Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Creating a Satellite-Based Record of Tropospheric Ozone

The TES retrieval algorithm has been applied to IASI radiances. We compare the retrieved ozone profiles with ozone sonde profiles for mid-latitudes for the year 2008. We find a positive bias in the IASI ozone profiles in the UTLS region of up to 22 %. The spatial coverage of the IASI instrument allows sampling of effectively the same air mass with several IASI scenes simultaneously. Comparisons of the root-mean-square of an ensemble of IASI profiles to theoretical errors indicate that the measurement noise and the interference of temperature and water vapour on the retrieval together mostly explain the empirically derived random errors. The total degrees of freedom for signal of the retrieval for ozone are 3.1 +/- 0.2 and the tropospheric degrees of freedom are 1.0 +/- 0.2 for the described cases. IASI ozone profiles agree within the error bars with coincident ozone profiles derived from a TES stare sequence for the ozone sonde station at Bratt's Lake (50.2 deg N, 104.7 deg W).
The development and application of strategic adaptive management within South African National Parks

Adaptive management is an appealing approach to deal with inherent uncertainty in complex and interactive social-ecological systems (Holling 2001; Rogers 2003). In short, adaptive management is about learning-by-doing in a scientific way, adapting behaviour and overall direction as new information becomes available. It provides a structured way for improving our incomplete understanding through an iterative process of setting objectives, implementing policy decisions and evaluating the implications of their outcomes for future decision making.
Bryophyte colonisation in experimental microcosms: the role of nutrients, defoliation and vascular vegetation

A three-year multi-factorial microcosm experiment simulating fertilisation, defoliation and the composition of vascular vegetation in a dry grassland succession was used to test four hypotheses concerning the establishment and survival of bryophytes in grassland vegetation. H 1 : bryophyte cover may be used to predict bryophyte species richness. H 2 : bryophyte richness is suppressed at high nutrient levels and promoted by defoliation of vascular plants. H 3 : species richness of bryophytes is influenced by the species composition of the vascular vegetation. H 4 : bryophyte species richness is negatively correlated with vascular plant biomass. The relationship between bryophyte richness and bryophyte cover was found to follow the classical species-area richness curve. Bryophyte species richness responded positively to defoliation and negatively to fertilisation. The species composition of vascular vegetation had no significant effect on bryophyte richness. Bryophyte species richness was lower at high vascular plant biomass and vascular plant dry weight above 400 g m - 2 appeared fatal to bryophytes. At high nutrient levels, defoliation increased bryophyte richness, but defoliation did not fully compensate for the negative effect of fertilisation. The study reinforces the concern for short lived shuttle bryophytes in the agricultural landscape.
Rational Addiction to Audiovisual Narratives: an Analysis of Broadcasting and Consumption of Fiction in France

TV-series have traditionally been watched and monetized through broadcasting on free-to-air and pay television. They are increasingly consumed via on-demand platforms and catch-up services. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the narrative structure of TV-series inﬂuences their consumption and causes delinearization. We use data from M´ediam´etrie , reporting the live and catch-up audience for all movies and series aired between 8 p.m and 10 p.m on free and public French TV-channels, from 2011 to 2016. We show that when the story takes several episodes or seasons to develop, consumers are more likely to watch the program on alternative platforms or catch-up . We provide evidence that the consumption of such programs follows a model of rational addiction, where current consumption is inﬂuenced by its past and future values. These results allow us to explain recent changes in the industrial organization of the French free-to-air television market. We show how the narrative structure of TV-series can explain broadcasters’ competitive strategies. These results can have important policy implications, as broadcasters are one of the main investors in the production of audiovisual content in France. These results provide evidence of strong habits or addictive eﬀects in the consumption of TV series. This holds in the case of independent-episodes series but these eﬀects are signiﬁcantly lower than when the narrative develops over the whole season.
Preliminary Identification of Lactate Dehydrogenase Inhibitors towards Anticancer Drug Development

