Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intercomparison of the Surface Energy Partitioning in CMIP5 Simulations

The warming climate significantly modifies the global water cycle. Global evapotranspiration has increased over the past decades, yet climate models agree on the drying trend of land surface. In this study, we conducted an intercomparison analysis of the surface energy partitioning across Coupled Model Intercomparison Phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations and evaluated its behaviour with surface temperature and soil moisture anomalies, against the theoretically derived thermodynamic formula. Different responses over land and sea surfaces to elevated greenhouse gas emissions were found. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway of +8.5 W m−2 (RCP8.5) warming scenario, the multi-model mean relative efficiency anomaly from CMIP5 simulations is 3.83 and −0.12 over global sea and land, respectively. The significant anomaly over sea was captured by the thermodynamic solution based on the principle of maximum entropy production, with a mean relative error of 14.6%. The declining trend over land was also reproduced, but an accurate prediction of its small anomaly will require the inclusions of complex physical processes in future work. Despite increased potential evapotranspiration under rising temperatures, both CMIP5 simulations and thermodynamic principles suggest that the soil moisture-temperature feedback cannot support long-term enhanced evapotranspiration at the global scale. The dissipation of radiative forcing eventually shifts towards sensible heat flux and accelerates the warming over land, especially over South America and Europe.
A Novel Dual-Band Band-Pass Filter Using Plasmonic Square Ring Resonator

We propose a plasmonic Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) waveguide based on a new ring resonator Band-Pass Filter (BPF) with tunable band-pass bandwidth. We use very easy techniques for analyzing the resonant frequencies and transmission coefficients. The band-pass filter operates at optical wavelengths in between O & L bands. To design band-pass filters, steppedimpedance stubs with open lengths are connected with the ring to acquire the tunable bandwidth. A full wave simulation software tool is used in the design of the band-pass filter. The filter has wide applications in high density Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs).
Novel beam forming approach for rectangular planar array

A novel beam forming approach is presented for rectangular antenna array. The new method is a noniterative approach and suitable for any rectangular planar array. The array element excitation matrix of the new method is solved directly through two novel matrix formulas on the basis of the fixed target beam pattern and the array configuration. In the second new beam forming matrix formula, there are two adjustable weighting matrices with variable parameters that can be used to control the beam attenuation. Simulations of the new approach are conducted to show its performance. The results of simulations show that the new approach can well synthesize the targeted pattern and the second formula can form excellent null beams in the two‐dimensional beam pattern. The important advantages over other existing techniques of the new method are: (a) it is suitable for any rectangular planar array; (b) it is noniterative method and thus more simple and easy to use; (c) it can form null beam easily, which is in sharp contrast to the fact that other existing methods for rectangular planar array does not perform well in null beam forming and even cannot form null beam aside from few special case.
High-Gain Filtering Reflectarray Antenna for Millimeter-Wave Applications

This article presents a novel design of filtering reflectarray antenna, an integrated module for the combination of filtering and high-gain radiation performance. The filtering reflectarray consists of two-section metal pixel waveguide elements, which can realize the optimized aperture reflection phase distributions in the operating band <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{1~ \le }f~ _{\le }~f_{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to yield high-gain radiation. Below the lower cutoff frequency <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, the reflection phase distributions drastically deviate from the required ones. Above the upper cutoff frequency <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, both the amplitude and phase distributions fail to provide strong coherent radiation. In the reflectarray synthesis process, a multi-frequency phase matching method (PMM) is further developed, in which the phase compensation for each pixel is implemented at three simultaneous in-band frequencies. Meanwhile, the effects of incident angle for elements are also taken into consideration during the reflectarray synthesis. The design of an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$11\lambda \times 11\lambda $ </tex-math></inline-formula> filtering reflectarray operating from 55 to 65 GHz was conveniently fabricated by 3-D printing technology, followed by metal coating with advantages of rapid prototyping, lightweight, and low cost. Both the simulated and measured results show that the proposed reflectarray can realize high-gain radiation within the desired frequency band but presents effective suppression of out-of-band signals, demonstrating its filtering capability.
Does Saudi Society and the School Community Affect the Improvement of Critical Thinking Skills in Saudi Arabian Elementary Schools

