Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Hierarchical Time-Series Forecasting Using Gaussian Processes

Forecasting often involves multiple time-series that are hierarchically organized (e.g., sales by geography). In that case, there is a constraint that the bottom level forecasts add-up to the aggregated ones. Common approaches use traditional forecasting methods to predict all levels in the hierarchy and then reconcile the forecasts to satisfy that constraint. We propose a new algorithm that automatically forecasts multiple hierarchically organized time-series. We introduce a combination of additive Gaussian processes (GPs) with a hierarchical piece-wise linear function to estimate, respectively, the stationary and non-stationary components of the time-series. We define a flexible structure of additive GPs generated by each aggregated group in the hierarchy of the data. This formulation aims to capture the nested information in the hierarchy while avoiding overfitting. We extended the piece-wise linear function to be hierarchical by defining hyperparameters shared across related time-series. From our experiments, our algorithm can estimate hundreds of time-series at once. To work at this scale, the estimation of the posterior distributions of the parameters is performed using mean-field approximation. We validate the proposed method in two different real-world datasets showing its competitiveness when compared to the state-of-the-art approaches. In summary, our method simplifies the process of hierarchical forecasting as no reconciliation is required. It is easily adapted to non-Gaussian likelihoods and multiple or non-integer seasonalities. The fact that it is a Bayesian approach makes modeling uncertainty of the forecasts trivial.
ESTIMATION OF BIODEGRADABLE MATERIAL CONCENTRATIONS IN THE SEWAGE USING IWA ACTIVATED SLUDGE MODEL

Conventional water analysis based on influent sampling holds a limitation of accuracy due to fluctuation of influent composition in time. The study was aimed at identification of the composition from a back-calculation of biological responses in the activated sludge reactor. The developed approach was based on IWA ASM1, which was structured by the influent constituents. A pilot-scale activated sludge 2 reactors (with and without primary settler were installed and operated continuously at Doan Thi Diem Str. , Hue, Vietnam. Focusing on the activated sludge sampled from the reactor with a settler, the soluble biodegradable organic concentration in the influent was calculated. From the state variables in the activated sludge reactor, the organic matter and nitrogen compounds in the influent were calculated.
Economic Burden Attributable to Healthcare-Associated Infections in Tertiary Public Hospitals of Central China: A Multi-Center Case-Control Study

DRGs: Diagnosis Related Groups; HICs: High-income Low- and Middle-income GDP: Gross Domestic Product; aCCI: age-adjusted Charlson ICD: International Classi�cation of Diseases; LOS: Length of stay; NISS: Nosocomial infections surveillance system; IPC: Infection prevention and control; CI: Con�dence Interval; IQR: Interquartile range; ICU: Intensive care unit; CMI: Commercial medical UEBMI: Urban employee basic medical URBMI: Urban basic medical NRCMI: New rural cooperative medical HSIs-PS: Healthcare service items-payment system; SD-PS: Single disease-payment system; DRGs-PPS: Diagnosis Related Groups-prospective payment system; CLABSI: Central line-associated bloodstream infection; VAP: Ventilator -associated CAUTI: Catheter-associated CRE: Carbapenem-resistant while S is for in CSE, CSPa, and
On How Episodic Sediment Supply Influences the Evolution of Channel Morphology, Bedload Transport and Channel Stability in an Experimental Step‐Pool Channel

We present results from flume experiments in which an 8% steep channel with longitudinal width variations and step‐pool morphology was subjected to sediment feed pulses of different magnitude and frequency under constant water discharge. The channel response to these pulses included (a) large bedload transport rates, (b) bed aggradation, (c) fining of the bed surface, and (d) continuous formation and collapse of steps. In between pulses, the bed surface coarsened, and bedload transport rates dropped by several orders of magnitude. Steps continuously formed and collapsed during and shortly after the pulses, but their stability increased when the sediment feed was turned off. High pulse magnitude enhanced step formation, while low pulse frequency (i.e., long interpulse period) enhanced step stability. We back‐calculated the threshold for motion based on measured bedload transport rates and bed shear stress. Changes in the threshold for motion were much larger than changes in bed surface slope. By accounting for energy dissipation through the effective slope based on flow resistance partitioning, a better prediction was obtained. The threshold for motion decreased following sediment pulses then increased immediately after and fluctuated until the next sediment pulse. Our results indicate that longitudinal width variations and episodic sediment supply are primary controls on the evolution of step‐pool channels. Sediment feed magnitude affects mostly morphological changes, while sediment feed frequency controls channel stability.
Study on Land Consolidation Zoning in Hubei Province Based on the Coupling of Neural Network and Cluster Analysis

