Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study on the contribution rate of urbanization and air-sea circulation factors to the increase of rainstorm in China

More and more attention has been paid to the serious disasters caused by extreme precipitation events. The relationship between climate change and extreme precipitation has become the hottest science foreland issue. Based on the study of daily rainstorm observation records of 659 meteorological stations in China from 1951 to 2010, this paper shows that rapid urbanization may trigger a significant increase in large-scale rainstorm in China. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) In terms of time, China’s rainstorm rainfall, rainy days and rainfall intensity increased significantly, reaching 68.71%, 60.15% and 11.52% respectively. In space, the torrential rains in China gradually migrated from the southeastern coast to the spatial transition process of gradient expansion in Central, Southwest, North, and Northeast China. (2) The variance explanations of the rapid urbanization factors to the rainstorm rainfall, rainy days and rainfall intensity in China are 61.54%, 58.48% and 65.54% respectively, while the variance explanations of the climatic factors are only 24.30%, 26.23% and 21.92% respectively. Rapid urbanization factors are likely to trigger a significant increase in rainstorm rainfall in China. (3) The panel data of China’s county-level total population and the annual average of visibility days are significantly spatially correlated with rainstorm rainfall, rainy days and rainfall intensity. The correlation coefficient gradually increases with age, further indicating that rapid urbanization has triggered a significant increase in large-scale inter-decadal rainstorm in China.
PhD experience (and progress) is more than work: life-work relations and reducing exhaustion (and cynicism)

ABSTRACT Prior studies have reported high levels of PhD stress resulting in exhaustion and cynicism related to negative institutional factors. Yet, we know little of the possible influence of personal lives on exhaustion/cynicism. This mixed-methods study examines the interrelation. We drew on exhaustion, cynicism, life-work relation scales and free-write responses about managing life and work of 123 Swiss PhD students. Respondents typically reported positive life-work relations, with this experience particularly buffering exhaustion, which can lead to cynicism and possibly burnout. The analysis of free-write responses supported this view. Respondents reported they largely balanced/managed to balance life and work, with family most frequently referenced in this regard. Finally, we combined the scaled and free-write responses. Individuals, even if reporting exhaustion and negative aspects in their life-work relations, consistently reported being able to combine their career and life goals. This alignment may serve as a mechanism for buffering other life-work and institutional challenges.
The Commercial Fisheries for Jasus and Palinurus Species in the South-East Atlantic and South-West Indian Oceans

Spiny lobsters are among the world's most valuable and highly prized seafoods, captured and marketed in over 90 countries. Demand for spiny lobsters has escalated in the past two decades, spurring the need both for better management and for research on which to base that management. Spiny lobster aquaculture, however, now appears to be a real possibility, some countries have already approved the legislation, and it may be only a few years before this becomes the major source. The book opens with a brief review of the general biology, distribution, fishing techniques etc. but the major emphasis is on the latest management strategies, developments in aquaculture, marketing and economics. A special feature of the book will be detailed reviews of the spiny lobster fishery, research activities and marketing process in Japan, where customers are willing to pay more than US$50 per pound for live lobsters. [Book Synopsis]
Composite damage zones in the subsurface

Zonghu Liao ,1 Wei Li,1 Huayao Zou,1 Fang Hao,2 Kurt J. Marfurt3 and Ze’ev Reches 3 1State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, College of Geosciences, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China. E-mail: Zonghuliao@163.com 2School of Geosciences, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, Shandong 266555, China 3School of Geology and Geophysics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73072, USA
Pengaruh pembangkit photovoltaic sebagai distributed energy resources terhadap profil tegangan dan rugi-rugi daya pada Penyulang Bantul 05 Yogyakarta

Permasalahan besarnya jumlah beban dan letak pembangkit yang jauh dari dari sistem distribusi menimbulkan jatuh tegangan dan rugi-rugi daya semakin meningkat. Selain itu, Distributed Energy Resources (DER) yang terintegrasi pada, penyulang distribusi menjadikan tantangan yang baru terhadap sistem distribusi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui besarnya dampak pemasangan pembangkit Photovoltaic (PV) sebagai DER terhadap penyulang Bantul, Yogyakarta. Peneliti menggunakan simulasi dengan mode aliran daya dari perangkat lunak Open Distribution System Simulator (OpenDSS) dalam menganalisis perbandingan profil tegangan dan besarnya rugi-rugi daya sebelum dan setelah pemasangan PV. Penelitian dibagi dalam dua skenario penambahan Distributed Generation (DG) yaitu skenario 1 dengan menggunakan single DG terpasang pada bus 33 sedangkan skenario 2 dengan multi-DG terpasang pada bus 19 dan 33. Hasil penelitian awal tanpa pemasangan DG menunjukkan bahwa pada bus terendah memiliki nilai profil tegangan sebesar 0.86 p.u. dengan total rugi-rugi daya sebesar 439.9 kW. Sedangkan integrasi DG terbukti dapat meningkatkan profil tegangan dan meminimalisir total rugi daya. Skenario 1 dapat memperbaiki profil tegangan terendah penyulang dari 0.86 p.u menjadi 0.92 p.u. dan total rugi-rugi daya yang awalnya sebesar 439.9 kW menjadi sebesar 125.2 kW. Skenario 2 menjadi skenario terbaik dengan perbaikan profil tegangan pada bus terendah dari 0.86 p.u menjadi sebesar 0.9695 p.u dan rugi-rugi daya total awalnya sebesar 439.9 kW menjadi sebesar 62.6 kW.
Modified Spline Interpolation Method For Resource Allocation In Heterogeneous Cloud Environment