The intent of this explanatory sequential mixed-method study is to examine Islamic teachers’ thoughts on improving critical thinking skills in elementary schools in the Southwestern province of Saudi Arabia. This study involves the collection of quantitative data and an explanation of the quantitative results with qualitative data. In the first phase, a survey was administered to Islamic teachers in Saudi elementary schools to assess their opinions on improving students’ critical thinking skills and to identify the factors that influence or hinder their implementation of critical thinking instruction. In the second phase, qualitative data was collected using semistructured interviews with a number of Islamic teachers in order to explore more fully their perceptions toward improving students’ critical thinking skills in Saudi elementary schools. The study’s findings suggest there is a need to also examine female Islamic teachers’ perceptions toward critical thinking in the Southwestern region of Saudi Arabia in order to identify the similarities and differences between the perceptions of male and female teachers.
Application of clinical nursing pathway in interventional therapy for coronary heart disease

Objective:To discuss the application of clinical nursing pathway(CNP)in interventional therapy for the patients with coronary heart disease and its nursing efficacy.Methods:120 patients with coronary heart disease who underwent interventional therapy were randomly divided into observation group and control group,each consisting of 60 cases.The observation group received CNP,while the control group received routine nursing care in conventional nursing mode.Results:The incidence rate of negative effect was markedly lower in the observation group than that in the control group,and the satisfaction degree of the patient and the health education of the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group,and the anxiety and depression of patients with degree was reliever than before,with a significant difference between two groups,(P0.05). Conclusion:CNP could reduced the negative effect incidence,enhanced the patient satisfaction,increased the comprehensive nursing quality and reduced the anxiety and depression of patients in interventional therapy for the patients with coronary heart disease.
A Case of Trichosporon beigelii Fungemia Treated with Amphotericin B and Fluconazole in a Patient with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia

Trichosporon beigelii is a causative agent of white piedra, an superficial hair shaft infection in immunocompetent individuals, and rarely of disseminated trichosporonosis in immunocompromised patients especially in neutropenic patients with leukemia. Trichosporon infections in immunocompromised patients are frequently fatal despite therapy with amphotericin B. We describe an acute myelogenous leukemia patient with T. beigelii fungemia after remission induction chemotherapy who was successfully treated with amphotericin B and fluconazole.
Nano-porous coatings for gas retention studies

One way to produce coatings with high gas retaining capability is to manipulate their structure towards a nano-porous one. Combined Magnetron Sputtering and Ion Implantation (CMSII) technique was used to produce pores of 1–10 nm in tungsten layers of about 1 m in thickness. STEM, EDX, RBS, TDS and GDOES techniques were used for analyses of these layers. By heating the layer at 950C the pores size increased up to 30 nm. The total amount of Ar retained in these layers was 3.9  1020 atoms/m2 while in compact W coating of the same thickness only 2.7  1019 atoms/m2 it was found.
Bayesian Approach to Structural Equation Models: for Ordered Categorical and Dichotomous Data

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical methodology that is commonly used to study the relationships between manifest variables and latent variables. In analysing ordered categorical and dichotomous data, the basic assumption in SEM that the variables come from a continuous normal distribution is clearly violated. A rigorous analysis that takes into account the discrete nature of the variables is therefore necessary. A better approach for assessing these kinds of discrete data is to treat them as observations that come from a hidden continuous normal distribution with a threshold specification. A censored normal distribution and truncated normal distribution, each includes interval, right and left where the later are with known parameters, are used to handle the problem of ordered categorical and dichotomous data in Bayesian non-linear SEMs. The truncated normal distribution is used to handle the problem of non-normal data (ordered categorical and dichotomous) in the covariates in the structural model. Two types of thresholds (having equal and unequal spaces) are used in this research. The Bayesian approach (Gibbs sampling method) is applied to estimate the parameters. SEM treats the latent variables as missing data, and imputes them as part of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation results in the full posterior distribution using data augmentation. An example using simulation data, case study and bootstrapping method are presented to illustrate these methods. In addition to Bayesian estimation, this research provide the standard error estimates (SE), highest posterior density (HPD) intervals and a goodness-of-fit test using the Deviance Information Criterion (DIC) to compare with the proposed methods. Here, in terms of parameter estimation and goodness-of-fit statistics, it is found that the results with a censored normal distribution are better than the results with a truncated normal distribution, with equal and unequal spaces of thresholds. Furthermore, the results with unequal spaces of thresholds are less than the results of equal spaces of thresholds in the interval of the censored and truncated normal distributions, this is including the left censored and truncated normal distributions. The results of equal spaces of thresholds are less than the results of unequal spaces of thresholds in right censored and truncated normal distributions. In other cases, the results of bootstrapping method are better than the real data results in terms of SE and DIC. The results of convergence showed that dichotomous data needs more iterations to convergence than ordered categorical data.
Exact dynamics of concurrence-based entanglement in a system of four spin-1/2 particles on a triangular ladder structure

