Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Online decision making and path planning framework for safe operation of unmanned aerial vehicles in urban scenarios

As the potential for deploying low-flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in urban spaces increases, ensuring their safe operations is becoming a major concern. Given the uncertainties in their operational environments caused by wind gusts, degraded state of health, and probability of collision with static and dynamic objects, it becomes imperative to develop online decision-making schemes to ensure safe flights. In this paper, we propose an online decision-making framework that takes into account the state of health of the UAV, the environmental conditions, and the obstacle map to assess the probability of mission failure and re-plan accordingly. The online re-planning strategy considers two situations: (1) updating the current trajectory to reduce the probability of collision; and (2) defining a new trajectory to find a new safe landing spot, if continued flight would result in risk values above a pre-specified threshold. The re-planning routine uses the differential evolution optimization method and takes into account the dynamics of the UAV and its components as well as the environmental wind conditions. The new trajectory generation routine combines probabilistic road-maps with Bspline smoothing to ensure a dynamically feasible trajectory. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by running UAV flight simulation experiments in urban scenarios.
Defence spending, burden-sharing and strategy in NATO’s Black Sea littoral states: domestic, regional, and international systemic factors

ABSTRACT The allocation of scarce resources is a grand strategic question – burden-sharing behaviour has clear effects on states’ ability to contribute to collective defence. Both NATO and the European Union encourage members not just to spend more on defence, but to focus those expenditures on equipment modernization and shared operational requirements. After NATO allies formally pledged to improve burden-sharing along these lines in 2014, and EU members followed in 2016, transatlantic debates on defence spending have become increasingly tense, particularly since 2017. What actually drives states’ choices to allocate resources to shared defence priorities? I operationalize transatlantic burden-sharing in line with NATO’s ‘Cash, Capabilities, and Contributions’ approach for a mixed-methods analysis of the burden-sharing behaviour of NATO’s Black Sea littoral states – Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey. Using a multi-method analytical approach, I find that national and particularly regional political economies drive burden-sharing choices more than geostrategy, at least in the current strategic environment.
Simple Alternative to Neural Networks for Predicting Sublimation Enthalpies from Fragment Contributions

Taking advantage of an extended data set of sublimation enthalpies recently used to develop an artificial neural network for the prediction of this property, an alternative model based on 35 atom and ring contributions is presently reported. The values predicted using both approaches are remarkably similar, although the present one is much simpler and less empirical.
Absorbance Spectroscopy of Heads, Hearts and Tails Fractions in Fruit Spirits

There is a large economic interest to characterize heads, hearts and tails fractions during fruit spirit distillation by simple, fast, low-volume and low-cost analytical methods. This study evaluated the potential of ultraviolet (UV)-visible-infrared spectroscopy (230–1000 nm) to characterize and differentiate these distillate fractions. Heads, hearts and tails fractions of 10 different fruit spirits were separated by sensory evaluation and investigated by absorbance spectroscopy. Principal component analysis indicated that UV spectroscopy at a wavelength range from 230 to 310 nm had the highest potential to differentiate all three distillate fractions. While all tails fractions showed significantly different UV spectra, a clear differentiation between heads and hearts fractions was limited. However, an additional UV spectroscopy of 100 mL subfractions sampled during the shift from heads to hearts in three additional distillations did reveal significant differences. The calculated integrals of the according best-fit trendline functions of the spectra indicated a trend towards reduced area-under-the-curve and zero-point values during the shift. This could be a new lead to implement an analytical method for in-line process control during fruit spirit production.
Culture: The Link to Learning Transfer

Organizations worldwide spend large amounts of money and resources on developing their employees, yet the money invested in professional learning (PL) yields low to moderate results at best. Because culture is a predominant force in people’s life, multinational corporations and other institutions should take culture into account at every stage of the PL process or they will not obtain the desired return on their investments. Despite the numerous studies on learning transfer, practitioners continue to experience challenges when it comes to altering their practices and generate better outcomes. Scholars have not yet fully taken into consideration culture when developing learning transfer models. Although some learning transfer models address transfer climate as an enhancer or a hindrance to learning transfer, none have considered the overall influence of culture on the transfer phenomenon. This article proposes a culturally grounded multidimensional model of learning transfer (MMLT). The MMLT is designed to assist practitioners and PL organizers before, during, and after the PL event. This innovative model aims at enhancing the implementation of new knowledge, skills, or behaviors in the workplace. The MMLT is based on qualitative data collected and analyzed over 6 years in educational institutions in five African nations. The model is relevant to any organizations across sectors whose aspirations are to maximize learning transfer and obtain a return on their investments that would in turn positively affect organizations’ outcomes.
On‐chip power supply generation for self‐contained electronics using oxide thin‐film transistors

