Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ORNSTEIN-UHLENBECK PROCESS WITH NON-GAUSSIAN STRUCTURE

In this paper, we examine the Ornstein‐Uhlenbeck process, i.e. one of the most famous example of continuous time models. Because many studies indicate that the classic version of the Ornstein‐Uhlenbeck process is insucient to description of examined phenomenon, there is a need to consider various modifications of the conventional process. We introduce generalized versions of the classic process in which the standard Brownian motion (Wiener process) is replaced by -stable and variance gamma processes. We analyze similarities and dierences between Gaussian and considered non-Gaussian versions of the Ornstein‐Uhlenbeck process. We point at testing and estimation procedures which we illustrate by simulated data. In order to illustrate theoretical results, we examine a real financial data set in the context of presented methodology.
A Study on Water Sanitation Hygiene & Hand Washing Practices among Mothers Of Under 5 Children Attending Tertiary Care Hospital In Kolkata, India

Safe drinking water, basic sanitation & hygiene is one of the prime concerns globally. Hand washing with soap is a cost effective way of reducing diarrhoeal disease, acute respiratory infections. But a substantial numbers of women in India have lack of access to these basic facilities & poor practice of hand washing. An observational cross sectional study was undertaken among 300 mothers of under 5 children attending NRS Medical College during three months period, to assess the water & sanitation facilities available to them & their knowledge & practices regarding hand washing. 51% of mothers had piped drinking water supply, only 35% purified water, principally by boiling. 20% of participants practice open field defaecation in spite of having access to latrines. Hand washing practice of mothers regarding timing & material used was good. More emphasis must be given to improved access of water, sanitation facilities as well as their utilization & also on hand hygiene behaviour & knowledge of mothers.
Large-scale surface strain gauge for health monitoring of civil structures

Health monitoring of civil structures is a process that aims at diagnosing and localizing structural damages. It is typically conducted by visual inspections, therefore relying vastly on the monitoring frequency and individual judgement of the inspectors. The automation of the monitoring process would be greatly beneficial by increasing life expectancy of civil structures via timely maintenance, thus improving their sustainability. In this paper, we present a sensing method for automatically localizing strain over large surfaces. The sensor consists of several soft capacitors arranged in a matrix form, which can be applied over large areas. Local strains are converted into changes in capacitance among a soft capacitors matrix, permitting damage localization. The proposed sensing method has the fundamental advantage of being inexpensive to apply over large-scale surfaces. which allows local monitoring over large regions, analogous to a biological skin. In addition, its installation is simple, necessitating only limited surface preparation and deployable utilizing off-the-shelf epoxy. Here, we demonstrate the performance of the sensor at measuring static and dynamic strain, and discuss preliminary results from an application on a bridge located in Ames, IA. Results show that the proposed sensor is a promising health monitoring method for diagnosing and localizing strain on a large-scale surface.
Structuring Mortgages for Macroeconomic Stability

We study mortgage design features aimed at stabilizing the macroeconomy. We model overlapping generations of mortgage borrowers and an infinitely lived risk-averse representative mortgage lender. Mortgages are priced using an equilibrium pricing kernel derived from the lender's endogenous consumption. We consider an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) with an option that during recessions allows borrowers to pay only interest on their loan and extend its maturity. We find that this maturity extension option stabilizes consumption growth over the business cycle, shifts defaults to expansions, and is welfare enhancing. The cyclical properties of the maturity extension ARM are attractive to a risk-averse lender so the mortgage can be provided at a relatively low cost.
Molecular Characterization Indian Isolates of Pasteurella multocida Isolated from Buffalo and Cattle in India

