Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) for the Subaru Telescope: its start of the last development phase

PFS (Prime Focus Spectrograph), a next generation facility instrument on the Subaru telescope, is now being tested on the telescope. The instrument is equipped with very wide (1.3 degrees in diameter) field of view on the Subaru’s prime focus, high multiplexity by 2394 reconfigurable fibers, and wide waveband spectrograph that covers from 380nm to 1260nm simultaneously in one exposure. Currently engineering observations are ongoing with Prime Focus Instrument (PFI), Metrology Camera System (MCS), the first spectrpgraph module (SM1) with visible cameras and the first fiber cable providing optical link between PFI and SM1. Among the rest of the hardware, the second fiber cable has been already installed on the telescope and in the dome building since April 2022, and the two others were also delivered in June 2022. The integration and test of next SMs including near-infrared cameras are ongoing for timely deliveries. The progress in the software development is also worth noting. The instrument control software delivered with the subsystems is being well integrated with its system-level layer, the telescope system, observation planning software and associated databases. The data reduction pipelines are also rapidly progressing especially since sky spectra started being taken in early 2021 using Subaru Nigh Sky Spectrograph (SuNSS), and more recently using PFI during the engineering observations. In parallel to these instrumentation activities, the PFS science team in the collaboration is timely formulating a plan of large-sky survey observation to be proposed and conducted as a Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) from 2024. In this article, we report these recent progresses, ongoing developments and future perspectives of the PFS instrumentation.
Dispersion Compensation using a Prism-pair

A simple and intuitive formulation is reviewed for the Brewster prism-pair - A most common component in spectroscopy-oriented experiments using ultrashort pulses. This review aims to provide students and beginners in the field of spectroscopy with a unified description of a major experimental component. The total spectral phase experienced by a broadband light field is calculated after passing through a pair of Brewster-cut prisms, demonstrating the flexibility of the prism pair to provide tuned, low-loss control of the dispersion and spectral phase experienced by ultrashort pulses
Biodiversity conservation funding in Bhutan: Thematic, temporal, and spatial trends over four decades

Access to sufficient financial resources is vital for effective biodiversity conservation. Although the importance of biodiversity conservation is widely recognized, lack of funding has been a significant impediment to achieving conservation goals. Yet, information on the allocation of conservation funding remains limited. This study addresses this gap by mapping conservation funding flows in Bhutan over the past four decades. We identified 249 projects totaling US$ 239.4 million allocated for biodiversity conservation in Bhutan from 1980 to 2019. Most of this funding derived from bilateral and multilateral aid agencies, with domestic trust fund and private foundations also contributing. Funding for projects with coupled conservation and development objectives and gender components was relatively high, particularly for funds allocated by multilateral and bilateral organizations. By contrast, domestic funding typically did not include development or gender components. Private foundations and domestic sources emphasized capacity development interventions. Despite relatively limited funding flows, the socio‐political context in Bhutan, which favors environmentally friendly practices, may have been key to the country's widely recognized conservation success. Evidence on trends and patterns in conservation finance, as presented here for Bhutan, can advance conservation science and practice by shedding new light on historical and current conservation priorities and helping inform future allocation.
Modeling and Simulation of Renewable Energy Sources by Markov Chains

The increased participation of renewable variable energy sources (RVS) in the Brazilian electricity matrix brings several challenges to the planning and operation of the Brazilian Electricity System (BES) due to the stochasticity present in RVS. Such challenges involve the modeling and simulation of intermittent generation processes. In this context, this work aims to simulate power generation scenarios of three Brazilian plants, each based on three distinct renewable sources: wind power, solar, and biomass. The methodology used is based on the modeling of historical time series by Markov Chains, and the generation of scenarios is performed by Monte Carlo simulation. The results obtained are promising: the simulated scenarios satisfactorily reproduced the characteristics of the historical generation data of the plants.
Solo Travel Research and Its Gender Perspective: A Critical Bibliometric Review

Solo travel continues to be an under-researched area in the field of tourism, hospitality, and events. After the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become necessary to review the knowledge acquired so far. In addition, the 2030 Agenda calls for more studies to understand the relationship between gender and tourism. Because of these facts, and with the aim of analyzing the progress and gaps in academic publications on solo travel in recent years, a bibliometric and content analysis review of the existing scientific literature on solo travel published in Scopus, ProQuest, and the Web of Science in the last 5 years was carried out, focusing the analysis on the gender perspective applied to these investigations. The results showed that research focused on solo travel should increase; this research should segment solo travelers, and comparisons should be realized between those segments and with other tourists who travel accompanied. To do so, a consensual definition of solo travelers is necessary. In addition, research should be extended to other regions and expand the field of analysis beyond motivations, experiences, or constraints. Research focused on solo female travelers should continue because while women cannot travel under the same conditions as men effective gender equality cannot be achieved.
Understanding Breast Cancers through Spatial and High-Resolution Visualization Using Imaging Technologies