Land consolidation zoning is the basis of land reclamation planning and provides a precondition for land management work. Zoning is beneficial to scientific decision-making regarding the use of cultivated land resources, and helps to ensure the quality and production level of cultivated land. Hence, land consolidation zoning is of national significance in terms of safeguarding food security. In this paper, an indicator system for land evaluation and zoning is described based on indicators of natural ecological conditions, socioeconomic conditions, land-use conditions, and the land consolidation potential of Hubei province. The application of self-organizing maps and Hierarchical clustering results in 11 and 12 categories, respectively. After comparing and adjusting these results according to the real situation and key points in the land consolidation of each zone, seven integrated categories are determined. Finally, the land consolidation zoning scheme for these seven integrated partitions is shown to be suitable for Hubei province and in line with the real situation. The proposed scheme offers support for land remediation in a coordinated and orderly way, and provides a scientific basis for improving land utilization efficiency and grain production capacity in Hubei province.
REMINERALIZATION POTENTIAL OF FUNCTIONALIZED TRICALCIUM PHOSPHATE VERSUS CASEIN PHOSPHOPEPTIDE- AMORPHOUS CALCIUM PHOSPHATE IN CARIES WHITE SPOT LESIONS “A RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIAL”

Aim: The current study was conducted to compare between reminerlization potential of tri-calcium phosphate plus fluoride versus casein-phosphopeptide/amorphous-calcium phosphate in caries white spot lesions. Methodology: white spot lesions in anterior teeth of post orthodontic patients received randomly two types of remineralizing agents, clinpro tooth creme or MI paste plus, both materials were applied according to the manufacturer’s instructions. White spot lesions were evaluated at base line one month ,3, 6 months follow up periods by two blinded assessors to assess patient satisfaction using VAS score and color change by Vita Easyhshade. Results: One-way ANOVA followed by post-hoc Tukey’s test showed that within each remineralizing agent, there was no statistically significant difference in L* mean values between different evaluation time periods. Independent Student-t test showed that at each evaluation time, there was no statistically significant difference in L* mean values between both remineralizing agents. Two-way ANOVA showed that the two independent variables “remineralizing agent” (P<0.004) and “evaluation time” (P<0.0001) had significant effect on patien. T6 revealed the significantly highest VAS mean values; followed by T3; then T0 and T1 which were statistically similar but at each evaluation time, there was no statistically significant difference in VAS mean values between both reminerailizing agents. Conclusions: 1. Both clinpro tooth creme and mi paste plus has acceptable reminerlaization potential and beneficial effect in masking white spot lesions 2. There is gradual increase in patient satisfaction up to 6 months but it did not reach to the maximum patient satisfaction in masking white spot lesions.
The use of integrative and complementary practices in leprosy-related pain is influenced by sociodemographic, clinical and care factors: A case-control study

Purpose: Study in order to evaluate the use of complementary and integrative practices for leprosy-related pain. Cross-sectional, descriptive and quantitative research carried out at the University Hospital and Medical Specialties Center of Sergipe between February and June 2019. Methods: 170 people with leprosy pain contributed socio-demographic data, resources used for pain relief and factors that hinder adherence to practices. For pain assessment, the Verbal Pain Scales, Descriptor Scales and the tester Douler Neuropathic 4 were used. Results: Neuropathic pain was present in 119 individuals (70.0%) and the pain was assessed as severe in 85 (50.0%). Half of them (86; 50.6%) reported using pain relief: restricted diet (50, 29.4%), exercise (32, 18.8%), massage (31, 18.2%), among others. The factors that most influenced adherence to practices: lack of information (65, 38.2%), economic reasons (36, 21.2%), subjective characteristics (34, 20.0%). Women (45, 60.0%, p = 0.0427), patients with the borderline clinical form of the patient (23, 74.2%, p = 0.0014), reporting a burning sensation on the skin (70, 55, 5%, p = 0.0437), and those monitored by a physiotherapist (11, 84.6%, p = 0.0178) showed greater adherence to the practices. Conclusion: It is concluded that several complementary and integrative practices are being used for pain relief, but sociodemographic, clinical and care factors can influence adherence to these interventions.
Insights into the Restoration of Tributyltin Contaminated Environments Using Marine Bacteria from Portuguese Fishing Ports

