Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparisons of HRD and SLOSH Surface Wind Fields in Hurricanes: Implications for Storm Surge Modeling

Surface wind observations analyzed by the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) were compared to those computed by the parametric wind model used in the National Weather Service Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) model’s storm surge computations for seven cases in five recent hurricanes. In six cases, the differences between the SLOSH and HRD surface peak wind speeds were 6% or less, but in one case (Hurricane Emily of 1993) the SLOSH computed peak wind speeds were 15% less than the HRD. In all seven cases, statistics for the modeled and analyzed wind fields showed that for the region of strongest winds, the mean SLOSH wind speed was 14% greater than that of the HRD and the mean inflow angle for SLOSH was 198 less than that of the HRD. The radii beyond the region of strongest winds in the seven cases had mean wind speed and inflow angle differences that were very small. The SLOSH computed peak storm surges usually compared closely to the observed values of storm surge in the region of the maximum wind speeds, except Hurricane Emily where SLOSH underestimated the peak surge. HRD’s observation-based wind fields were input to SLOSH for storm surge hindcasts of Hurricanes Emily and Opal (1995). In Opal, the HRD input produced nearly the same computed storm surges as those computed from the SLOSH parametric wind model, and the calculated surge was insensitive to perturbations in the HRD wind field. For Emily, observation-based winds produced a computed storm surge that was closer to the peak observed surge, confirming that the computed surge in Pamlico Sound was sensitive to atmospheric forcing. Using real-time, observation-based winds in SLOSH would likely improve storm surge computations in landfalling hurricanes affected by synoptic and mesoscale factors that are not accounted for in parametric models (e.g., a strongly sheared environment, convective asymmetries, and stably stratified boundary layers). An accurate diagnosis of storm surge flooding, based on the actual track and wind fields could be supplied to emergency management agencies, government officials, and utilities to help with damage assessment and recovery efforts.
The Structure of Class Conflict in Democratic Capitalist Societies

The article presents a theory of class conflict between workers and capitalists who pursue their material interests under a form of societal organization that combines private ownership of instruments of production with representative political institutions. There exist economic and political conditions under which both classes would simultaneously choose courses of action that constitute a class compromise: workers consent to the institution of profit and capitalists to democratic institutions through which workers can effectively press claims for material gains. When these conditions hold and a compromise is in force, the role of the state consists in institutionalizing, coordinating, and enforcing the terms of a compromise that represents the preferences of workers as well as capitalists.
HCI Outdoors: How Smart Wearables can Help to Promote a Better Lifestyle

Workshop on HCI Outdoors: Understanding Human-Computer Interaction in the Outdoors at CHI 2018, Apri 21, 2018, Montréal, Canada Abstract The ongoing miniaturization of technology brought a new device class to the mass market: wearables. Although there already exist a variety of devices such as specialized fitness trackers or more general smartwatches, there is still a lack of understanding and development when it comes to how these devices are integrated in our everyday lives. Instead of the devices being directly supportive, people often have to deal with annoying aspects before, during and after using them – especially when using them on the go, e.g. in outdoor activities. In this position paper, we outline possible next steps to deal with these problems and point out how the devices can then help to promote a better lifestyle.
Materials science of membranes for gas and vapor separation