Motivated by the ability of triangular spin ladders to implement quantum information processing, we propose a type of such systems whose Hamiltonian includes the XX Heisenberg interaction on the rungs and Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) coupling over the legs. In this work, we discuss how tuning the magnetic interactions between elements of a nanomagnetic cell which contains four qubits influences on the dynamical behavior of entanglement shared between any pairs of the system. In this work, we make use of concurrence for monitoring entanglement. It is realized that the generation of quantum W states is an important feature of the present model when the system evolves unitarily with time. In general, coincidence with the emergence of W states, the concurrences of all pairs are equal to 2/N, where N is the number of system’s qubits. We also obtain the precise relationship between the incidence of such states and the value of DM interaction as well as the time of entanglement transfer. Finally, by studying the two-point quantum correlations and expectation values of different spin variables, we find that xx and yy correlations bring the entanglement to a maximum value for W states, whereas for these states, zz correlation between any pairs completely quenches. Our results reveal that although S ˆ tot z does not commute with the system’s Hamiltonian, its expectation value remains constant during time evolution which is a generic property of quantum W states.
A breakline-preserving ground interpolation method for MLS data

ABSTRACT Modelling accurate ground surfaces in urban areas is important for surveying and mapping. Breaklines along roads are critical for both digital elevation models and high precision maps. This article presents a new breakline-preserving ground interpolation method for point clouds acquired by mobile laser scanning (MLS). The proposed method needs only point coordinates as input. It first initializes unknown regions by the nearest neighbouring interpolation then matched patches in known regions are found along edges. Next, Poisson interpolation is utilized to improve the elevation accuracy. An edge-guided patch regularization method is applied before patch blending to remove noise and improve gradient accuracy. The proposed method was tested on two datasets acquired by different MLS systems. This paper quantitatively evaluates the proposed method as well as the existing solution in two samples of complete points. These results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the existing method in terms of visual coherence and mean absolute differences. Moreover, the edge information which is self-contained in point clouds has been proven useful in ground interpolation.
DOA Estimation for UCA in the Presence of Mutual Coupling via Error Model Equivalence

In this letter, a direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation method for a uniform-circular-array (UCA) with mutual coupling is presented. Due to the mutual coupling model of UCA, the actual steering vector in the mode domain is considered to correspond to a virtual uniform-linear-array (ULA) with gain-phase errors. This consideration indicates the calibration for mutual coupling in UCA can be transformed to that for gain-phase errors in the ULA: the gain errors are estimated with the main diagonal of the actual covariance matrix of the virtual ULA, and the phase errors are obtained via the Toeplitz structure of the ideal covariance matrix. In addition, due to the property of the ULA, there is an ambiguity in the estimation of the phase errors, which is analyzed and eliminated via least-square-method. Ultimately, the DOA and the coefficient of mutual coupling are estimated using estimating- signal-parameter-via-rotational-invariance-techniques and rank- reduction theory, respectively. The proposed method works on line without multidimensional parameter search. Furthermore, it avoids the ambiguity of the DOA estimation and simulations verify its effectiveness.
Differential item function of gender in the mathematics elementary school tryout test

The purpose of this paper is to describe: 1) number of items in the elementary school mathematics national examination tryout test containing DIF gender and pattern; 2) functionality of differential tests on elementary school mathematics national examination tryout test tool organized by the Pythagoras tutoring institute. This study is a quantitative explorative descriptive study with a type of case research, because it describes the characteristics of the elementary school mathematics national examination tryout tests device and is not generalizable. The amount of data used comes from the answer patterns of 919 students consisting of 431 female students and 488 male students. As for the results of this study are: 1) the elementary school mathematics national examination tryout test kit has a different power ranging from 0.282 to 1,129 and the level of grain difficulty ranges from -3,365 to 2,838; 2) Items in the elementary school mathematics national examination try out test containing 34 items or as much as 87.2%; 3) the elementary school mathematics national examination tryout test kit benefited the female group in theta > -3.06 which was seen from the DTF (differential test function) graph in the male and female groups.
Graph Neural Networks Exponentially Lose Expressive Power for Node Classification

