Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flora and vegetation of banded iron formations of the Yilgarn Craton: the Montague Range Zone of the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt

The Montague Range of the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt is located in the central portion of the Yilgarn Craton, c. 70 km north of the township of Sandstone. Fifty permanent vegetation quadrats were established, within which all vascular flora and a series of environmental attributes were recorded. A total of 91 taxa were recorded, representing 28 families and 43 genera. Five taxa of conservation significance were identified, including Acacia burrowsiana (P1), Stenanthemum mediale (P1), Calytrix praecipua (P3), Sauropus ramosissimus (P3), and Baeckea sp. Melita Station (H Pringle 2738; P3). A single putative variant of the Acacia aneura complex was identified; further material of A. aneura aff. argentea is required for confirmation. Three taxa (A. aneura aff. argentea, A. aneura var. conifera, A. cockertoniana) represented significant range extensions. No weeds or regional endemics were collected during the survey. Six floristic communities were identified from the survey, which were related to topographical position, geology and edaphic factors. The Montague Range represents an important repository of significant taxa and floristic communities associated with banded ironstone formations. Any future exploration or development should ensure that the important conservation values and condition of the range are retained.
Fundamental conditions required in extracting an alpha-amylase from Cadaba farinosa Forsk branches

Crude extracts of Cadaba farinosa, Forsk plant are used for their starch-reducing power in most tropic countries to liquefy/sweeten starch gruels. The extraction process is a time consuming osmotic rehydrating process characterized by fluctuating extract yield and consequently, an unstable inherent starch-reducing power. In this study, dried tender branches were ground (O.1 mm) and soaked for 50 min under agitation. The resulting mixture was clarified by centrifugation and tested for total proteins and α-amylase activity. Preliminary trials preceding extraction, generated process factors which were screened using the Plackett-Burman design. The most significant factors were modeled using Doeh-lertfs design. Four of the eight factors, pH, concentration, velocity gradient of agitation and centrifugal force, were most relevant for extraction. Statistical analysis of the models of total proteins and total activity suggested a compromise zone where specific activity is always . 2.1 Umg -1 under particular prevailing fundamental conditions. The complete extraction cycle of more than 6 h was now reduced to approximately 60 min. Investigating the marginal starch-reducing power of α-amylase from Cadaba seeds could reveal a better source. Key words : Cadaba farinosa branches, extraction, fundamental factors, screening, cell-free extract, α-amylase.
Hadoop-Based Word Count Simulation on Amazon Cloud

: Processing very large amounts of data with the traditional conventional database systems are no longer able to handle such a data in an effective manner and practically now obsolete. Due to the introduction of new automated systems and Internet of Things (IoT), accumulation of massive size of the data through heterogeneous sources with unstructured or semi-structured form is quite obvious. To cope up with the current scenario of big data processing needs, Hadoop MapReduce is being the widely preferred choice among many organizations. With the recent growth of cloud computing paradigm, on-demand distributed and parallel data intensive processing is much cheaper and easier on the cloud. The objective of this research paper is to measure the execution time on different sizes of text files by performing a simple MapReduce simulation on the word count program which is very popular in the Big data and Text mining arena. Also, an improved version of the word count program has been designed and variants of word count programs have been tested and simulated on Amazon EC2 Cloud environment. A comparative study of both methods has been carried out and critically reviewed.
Sufficient condition for estimation in designing H ∞ filter-based slam

Extended Kalman filter (EKF) is often employed in determining the position of mobile robot and landmarks in simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Nonetheless, there are some disadvantages of using EKF, namely, the requirement of Gaussian distribution for the state and noises, as well as the fact that it requires the smallest possible initial state covariance. This has led researchers to find alternative ways to mitigate the aforementioned shortcomings. Therefore, this study is conducted to propose an alternative technique by implementing filter in SLAM instead of EKF. In implementing filter in SLAM, the parameters of the filter especially γ need to be properly defined to prevent finite escape time problem. Hence, this study proposes a sufficient condition for the estimation purposes. Two distinct cases of initial state covariance are analysed considering an indoor environment to ensure the best solution for SLAM problem exists along with considerations of process and measurement noises statistical behaviour. If the prescribed conditions are not satisfied, then the estimation would exhibit unbounded uncertainties and consequently results in erroneous inference about the robot and landmarks estimation. The simulation results have shown the reliability and consistency as suggested by the theoretical analysis and our previous findings.
Testing the Endowment Effect for Default Rules

