Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparing Regional Patterns of Individual Movement Using Corrected Mobility Entropy

ABSTRACT In this paper, we propose a correction of the Mobility Entropy indicator (ME) used to describe the diversity of individual movement patterns as can be captured by data from mobile phones. We argue that a correction is necessary because standard calculations of ME show a structural dependency on the geographical density of observation points, rendering results biased and comparisons between regions incorrect. As a solution, we propose the Corrected Mobility Entropy (CME). We apply our solution to a French mobile phone dataset with ∼18.5 million users. Results show CME to be less correlated to cell-tower density (r = –0.17 instead of –0.59 for ME). As a spatial pattern of mobility diversity, we find CME values to be higher in suburban regions compared to their related urban centers, while both decrease considerably with lowering urban center sizes. Based on regression models, we find mobility diversity to relate to factors like income and employment. Additionally, using CME reveals the role of car use in relation to land use, which was not recognized when using ME values. Our solution enables a better description of individual mobility at a large scale, which has applications in official statistics, urban planning and policy, and mobility research.
Intergenerational Transfers as a Link between Overlapping Generations and Ramsey Models

This paper develops a continuous-time model in which intergenerational transfers, di.erent from bequest, serve as a link between the overlapping generations (OLG) model and Ramsey-type model. We show that this theoretical framework covers a range of possible dynamics including the model of perpetual youth and Ramsey model as the two boundary cases. We also prove that, except for the Ramsey case, the new model retains qualitative features of an OLG model: competitive equilibrium can be ine1cient, Ricardian debt neutrality may be violated, and asset bubbles can exist. JEL classi/cation: C61; D91; O41 Mathematics Subject Classi/cation (2000): 91B64, 93C10
Effects of controlled fire on hydrology and erosion under simulated rainfall

Mediterranean forests are frequently subject to wildfires, inducing risks of high runoff and loss of nutrient-rich topsoil. The mechanisms influencing these post-fire effects are spatially variable due to differences in vegetation density, litter composition, soil texture and structure, and fire intensity, and therefore difficult to separate. The characteristics of the soil surface in the immediate post-fire period are of critical importance to the hydrological response and erosion susceptibility of the burnt hillslope and catchment. In laboratory experiments, uniform soil, controlled temperature and rain regimes were used to create a controlled environment to isolate the impact of certain influencing parameters. In this study, for a Rendzina soil, we investigated the post-fire impacts of laboratory fire and two successive rainfall (rotating disktype) simulation experiments to evaluate short-term effects of fire on soil hydrological and erodibility parameters by examining (i) soil water repellency (WR) levels and distribution, (ii) surface cover features, and (iii) infiltration, runoff and erosion responses to simulated rain on control (bare and pineneedle covered) and burnt (with and without ash cover) samples. Fire-induced surface WR tested in the laboratory by grid-wise Water Drop Penetration Time tests (WDPT), revealed moderate WR, which decreased for all treatments after rainfall. The response to rain (33 mmh-1) differed for the two simulation runs. The rates of drainage and runoff of the burnt samples in the first run varied between the values of cover (low runoff, high infiltration) and bare (high runoff, low infiltration). Drainage in the ash-covered samples was twice as high as ashremoved samples. In the second run, both samples showed a similar response compared to bare conditions. These laboratory observations suggest that WR and protection by ash are factors to consider in assessing the erosion susceptibility of a burnt forest soil. Furthermore, possible management implications based upon this research are that: 1) ash can have several important roles immediately after a forest fire by protecting the forest soil from rain splash erosion, and with its high water holding capacity, absorbs rainfall, thereby reducing runoff; and 2) ash has no negative influence upon soil infiltration demonstrating the important benefits of ensuring the longer term maintenance of post-fire ash within the burnt landscape. Finally, management actions including mulching further enhance soil stability and minimize soil erosion.
Epitope-Blocking Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay Developed for Avian Species Detection of Anti-Influenza A Nucleoprotein Antibodies in Pigs Using a Commercial Influenza

Influenza virus causes acute respiratory disease in pigs and is of concern for its potential public health significance. Many subtypes of influenza virus have been isolated from pigs, and the virus continues to evolve in swine populations. Current antibody assays have limited antigenic recognition, and accurate, broadspectrum, high through-put screening tests are needed to detect infections in swine herds and to aid in the implementation of control measures. In the current study, a commercial blocking enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) developed for the detection of Influenza A virus nucleoprotein antibodies in avian species was evaluated for the detection of anti-influenza serum antibodies in swine. Serum samples used to evaluate the test were archived samples from influenza research conducted at the U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service–National Animal Disease Center and included samples from influenza-inoculated pigs (H1N1, H1N2, H2N3, and H3N2), contact-infected pigs, vaccinated pigs, and negative controls. Based on samples of known status (n 5 453), a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis of the ELISA results estimated the optimized diagnostic sensitivity and specificity at 96.6% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 92.3, 98.9) and 99.3% (95% CI: 97.6, 99.9), respectively. By using the cutoff established in the ROC analysis, the assay was evaluated in pigs infected with 2 isolates of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus. Overall, the assay showed excellent diagnostic performance against the range of influenza subtypes investigated and could serve as a useful screening assay for swine.
Reversibility of predator‐induced plasticity and its effect at a life‐history switch point