Contributors. Preface. 1. Transport of Gases and Vapors in Glassy and Rubbery Polymers (Scott Matteucci, Yuri Yampolskii, Benny D. Freeman and Ingo Pinnau). 2. Principles of Molecular Simulation of Gas Transport in Polymers (Doros N. Theodorou). 3. Molecular Simulation of Gas and Vapor Transport in Highly Permeable Polymers (Joel R. Fried). 4. Predicting Gas Solubility in Membranes through Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics for Glassy Polymers (Ferruccio Doghieri, Massimiliano Quinzi, David G. Rethwisch and Giulio C. Sarti). 5. The Solution-Diffusion Model: A Unified Approach to Membrane Permeation (Johannes G. (Hans) Wijmans and Richard W. Baker ). 6. Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy and Other Methods for Free Volume Evaluation in Polymers (Yuri Yampolskii and Victor Shantarovich). 7. Prediction of Gas Permeation Parameters of Polymers (Alexander Alentiev and Yuri Yampolskii ). 8. Synthesis and Permeation Properties of Substituted Polyacetylenes for Gas Separation and Pervaporation (Toshio Masuda and Kazukiyo Nagai). 9. Gas and Vapor Transport Properties of Perfluoropolymers (Tim C. Merkel, Ingo Pinnau, Rajeev Prabhakar and Benny D. Freeman). 10. Structure and Transport Properties of Polyimides as Materials for Gas and Vapor Membrane Separation (Kazuhiro Tanaka and Ken-Ichi Okamoto). 11. The Impact of Physical Aging of Amorphous Glassy Polymers on Gas Separation Membranes (Peter H. Pfromm). 12. Zeolite Membranes for Gas and Liquid Separations (George R. Gavalas). 13. Gas and Vapor Separation Membranes Based on Carbon Membranes (Hidetoshi Kita). 14. Polymer Membranes for Separation of Organic Liquid Mixtures (Tadashi Uragami ). 15. Zeolite Membranes for Pervaporation and Vapor Permeation (Hidetoshi Kita). 16. Solid-State Facilitated Transport Membranes for Separation of Olefins/Paraffins and Oxygen/Nitrogen ( Yong Soo Kang, Jong Hak Kim, Jongok Won and Hoon Sik Kim ). 17. Review of Facilitated Transport Membranes (Richard D. Noble and Carl A. Koval ). Index.
Data Sparseness and Variance in Accounting Profitability

A central question in strategic management is why some firms perform better than others. One approach to addressing this question empirically is to decompose the variance in firm-level profitability into firm, industry, location, and year components. Although it is well established that data sparseness in variance decomposition studies can lead to overestimating particular variance components, little attention has been paid to sample size requirements in strategic management studies that have examined the nature of differences in firm profitability. We conduct a meta-regression and variance decomposition study and conclude that the variation in the results from previous studies is driven—to a considerable extent—by the number of observations per group within a component. Based on these findings, we draw conclusions regarding the validity and reliability of previous variance decomposition studies and provide implications for current debates in the strategic management literature.
Efficient Generation of Model Bulk Heterojunction Morphologies for Organic Photovoltaic Device Modeling

Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations have been previously used to model and understand a wide range of behaviors in bulk heterojunction (BHJ) organic photovoltaic devices, from fundamental mechanisms to full device performance. One particularly unique and valuable aspect of this type of modeling technique is the ability to explicitly implement models for the bicontinuous nanostructured morphology present in these devices. For this purpose, an Ising-based method for creating model BHJ morphologies has become prevalent. However, this technique can be computationally expensive, and a detailed characterization of this method has not yet been published. Here, we perform a thorough characterization of this method and describe how to efficiently generate controlled model BHJ morphologies. We show how the interaction energy affects the tortuosity of the interconnected domains and the resulting charge-transport behavior in KMC simulations. We also demonstrate how to dramatically reduce calculation time by several orders of magnitude without detrimentally affecting the resulting morphologies. In the end, we propose standard conditions for generating model morphologies and introduce an open-source software tool. These developments to the Ising method provide a strong foundation for future simulation and modeling of BHJ organic photovoltaic devices that will lead to a more detailed understanding of the important link between morphological features and device performance.
Discovering the Features in Opinion Mining via Domain Dependent and Domain Independent Relevance