This paper presents a novel DC–DC converter suitable for low voltage operation using n‐type all enhancement amorphous indium–gallium–zinc oxide (a‐IGZO) thin‐film transistors (TFTs). This circuit employs the charge transfer switches (CTSs) which dynamically directs the charge flow in one direction. The limitations of conventional charge pump topology, that is, reverse charge sharing phenomenon and limited output voltage, are mitigated in the proposed design. It offers a voltage conversion efficiency (VCE) of 97.8% and maximum power efficiency of 91.1% at a load current of 5 μA when simulated using an in‐house analytical model in cadence virtuoso environment. It is capable of working at a voltage as low as 3 V provided by thin‐film, printed batteries. To the best of author's knowledge, this is the first design, which demonstrates on‐chip power supply generation for oxide TFT‐based circuits using a single thin‐film battery (equivalent voltage) which offers the highest output DC voltage of 14.36 V at a clock frequency and input voltage of 1 MHZ and 3 V, respectively. Further, an on‐chip clock generator is implemented to generate all signals required by the charge pump circuit. The proposed circuit provides highest VCE and power efficiency in comparison to reported circuits using same technology. Hence, it finds potential application in next era self‐contained electronics, such as smart packaging and wearable devices using flexible electronics.
Multimodal Biometric Authentication Systems using Deep Learning

: The use of biometrics for identification operations needs that a specific biometric issue is distinctive for each person that it is calculated, which it's invariant over time. Biometrics similar to signatures, photographs, fingerprints, voiceprints, and retinal vas patterns all have noteworthy drawbacks. Though signatures and images are low cost and simple to get and store, they're impossible to spot automatically with assurance and are simply forged. The human iris, on the other hand, is an interior organ of attention and yet protected against the external environment, however, it is easily visible from among one meter of distance makes it an ideal biometric for an identification system with the benefit of speed, responsibility, and automation. In this work, it's planned to implement a face and iris recognition system, wherever unvaried closest purpose formula (ICP) and deep neural network is employed to section the face, eye, and iris region. In this proposal, the system propose a novel and strong approach for periocular recognition and feature extraction. In the approach, the face is detected in real-time face images which are then aligned and normalized. The proposed system utilizes an entire strip containing both the eyes as a periocular surface. For feature extraction, the model computed the magnitude responses of the image filtered with a filter bank of harder Gabor filters. Feature dimensions are reduced by applying the Grassmann algorithm. Hence, the system produces High-level security and the identification accuracy is well-maintained. Also, the real-time camera-based implementation and readability of multiple features at the time are focussed. The results show that the proposed method is effective for multi-modal biometric recognition.
Primary school parents’ perspectives on relationships and sexuality education in Queensland, Australia

ABSTRACT Primary school educators in Australia are often uncertain about parents’ perspectives when it comes to teaching about relationships and sexuality education in schools. Teachers, school leaders, parents and the broader community continue to struggle with the best way to educate children about the many topics that fall under the banner of relationships and sexuality education. This paper explores the perspectives of primary school parents in Queensland, Australia adding to the growing body of research in internationally about parents’ perspectives on relationships and sexuality education in primary schools.
Determination of Local Dye Concentration in Hybrid Porous Silica Thin Films

The idea of determination of local dye concentration in a nanoporous matrix is proposed based on donor–acceptor energy transfer. The method was tested for a Rhodamine 110–Rhodamine 101 system in silica and methylated silica nanolayers. Evaluation of acceptor (Rhodamine 101) local concentration was carried out by comparing the results of Monte Carlo simulation of energy transfer from donor (Rhodamine 110) to acceptor (Rhodamine 101) with the experimental data of donor fluorescence decay in which concentration was treated as a best fit parameter. The obtained values of acceptor local concentration were about 10 times higher than the mean bulk concentration. Further possible implementations of this method are discussed.
Satisfaction with Democracy and Social Capital: Multi-Level Model Evidence for the Pre- and Post-Crisis Era