In natural systems, organisms are frequently exposed to spatial and temporal variation in predation risk. Prey organisms are known to develop a wide array of plastic defences to avoid being eaten. If inducible plastic defences are costly, prey living under fluctuating predation risk should be strongly selected to develop reversible plastic traits and adjust their defences to the current predation risk. Here, we studied the induction and reversibility of antipredator defences in common frog Rana temporaria tadpoles when confronted with a temporal switch in predation risk by dragonfly larvae. We examined the behaviour and morphology of tadpoles in experimental treatments where predators were added or withdrawn at mid larval development, and compared these to treatments with constant absence or presence of predators. As previous studies have overlooked the effects that developing reversible anti-predator responses could have later in life (e.g. at life history switch points), we also estimated the impact that changes in antipredator responses had on the timing of and size at metamorphosis. In the presence of predators, tadpoles reduced their activity and developed wider bodies, and shorter and wider tails. When predators were removed tadpoles switched their behaviour within one hour to match that found in the constant environments. The morphology matched that in the constant environments in one week after treatment reversal. All these responses were highly symmetrical. Short time lags and symmetrical responses for the induction/reversal of defences suggest that a strategy with fast switches between phenotypes could be favoured in order to maximise growth opportunities even at the potential cost of phenotypic mismatches. We found no costs of developing reversible responses to predators in terms of life-history traits, but a general cost of the induction of the defences for all the individuals experiencing predation risk during some part of the larval development (delayed metamorphosis). More studies examining the reversibility of plastic defences, including other type of costs (e.g. physiological), are needed to better understand the adaptive value of these flexible strategies.
Modelling for the Inheritance of Endangered Equid Multiple Births and Fertility: Determining Risk Factors and Genetic Parameters in Donkeys (Equus asinus)

Multiple births or twinning in equids are dangerous, undesirable situations that compromise the life of the dam and resulting offspring. However, embryo vitrification and freezing techniques take advantage of individuals whose multiple ovulations allow flushing more fertilised embryos from the oviduct to be collected, increasing the productivity and profitability of such techniques. Embryo preservation is especially important in highly endangered populations such as certain donkey (Equus asinus) breeds; for which conventional reproductive techniques have previously failed. For instance, becoming an effective alternative to artificial insemination with frozen semen to preserve the individuals’ genetic material. The objective of this study was to examine the historical foaling records of Andalusian donkeys to estimate genetic parameters for multiple births, assessing the historical foal number born per animal, maximum foal number per birth and multiple birth number per animal. We designed an Animal Model with single records considering the fixed effects of birthyear, birth season, sex, farm, and husbandry system, and age as a linear and quadratic covariate. Restricted maximum likelihood reported heritability estimates ranging from 0.18±0.01 to 0.24±0.01. Genetic and phenotypic correlations ranged from 0.01±0.01 to 0.83±0.01 and 0.12±0.01 and 0.53±0.01, respectively. These estimates enable the potential for selection against/for these traits, offering a new perspective for donkey breeding and conservation.
The Omni Framework: A Destiny-Driven Solution to Dynamic Quest Generation in Games

Video games have had the capability to generate dynamic quests for years. Such quests are generally generated from tables of values or randomly assigning properties without properly regarding player progress, situation, or preference. This paper proposes a framework, called Omni framework, for creating quests that are dynamic and contextually linked by incorporating player statistics and play-style. The core of th framework is the Destiny Concept - the idea that a player's ‘destiny’ can be uniquely ‘discovered’ and followed throughout the game, rather than scripted.
Theoretical Review on Influencing Factors in the Design of Parabolic Trough Collector

 Abstract — Recent years have an upward trend in the research of renewable energy sector, due to the low availability of resources and huge consumption of conventional energies. Considerable renewable energy can be achieved from the available solar power with the utilization of collecting systems. Parabolic trough concentrating collector systems are mostly used to utilize maximum availability of solar power. This paper reviews the contributing factors for the overall performance of parabolic trough collectors. Its performance depends on the operating parameters such as the type of receiver and the collector material, medium of heat transfer, type of and various climatic conditions.
FOOD LABEL USAGE AMONG RESIDENTS OF THE VALIKAMAM AREA OF JAFFNA, SRI LANKA