Simple Summary Breast cancer tissue is not composed solely of cancer cells but exists in a complex microenvironment consisting of surrounding cells and proteins, including fibroblasts, immune cells, blood vessels, and extracellular matrix. The malignant transformation and metastasis of breast cancer occur due to the interaction between cancer cells and surrounding environmental cells and/or proteins. Therefore, it is extremely important to visualize the three-dimensional structure of breast cancer cells and their surrounding environment both invasively and noninvasively and to understand their relationship; this review aims to provide an overview of the tissue transparency techniques, optical observation methods, spatial transcriptomic analysis, and noninvasive medical imaging methods used for understanding malignant breast cancers. Abstract Breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women worldwide. Although many analyses and treatments have traditionally targeted the breast cancer cells themselves, recent studies have focused on investigating entire cancer tissues, including breast cancer cells. To understand the structure of breast cancer tissues, including breast cancer cells, it is necessary to investigate the three-dimensional location of the cells and/or proteins comprising the tissues and to clarify the relationship between the three-dimensional structure and malignant transformation or metastasis of breast cancers. In this review, we aim to summarize the methods for analyzing the three-dimensional structure of breast cancer tissue, paying particular attention to the recent technological advances in the combination of the tissue-clearing method and optical three-dimensional imaging. We also aimed to identify the latest methods for exploring the relationship between the three-dimensional cell arrangement in breast cancer tissues and the gene expression of each cell. Finally, we aimed to describe the three-dimensional imaging features of breast cancer tissues using noninvasive photoacoustic imaging methods.
Reconciling and Improving Formulations for Thermodynamics and Conservation Principles in Earth System Models (ESMs)

This paper provides a comprehensive derivation of the total energy equations for the atmospheric components of Earth System Models (ESMs). The assumptions and approximations made in this derivation are motivated and discussed. In particular, it is emphasized that closing the energy budget is conceptually challenging and hard to achieve in practice without resorting to ad hoc fixers. As a concrete example, the energy budget terms are diagnosed in a realistic climate simulation using a global atmosphere model. The largest total energy errors in this example are spurious dynamical core energy dissipation, thermodynamic inconsistencies (e.g., coupling parameterizations with the host model) and missing processes/terms associated with falling precipitation and evaporation (e.g., enthalpy flux between components). The latter two errors are not, in general, reduced by increasing horizontal resolution. They are due to incomplete thermodynamic and dynamic formulations. Future research directions are proposed to reconcile and improve thermodynamics formulations and conservation principles.
“It Stays with You for Life”: The Everyday Nature and Impact of Police Violence in Toronto’s Inner-City

In recent years, police violence has amassed notable international attention from the public, practitioners, and academics alike. This paper explores experiences and perceptions of police violence in Canada, documenting the impacts of direct and vicarious experiences of police violence on inner-city residents. The study employed semi-structured interviews with 45 community members across three Toronto inner-city neighbourhoods. Using a general interview prompt guide, participants were asked a range of questions about their experiences with and perceptions of police, and particularly, of police violence in their community. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, thematically coded, and analyzed. All participants reported direct and/or vicarious experiences of police violence, and most described experiencing long-standing, and continual fear that police contact would result in harm to them. Further, participants described a variety of serious and negative outcomes associated with experiencing and/or witnessing police violence. Police violence in Canada is a public health issue that requires an integrated public health policy approach to address the negative outcomes associated with direct and vicarious police violence exposure.
The Proteome Signatures of Fibroblasts from Patients with Severe, Intermediate and Mild Spinal Muscular Atrophy Show Limited Overlap

Most research to characterise the molecular consequences of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has focused on SMA I. Here, proteomic profiling of skin fibroblasts from severe (SMA I), intermediate (SMA II), and mild (SMA III) patients, alongside age-matched controls, was conducted using SWATH mass spectrometry analysis. Differentially expressed proteomic profiles showed limited overlap across each SMA type, and variability was greatest within SMA II fibroblasts, which was not explained by SMN2 copy number. Despite limited proteomic overlap, enriched canonical pathways common to two of three SMA severities with at least one differentially expressed protein from the third included mTOR signalling, regulation of eIF2 and eIF4 signalling, and protein ubiquitination. Network expression clustering analysis identified protein profiles that may discriminate or correlate with SMA severity. From these clusters, the differential expression of PYGB (SMA I), RAB3B (SMA II), and IMP1 and STAT1 (SMA III) was verified by Western blot. All SMA fibroblasts were transfected with an SMN-enhanced construct, but only RAB3B expression in SMA II fibroblasts demonstrated an SMN-dependent response. The diverse proteomic profiles and pathways identified here pave the way for studies to determine their utility as biomarkers for patient stratification or monitoring treatment efficacy and for the identification of severity-specific treatments.
A Privacy-Preserving Outsourcing Computing Scheme Based on Secure Trusted Environment