Tributyltin (TBT) is an organotin chemical mainly used as biocide in marine antifouling paints. Despite the restrictions and prohibitions on its use, TBT is still an environmental problem due to its extensive application and subsequent release into the environment, being regarded as one of the most toxic chemicals released into the marine ecosystems. Microorganisms inhabiting impacted sites are crucial for their restoration since they have developed mechanisms to tolerate and break down pollutants. Nonetheless, transformation products resulting from the degradation process may still be toxic or, sometimes, even more toxic than the parent compound. The determination of the parent and degradation products by analytical methods, although necessary, may not be ecologically relevant since no information is provided regarding their ecotoxicity. In this study, marine bacteria collected from seven Portuguese fishing ports were isolated and grown in the presence of TBT. Bacteria that exhibited higher growth were used to bioremediate TBT-contaminated waters. The potential of these bacteria as bioremediation agents was evaluated through ecotoxicological assays using the sea snail Gibbula umbilicalis as model organism. Data suggested that some TBT-tolerant bacteria, such as Pseudomonas putida, can reduce the toxicity of TBT contaminated environments. This work contributes to the knowledge of TBT-degrading bacteria.
Thermoregulatory responses during prolonged swimming with a Wetsuit at 25 °C

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of prolonged steady state swimming with a wetsuit, on thermoregulatory and behavioural responses, in water of 25°C. Ten male swimmers participated in two 75-min swim trials, in one wearing a neoprene wetsuit (WS), and the other a conventional swimsuit (SS). The swimming intensity was controlled at 70% of swimmers’ critical velocity (CV). Core (Tcore) and skin (Tsk) temperature, heart rate (HR), and behavioural modulators, were measured before, during and after swimming. A 2-way ANOVA for repeated measures with aFisher’s 2SD test was used for multiple comparisons and a paired t-test with a Tukey post hoc analysis for pre and post measurements at p< 0.05. The results demonstrated an interaction of Tcore (p = 0.039), between time in the water and type of garment worn. Tcore with the WS initially increased until the 45th min and plateaued, while with the SS was continuously decreasing. HR was lower during swimming with the WS and higher with the SS. Thermal sensation and thermal comfort, were more favourable with the WS (p < 0.05). Thus, WS use during prolonged swimming, helped maintain Tcore levels, and improved thermal perceptions, at 25 °C.
Gendered leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: how democracy and representation moderate leadership effectiveness

ABSTRACT This article investigates whether and how gendered leadership makes a difference in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The country-level variances in the initial trajectories provide a unique comparative setting that allows us to examine the link between leadership and performance, moderated by institutional contexts – democracy and representation. Using daily panel data over the first half of the year 2020 across OECD countries, I find that women-led countries show epidemiologic patterns different from male-led countries. The effect of gendered leadership was contingent on the maturity of democracy and the degree of gender representation in both parliament and bureaucracy.
Geomorphological Approach to Cliff Instability in Volcanic Slopes: A Case Study from the Gulf of Naples (Southern Italy)

This paper deals with the problem of cliff stability and proposes a geomorphological zonation of a cliff using a sector of the Posillipo promontory (named the Coroglio-Trentaremi sea cliff, Italy), in the Campi Flegrei coastal area, as a case study. A detailed geological and geomorphological analysis was carried out, by combining field work with analysis of detailed scale topographic maps, orthophoto, and stratigraphical data from deep boreholes. Field and borehole data, together with structural data collected in seven different stations along the cliff, allowed us to derive six geological cross-sections and to reconstruct the complex stratigraphical and structural setting of the cliff. Geomorphological analysis focused on the detection of the main geomorphological factors predisposing to cliff instability. We selected the most significant factors and divided them into two groups: factors influencing landslide intensity and factors influencing cliff instability. Then, by means of a heuristic approach, we constructed a matrix that was used to derive a map showing the geomorphological zonation of the sea cliff. This map may enable to development of a reliable scenario of cliff instability and consequent retreat, which may be useful either to plan intervention works in the most critical areas or to organize prevention plans aimed at risk mitigation.
Acting Agentically at Work: Developing a Short Measure of Professional Agency

Although professional agency has become an increasingly crucial issue in work organizations, investigators lack a brief instrument to measure it. This paper introduces a short measure to explore professional agency at work. Our aim was to shorten the original 17-item Professional Agency Measure, while also exploring its usability for cross-validating questionnaire datasets, and investigating the relationship between professional agency and work engagement. Three dimensions of professional agency emerged, with three items per dimension, across the domains of healthcare, real estate services, and information technology (all within Finland). All the dimensions (Influencing at work, Participation at work, and Negotiating professional identity) showed good reliability. The results further revealed that these dimensions of agency are distinct from, but closely and positively linked to work engagement. In particular, our research offers a reliable, short measure of professional agency that is relevant across professional domains in the Nordic context.
Discovering Overlapping Communities in Dynamic Networks Based on Cascade Information Diffusion