Food consumption patterns of Sri Lankan citizens are changing drastically towards fast and junk foods within the last decade. As a consequence of adverse food intake, Sri Lankan population has undergone the risk of obesity, raised blood pressure, raised blood sugar level and deposition of bad cholesterol. Labels not only aid consumer choices, but they also guide him to healthy living by avoiding adverse intake. Now a days, many fast food restaurants and supermarkets sell modern sophisticated foods rushed into Jaffna and consumers are also attracted towards such places. The objective of this study is to identify the sociodemographic features and individual behaviors that influence the food label usage and to identify the consumer groups in order to find out the market for food labeling. A total of 158 respondents were interviewed in Valikamam DS division for this survey. In order to identify the key determinants of whether an individual reads food labels when buying a familiar product, 15 explanatory variables were analysed using logistic regression. Therefore, the study concludes that the determinants that influence whether an individual reads food labels when buying familiar product. These include Special dietary status, marital status, whether an individual reads nutrition panel of familiar product and if the household income group earns less than 250000/=annually when other income group earn above or equal 400000/= annually. Among them, married and those who are not reading nutritional labels on familiar products have negative significant impacts.
Frequency sensitive moment tensor inversion for light to moderate magnitude earthquakes in eastern Africa

We provide a procedure for the routine determination of moment tensors from earthquakes with magnitudes as low as MW 4.4 using data recorded by only a few permanent seismic stations at regional to teleseismic distances. Waveforms are inverted for automatically determined frequency pass‐bands that depend on source‐receiver locations as well as the earthquake magnitude. Inversion results are stable against small variations in the frequency band and provide low data variances, i.e., a good fit between observed and modelled waveform traces. The total frequency band used for our procedure ranges from 10 mHz to 29 mHz (periods of 35 s to 100 s). This enables us to determine focal mechanisms for earthquakes that were not derived previously by routine procedures of CMT or other agencies. As a case study, we determine focal mechanism solutions of 38 light to moderate magnitude earthquakes in eastern Africa between 1995 and 2002.
NON-ALCOHOLIC FATTY LIVER DISEASE : RELATION WITH THE CARDIOVASCULAR RISK

The purpose of this research study is to assess the presence of metabolic cardiovascular risk factors (lipid dismetabolismul, diabetes mellitus type 2), anthropometric (obesity) and smoking in subjects with and without steatosis (non-viral and non-alcoholic) and the influence of steatosis on cardiovascular risk. Subjects were examined by abdominal ultrasonography under á jeun conditions of at least 5 hours. Abdominal ultrasounding is the most commonly used method for detecting steatosis, is widespread and reproducible. Nonalcoholic fatty liver viewed on ultrasounds shows a bright echostructure (comparable to the kidneys) with a posterior attenuation of the signal and a blurred vascular hepatic drawing. In the light of these recommendations, assessment of non-HDL cholesterol levels contributes to a more accurate stratification of cardiovascular risk than the calculation of LDL cholesterol. The target level of non-HDL-cholesterol is with 30 mg/dL higherr than the corresponding target level of LDL cholesterol.
Design-adaptive Nonparametric Regression

Abstract In this article we study the method of nonparametric regression based on a weighted local linear regression. This method has advantages over other popular kernel methods. Moreover, such a regression procedure has the ability of design adaptation: It adapts to both random and fixed designs, to both highly clustered and nearly uniform designs, and even to both interior and boundary points. It is shown that the local linear regression smoothers have high asymptotic efficiency (i.e., can be 100% with a suitable choice of kernel and bandwidth) among all possible linear smoothers, including those produced by kernel, orthogonal series, and spline methods. The finite sample property of the local linear regression smoother is illustrated via simulation studies. Nonparametric regression is frequently used to explore the association between covariates and responses. There are many versions of kernel regression smoothers. Some estimators are not good for random designs, such as in observational studies, and .
BabelSenticNet: A Commonsense Reasoning Framework for Multilingual Sentiment Analysis

SenticNet is a concept-level knowledge base used to develop commonsense reasoning algorithms for sentiment analysis tasks. One of the challenges that this resource must overcome is its lack of availability for languages aside from English. Prototype algorithms have been recently proposed to create non-English language concept-level knowledge databases, but they rely on a number of heterogeneous resources that complicate comparison, reproducibility and maintenance. This paper proposes an easy and replicable method to automatically generate SenticNet for a variety of languages, obtaining as a result BabelSenticNet. We use statistical machine translation tools to create a high coverage SenticNet version for the target language. We then introduce an algorithm to increase the robustness of the translated resources, relying on a mapping technique, based on WordNet and its multilingual versions. SenticNet versions for 40 languages have been made available. Human-based evaluation on languages belonging to different families, alphabets and cultures proves the robustness of the method and its potential for utility in future research on multilingual concept-level sentiment analysis.
Special Session: Advances and Throwbacks in Hardware-Assisted Security