As one of the key technologies to enable the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing plays a significant role in providing huge computing and storage facilities for large-scale data. Though cloud computing brings great advantages, new issues emerge, such as data security breach and privacy disclosure. In this article, we introduce a novel secure and privacy-preserving outsourcing computing scheme (hereafter referred to as SPOCS) to tackle this issue. In SPOCS, the effective use of Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX), one of the trusted execution environment (TEE), ensures the confidence and integrity of sensitive data in cloud computing and prevents data loss from causing privacy disclosure. In order to keep malicious cloud service providers (CSPs) from illegally tampering with the outsourcing results, blockchain is employed to ensure the data immutability. Significantly, our proposed scheme achieves anonymity and traceability. In the outsourcing process, smart contracts are applied to make the whole process fully automated without any human involvement. Finally, the security of the proposed scheme is analyzed in terms of its resistance to different attacks. The experiments indicate that our scheme is effective and efficient.
Classification of mango plants based on leaf shape using GLCM and K-nearest neighbor methods

Objective: Apply the GLCM method to select mango leaf feature extraction and determine the accuracy level obtained from the K-Nearest Neighbor classification results.Design/method/approach: Using GLCM and K-Nearest Neighbor(KNN) methods. System development using the Prototype method.Results: The test results have been carried out using as many as 60 mango leaves compared to training data and 80:20 test data, with different accuracy. The highest accuracy is at K = 3 by 81% using 6 features, K = 6 by 78% using 5 features, and K = 7 by 74% using 4 features.Authenticity/state of the art: The difference between this research and previous research is the pre-processing method, the type of features used, and the classification method. In this method, the mango leaf image is converted to grayscale, and a feature extraction process is carried out. Then the results of feature extraction will be classified using the K-Nearest Neighbor method. The output of this system is the result of the image classification of mango leaves, such as Kweni, Lalijowo, and Madu.
Multi‐objective optimization design for pressure uniformity in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack

For a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), the pressure uniformity of fluid in the stack is a significant factor influencing the cell performance. This study employs the multi‐objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) to optimize the pressure uniformity in a PEMFC stack by adjusting the geometric design of inlet and outlet flow channels. The flow channel geometry is divided into three parts or named factors: tube length, tapered tube length, and channel height. The target is to find the minimum pressure difference between the inlet and outlet flow channels and optimize the pressure uniformity in the stack. The Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method is used to organize the simulations for the design of experiments (DoEs), and the genetic aggregation (GA) method is employed to generate the response surfaces of the three factors. The resultant response surfaces are utilized to analyze the effects of the three factors on two objective functions, namely, pressure uniformity and pressure drop. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) method is also used to evaluate the influences of the factors, and the results are consistent with those obtained by the response surface method. The results show that the channel height produces the greatest impact on pressure uniformity. An increase in channel height can improve the pressure uniformity and reduce the pressure drop between the inlet and outlet channels. The MOGA analysis determines the optimal geometric design where the maximized pressure uniformity is 0.97 and the minimized pressure drop is 31 kPa. The number of cells in the stack is also taken into consideration. It is found that the influence of the inlet/outlet channel geometry on pressure uniformity is more pronounced when the cell number increases. The results benefit the design of inlet/outlet flow channels and the improvement of pressure uniformity in a PEMFC stack.
NWPU-Captions Dataset and MLCA-Net for Remote Sensing Image Captioning

Recently, the burgeoning demands for captioning-related applications have inspired great endeavors in the remote sensing community. However, current benchmark datasets are deficient in data volume, category variety, and description richness, which hinders the advancement of new remote sensing image captioning approaches, especially those based on deep learning. To overcome this limitation, we present a larger and more challenging benchmark dataset termed NWPU-Captions is available at https://github.com/HaiyanHuang98/NWPU-Captions. NWPU-Captions contains 157 500 sentences, with all 31 500 images annotated manually by seven experienced volunteers. The superiority of NWPU-Captions over current publicly available benchmark datasets not only lies in its much larger scale but also in its wider coverage of complex scenes and the richness and variety of describing vocabularies. Furthermore, a novel encoder–decoder architecture, multilevel and contextual attention network (MLCA-Net), is proposed. MLCA-Net employs a multilevel attention module to adaptively aggregate image features of specific spatial regions and scales and introduces a contextual attention module to explore the latent context hidden in remote sensing images. MLCA-Net improves the flexibility and diversity of the generated captions while keeping their accuracy and conciseness by exploring the properties of scale variations and semantic ambiguity. Finally, the effectiveness, robustness, and generalization of MLCA-Net are proved through extensive experiments on existing datasets and NWPU-Captions.
Drivers and Barriers for Municipal Retrofitting Activities – Evidence from a Large-Scale Survey of German Local Authorities