: Distributed resource allocation is a complex problem in the emerging Cloud Computing strategy, where the fundamental criteria that benefit both the cloud users and the cloud providers are to be identified. The resources are allocated to the tasks depending on the demand in terms of bandwidth and memory by the Users. In this research work, the Spline Linear Interpolation method is used for the resource allocation problem to find an optimum solution. It is keen to provide user-requested bandwidth and memory with less completion time. The proposed method is evaluated and tested in the CloudSim environment. The test results show that the Spline Interpolation method performs efficiently in terms of migration cost, Completion Time, Waiting Time, Turn Around Time and workload balance compared to Modified Round Robin Algorithm.
Exploring Methods for Linked Data Model Evaluation in Practice

Abstract Ontology development and data modeling are core components of any linked data project. Through our own experiments building a linked data ontology for our collections, we wondered: how are our peers in the linked data community evaluating their ontologies? Are participants engaging in ontology evaluation? What methodologies and evaluation criteria are they using? Are they documenting and sharing their processes? In this paper, we present findings from a survey conducted in the fall of 2018, aimed at professionals from libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) who were part of the data modeling team on linked data projects. The purpose of this survey was to better understand the reality of ontology evaluation in the context of a linked data project. We found that our colleagues were engaging in data modeling as part of linked data projects in a variety of different tasks and roles. There was some ambiguity with respect to evaluation, possibly in part due to the iterative nature of the modeling process. Evaluation is engaged iteratively and informally through use cases, competency questions, and testing of the data in the application. On the whole, not being shared widely outside of a project. The identified barriers to evaluating their models included: lack of knowledge, resources, and documentation.
Multi-Level Deep Neural Network Adaptation for Speaker Verification Using MMD and Consistency Regularization

Adapting speaker verification (SV) systems to a new environment is a very challenging task. Current adaptation methods in SV mainly focus on the backend, i.e, adaptation is carried out after the speaker embeddings have been created. In this paper, we present a DNN-based adaptation method using maximum mean discrepancy (MMD). Our method exploits two important aspects neglected by previous research. First, instead of minimizing domain discrepancy at utterance-level alone, our method minimizes domain discrepancy at both frame-level and utterance-level, which we believe will make the adaptation more robust to the duration discrepancy between training data and test data. Second, we introduce a consistency regularization for unlabelled target-domain data. The consistency regularization encourages the target speaker embeddings robust to adverse perturbations. Experiments on NIST SRE 2016 and 2018 show that our DNN adaptation works significantly better than the previously proposed DNN adaptation methods. What’s more, our method works well with backend adaptation. By combining the proposed method with backend adaptation, we achieve a 9% improvement over backend adaptation in SRE18.
Highly Efficient Biolistic Transformation of Embryogenic Cell Suspensions of Banana Via a Liquid Medium Selection System

An efficient biolistic transformation system of banana combined with a liquid medium selection system was developed during this study. An embryogenic cell suspension (ECS) of Musa acuminata cv. Baxi (AAA) was bombarded with a particle delivery system. After 7 days of restoring culture in liquid M2 medium, embryogenic cells were transferred to a liquid selection M2 medium supplemented with 10 μg/mL hygromycin for resistance screening. The untransformed cell clusters were inhibited or killed, and a small number of transformants proliferated in the liquid selection medium. After the 0th, first, second, and third generation of antibiotic screening, there were 0, 65, 212, and 320, respectively, vitality-resistant buds obtained from a 0.5-mL packed cell volume (PCV) of embryogenic cell suspension. The β-glucuronidase (GUS) staining, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis, and Southern blot hybridization results all demonstrated a 100% positive rate of regenerated resistant seedlings. Interestingly, the number of buds obtained through third-generation screening was almost equal to that obtained from the original ECS in M2 medium without antibiotics. These results suggested that the liquid medium selection system facilitated the proliferation of a positive transgenic ECS, which significantly improved the regeneration rate of transformants. This protocol is suitable for the genetic transformation of all banana genotypes and is highly advantageous to varieties with low callusing potential.
Impact of a Shift-Invariant Harmonic Phase Model in Fully Parametric Harmonic Voice Representation and Time/Frequency Synthesis