Hardware security architectures and primitives are becoming increasingly important in practice providing trust anchors and trusted execution environment to protect modern software systems. Over the past two decades we have witnessed various hardware security solutions and trends from Trusted Platform Modules (TPM), performance counters for security, ARM’s TrustZone, and Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), to very recent advances such as Intel’s Software Guard Extension (SGX). Unfortunately, these solutions are rarely used by third party developers, make strong trust assumptions (including in manufacturers), are too expensive for small constrained devices, do not easily scale, or suffer from information leakage. Academic research has proposed a variety of solutions, in hardware security architectures, these advancements are rarely deployed in practice.
AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Michael Lam for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science presented on May 15, 2014. Title: Object Detection in Biological Images Using a Search-Based Framework Abstract approved:

approved: Sinisa Todorovic Thomas Dietterich This thesis addresses a basic problem in computer vision, that of semantic labeling of images. Our work is aimed at object detection in biological images for evolutionary biology research. In particular, our goal is to detect nematocysts in Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images. This biological domain presents challenges for existing approaches developed to address other domains (e.g. natural scenes). An image may show more than one nematocyst under partial occlusion and amidst background clutter (e.g., cellular debris). We formulate the detection of nematocysts as labeling of a regu­ lar grid of patches, where patches occupied by a nematocyst are labeled as foreground and the other patches are labeled as background. This structured prediction problem is addressed using the HC -Search framework. HC -Search seeks a solution in the space of candidate labelings of image patches. It employs a heuristic function (H) to uncover high-quality candidate labelings, and then applies a cost function (C) to select the bestscoring prediction among the candidates. The heuristic and cost functions are learned on training data using imitation learning. Our key novelty is a formulation of a stochastic search space and pruning function that improve the accuracy and efficiency of HC ­ search. The stochastic search space is generated by a successor function that proposes random candidate labelings based on clusterings of patches in the image instead of em­ ploying the traditional method of flipping the labels of individual patches. Additionally, we introduce a pruning function (P) to remove bad candidate labelings generated by the successor function. This induces a sparser search space, which improves the efficiency of search. We compare our approach with the Conditional Random Field (CRF) model, a well-understood framework for scene labeling. While CRF inference typically yields good performance on natural scenes, our results demonstrate that CRFs perform poorly on the nematocyst images and that HC -Search outperforms CRFs. c ©Copyright by Michael Lam May 15, 2014 All Rights Reserved Object Detection in Biological Images Using a Search-Based Framework
Birdie: Towards a true flying experience

In this paper, we present Birdie, a novel sensory experience as a first step towards a true flying experience. With the use of a tele-existence concept [6, 2] an augmented human controls an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remotely. At the same time he or she receives multi sensory feedback like vision and sound from the UAV. We also introduce intuitive interactions, as well a possible implementation of Birdie.
Violent Conflict and the Child Quantity-Quality Tradeoff

We show that the exposure to war-related violence increases the quantity of children temporarily, with permanent negative consequences for the quality of the current and previous cohorts. Our empirical evidence is based on Nepal, which experienced a 10 year long civil conflict of varying intensity. We exploit that villages affected by the conflict had the same trend in fertility as non-affected villages prior to the onset of conflict and employ a difference-in-differences estimator. We find that women in affected villages increased their fertility during the conflict by 19%, while child height-for-age declined by 10%. Supporting evidence suggests that the temporary fertility increase was the main pathway leading to reduced child height, as opposed to direct impacts of the conflict.
Open Research Online Analytics4Action Evaluation Framework: A Review of Evidence-Based Learning Analytics Interventions at the Open University UK

There is an urgent need to develop an evidence-based framework for learning analytics whereby stakeholders can manage, evaluate, and make decisions about which types of interventions work well and under which conditions. In this article, we will work towards developing a foundation of an Analytics4Action Evaluation Framework (A4AEF) that is currently being tested and validated at the Open University UK. By working with 18 introductory large-scale modules for a period of two years across the five faculties and disciplines within the OU, Analytics4Action provides a bottom-up-approach for working together with key stakeholders within their respective contexts. A holistic A4AEF has been developed to unpack, understand and map the six key steps in the evidence-based intervention process. By means of an exemplar in health and social science, a practical illustration of A4AEF is provided. In the next 3–5 years, we hope that a rich, robust evidence-base will be presented to show how learning analytics can help teachers to make informed, timely and successful interventions that will help each learner to achieve the module’s learning outcomes.