Complex networks in real world are always in the state of evolution and composed of numerous overlapping communities. The discovery of overlapping communities in dynamic networks plays an important role in community detection research. In recent years, methods based on incremental clustering have become increasingly popular owing to their high efficiency. However, few of them can deal with communities that are both overlapping and dynamic. In this article, we propose an incremental clustering algorithm for discovering overlapping communities in dynamic networks. In the initial snapshot of a dynamic network, a degree-based seed selection strategy with concise and effective rules is employed to obtain stable and high-quality overlapping communities, in which the degree of nodes is the number of their neighboring nodes in the subgraph composed of free nodes. In the subsequent snapshots, a four-staged framework based on cascade information diffusion is proposed to update the communities incrementally. In this framework, a cascade information diffusion model is used to simulate the evolution of communities and then the fitness of nodes to the communities they belong to is updated based on node similarity. Experiments conducted on both real-world and artificial datasets show that the proposed algorithm can discover overlapping communities in dynamic networks effectively and outperform to the state-of-art baseline algorithms.
Synthesis of Large-Scale Instant IoT Networks

While most networks have long lifetimes, temporary network infrastructure is often useful for special events, pop-up retail, or disaster response. An instant IoT network is one that is rapidly constructed, used for a few days, then dismantled. We consider the synthesis of instant IoT networks in urban settings. This synthesis problem must satisfy complex and competing constraints: sensor coverage, line-of-sight visibility, and network connectivity. The central challenge in our synthesis problem is quickly scaling to large regions while producing cost-effective solutions. We explore two qualitatively different representations of the synthesis problems using satisfiability modulo convex optimization (SMC), and mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). The former is more expressive, for our problem, than the latter, but is less well-suited for solving optimization problems like ours. We show how to express our network synthesis in these frameworks. To scale to problem sizes beyond what these frameworks are capable of, we develop a hierarchical synthesis technique that independently synthesizes networks in sub-regions of the deployment area, then combines these. We find that, while MILP outperforms SMC in some settings for smaller problem sizes, the fact that SMC's expressivity matches our problem ensures that it uniformly generates better quality solutions at larger problem sizes.
Gene Editing in Prunus Spp.: The Challenge of Adapting Regular Gene Transfer Procedures for Precision Breeding

Successfully gene editing (GE) in Prunus spp. has been delayed due to its woody nature presenting additional difficulties in both, proper regeneration protocols and designing efficient gene transfer techniques. The availability of adequate, single cell culture techniques for GE such as protoplast regeneration, is a limiting step for the genus and for this reason, the improvement of regular regeneration protocols and finding more efficient techniques for the delivery of the “editing reagents” seem to be a reasonable strategy to incorporate GE in the genus. During the last 10 years, we have focused our efforts optimizing some previous regeneration and gene transfer procedures for Japanese plum (P. salicina), sweet cherry (P. avium) and peach (P. persica) to incorporate them into a GE technology on these species. In parallel, delivery techniques for the CRISPR/Cas9 editing components, i.e., guide RNA (gRNA) and Cas9, have been developed with the aim of improving gene targeting efficiencies. In that line, using DNA virus-based replicons provides a significant improvement, as their replicational release from their carriers enables their enhanced expression. Here, we make a brief overview of the tissue culture and regeneration protocols we have developed for P. salicina, P. avium and P. persica, and then we proceed to describe the use of Bean yellow dwarf virus (BeYDV)-derived replicon vectors to express the editing reagents in vivo and to evaluate their editing capability on individuals derived from Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer experiments of these species. We show part of our characterization assays using new BeYDV-derived vectors harboring multiple gRNAs, the Cas9 gene, and the green fluorescent protein reporter gene. We also describe a dedicated genome analysis tool, by which gRNA pairs can be designed to address gene deletions of the target genes and to predict off-target sequences. Finally, as an example, we show the general results describing GE of the peach TERMINAL FLOWER 1 gene and some preliminary characterizations of these materials.
Ship detection from coastal surveillance videos via an ensemble Canny-Gaussian-morphology framework

Abstract Coastal surveillance video helps officials to obtain on-site visual information on maritime traffic situations, which benefits building up the maritime transportation detection infrastructure. The previous ship detection methods focused on detecting distant small ships in maritime videos, with less attention paid to the task of ship detection from coastal surveillance video. To address this challenge, a novel framework is proposed to detect ships from coastal maritime images in three typical traffic situations in three consecutive steps. First the Canny detector is introduced to determine the potential ship edges in each maritime frame. Then, the self-adaptive Gaussian descriptor is employed to accurately rule out noisy edges. Finally, the morphology operator is developed to link the detected separated edges to connected ship contours. The model's performance is tested under three typical maritime traffic situations. The experimental results show that the proposed ship detector achieved satisfactory performance (in terms of precision, accuracy and time cost) compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms. The findings of the study offer the potential of providing real-time visual traffic information to maritime regulators, which is crucial for the development of intelligent maritime transportation.