Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accounting for Changing Temperature Patterns Increases Historical Estimates of Climate Sensitivity

Eight atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) are forced with observed historical (1871–2010) monthly sea surface temperature and sea ice variations using the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project II data set. The AGCMs therefore have a similar temperature pattern and trend to that of observed historical climate change. The AGCMs simulate a spread in climate feedback similar to that seen in coupled simulations of the response to CO2 quadrupling. However, the feedbacks are robustly more stabilizing and the effective climate sensitivity (EffCS) smaller. This is due to a pattern effect, whereby the pattern of observed historical sea surface temperature change gives rise to more negative cloud and longwave clear‐sky feedbacks. Assuming the patterns of long‐term temperature change simulated by models, and the radiative response to them, are credible; this implies that existing constraints on EffCS from historical energy budget variations give values that are too low and overly constrained, particularly at the upper end. For example, the pattern effect increases the long‐term Otto et al. (2013, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1836) EffCS median and 5–95% confidence interval from 1.9 K (0.9–5.0 K) to 3.2 K (1.5–8.1 K).
Mechanical Properties, Permeability, and Freeze–Thaw Resistance of Pervious Concrete Modified by Waste Crumb Rubbers

Due to the negative effects that derive from large impervious surfaces in urban areas, pervious concrete has been developed, and has become an environmentally friendly pavement material. As a porous and permeable material, pervious concrete presents an overwhelming advantage in solving urban problems, such as flooding, groundwater decline, urban heat island phenomena, etc. Waste crumb rubber has been verified as a feasible modifier for pavement material. The objective of this paper is to explore the effects of rubber particle size and incorporation level on the permeability, mechanical properties, and freeze–thaw resistance of pervious concrete. Two kinds of rubbers (fine and coarse) with four incorporation levels (2%, 4%, 6%, and 8%) are used in the experiment. Permeability, compressive strength, flexural strength, flexural strain, and freeze–thaw resistance are tested. The results indicate that the addition of rubber slightly decreases strength and permeability, but significantly enhances ductility and freeze-thaw resistance. Fine crumb rubber with a suitable incorporation level could remarkably improve the ductility and freeze–thaw resistance of pervious concrete without sacrificing excessively strength and permeability.
Consistency of a time-stepping method for a class of piecewise-linear networks

In this brief, we will study the computation of transient solutions of a class of piecewise-linear (PL) circuits. The network models will be so-called linear complementarity systems, which can be seen as dynamical extensions of the PL modeling structure. In particular, the numerical simulation will be based on a time-stepping method using the well-known backward Euler scheme. It will be demonstrated, by means of an example, that this widely applied time-stepping method does not necessarily produce useful output for arbitrary linear dynamical systems with ideal diode characteristics. Next the consistency of the method will be proven for PL networks that can be realized by linear passive circuit elements and ideal diodes by showing that the approximations generated by the method converge to the true solution of the system in a suitable sense. To give such a consistency proof, a fundamental framework developed previously is indispensable as it proposes a precise definition of a "solution" of a linear complementarity system and provides conditions under which solutions exist and are unique.
Chances and Challenges for Social Urban Living Labs in Urban Research

As current research programmes show, living lab approaches are a promising instrument in urban research. However, current living lab concepts are still based on technologically-centred and innovation-driven paradigms. A shift towards a more nuanced understanding of living labs that are all embedded in different frameworks is necessary to develop a basis for comparisons across disciplines and across living labs. This paper examines the possibilities and limitations of using living labs in urban research with a focus on social-spatial research questions. It identifies current approaches and gaps in living lab concepts and contributes to a more differentiated understanding of living lab design that fit socially-centred research better than previously concepts.
Gyro-Bias Estimation Filter Design for the Stabilization Accuracy Enhancement of Two Axes Gimbaled Sighting Systems

Abstract In this study the development of a bias estimation technique for the gyroscopes used in stabilization of two axes gimbaled sighting systems is presented. Due to their size and cost limitations, generally, two axes gyroscopes with high bias values are used on such systems. These high bias values cause the sight-line to drift from the target direction and result in a need for frequent corrections from the operator. The proposed technique uses the aiding from the inertial navigation system (INS) of the host vehicle and the kinematical constraints to enable the complete attitude solution of the sighting system with only using a two axes gyroscope. This full attitude solution is used in designing an extended Kalman filter which estimates the gyroscope biases. As for the simulations, a dynamical model of the sighting system, carried on a host land vehicle, is developed and the performance improvement resulting from the bias corrections is demonstrated with simulations using this model.
artial characterization of indigo ( Polygonum tinctorium Ait . ) plant seeds and eaves uk -