Harmonic representation models are widely used, notably in speech coding and synthesis. In this paper, we describe two fully parametric harmonic representation and signal reconstruction alternatives that rely on a shift-invariant harmonic phase model and that implement accurate frame-based synthesis in the frequency-domain, and accurate pitch pulse-based synthesis in the time-domain. We use natural spoken and sung voice signals in order to assess the objective and subjective quality of both alternatives when parameters are exact, and when they are replaced by compact and shift-invariant harmonic phase and magnitude approximation models. We highlight the flexibility of these models and present results indicating that not only does the compact shift-invariant phase model cause a smaller impact than that caused by harmonic magnitude modeling, but it also compares favorably to results presented in the literature.
Opportunistic Calibration Method for Walking Distance Estimation Using a Waist-Mounted Inertial Sensor

This article introduces an opportunistic calibration method for walking distance estimation using a waist-mounted inertial sensor. In the proposed method, the calibration data are automatically collected from daily normal walking and it does not require a laboratory calibration procedure. While the walking steps can be accurately detected, the walking step length estimation is more difficult in a waist-mounted sensor case. In our method, when short walking data are detected from normal walking, a smoothing algorithm is used to estimate its walking distance. The walking step length and walking features of these data are used to update the step length model. Two experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The accuracy of smoother-based short walking distance estimation has been investigated in the first experiment. This experiment also investigates which feature is the best fit for our linear step length model. The second experiment is to demonstrate the opportunistic nature of the proposed method; 3–10 walking steps segments are extracted from 2 h walking data of one healthy subject and used to calibrate his walking profile. This method can be applied to a consumer device for human walking distance estimation without laboratory calibration procedure.
Avaliação da infiltração de água no solo pelo método de infiltrômetro de anel no agreste alagoano

A infiltracao de agua no solo e o processo de entrada de agua atraves da superficie do solo. O conhecimento da taxa de infiltracao da agua no solo e de fundamental importância para definir tecnicas de conservacao do solo, planejar e delinear sistemas de irrigacao e drenagem, bem como auxiliar na composicao de uma imagem mais real da retencao da agua e aeracao no solo. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo determinar as curvas de infiltracao e velocidade de infiltracao de agua pelo metodo de infiltrometro de anel em um solo do agreste alagoano. O Infiltrometro de anel e um equipamento composto por dois aneis (50 e 25 cm de diâmetro e 30 cm de altura), que sao instalados de forma concentrica e enterrados a 15 cm. Pode-se concluir que o metodo de infiltrometro de anel e simples e pratico para determinacao da infiltracao acumulada (I) e a velocidade de infiltracao (VI). O solo foi caracterizado como Argissolo Vermelho distrofico e sua VIB (velocidade de infiltracao basica) foi classificada como alta (2 cm h -1 ).
Genomic DNA Extracted from Ancient Antarctic Glacier Ice for Molecular Analyses on the Indigenous Microbial Communities

From ancient Antarctic glacier ice, we extracted total genomic DNA that was suitable for prokaryotic 16S rDNA gene cloning and sequencing, and bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) library and end-sequencing. The ice samples were from the Dry Valley region. Age dating by analysis on the volcanic ashes deposited in situ indicated the ice samples are minimum 100,000-300,000 yr (sample DLE) and 8 million years (sample EME) old. Further assay proved the ice survived freeze-thaw cycles or other re-working processes. EME, which was from a small lobe of the basal Taylor glacier, is the oldest known ice on Earth. Microorganisms, preserved frozen in glacier ice and isolated from the rest of the world over a geological time scale, can provide valuable data or insight for the diversity, distribution, survival strategy, and evolutionary relationships to the extant relatives. From the 16S gene cloning study, we detected no PCR amplicons with Archaea-specific primers, however we found many phylotypes belonging to Bacteria divisions, such as Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria , Firmicutes, and Cytophaga-Flavobacterium-Bacteroid$. BAC cloning and sequencing revealed protein codings highly identical to phenylacetic acid degradation protein paaA, chromosome segregation ATPases, or cold shock protein B of present day bacteria. Throughput sequencing of the BAC clones is underway. Viable and culturable cells were recovered from the DLE sample, and characterized by their 16S rDNA sequences. Further investigation on the survivorship and functional genes from the past should help unveil the evolution of life on Earth, or elsewhere, if any.
A Multi-Fault Detection Method With Improved Triplet Loss Based on Hard Sample Mining