ABSTRACT We analyze the relationship between social capital and satisfaction with democracy (SWD) levels. We consider SWD to denote regime support and we operationalize social capital in two different ways so as to discern between individual (micro) and country (macro) level effects. At the individual level, we operationalize social capital as composed of trust (generalized and institutional), human values (altruism, equality, tolerance, humanitarianism), and participatory behavior (political engagement, associations, activism). At the country level, we control for the effect of national culture (power distance, development, masculinity, individualism) upon SWD levels. Individual level data are drawn from the European Social Survey (ESS) Rounds 4 (2008) and 8 (2016). The two periods of time have been chosen to allow for the analysis of the effects that the recent financial crisis has had upon the social capital and SWD relationship. Data on the macro level indicators are drawn from the UN. Our estimation procedures involve the application of multi-level model techniques. Robust evidence is provided of that individual and country level factors interact and shape respondents’ levels of SWD. The dynamic nature of this interaction is also verified in light of the evidence regarding the pre and post crisis periods.
Big Data Processing Technology in Film and Television Post Production

Nowadays, the wave of digitization, networking and informatization is sweeping the world, which makes the visual image become an important way of communication and transmission of global culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the application of big data processing technology in film and television post production. The distributed computing power of MapReduce is used to extract the content features of video images, construct corresponding indexes, and store and retrieve them in HBase database according to the indexes to form a big data processing platform for video images. This paper deeply discusses the framework related theory as the support of big data processing technology in film and television post production, analyzes the common algorithms in nonlinear editing system, discusses the mirror effect monorail and double track special effects in video special effects, and makes the realization effect of each kind of special effects in the space domain, and makes some special effects among them, The implementation of compressed domain is discussed. In this paper, through the application of experimental video big data processing technology to the film and television post production of various possibilities, and draw the following conclusions: in extreme cases, the stunt tree becomes a one-dimensional linear structure, using traditional parallel topology sorting, the device parallelism is 0, and using pipeline scheduling, because of breaking the sequence between frames, can play a relatively large parallelism.
GENETIC DIVERSITY OF Digitaria horizontalis Willd. IN BUILT ENVIRONMENTS IN BENIN CITY, NIGERIA

he influence of humans on biodiversity at the genetic, species, community, and ecosystem levels is enormous. This is even more impactful on plant populations, which, being immobile, are at the mercy of their immediate environment. Digitaria horizontalis is a very common grass species in Benin City. Its ruderal nature accounts mostly for its widespread. The current study investigated the existence of possible genetic diversity of the grass in built environment in Benin City. Plant samples were randomly collected from 21 built environment locations within 6 Local Government Council Areas that make up Benin City. Test plants were allowed to acclimatize in experimental bowls and then allowed to grow for 4 weeks after which morphological characteristics were determined. Genetic diversity was determined by Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA. Significant differences in plant height (33.0 – 59.0 cm) occurred when plants were compared based on location of collection. Changes in patterns of the association with weeds within the vicinity of the test plant was observed. The most prevalent plant species associated with the test plant was Pennisetum purpureum with a 12.18% prevalence. RAPD analysis using primer OPA 04 revealed a locus (about 600bp) that was absent in one or more of the locations with minimum disturbance. This 600pb fragment was however observed in most samples from highly built up and trampled environments. Primer OPA 03 showed monomorphic bands in 2 test samples with a band size of 400bp. It is therefore reported that there is an existence of the genetic diversity in a landscape of grass species (Digitaria horizontalis) found in different built environment in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.
“Nothing should jiggle while you’re moving”: Preparing the fat body for an American “plus-size” pageant

ABSTRACT There is limited scholarly information about beauty pageants for fat women. Based on a larger study about how pageant participants define beauty and health, this paper examines the presentation of fat bodies in a plus-size beauty pageant, and how the pageant constructs, rewards, and reinforces specific types of fat performativity. Although the plus-size pageant is challenging traditional ideas of beauty in terms of body size, pageant participants are expected to be “good fatties”. The pageant teaches competitors the socially acceptable ways to eat and to dress for one’s body. Pageant competitors are taught that looking beautiful means to “discipline their corpulence”, while the pageant simultaneously delivers the messages of “big is beautiful” and that beauty comes from within. The paper concludes with implications of these findings on gender and femininity, and fat studies, and fashion studies scholarship.
Using centrality measures to improve the classification performance of tweets during natural disasters

Online social networks like Twitter facilitate instant communication during natural disasters. A key problem is to distinguish in real-time the most assertive and contingent tweets related to the current disaster from the whole streaming. To address this problem, machine learning allows to classify tweets according to their relevance or credibility. In this article, it is proposed to use centrality measures to improve the training data sample of active learning classifiers. As a case study, tweets collected during the massive floods in Santiago of Chile at 2016 are considered. This approach improves the consistency and pertinence of the labeling process, as well as the classifiers’ performance.
Phase Equilibria in the B–BN–B2O3 System at 5 GPa