The aim of this study was to assess the contents of indigo’s bioactive compounds, its antioxidant and anticancer activities in acetone, hexane and DMSO extracts and to compare the overall bioactivity with another more used medicinal plant named prolipid. It was found that the contents of the bioactive compounds in the studied extracts from different parts of indigo plant varied (P < 0.05): the significantly highest content of polyphenols and flavonoids was in DMSO extract of prolipid, flavanols – in acetone extract of brown seeds (P < 0.05 in both cases) and tannins – in DMSO extract of green leaves, but not significantly (P > 0.05). Also the level of antioxidant activity was different: the highest antioxidant activity of all studied samples was in prolipid: according to ABTS, FRAP and CUPRAC tests in DMSO extract (P < 0.05 in all 3 cases), and only in acetone extract according to DPPH was not significant (P > 0.05). The correlations between polyphenol compounds and the antioxidant activities were relatively high. DPPH kinetic measurements were used to compare and distinguish the antiradical activity among indigo extracts by multivariate analysis. The FT-IR spectroscopy evaluated the presence of polyphenols. The interaction between DMSO polyphenol extracts of indigo plant and BSA showed that indigo has a strong ability as other medicinal plants such as prolipid to quench the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA by forming complexes and was measured by 3-dimensional fluorescence (3D-FL). The highest anticancer activity was in prolipid in concentrations of 800 g/mL against Calu-6, following by indigo brown leaves. In conclusion, organic extracts of indigo brown leaves were analyzed for their antioxidant and anticancer activities and compared with prolipid, using polyphenols composition, antioxidant activities and fluorescence properties. The indigo ability to quench the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA, relatively high content of phenolic compounds and anticancer properties can be used as medicinal plant. ∗ Corresponding author at: Naju Foundation of Natural Dyeing Culture, Naju 52031, Republic of Korea. Tel. : +82 61 3350801. ∗∗ Corresponding author at: Institute for Drug Research, School of Pharmacy, The ebrew University, Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem 91120, Israel. el. : +972 2 6758690. E-mail addresses: bukgu@naver.com (B.-G. Heo), gorin@cc.huji. ac.il S. Gorinstein). 1 This article was written in memory of my dear brother Prof. Simon Trakhtenberg, ho died in November 2011, who encouraged me and our research group during ll his life. 926-6690/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. ttp://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.indcrop. 2012.06. 029 © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Developer-Friendly and Computationally Efficient Predictive Modeling without Information Leakage: The emil Package for R

Data driven machine learning for predictive modeling problems (classification, regression, or survival analysis) typically involves a number of steps beginning with data preprocessing and ending with performance evaluation. A large number of packages providing tools for the individual steps are available for R, but there is a lack of tools for facilitating rigorous performance evaluation of the complete procedures assembled from them by means of cross-validation, bootstrap, or similar methods. Such a tool should strictly prevent test set observations from influencing model training and meta-parameter tuning, so-called information leakage, in order to not produce overly optimistic performance estimates. Here we present a new package for R denoted emil (evaluation of modeling without information leakage) that offers this form of performance evaluation. It provides a transparent and highly customizable framework for facilitating the assembly, execution, performance evaluation, and interpretation of complete procedures for classification, regression, and survival analysis. The components of package emil have been designed to be as modular and general as possible to allow users to combine, replace, and extend them if needed. Package emil was also developed with scalability in mind and has a small computational overhead, which is a key requirement for analyzing the very big data sets now available in fields like medicine, physics, and finance. First package emil's functionality and usage is explained. Then three specific application examples are presented to show its potential in terms of parallelization, customization for survival analysis, and development of ensemble models. Finally a brief comparison to similar software is provided.
Pharmacognostic , antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of fractions of the leaf extract of Kigelia africana Lam . Benth ( Bignoniaceae )

Kigelia africana Lam. Benth (Bignoniaceae) leaves are used in ethnomedicine for the management and treatment of various infectious diseases. This study was aimed at investigating the Pharmacognostic, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of the plant to aid standardization and continuous usage. Evaluation of fresh, powdered and anatomical sections of the leaves were carried out to determine Pharmacognostic profile. Chemical tests were employed in phytochemical investigations. The antioxidant activities were carried out using DPPH radical scavenging method. The polyphenolic contents were also evaluated. Inhibitory activity of the crude methanol extract and fractions against clinical strains of Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella aerogenes, Candida albicans and Candida parasilopsis were compared with ciprofloxacin and nystatin for bacteria and fungi respectively. Pharmacognostic data which can aid sample identification are provided. Phytochemical screening revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, and saponins. The fractions showed significant antioxidant activity when compared to the standard with n-butanol fraction having the highest activity. The crude methanol extract and the fractions inhibited the growth of E. coli, B. subtilis, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa, C. albicans and C. parasilopsis to varying degrees, except the aqueous fraction that was devoid of activity. Extract and fractions of K. africana have demonstrated antimicrobial activity against clinical strains of selected microorganisms and showed significant antioxidant activity. These results showed that K. africana has a role in the treatment of infectious diseases.
Tailoring the Local Density of Optical States and Directionality of Light Emission by Symmetry Breaking

