods: Prospective study of 100 patients with exudative pleural effusions. The demographic data was expressed as mean±standard deviation. Comparison between groups was done by Chi-Square test and Fischer exact test for categorical variables and Kruskar-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests for continuous variables.Results: There were 67 males and 33 females. The mean age was 41.6±15.74. The majority were tubercular in origin (67%),13%,8%,3%and 6% were malignant effusions, Synpneumonic effusion, pancreatic effusions and empyema respectively. Diagnosis was not established in 3% of effusions. Massive effusions were seen in 53.8% of malignant effusions and 33.3% of empyemas. Most effusions had a total cell count between 1000 to 5000 cells /mm3.Lymphocyte predominant effusions were seen in 84.6% and 89.6% of malignant and tubercular effusions. 61.5% of malignant effusions had a positive cytology. Tubercular effusion had a pleural ﬂuid ADA more than 40 IU/L. 92.3% of malignant effusion had pleural ﬂuid ADA less than 30IU.Conclusions: Pleural effusion is a commonly encountered in medical practice and in our country, the commonest cause is tuberculosis, as is evidenced from the present study. The initial step in evaluating case of pleural effusion is to establish the cause of pleural effusion which is done by a detailed history, clinical examination and investigations like a chest radiology and pleural ﬂuid analysis. Even in the advanced diagnostic approaches, still detailed clinical history and examination of the patient of the patient is important to make a clinical diagnosis. All suspected cases of pleural effusion should undergo Sonography of the thorax along with routine chest x-ray. Fluid cytology should be done to conﬁrm tuberculosis or to rule out malignancy, which guides the physician for further evaluation of the patient if required.