Graph Neural Networks (graph NNs) are a promising deep learning approach for analyzing graph-structured data. However, it is known that they do not improve (or sometimes worsen) their predictive performance as we pile up many layers and add non-lineality. To tackle this problem, we investigate the expressive power of graph NNs via their asymptotic behaviors as the layer size tends to infinity. Our strategy is to generalize the forward propagation of a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN), which is a popular graph NN variant, as a specific dynamical system. In the case of a GCN, we show that when its weights satisfy the conditions determined by the spectra of the (augmented) normalized Laplacian, its output exponentially approaches the set of signals that carry information of the connected components and node degrees only for distinguishing nodes. Our theory enables us to relate the expressive power of GCNs with the topological information of the underlying graphs inherent in the graph spectra. To demonstrate this, we characterize the asymptotic behavior of GCNs on the Erdős -- Renyi graph. We show that when the Erdős -- Renyi graph is sufficiently dense and large, a broad range of GCNs on it suffers from the "information loss" in the limit of infinite layers with high probability. Based on the theory, we provide a principled guideline for weight normalization of graph NNs. We experimentally confirm that the proposed weight scaling enhances the predictive performance of GCNs in real data. Code is available at this https URL.
A Non-Elliptical Orthogonal GARCH Model for Portfolio Selection under Transaction Costs

Covariance matrix forecasts for portfolio optimization have to balance sensitivity to new data points with stability in order to avoid excessive rebalancing. To achieve this, a new robust orthogonal GARCH model for a multivariate set of non-Gaussian asset returns is proposed. The conditional return distribution is multivariate generalized hyperbolic and the dispersion matrix dynamics are driven by the leading factors in a principle component decomposition. Each of these leading factors is endowed with a univariate GARCH structure, while the remaining eigenvalues are kept constant over time. Joint maximum likelihood estimation of all model parameters is performed via an expectation maximization algorithm, and is applicable in high dimensions. The new model generates realistic correlation forecasts even for large asset universes and captures rising pairwise correlations in periods of market distress better than numerous competing models. Moreover, it leads to improved forecasts of an eigenvalue-based financial systemic risk indicator. Crucially, it generates portfolios with much lower turnover and superior risk-adjusted returns net of transaction costs, outperforming the equally weighted strategy even under high transaction fees.
Band Topology of Bismuth Quantum Films

Bismuth has been the key element in the discovery and development of topological insulator materials. Previous theoretical studies indicated that Bi is topologically trivial and it can transform into the topological phase by alloying with Sb. However, recent high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements strongly suggested a topological band structure in pure Bi, conflicting with the theoretical results. To address this issue, we studied the band structure of Bi and Sb films by ARPES and first-principles calculations. The quantum confinement effectively enlarges the energy gap in the band structure of Bi films and enables a direct visualization of the Z 2 topological invariant of Bi. We find that Bi quantum films in topologically trivial and nontrivial phases respond differently to surface perturbations. This way, we establish experimental criteria for detecting the band topology of Bi by spectroscopic methods.
Holographic F-theory

The central theme of this thesis is Type IIB supergravity solutions and their field theory duals. The uniqueness of our set up is the inclusion of an AdS factor in the geometry. In traditional F-theory compactifications the non-compact part of spacetime is Minkowski space, by including an AdS factor we may appeal to the AdS/CFT correspondence and probe the dual field theories from the gravity side. In the first part of this thesis we will be interested in AdS3 solutions with Ftheoretic interpretations. We find the general conditions for the existence of a supersymmetric solution with (0, 2) supersymmetry. This is determined by the choice of a 6d Kähler base satisfying a master equation. One may give this equation an F-theoretic interpretation by the inclusion of an auxiliary elliptic fibration which models the varying axio-dilaton as in canonical F-theory compactifications. The unique family of (0, 4) solutions are holographically dual to D3-branes wrapped on curves inside a Calabi–Yau three-fold and correspond to self-dual strings in the 6d N = (0, 1) theory obtained from F-theory on the aforementioned Calabi–Yau threefold. The dual field theory to this set up has been discussed in the literature, but only in the abelian (N = 1) case. The power of the AdS/CFT correspondence allows us to make predictions for N > 1 which are otherwise inaccessible from the field theory side with current technology. We compute the holographic central charges and show that these agree with the field theory and with the anomalies of self-dual strings in 6d. We complement our analysis with a discussion of the dual M-theory solutions and a comparison of the central charges. We supplement our (0, 4) analysis with a discussion on (0, 2) solutions. We discuss three classes of solutions with varying axio-dilaton. It is interesting to note that contrary to the popular F-theory lore, Ricci-flat (i.e. Calabi–Yau) manifolds are not a necessary condition for an F-theory geometry. In each of these classes we compare the holographic central charges with field theory results obtained by using c-extremisation, finding perfect agreement. In the final chapter of this thesis we complete the classification of AdS5 solutions in Type IIB by extending the existing classification to allow for vanishing self-dual five-form. AdS5 solutions with vanishing five-form have been found recently which evaded the previous classification and we show how these solutions fit into the extended classification presented here. We allow throughout for a varying axio-dilaton.