Abstract This paper explores potential endowment effects of contractual default rules. For this purpose, we analyze the Hadley liability default clause in a model of bilateral bargaining of lotteries against safe options. The liability default clause determines the right for the safe payoff option. We test the model in series of laboratory experiments. The results reveal a substantial willingness-to-accept to willingness-to-pay gap for the right to change lotteries against safe options. Even if we apply the incentive compatible Becker-DeGroot-Marschak value elicitation mechanism, there is a significant gap indicating a robust endowment effect caused by default rules. Differences of expected values of the lotteries and the safe options consistently decrease the gaps. Implications for applications of default rules in the law are discussed.
: TR-05-21 Towards a distributed scalable data service for the Grid

Abstract: AdHoc (Adaptive Distributed Herd of Object Caches) is a Grid-enabled, fast, scalable object repository providing programmers with a general storage module. We present three different software tools based on AdHoc: A parallel cache for Apache, a DSM, a main-memory parallel file system. We also show that these tool exhibit a considerable performance and speedup both in absolute figures and w.r. t. other software tools exploiting the same features. AdHoc (Adaptive Distributed Herd of Object Caches) is a Grid-enabled, fast, scalable object repository providing programmers with a general storage module. We present three different software tools based on AdHoc: A parallel cache for Apache, a DSM, a main-memory parallel file system. We also show that these tool exhibit a considerable performance and speedup both in absolute figures and w.r. t. other software tools exploiting the same features.
Importance of Regional Climate Model Grid Spacing for the Simulation of Heavy Precipitation in the Colorado Headwaters

AbstractSummer and winter daily heavy precipitation events (events above the 97.5th percentile) are analyzed in regional climate simulations with 36-, 12-, and 4-km horizontal grid spacing over the headwaters of the Colorado River. Multiscale evaluations are useful to understand differences across horizontal scales and to evaluate the effects of upscaling finescale processes to coarser-scale features associated with precipitating systems.Only the 4-km model is able to correctly simulate precipitation totals of heavy summertime events. For winter events, results from the 4- and 12-km grid models are similar and outperform the 36-km simulation. The main advantages of the 4-km simulation are the improved spatial mesoscale patterns of heavy precipitation (below ~100 km). However, the 4-km simulation also slightly improves larger-scale patterns of heavy precipitation.
Neogene stratigraphie Mejillones Peninsula geological map architecture and (northern Chile) tectonic based on evolution of the a new 1:50,000

1 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Camerino, Via Gentile III da Varano, 1 62032 Camerino (MC), Italy. Email addresses:claudio.dicelma@unicam.it;gino.cantalamessa@unicam.it 2 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Via S. Maria 53, Pisa, Italy. Email addresses: ragaini@dst.unipi. it; landini@dst.unipi. it 3 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via La Pira 1, Firenze, Italy. Email address : gvalleri@geo.unifi . it
A comparison between statistical and Walrasian approaches: an application to a labour market

The Walrasian construction of the tatonnement constitutes the inner core of the neoclassical paradigm. Despite being a satisfactory one in many cases, there are several real-world phenomena which cannot be critically appraised under this approach. We argue that the Walrasian understanding of the market implicitly limits the scope of problems that can be analysed within the paradigm. The statistical markets approach, first developed by Duncan Foley, aims at offer a distinct perspective when analysing economic interactions through the abandonment of methodological individualism. We draw a critical comparison between the two approaches in the context of a labour market. We express the same market configuration under the two approaches, thus ensuring a higher degree of comparability between the two. We check whether their predictions are similar in a number of cases, stressing those features that exclusively pertain to the statistical approach that, in our opinion, enhance the theoretical appraisal of economic activity in contemporary societies.
Rain detection over land surfaces using passive microwave satellite data

An algorithm is presented for the detection of surface rainfall using passive microwave measurements by satellite radiometers. The technique consists of a two-stage approach to distinguish precipitation signatures from other effects: (1) Contributions from slowly varying parameters (surface type and state) are isolated by comparing observed brightness temperatures to those obtained from previous orbits only containing rain-free observations. (2) Effects of more dynamic parameters, i.e., surface temperature and moisture, are reduced by successive subtraction from the observations by means of principal component analysis. For this purpose, the general signatures of both temperature and moisture variations are deduced from radiative transfer simulations. The fundamentals of this approach are based on a methodology developed by CONNER and PETTY (1998). The technique is applied to TMI observations and compared to co-located measurements of TMI and PR as well as independent techniques over selected regions in Africa, North and South America and India, but less skill over South America. All techniques provide similar rainfall screening skill where our technique showed superior results over Africa, North America, and India. Based on HEIDKE skill scores as a function of rainfall and brightness temperature range, an efcient calibration tool to retrieve near-surface rainfall intensities is provided
A FAST AND FLEXIBLE METHOD FOR META-MAP BUILDING FOR ICP BASED SLAM