Opinion feature mining is also known as aspect mining used to take out users opinions, and attitudes towards a specific product, services and their characteristics. The most of the existing approaches to opinion feature extraction on mining patterns is only by using a single review corpus. This paper presents the new method to discover the opinion features from online reviews by taking out the difference in opinion feature statistics across two different corpora, one domain specific corpus and another is domain independent corpus (i.e. the contrasting corpus). Domain relevance is the measure which is used to capture the disparity. The domain relevance characterizes the relevant term from the text collection. Firstly, the sentences are extracted from the reviews. Then the POS Tagger is applied to separate out the nouns, noun phrases and adjectives. Next the candidate features are extracted by applying the syntactic rules designed for Standard English. For every candidate feature ,the Intrinsic Domain Relevance (IDR) and Extrinsic Domain Relevance (EDR) scores are calculated by using Domain dependent and domain independent corpus respectively. a The interval threshold approach, called as IEDR Criteria is applied to confirm the final Opinion Feature in which the candidate feature having IDR score greater than IDR threshold, and EDR scores less than EDR threshold is checked .
Association of hyperuricemia with Obesity and Metabolic CoMorbidities among Post-Menopausal Egyptian Women

Background: Obesity is a global public health problem and is associated with cardio-metabolic diseases and hyperuricemia. Thus the aim of our study was to evaluate the role of serum uric acid as a marker of cardiovascular risk in screening of obesity-related metabolic comorbiditiesamong Egyptian women according to menopausal status. Methods: This a cross-sectional study included 72 premenopausal women and 128 post-menopausal women who were stratified according to BMI into three subgroup.Serum uric acid was measured. Fat mass (FM) were evaluated by Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Results: there were significantly higher values of serum uric acid in post-menopausal women compared to premenopausal women, in post-menopausal women, serum uric acidlevels were higher in obese compared to overweightas well as lean women, In post-menopausal women, there were significantly positive correlationsbetween serum uric acid and fasting plasma glucose, waist circumferenceas well as triglycerides . Also,stepwise linear regression analysis showed that serum uric acidlevels were independently correlated with systolic blood pressure ,triglycerides,HbA1c and FM.Conclusion: serum uric acid increased in post-menopausal women and associated with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases as well as obesity indices among Egyptian post-menopausal women.
Demulsification capabilities of a Microbacterium species for breaking water-in-crude oil emulsions

A bacterium strain belonging to Microbacterium sp. , isolated from oily sludge samples of Siri Island in the south of Iran, produced a strong, thermo stable microbial demulsifier (Y x/s =0.663, Y p/s =0.204, productivity=0.185 g L -1 h -1 ) on glucose as a sole carbon source supplemented with yeast extract. The optimum values of temperature, inoculum concentration, pH and culture age for microbial demulsifier production were 25°C, 10 8 CFU mL -1 , 7 and 24 h, respectively. The maximum demulsification activity and the half-life value (t 1/2 ) of culture broth measured for a water-in-crude oil (W/CO) emulsion were 96.4% and 36 h at 80°C in flask. The demulsifier was purified to homogeneity using cold ethanol. For 4.33 mg mL -1 of partially purified microbial demulsifier, the half-life value for the W/CO model emulsion was 3 h. Keywords : Biopolymer, demulsification, Microbacterium , demulsifier, petroleum emulsion, water-in-crude oil African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(16), pp. 2019-2026
Generalized Advantage Estimation for Policy Gradients

Value functions provide an elegant solution to the delayed reward problem in reinforcement learning, but it is difficult to accurately estimate and approximate them when the state space is high-dimensional. As a result, policy gradient methods that use Monte Carlo estimation are often preferred over methods that approximate the value function. We propose a method for using an approximate value function to help estimate the advantage function and obtain better policy gradient estimates, even when the value function is inaccurate. These estimators use a timescale parameter that makes an explicit tradeoff between bias and variance, and they empirically achieve faster policy improvement than Monte Carlo estimation and the actor-critic method, which can be viewed as limiting cases of these estimators. We present experimental results on a standard cart-pole benchmark task, as well as a number of highly challenging 3D locomotion tasks, where we show that our approach can learn complex gaits using neural network function approximators with over 10 parameters for both the policy and the value function.
Persistent carbon sink at a boreal drained bog forest