We present a method to simultaneously engineer the energy-momentum dispersion and the local density of optical states (LDOS). Using vertical symmetry breaking in high-contrast gratings, we enable the mixing of modes with different parities, thus producing hybridized modes with controlled dispersion. By tuning geometric parameters, we control the coupling between Bloch modes, leading to flatband, M- and W-shaped dispersion as well as Dirac dispersion. This dispersion-engineering leads to tailored LDOS and we experimentally demonstrate a two order of magnitude enhancement of photoluminescence from weak emitters—defects in silicon—via optical modes with adjustable angle of emission. This vertical symmetry-breaking method could readily be used in various photonic crystals and metasurfaces devices and opens up a new way to strongly boost light emission on-chip and to steer it to arbitrary directions.
The Dependence of Caribbean Rainfall on the Interaction of the Tropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans

Seasonally stratified analyses of rainfall anomalies over the intra-Americas sea and surrounding land areas and of onset and end dates of the Central American rainy season show that the variability of the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) is more strongly associated with rainfall over the Caribbean and Central America than is tropical eastern Pacific SSTA. Seasonal differences include the importance of antisymmetric configurations of tropical Atlantic SSTA in the dry season but not in the rainy season. Both oceans are related to rainfall, but the strength of the rainfall response appears to depend on how SSTA in the tropical Atlantic and eastern Pacific combine. The strongest response occurs when the tropical Atlantic is in the configuration of a meridional dipole (antisymmetric across the ITCZ) and the eastern tropical Pacific is of opposite sign to the tropical North Atlantic. When the tropical North Atlantic and tropical Pacific are of the same sign, the rainfall response is weaker. The rainy season in lower Central America tends to start early and end late in years that begin with warm SSTs in the tropical North Atlantic, and the end dates are also delayed when the eastern equatorial Pacific is cool. This enhancement of date departures for zonally antisymmetric configurations of SSTA between the North Atlantic and Pacific is qualitatively consistent with the results for rainfall anomalies.
Anharmonicity and the infrared emission spectrum of highly excited polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

Aims. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study molecules in space. A key issue in such analyses is understanding the effect that temperature and anharmonicity have on different vibrational bands, and thus interpreting the IR spectra for molecules under various conditions. Methods. We combined second order vibrational perturbation theory and the Wang-Landau random walk technique to produce accurate IR spectra of highly excited polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We fully incorporated anharmonic effects, such as resonances, overtones, combination bands, and temperature effects. Results. The results are validated against experimental results for the pyrene molecule (C16H10). In terms of positions, widths, and relative intensities of the vibrational bands, our calculated spectra are in excellent agreement with gas-phase experimental data.
Immigration and the Macroeconomy: Some New Empirical Evidence

We propose a new VAR identification scheme that enables us to disentangle immigration shocks from other macroeconomic shocks. Identification is achieved by imposing sign restrictions on Norwegian data over the period 1990Q1 - 2014Q2. The availability of a quarterly series for net immigration is crucial to achieving identification. Notably, immigration is an endogenous variable in the model and can respond to the state of the economy. We find that domestic labour supply shocks and immigration shocks are well identified and are the dominant drivers of immigration dynamics. An exogenous immigration shock lowers unemployment (even among native workers), has a small positive effect on prices and on public finances, no impact on house prices and household credit, and a negative effect on productivity.
Environmentally friendly superabsorbent polymers for water conservation in agricultural lands

Polymer complexes of crosslinked carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and starch were synthesized to form superabsorbent polymers (SAP) and their performances as a water retaining aid for irrigation were assessed. The SAP was crosslinked with aluminum sulfate octadecahydrate for optimum water retention. Starch from vegetables and chemically modified cellulose fibers were used as the basis for the polymer structure because of their biodegradability and the sustainability of their sources. The starch vegetables include potatoes, yam, cassava, and corn. Radish seeds were planted in pots that contained soil amended with the SAPs (as well as soils control with no amendment). For the first two weeks the plants were given a healthy amount of water, then watering was reduced to observe how the plants responded to drought. The plants with no amendment to the soil stopped growing after the first two weeks and showed signs of dehydration. All the plants in the amended soil continued to grow after the first two weeks and they looked much healthier. Performance evaluation of the response to the four starch types suggests that potato based SAP performed the best with 73% water retention, while corn gave 56%. The study also suggests that lower dosage of 0.12% by weight of the potato based SAP performed better than 0.24% when used for soil amendment.
predSucc-Site: Lysine Succinylation Sites Prediction in Proteins by using Support Vector Machine and Resolving Data Imbalance Issue