Recent developments in LiDAR sensors make mobile mapping fast and cost effective. These sensors generate a large amount of data which in turn improves the coverage and details of the map. Due to the limited range of the sensor, one has to collect a series of scans to build the entire map of the environment. If we have good GNSS coverage, building a map is a well addressed problem. But in an indoor environment, we have limited GNSS reception and an inertial solution, if available, can quickly diverge. In such situations, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is used to generate a navigation solution and map concurrently. SLAM using point clouds possesses a number of computational challenges even with modern hardware due to the shear amount of data. In this paper, we propose two strategies for minimizing the cost of computation and storage when a 3D point cloud is used for navigation and real-time map building. We have used the 3D point cloud generated by Leica Geosystems's Pegasus Backpack which is equipped with Velodyne VLP-16 LiDARs scanners. To improve the speed of the conventional iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm, we propose a point cloud sub-sampling strategy which does not throw away any key features and yet significantly reduces the number of points that needs to be processed and stored. In order to speed up the correspondence finding step, a dual kd-tree and circular buffer architecture is proposed. We have shown that the proposed method can run in real time and has excellent navigation accuracy characteristics.
Global product development: KPI selection support

Selecting key performance indicators in conventional product development is a challenging task for project management and is compound by global product development. Informed from the findings of two in depth case studies conducted with large Danish manufacturing companies, in this paper we develop and test a framework that supports the selection of Leading and Lagging key performance indicators in global product development. The framework provides an alternative approach to design, select and document key performance indicators by incorporating a challenge-oriented approach to selection.
Using pattern-oriented modeling for revealing hidden information: a key for reconciling ecological theory and application

We suggest that the conscious use of information that is “hidden” in distinct structures in nature itself and in data extracted from nature (=pattern) during the process of modeling (=pattern-oriented modeling) can substantially improve models in ecological application and conservation. Observed patterns, such as time-series patterns and spatial patterns of presence/absence in habitat patches, contain a great deal of data on scales, site-history, parameters and processes. Use of these data provides criteria for aggregating the biological information in the model, relates the model explicitly to the relevant scales of the system, facilitates the use of helpful techniques of indirect parameter estimation with independent data, and helps detect underlying ecological processes. Additionally, pattern-oriented models produce comparative predictions that can be tested in the field. We developed a step-by-step protocol for pattern-oriented modeling and illustrate the potential of this protocol by discussing three pattern-oriented population models: (1) a population viability analysis for brown bears (Ursusarctos) in northern Spain using time-series data on females with cubs of the year to adjust unknown model parameters; (2) a savanna model for detecting underlying ecological processes from spatial patterns of tree distribution; and (3) the incidence function model of metapopulation dynamics as an example of process integration and model generalization. We conclude that using the pattern-oriented approach to its full potential will require a major paradigm shift in the strategies of modeling and data collection, and we argue that more emphasis must be placed on observing and documenting relevant patterns in addition to attempts to obtain direct estimates of model parameters.
Zero-Moment Point-Based Biped Robot with Different Walking Patterns

Abstract —This paper addresses three issues of motion planning for zero-moment point (ZMP)-based biped robots. First, three methods have been compared for smooth transition of biped locomotion from the single support phase (SSP) to the double support phase (DSP) and vice versa. All these methods depend on linear pendulum mode (LPM) to predict the trajectory of the center of gravity (COG) of the biped. It has been found that the three methods could give the same motion of the COG for the biped. The second issue is investigation of the foot trajectory with different walking patterns especially during the DSP. The characteristics of foot rotation can improve the stability performance with uniform configurations. Last, a simple algorithm has been proposed to compensate for ZMP deviations due to approximate model of the LPM. The results show that keeping the stance foot flat at beginning of the DSP is necessary for balancing the biped robot. Index Terms —Biped robot, Zero-moment point, Walking pattern generators, Gait cycle, Single support phase, Double support phase.
STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF ISOPROPANOL AND ALKALINE pH-INDUCED TRYPSIN GEL AND THIN FILM AND ITS BIOTECHNOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS

STRUCTURAL INVESTIGATION OF ISOPROPANOL AND ALKALINE pH-INDUCED TRYPSIN GEL AND THIN FILM AND ITS BIOTECHNOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS Trypsin is a biologically and industrially important member of serine protease family. Gelation forms a three dimensional network structure through the interaction of protein molecules among themselves and also with the environment. The aim of the study was the investigation of structural and the functional properties of bovine pancreatic trypsin after gelation and aggregation processes. The phase behaviour of trypsin was determined for different protein concentration, NaOH concentration and CaCl2 concentrations. In addition, the effect of sucrose addition to gelation time was observed. Increasing protein concentrations caused a decrease in gelation time. Increasing NaOH concentrations resulted in a decrease in gelation time. In low CaCl2 concentrations gelation was observed but in high CaCl2 concentrations aggregation was observed. The gels were resolubilized in water. Trypsin stability studies showed that there was a nearly 50% specific activity loss after the gelation process. According to FTIR studies β–sheet structure in 1637 cm band disappeared in trypsin gel and trypsin aggregates. Increases in α–helix structure in 1651 cm in trypsin gel with sucrose and aggregate with and without sucrose were observed. Iodoacetamide was shown to delay in gelation indicating the importance of intermolecular disulfides in the gelation process. The QCM studies showed that the film formed after gelation had absorbtion ability to different gases (benzene, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, dichloromethane, hydrogen peroxide and propanol) and can be used for gas sensing purposes. GI-XRD studies showed that trypsin thin film did not contain any crystalline structures.
The Neuroscience Behind Drugs of Abuse: A PharmD Service-Learning Project

Objective. To evaluate a service-learning program that involved PharmD students at Duquesne University delivering the presentation, “The Neuroscience Behind Drugs of Abuse,” to area middle school and high school students, to dissuade these teenagers from experimenting with illicit drugs. Methods. Student presenters administered exit surveys to students and teachers in the audience to assess the presentations, kept a reflective journal of the presentations and interactions with the student audience, regularly met with faculty mentors to refine the presentation and compare experiences with other students, and wrote a summative paper on an issue pertaining to substance abuse among adolescents. Results. The middle school and high school students were interested in, appreciated, and learned from the presentations. All participating schools (“community partners”) indicated their interest in hosting the presentation again. PharmD students communicated their enthusiasm for the project and recognized the civic con.
Relative NaCl tolerance of rare and endangered coastal plant species in conditions of tissue culture

Three coastal plant species Glaux maritima, Dianthus arenarius spp. arenarius and Linaria loeselii were experimentally tested for NaCl tolerance in conditions of tissue culture. NaCl-induced changes in oxidative enzyme activities and ascorbate peroxidase were measured as indicators of salinity-affected processes. Relatively high NaCl tolerance was found for all of the tested species. Growth and development of G. maritima explants was stimulated by 100 mM NaCl throughout the cultivation period. The stimulation was not due to osmotic effect, as equiosmotic concentration of polyethylene glycol significantly reduced growth of explants. A relationship between NaCl tolerance and NaCl-induced increase in ascorbate peroxidase activity in explant tissues was found. Salinity-induced changes in peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase activity varied in plants with different NaCl tolerance. The results are discussed in respect to putative salinity tolerance reactions.
Royal jelly protects against experimentally-induced ulcerative colitis in adult male albino rats : A histological study

Introduction: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory condition characterized by acute episodes of colonic inflammation. Its pathogenesis is associated with decreased antioxidant capability. Royal Jelly (RJ) is usually used as a complementary therapy in various diseases because of its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects.Aim of the work: To evaluate the protective effect of RJ against acetic acid-induced UC in adult male albino rats.Materials and Methods: Thirty rats were divided equally into 3 groups. Group I was the control group. Group II included rats subjected to intracolonic acetic acid (AA) for induction of UC. Group III 10 rats treated with RJ (250 mg/kg/day orally) for 7 days, thereafter subjected to AA. RJ was administered for another 14 days. Rats were sacrificed after 21 days. Serum glutathione (GSH) and malondialdehyde (MDA) were assessed. Colonic sections were subjected to H&E, Periodic Acid Schiff (PAS), toluidine blue, Mallory's trichrome stains and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) immunohistochemical stain.Results: Group II showed significant decrease in GSH, significant increase in MDA and marked histological alterations in colon. There was a significant decrease in the number of goblet cells, but significant increases in the number of mast cells, area% of collagen fibers and COX-2 immunoexpression compared to the control. In group III, GSH was significantly increased and MDA was significantly decreased compared to group II. The colon showed minimal changes, significant increase in the number of goblet cells, significant reduction in the number of mast cells, collagen deposition and COX-2 immunoreactivity compared to group II. When compared to the control, there was no significant difference regards the serological, histological and morphometric results, except for the number of goblet cells that revealed significant decrease.Conclusion: RJ proven to protect against acetic acid-induced UC in albino rats.