Abstract. Drainage of peatlands is expected to turn these ecosystems into carbon sources to the atmosphere. We measured carbon dynamics of a drained forested peatland in southern Finland over 4 years, including one with severe drought during growing season. Net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide (CO2) was measured with the eddy covariance method from a mast above the forest. Soil and forest floor CO2 and methane (CH4) fluxes were measured from the strips and from ditches with closed chambers. Biomass and litter production were sampled, and soil subsidence was measured by repeated levellings of the soil surface. The drained peatland ecosystem was a strong sink of carbon dioxide in all studied years. Soil CO2 balance was estimated by subtracting the carbon sink of the growing tree stand from NEE, and it showed that the soil itself was a carbon sink as well. A drought period in one summer significantly decreased the sink through decreased gross primary production. Drought also decreased ecosystem respiration. The site was a small sink for CH4, even when emissions from ditches were taken into account. Despite the continuous carbon sink, peat surface subsided slightly during the 10-year measurement period, which was probably mainly due to compaction of peat. It is concluded that even 50 years after drainage this peatland site acted as a soil C sink due to relatively small changes in the water table and in plant community structure compared to similar undrained sites, and the significantly increased tree stand growth and litter production. Although the site is currently a soil C sink, simulation studies with process models are needed to test whether such sites could remain C sinks when managed for forestry over several tree-stand rotations.
Interaction of Government Tiers and Central Banks in a Federation: An Empirical Test

Fiscal rules are necessary to protect monetary policy from the consequences of unsustainable or active fiscal policy on inflation. Monetary unions, like the EMU, require even stronger fiscal rules to avoid free riding by regional fiscal authorities on the common monetary policy. By contrast, in a fiscal federation, a federal government internalises the effect of active regional policies on the overall price level. Federal fiscal policy contributes to price stability either by enforcing fiscal rules or adjusting its own stance. Following Canzoneri et al. (2001), we test if federal and regional government in Germany behave in an active or passive way. We find evidence of a spillover effect of unsustainable policies on other regions. The German federal government offsets the effect on the price level by running passive policies. The Bundesbank prime objective of price stability is therefore endorsed by fiscal policy. The results have implications for the regulation of fiscal policies in the EMU. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Uniform Coating of Self-Assembled Noniridescent Colloidal Nanostructures using the Marangoni Effect and Polymers

Colloidal crystals exhibit structural color without any color pigment due to the crystals' periodic nanostructure, which can interfere with visible light. This crystal structure is iridescent as the resulting color changes with the viewing or illumination angle, which limits its use for printing or displays. To eliminate the iridescent property, it is important to make the packing of the colloidal nanoparticles disordered. Here, we introduce a drop-casting method where a droplet of a water- ethanol mixture containing monodisperse polymer-coated silica nanoparticles creates a relatively uniform and non-iridescent deposit after the droplet evaporates completely on a heated substrate. The uniformity is caused by a thermal Marangoni flow and fast evaporation effects due to the heated substrate, whereas non-iridescence is the outcome of short-range-ordered packing of nanoparticles by depletion attraction and friction effects produced by polymer brushes. We show that the colors of the final deposits from individual droplets remain unchanged while the viewing angle is varied under ambient light. We expect that the coating method is compatible with ink-jet printing and the uniformly coated self-assembled non-iridescent nanostructures have potential for color displays using reflection mode and other optical devices.
Tactile sensors based on conductive polymers

This paper presents results from a selection of tactile sensors that have been designed and fabricated. These sensors are based on a common approach that consists in placing a sheet of piezoresistive material on the top of a set of electrodes. We use a thin film of conductive polymer as the piezoresistive material. Specifically, a conductive water-based ink of this polymer is deposited by spin-coating on a flexible plastic sheet, giving it a smooth, homogeneous and conducting thin film. The main interest in this procedure is that it is cheap and it allows the fabrication of flexible and low cost tactile sensors. In this work, we present results from sensors made using two technologies. Firstly, we have used a flexible printed circuit board (PCB) technology to fabricate the set of electrodes and addressing tracks. The result is a simple, flexible tactile sensor. In addition to these sensors on PCB, we have proposed, designed and fabricated sensors with screen-printing technology. In this case, the set of electrodes and addressing tracks are made by printing an ink based on silver nanoparticles. The exhaustive characterization provides us insights into the design of these tactile sensors.
Self-consistent dynamics of electromagnetic pulses and wakefields in laser-plasma interactions