In tumor cells undergoing rapid cellular division, significantly increased quantities of lactic acid are produced in an anaerobic respiration via the Cori cycle. While this produces a lower of the pH in the local environment, the hepatic conversion of the generated lactate into glucose places a huge energy demand on the body which makes the patient weaker and results in cancer cachexia. Thus, instead of producing acetyl CoA, the dividing tumorous cells synthesize lactic acid catalyzed by the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). LDH’s involvement in tumor initiation and metabolism primarily involves a state of fermentative glycolysis catalyzed by the A form of the enzyme which allows tumorous cells convert the majority of their glucose stores into lactate even under anaerobic conditions which invariably shifts the utilization of glucose metabolites from simple energy production to an active promotion of accelerated cell growth and replication. This makes LDH a vital target for drug development. And in the present work a combination of virtual screening, database scouting and biophysical analysis of binding site properties have been employed in analysis the interaction of about 30,000 compounds with LDH. Using a synthetic NADH inhibitor, as a reference, only four compounds were found to demonstrate stronger binding features than the inhibitor. This preliminary in silicon screening represents the foundational effort in a cancer drug discovery project aimed at generating specific inhibitors of LDH for use in cancer therapeutics.
Suppression of Coronal Mass Ejections in Active Stars by an Overlying Large-scale Magnetic Field: A Numerical Study

We present results from a set of numerical simulations aimed at exploring the mechanism of coronal mass ejection (CME) suppression in active stars by an overlying large-scale magnetic field. We use a state-of-the-art 3D magnetohydrodynamic code that considers a self-consistent coupling between an Alfvén wave-driven stellar wind solution, and a first-principles CME model based on the eruption of a flux rope anchored to a mixed-polarity region. By replicating the driving conditions used in simulations of strong solar CMEs, we show that a large-scale dipolar magnetic field of 75 G is able to fully confine eruptions within the stellar corona. Our simulations also consider CMEs exceeding the magnetic energy used in solar studies, which are able to escape the large-scale magnetic field confinement. The analysis includes a qualitative and quantitative description of the simulated CMEs and their dynamics, which reveals a drastic reduction of the radial speed caused by the overlying magnetic field. With the aid of recent observational studies, we place our numerical results in the context of solar and stellar flaring events. In this way, we find that this particular large-scale magnetic field configuration establishes a suppression threshold around ∼3 × 1032 erg in the CME kinetic energy. Extending the solar flare-CME relations to other stars, such CME kinetic energies could be typically achieved during erupting flaring events with total energies larger than 6 × 1032 erg (GOES class ∼X70).
Sol-Gel Synthesis , Structural and Optical Properties of Cerium-Doped Strontium

In this study, an aqueous sol-gel synthesis method was applied for the preparation of strontium aluminate (Sr3Al2O6 and SrAl12O19) ceramics. The structural properties of these compounds were investigated by X-ray powder diffraction analysis. The obtained data were analysed employing Rietveld method. Optical properties of sol-gel derived ceriumdoped strontium aluminates showed emission maxima at 480 nm and 317 nm for Sr3Al2O6:Ce and SrAl12O19:Ce, respectively.
A Review on Intelligent Transport System using Drowsiness Detection of Driver

: Driver drowsiness is the major problem in the world, which is leading to numerous road accidents. It affects the human brain which reduces driver capacity on driving for safety. Such factors may increase errors which will leads to more human deaths. Drowsy driver detection system can detect the drowsiness using hybrid features and reduce the accidents based on the status of the driver. The system is developed by collecting the video by camera placed on the dashboard and continuously monitoring driver for different reactions like continuous eye blinking, yawning frequently and also head nodding. Main goal of this system is not to disturb the driver that is to develop a non-intrusive system. The detection system should start when the vehicle starts without the knowledge of the driver and must be able for handling in different condition such as in day, night, with sunglass and without sunglass etc. We have conducted the survey of various designs on drowsiness detection technique to reduce the number of accidents.
On the sunflower spiral: acoustical holography results pdfkeywords=Phased array, acoustical holography, HELS, SONAH

ABSTRACT The sunflower spiral is an element of a family of well understood patterns which appear in many biological settings, e.g. in the formation of leaves or seeds in a flower. We study a multi-purpose phased array whose microphones are arranged in this particular form. More precisely, we investigate the influence of this arrangement on both beamforming and holography results. To render (near-field) acoustical holography possible given the shape of the array, we choose both, a Helmholtz equation least-squares and statistically optimized NAH approach. Our considerations include the analysis of experimental data of a vibrating plate: the results of both holography methods are compared against a laser vibrometer measurement.
The viability of co-active fuzzy inference system model for monthly reference evapotranspiration estimation: case study of Uttarakhand State