Fault detection plays an essential role in the power generation of wind turbines (WTs). However, most of the present fault detection methods are designed to detect a certain type of fault. When these methods are used to detect multiple fault types, their accuracies tend to decline. In this paper, an effective multi-fault detection method based on improved triplet loss is proposed. First, a hard sample mining method is presented based on WT data for the first time, so that the samples which are more suitable for triplet training are selected. Second, triplet training is improved by applying a new mapping layer and optimizing the loss function. Third, based on the improved triplet training, a deep learning model is trained to map the original samples into feature vectors in an embedding space, so that the distance between two samples in the same class is shortened whereas that of different classes is lengthened. Then, a multi-classification model is trained to distinguish the feature vectors, so that the faults of different types can be detected. Finally, four groups of experiments are conducted using real WT SCADA data collected from a wind farm in northern China. The experiment results show that the proposed method is effective.
Using Biosensors and Digital Biomarkers to Assess Response to Cardiac Rehabilitation: Observational Study

Background Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is known for its beneficial effects on functional capacity and is a key component within current cardiovascular disease management strategies. In addition, a larger increase in functional capacity is accompanied by better clinical outcomes. However, not all patients respond in a similar way to CR. Therefore, a patient-tailored approach to CR could open up the possibility to achieve an optimal increase in functional capacity in every patient. Before treatment can be optimized, the differences in response of patients in terms of cardiac adaptation to exercise should first be understood. In addition, digital biomarkers to steer CR need to be identified. Objective The aim of the study was to investigate the difference in cardiac response between patients characterized by a clear improvement in functional capacity and patients showing only a minor improvement following CR therapy. Methods A total of 129 patients in CR performed a 6-minute walking test (6MWT) at baseline and during four consecutive short-term follow-up tests while being equipped with a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) device. The 6MWTs were used to evaluate functional capacity. Patients were divided into high- and low-response groups, based on the improvement in functional capacity during the CR program. Commonly used heart rate parameters and cardiac digital biomarkers representative of the heart rate behavior during the 6MWT and their evolution over time were investigated. Results All participating patients improved in functional capacity throughout the CR program (P<.001). The heart rate parameters, which are commonly used in practice, evolved differently for both groups throughout CR. The peak heart rate (HRpeak) from patients in the high-response group increased significantly throughout CR, while no change was observed in the low-response group (F4,92=8.321, P<.001). Similar results were obtained for the recovery heart rate (HRrec) values, which increased significantly over time during every minute of recuperation, for the high-response group (HRrec1: P<.001, HRrec2: P<.001, HRrec3: P<.001, HRrec4: P<.001, and HRrec5: P=.02). The other digital biomarkers showed that the evolution of heart rate behavior during a standardized activity test differed throughout CR between both groups. These digital biomarkers, derived from the continuous measurements, contribute to more in-depth insight into the progression of patients’ cardiac responses. Conclusions This study showed that when using wearable sensor technology, the differences in response of patients to CR can be characterized by means of commonly used heart rate parameters and digital biomarkers that are representative of cardiac response to exercise. These digital biomarkers, derived by innovative analysis techniques, allow for more in-depth insights into the cardiac response of cardiac patients during standardized activity. These results open up the possibility to optimized and more patient-tailored treatment strategies and to potentially improve CR outcome.
Improving Sample-Efficiency in Reinforcement Learning for Dialogue Systems by Using Trainable-Action-Mask

By interacting with human and learning from reward signals, reinforcement learning is an ideal way to build conversational AI. Concerning the expenses of real-users’ responses, improving sample-efficiency has been the key issue when applying reinforcement learning in real-world spoken dialogue systems (SDS). Handcrafted action masks are commonly used to rule out impossible actions and accelerate the training process. However, the handcrafted action mask can barely be generalized to unseen domains. In this paper, we propose trainable-action-mask (TAM) which learns from data automatically without handcrafting complicated rules. In our experiments in Cambridge Restaurant domain, TAM requires only 30% of training data, compared with the baseline, to reach the 80% success rate and it also shows robustness to noisy environments.
Genetic differentiation of selected and control lines of White Leghorn and Rhodes Island Red using DNA markers

Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers were used to detect the DNA polymorphism in control and selected lines of White Leghorn (IWC and IWH) and Rhodes Island Red (RIRc and RIRs). Ten decamer primers were screened and five of these. generated the polymorphism with a total of 51 bands. A relatively higher proportion of polymorphic bands were observed in both the selected lines (about 45%) than their respective control lines (about 38%). IWH (0.47 kb) and RIRs (1.5 kb) line specific bands were observed in RAPD pattems of primer OPB-19 and BG-06. respectively. Within line genetic similarity ranged from 0.82 to 0.87. The control and selected lines within the same breed showed maximum genetic similarity to each other. Present study revealed the use of RAPD markers hI detecting the polymorphism between control and selected lines originated from same base population.