In the present work we study the dynamics of laser pulses propagating in a cold relativistic plasma, which can be of interest for particle acceleration schemes. After obtaining a Lagrangian density from the one-dimensional equations for the laser pulse envelope and the wakefield, we define a trial function and apply the variational approach in order to obtain an analytical model which allows us to calculate an effective potential for the pulse width. Using this procedure, we analyze the stability of narrow and large laser pulses and then compare its results with numerical solutions for the envelope and density equations.
A Novel Cavity Backed Monopole Antenna with UWB Unidirectional Radiation

A novel compact unidirectional UWB antenna is presented in this paper. First a novel planar omnidirectional UWB antenna with CPW-feed is designed. The antenna is composed of a half-elliptical disc with a small ground plane. A slot is inserted on the patch as a novel technique to improve the gain bandwidth of the antenna at higher frequencies. The omnidirectional antenna shows UWB matching and gain bandwidth of 2 GHz to 6.5 GHz. Furthermore, to make the radiation pattern of the omnidirectional antenna unidirectional, a rectangular shape metallic reflector without bottom wall is used on the backside of the antenna. The unidirectional antenna with a total dimension of 0. 52λm × 0. 33λm × 0. 18λm (λm wavelength of the minimum operating frequency) has a matching bandwidth of 1.5 GHz to 7.7 GHz with a gain of 5 dBi to 10.2 dBi over 1.7 GHz to 6.5 GHz, and flat group delays of less than 1nsec. To validate the proposed design, the antenna is fabricated, and measured results are compared with simulations.
Healthy Business? Managerial Education and Management in Health Care

Abstract We investigate the link between hospital performance and managerial education by collecting a large database of management practices and skills in hospitals across nine countries. We find that hospitals closer to universities offering both medical education and business education have lower mortality rates from acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks), better management practices, and more MBA-trained managers. This is true compared to the distance to universities that offer only business or medical education (or neither). We argue that supplying bundled medical and business education may be a channel through which universities improve management practices in hospitals and raise clinical performance.
Capital Budgeting Theory and Practice: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

The main purpose of this research was to delineate unearth lacunae in the extant capital budgeting theory and practice during the last two decades and ipso facto become springboard for future scholarships. It has analyses of various approaches, such as Web of science search and iCat search were used to locate research papers published during the last twenty years. Four criteria have been applied in selection of research papers: be an empirical study, published in English language, appeared in peer reviewed journal and full text research papers. These papers were collected from multiple databases including OneFile (GALE), SciVerse ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Informa - Taylor & Francis (CrossRef), Wiley (CrossRef), Business (JSTOR), Arts & Sciences (JSTOR), Proquest ,MEDLINE (NLM), and Wiley Online Library. Search parameters covered capital budgeting, capital budgeting decision, capital budgeting theory, capital budgeting practices, capital budgeting methods, capital budgeting models, capital budgeting tools, capital budgeting techniques, capital budgeting process and investment decision. Thematic text analyses have been explored to analyses them. Keywords: Capital budgeting theory and practices, capital budgeting tools for incorporating risk, discount rate
Evolution of b-type cytochromes in prokaryotes

Vassiliki Lila Koumandou, Sophia Kossida Bioinformatics & Medical Informatics Team, Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens, Soranou Efessiou 4, Athens 11527, Greece Present address: Department of Biotechnology, Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, Athens 118 55, Greece Present address: Institute of Human Genetics, IMGT, UPR CNRS 1142, 141 rue de la Cardonille, 34396 Montpelier cedex 5, France. E-mail : Sofia.Kossida@igh.cnrs. fr