Reference evapotranspiration (ETo) is a major component of the hydrological cycle linking the irrigation water requirement and planning and management of water resources. In this research, the potential of co-active neuro-fuzzy inference system (CANFIS) was investigated against the multilayer perceptron neural network (MLPNN), radial basis neural network (RBNN), self-organizing map neural network (SOMNN) and multiple linear regression (MLR) to estimate the monthly ETo at Pantnagar and Ranichauri stations, located in the foothills of Indian central Himalayas of Uttarakhand State, India. The significant combination of input variables for implemented techniques was decided by the Gamma test (GT). The results obtained by CANFIS models were compared with MLPNN, RBNN, SOMNN and MLR models based on performance evaluation indicators and visual inspection using line, scatter and Taylor plots for both the stations. The results of comparison revealed that CANFIS-5/CANFIS-9 models (RMSE = 0.0978/0.1394, SI = 0.0261/0.0475, COE = 0.9963/0.9846, PCC = 0.9982/0.9942 and WI = 0.9991/0.9959) with three and five input variables provide superior results for estimating monthly ETo at Pantnagar and Ranichauri stations, respectively. Also, the adopted modelling strategy can build a truthful expert intelligent system for estimating the monthly ETo at the study stations.
A New Adaptive Slicing Algorithm Based on Slice Contour Reconstruction in Layered Manufacturing Process

Introduction and background: This paper addresses the problem of reducing build times in Layered Manufacturing (LM) technologies in which 3D parts are constructed by depositing a series of planar layers. Most commercial LM systems use a multi-stage processing pipeline [4]: 3D modeling, Data conversion, Pre-processing, Model slicing, Part deposition and Post-processing. The 3D model of the mechanical product is created by a CAD system and converted into a tessellated format (STL). The quality of the prototype is determined by several key process variables including the part orientation, the layer thickness, the deposition speed and environmental noise such as temperature and humidity variations. The quality may be measured in terms of the part strength, dimensional accuracy, surface nish, build time or the material utilization. Common approaches to achieve better quality include [6]: (i) optimal part orientation, (ii) slicing strategy, (iii) process parameter optimization, (iv) post-treatment. The determination of the slice thickness is a key parameter involving the trade-o between part accuracy and deposition time. Due to stair-step (or staircase) errors, smaller slice thickness leads to lower surface roughness but requires at higher build time. Several researchers have explored methods for Adaptive Slicing, [13] in which they allow for using layers of di erent slice thickness at di erent heights along the build direction. However, a big issue with this approach is that practically no existing RP machine provides this option. In this paper, we explore an approach for improving the layer accuracy even when layer thickness remains constant over the build. Di erent measures have been used to estimate build errors: volumetric deviation[10], cusp height [5], surface roughness[14], area deviation[19], circumference di erence and gravity deviation[12]. Among these, the rst three approaches are most popular in adaptive slicing. Intuitively, the volumetric error is de ned as the volume di erence between the built-up part VP and the original CAD model VO; it is computed at each layer and summed over the entire part, using Eqn. (2.1).
Influential Opinion in South African Tweets: Should business continuously monitor customer sentiment and its potential influence in Twitter?

This research demonstrates that the degree of customer‐brand/business interaction depends on the type of business being analysed. For some South African companies there is sufficient interaction in Twitter to warrant adapting their public relations processes to allow for continuously monitoring Twitter. This kind of monitoring is especially relevant during significant events a company experiences. In order to answer the posed question managers must, firstly, determine if this technology is applicable to their business in the South African context, secondly, they must have a basic technical understanding of concepts like Sentiment and Influence Analysis, thirdly, they must be able to determine how opinionated and influential their customers are in social media, fourthly, they must be able to determine who the influencers in their business social ecosystem are, fifthly, they must be able to analyse their competitors social ecosystem in order to compare their own to their competitors and lastly, they must have an understanding of how to adapt their business processes to cater for this additional source of customer data. This research analysed the South African Twitter stream for a period of 30 days. From the analyses 3 South African companies in the same industry were selected to do a sentiment and influence analysis on. This was done in order to get a better understanding of the nuances and quality of real world Twitter data, originating from South African, for similar companies, in order to answer the question posed. Before determining which companies to use, the entire dataset of 21 million Tweets was searched using a list of publically listed South African company names and a list of popular South African brand names. This was done in order to find a sample of companies that have a high degree of customer‐brand/business interaction in Twitter. The results were analysed quantitatively and 3 companies, that had a sufficient degree of interaction, were chosen to do further analysis on. For each of these companies a qualitative analysis of the discovered Tweets was done in order to determine the nature of the sentiment and influence being expressed. Based on the insights discovered from this analysis, advice is offered to help companies understand what the implications on their business are, of incorporating this kind of analysis into their existing public relations processes. Advice is offered to companies wishing to outsource this kind of data analysis, in terms of what sort of questions they should be asking vendors of this kind of data analysis. Doing this research also laid the groundwork for the creation of an experimental model that could be used to quantitatively measure the Influential Opinion of a set of Tweets.
An Investigation of Self-Directed Learning Skills among the Iranian Agricultural Students (Case of Agricultural College, Tarbiat Modares University)