Local authorities are key actors for implementing innovative energy efficiency technologies (retrofitting) to reduce end-use energy demand and consequently reduce negative effects of high energy use such as climate change and public budget deficits. This paper reports the results of a large-scale survey of German municipalities by assessing drivers and barriers for deploying LED street lighting as an example of innovative retrofits. The results indicate that competencies and capacities, transparency of the underlying technology base, and a clear proposition of savings are crucial drivers for municipal retrofitting engagement. Most significant barriers include lack of experience, the tendency to wait for future improvements of innovative energy efficiency technologies, and existing contracts with energy suppliers, manufacturers, or other conventional retrofitting contractors. Investments in municipal competency building (both regarding technologies and procurement) as well as diffusing standard tendering criteria and (public) monitoring of their effectiveness are highly recommended to accelerate the municipal modernization process.
100 W-level peak power laser system tunable in the LWIR applied to detection of persistent chemical agents

Through the European Defence Agency, the Joint Investment Programme on CBRN protection funded the project AMURFOCAL to address detection at stand-off distances with amplified quantum cascade laser technology in the longwave infrared spectral range, where chemical agents have specific absorptions features. An instrument was developed based on infrared backscattering spectroscopy. We realized a pulsed laser system with a fast tunability from 8 to 10 μm using an external-cavity quantum cascade laser (EC-QCL) and optical parametric amplification (OPA). The EC-QCL is tunable from 8 to 10 μm and delivers output peak powers up to 500 mW. The peak power is amplified with high gain in an orientation-patterned gallium arsenide (OP-GaAs) nonlinear crystal. We developed a pulsed fiber laser acousto-optically tunable from 1880 to 1980 nm with output peak powers up to 7 kW as pump source to realize an efficient quasi-phase matched OPA without any mechanical or thermal action onto the nonlinear crystal. Mixing the EC-QCL and the pump beams within the OP-GaAs crystal and tuning the pump wavelength enables parametric amplification of the EC-QCL from 8 to 10 μm leading to up to 120 W peak power. The output is transmitted to a target at a distance of 10 – 20 m. A receiver based on a broadband infrared detector comprises a few detector elements. A 3D data cube is registered by wavelength tuning the laser emission while recording a synchronized signal received from the target. The presentation will describe the AMURFOCAL instrument, its functional units and its principles of operation.
Associations between Parents’ Digital Media Habits, Engagement, Awareness, and Movement Guidelines among Preschool-Age Children: International Ipreschooler Surveillance Study

The 24-hour movement guidelines (24-h MG) recommend behaviors (physical activity, screen time, sleep) to aid appropriate physical and mental development in early childhood. This research examined parents’ digital media habits (DMH), engagement (DME), and awareness (DMA) among parents in relation to their preschool-aged children’s 24-h MG in Japan and identified and compared the modifiable determinants of adherence to 24-h MG in urban and rural regions. This cross-sectional study included 867 participants and data were obtained from the International Ipreschooler Surveillance Study Among Asians and OtheRs (IISSAAR). The results revealed that adherence to weekend screen time recommendations and weekday sleep duration were higher in the urban region. The parents’ digital media variables that predicted moderate-intensity to vigorous-intensity physical activity among preschool-aged children were parents’ DME and DMA in the urban regions and parents’ DME in the rural regions. The children’s screen time was significantly associated with parents’ DMH, DME, and DMA in the urban regions and with parents’ DMH and DMA in the rural regions (p < 0.005, p < 0.001, respectively). This study confirmed that parents’ DMH, DME, and DMA are strong predictors of adherence to 24-h MG among preschool-aged children living in both rural and urban regions in Japan.
Improving Bulk Driven CMOS OTA Performance Using Feedforward Technique

This paper presents an ultra-low-voltage ultra-low-power CMOS Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA), using a novel feed-forward technique. The proposed topology is based on a bulk driven input differential pair, and inclusion of a gain-stage in the Miller capacitor feedback path to enhance the pole-splitting effect. The main objective of the proposed OTA is to utilize idle current source devices in small signal paths to improve the OTA performance. Not only the DC gain of the proposed OTA is enhanced by 10dB, its unity gain bandwidth (UGB) is also increased by factor of 3 with no extra power dissipation. The proposed OTA is designed and simulated in 180nm CMOS technology consuming only 386nW under the supply voltage of 400mV.