The lysine succinylation is found as an important post-translational modification where succinyle group is added to a lysine (K) residue of a protein molecule. It plays major role not only in regulating the cellular processes but also associated with some diseases. As a result, it requires an easiest way to detect succinylation modification in proteins. However, since the experimental technologies are costly and time-consuming, so it is quite hard to detect the succinylation modification timely at low cost to face the explosive growth of protein sequences in postgenomic age. In this context, an accurate computational method for predicting succinylation sites is an urgent issue which can be useful for drug development. In this study, a novel computational tool termed predSucc-Site has been developed to predict protein succinylation sites by (1) incorporating the sequence-coupled information into the general pseudo amino acid composition, (2) balancing the effect of skewed training dataset by Different Error Costs (DEC) method, and (3) constructing a predictor using support vector machine as classifier. The experimental result shows that the predSucc-Site predictor achieves an average AUC (area under curve) score of 0.97 in predicting lysine succinylation sites. All of the experimental results
Characterization of Dye-ability and Diffusion Kinetics of Chemically Modified Cotton Fabrics towards Disperse and Direct Dyes

This article aims to study the effect of chemical modification of cotton fabrics on their dye-ability towards disperse and direct dyes. The cotton samples were modified with 2-cholor-2-dimethylaminoethyl hydrochloride with two different concentrations (10 and 30) %. The obtained synthesized dimethylamino ethyl (DMAE) cotton samples, had two different nitrogen contents (0.386, 0.795) N%. The dye-ability expressed as (K/S) values were measured for the (DMAE) cotton that dyed separately with disperse and direct dyes dye classes at different dyeing temperatures and different dyeing times. The obtained results verify the role of modification process in the production of modified cotton with excellent dye-ability towards disperse and direct dyes under neutral pH conditions in the absence of salt with high reactivity, giving high fixation efficiency and good dyeing quality. The work is extended to study dyeing diffusion kinetics on those sensitized and dyed cotton fabrics with direct dye and thermodynamic parameters including: % exhaustion, dyeing rate constant, half dyeing time, and diffusion coefficient and activation energy. The results of this part deduced that modification process improved the structural characteristics of the cotton fabrics via improving their behviour for all of diffusion kinetic parameters.
Variability in fricative production of young people with Down's syndrome : an EPG analysis

Speech production in Down's syndrome is highly variable, with particular problems arising from complex articulations such as fricatives. In this paper, EPG analysis is used to study the variation in the production of the fricatives /s/ and /sh/ in 6 young people with Down’s syndrome. The variability of these productions is compared with information from the Robbins and Klee Oral/Speech Motor Control Protocol.
Bryanites graeffii sp. n. (Coleoptera, Carabidae): museum rediscovery of a relict species from Samoa

Bryanites graeffii sp. n. is described from Samoa based on a single male specimen collected between 1862–1870 that was recently discovered in the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris. Cladistic analysis based on 127 morphological characters from 49 exemplars of the carabid beetle tribe Platynini in the Austral-Pacific region, places the new species as adelphotaxon to Bryanites samoaensis Valentine, type species of the genus Bryanites Valentine, 1987. Bryanites comprises, along with Vitagonum Moore, 1998 of Fiji and Ctenognathus Fairmaire, 1843 of New Zealand, a clade that diverged early in the evolutionary history of Pacific platynine Carabidae. Bryanites graeffii exhibits very large body size among taxa of Platynini—16.2 mm standardized body length—with the genus characterized by vestigial flight wings and metathoracic apomorphies that are associated with flight-wing loss. Along with Blackburnia Sharp, 1878 of Hawaii, the origins of Bryanites, Vitagonum, and Ctenognathus are hypothesized to date to the Miocene, with their radiations beginning long before the origins of the geographically widespread, flight-capable species of Metacolpodes Jeannel, 1948 that colonized numerous island systems across the western Pacific. Given the numerous platynine taxa collected by extensive biotic surveys of Samoa during the first quarter of the 20th Century, the absence of any specimens of B. graeffii since the initial collection of the unique holotype prior to 1871 suggests that this species may be extinct. Such extirpation of large platynine carabid beetles has also been documented for Hawaii, where the time of extinction of seven Blackburnia species represented only by subfossil fragments coincides with the time of human colonization and attendant introduction of the Pacific rat, Rattus exulans (Peale).