The readiness for self-directed learning among the students and its role in improving life-long learning skills has been emphasized recently. The present descriptive study aimed at analyzing the self-directed learning skills possessed by the students of agriculture at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran (N= 414). As far as methodological design is concerned, the study has utilized Krejcie and Morgan’s (1970) table, and stratified random sampling technique, through which 201 students were selected as sample (n= 201). From this, 193 students filled and returned the research instrument (Return rate= 96%). A set of open ended questionnaires was developed, which was considered to be the main tool for the collection of required data. This prepared questionnaire was validated by a panel of experts of agricultural extension and education, subsequently; its reliability was also checked and confirmed by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient (0.78-0.83). The results showed that the students could perceive the range of ‘moderate to high’ for all dimensions underlying self-directed learning skills. Based upon another part of results, the students with different educational levels, majors and grade point averages had different self-directed learning skills. It can be concluded that readiness for self-directed learning is a crucial factor for all students and should be taken into consideration in education planning with regard to each field. It is necessary to state that the educational system seeks to develop such skills to promote self-management, selfmonitoring, and self-motivating as well as SDL skills among the students.
Masters Thesis: Docking of Underwater Vehicle

Allseas engineering BV is an offshore company that uses underwater vehicles for conducting subsea 1 operations. The two primary classification of such underwater vehicles are: Remote operated vehicle (ROV) and Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). As the names suggests, the former requires a human operator to control and the latter is a fully autonomous vehicle. As of now, the company (and most of the offshore industries) customarily use ROVs. In the recent past, Allseas was inclined to use AUVs as a measure of reducing the operational costs and conducted tests runs with an industrial grade AUV. But the test runs were unsuccessful and the plan of using such an AUV was dropped. It was concluded that the major problem was in launch and recovery operations of the AUV, which were conducted from the deck of a ship. To be specific, the disturbances from the ship’s thrusters, ocean currents, and waves, were proved to be impossible to compensate for by the AUV during the launch and recovery operations. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate on underwater docking capabilities of AUVs, which not only eliminates the launch and recovery issues but improves AUV’s overall operational capabilities. In this thesis, a docking problem is formulated and the solution to the problem covers the following aspects: modeling of AUV, motion control of AUV, and guidance strategies. For the motion control, an appropriate model of the vehicle is necessary. Various models used in the literature were studied which include: 6 degree of freedom (DOF) non-linear model, 3-DOF horizontal plane model, and 3-DOF vertical plane model. As an example, a 6-DOF non-linear model of ARIES AUV from literature was decoupled into the respective 3-DOF models. These models are used for controller design and docking strategies. A linear parameter varying (LPV) frame work based, gain scheduled feedback and feed forward controllers were developed for the control of vehicle heading and depth. The controller design involves the following steps: Firstly, a third order QuasiLPV control plant for heading and depth were derived from horizontal and vertical plane models. Then, linear controllers (gains) were designed for fixed values of scheduling variables. Based on the dimension of the scheduling variables, a stability preserving interpolation of these gains were performed 1Processes or operations occurring beneath the surface of sea. Master of Science Thesis Anand Sundaresan
Brief History of Usability Attributes , Benefits , Challenges of Cloud Computing Environment

In the field of service computing, cloud computing provides a scalable services and promising delivery platform. Although the specific future of cloud computing is hard to pin, but it has a vital impact in the present world of Information Technology and digitalized business world. The more usable the cloud is the more efficient will be its task performance and making a cloud usable is Usability. The usability aspect is an essential criterion to design services in an interactive way to support the task performance efficiently, effectively and with least navigational time, which increases user satisfaction level. Usability experts have carried out various usability evaluation techniques and metrics (or user satisfaction metrics) which play a significant role in cloud computing environment. Thus usability aspect became essential for designing cloud services and more interactive to support the user at their work. This paper mainly addresses the various usability techniques and evaluation assessment and issues that may be considered while evaluating the usability of cloud services.
Impact of Energy Band Structure on CNTFET Output Characteristics

The electronic band structure of the nanotube is a main factor controlling the device performance of Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistors (CNTFETs). In this paper four different calculation models of the band structure of a zig zag carbon nanotube are used to demonstrate the influence of the electronic band structure on device characteristics. The results of calculation of the energy band structure by the different methods are then analyzed.