Phase equilibria in the B−BN−B2O3 ternary system at pressures up to 5 GPa have been studied by in situ probing with synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction, microscopic and X-ray diffraction characterization of recovered samples, and thermodynamic analysis. The phase diagram of the system has been constructed by combining the previously reported data for binary subsystems and a conventional phenomenological model describing ternary interactions. The interaction parameter of the model of the ternary liquid phase has been determined by adjustment of experimental melting points to the calculated monovariant eutectic curve. The phase diagram is characterized by two ternary eutectics, one ternary transition-type equilibrium, and the maximum in the monovariant eutectic curve.
Ectomycorrhizal Fungi Associated with Pinus densiflora Seedlings under Flooding Stress

Flooding is an environmental stress for plants that not only limits aeration and nutrient acquisition, but also disturbs underground plant-associated fungal communities. Despite frequent flooding, red pine (Pinus densiflora) seedlings thrive in streamside environments. However, whether the compatible ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) of red pine are affected by natural flooding is unclear. As EMF are vital symbionts for the development of many trees and allow them to overcome various environmental stresses, in this study, the EMF species associated with red pine seedlings in a streamside environment in Korea were investigated after flooding. The EMF species in 47 seedlings collected from the streamside site were identified by observing their different morphotypes using internal transcribed spacer sequence analysis, and a total of 10 EMF species were identified. The EMF species diversity was lower than that in samples collected from a nearby forest analyzed as a control. The dominant EMF species of streamside seedlings included Amphinema spp. , Rhizopogon luteolus, Suillus luteus, and Thelephora terrestris. This study could serve as a basis for investigating the mechanisms by which advantageous EMF aid plant development under flooding stress.
The Effects of Climate Change on Interregional Electricity Market Dynamics on the U.S. West Coast

The United States (U.S.) West Coast power system is strongly influenced by variability and extremes in air temperatures (which drive electricity demand) and streamflows (which control hydropower availability). As hydroclimate changes across the West Coast, a combination of forces may work in tandem to make its bulk power system more vulnerable to physical reliability issues and market price shocks. In particular, a warmer climate is expected to increase summer cooling (electricity) demands and shift the average timing of peak streamflow (hydropower production) away from summer to the spring and winter, depriving power systems of hydropower when it is needed the most. Here, we investigate how climate change could alter interregional electricity market dynamics on the West Coast, including the potential for hydroclimatic changes in one region (e.g., Pacific Northwest (PNW)) to “spill over” and cause price and reliability risks in another (e.g., California). We find that the most salient hydroclimatic risks for the PNW power system are changes in streamflow, while risks for the California system are driven primarily by changes in summer air temperatures, especially extreme heat events that increase peak system demand. Altered timing and amounts of hydropower production in the PNW do alter summer power deliveries into California but show relatively modest potential to impact prices and reliability there. Instead, our results suggest future extreme heat in California could exert a stronger influence on prices and reliability in the PNW, especially if California continues to rely on its northern neighbor for imported power to meet higher summer demands.
On the origin of start-up effects in ply-ply friction for UD fiber-reinforced thermoplastics in melt

Hot press forming is an attractive production technology to fulfil the increasing demand for complex fiber-reinforced thermoplastic parts. Over the years, process simulation tools on press forming have shown to be very helpful in facilitating the design stage for defect free parts production. One of the important deformation mechanisms considered in process simulations is the relative slip of successive plies or ply-ply friction, of which the underlying principles need to be better understood in order to improve the overall predictive simulation quality. In particular the use of steady-state friction values, neglecting the transient response, is questionable as experiments showed that shear stress overshoots can be as high as three times the long-time value. The phenomenon of the overshoot at start-up shear is analyzed. Possible explanations include nonlinear viscoelasticity and a slip relaxation effect giving rise to wall slip, which are discussed using relevant ply-ply friction measurements carried out on a dedicated friction test set-up. Experimental results on UD C/PEEK show that the shear stress build up and subsequent relaxation comply with nonlinear viscoelasticity. However, the long-time shear stress fails to match the matrix material’s viscosity, possibly due to a yield stress. The flow curve corrected for a yield stress resembles the effects of wall slip. A transient model according to these findings will enhance the accuracy of press forming simulation software.