Haemorrhagic Septicaemia (HS) is an important disease cattle and buffalo in India. It is by Pasteurella multocida types B: 2, B: 2, 5 and B: 5 and has high mortality rate. Conventional methods of disease diagnosis are time consuming as it requires isolation identification and differentiation through bacteriological techniques. With the advancement of molecular biology Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based techniques has been extensively used for detection and differentiation of pathogens (Shivshankar et al., 2001; Saxena et al., 2006; Shivchandra et al., 2006; Saxena et al., 2004, Nagagapa et al., 2007). HSB-PCR (Haemorrhagic Septicaemia serotype B specific PCR) is rapid, specific and highly sensitive, are being employed efficiently for early detection (Towensend et al., 1998) and differentiation of various isolates of P. multocida B:2 from single and different outbreaks (Biswas et al., 2004). International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 5 Number 9 (2016) pp. 302-310 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Development of a Dung Beetle Robot and Investigation of Its Dung-Rolling Behavior

In this study, a bio-inspired dung beetle robot was developed that emulated the dung rolling motion of the dung beetle. Dung beetles, which can roll objects up to 1000 times their own body weight, are one of the strongest insect species in the world. While the locomotion of many insects, such as cockroaches, inchworms, and butterflies, has been studied widely, the locomotion of dung beetles has rarely been given attention. Here, we report on the development of a dung beetle robot made specifically to investigate dung-rolling behavior and to determine and understand the underlying mechanism. Two versions of the robot were built, and the leg trajectories were carefully designed based on kinematic analysis. Cylinder and ball rolling experiments were conducted, and the results showed that the dung beetle robot could successfully and reliably roll objects. This further suggests that the dung beetle robot, with its current morphology, is capable of reliably rolling dung without the need for complex control strategies.
Composition of particulate organic matter in the southern Chesapeake Bay: Sources and Reactivity

The distribution of two classes of lipid biomarker compounds (fatty acids and sterols) was used in conjunction with several bulk parameters (total suspended solids, chlorophyll a, and particulate carbon and nitrogen concentrations) to examine spatial and temporal variability in the sources of particulate organic matter (POM) important to southern Chesapeake Bay. Based on these geochemical parameters, we found that suspended and sedimentary organic matter in the southern Chesapeake Bay is derived from autochthonous sources including a mixture of fresh and detrital phytoplankton, zooplankton, and bacteria. The dominant factor contributing to temporal variability during our study was phytoplankton productivity. Enrichments in particulate organic carbon, chlorophyll a, total fatty acids, total sterols, and a number of biomarkers specific to phytoplankton sources were found in particles collected from surface (1 m) and deep (1 m above the bottom) portions of the water column at several sites during the spring bloom in March 1996 and during a localized bloom in July 1995. Comparison of sites at the mouths of two tributaries (York and Rappahannock rivers) to southern Chesapeake Bay with two sites located in the bay mainsterm indicates spatial variation in the composition of POM was not significant in this region of the bay. The energetic nature of this region of the Chesapeake Bay most likely contributes to the observed homogeneity. Comparison with biomarker studies conducted in other estuaries suggests the high levels of productivity characteristic of the Chesapeake Bay contribute to high background levels of POM.
Feedback Learning: Automating the Process of Correcting and Completing the Extracted Information

In recent years, with the increasing usage of digital media and advancements in deep learning architectures, most of the paper-based documents have been revolutionized into digital versions. These advancements have helped state-of-the-art information extraction and digital mailroom technologies become progressively efficient. Even though many efficient postInformation Extraction (IE) error rectification methods have been introduced in the recent past to improve the quality of digitized documents. They are still imperfect and they demand improvements in the area of context-based error correction, specifically when we are dealing with the documents involving sensitive information such as invoices. This paper describes the self-correction approach based on the sequence to sequence Neural Machine Translation (NMT) as applied to rectify the incorrectness in the results of any information extraction approach such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). We accomplished this approach by exploiting the concepts of sequence learning with the help of feedback provided during each cycle of training. Finally, we have compared state-of-the-art post-OCR error correction methods with our feedback learning approach. Our empirical results have outperformed state-of-the-art post-OCR error correction methods.
Inorganic carbon fluxes on the Mackenzie Shelf of the Beaufort Sea

Abstract. The Mackenzie Shelf in the southeastern Beaufort Sea is a region that has experienced large changes in the past several decades as warming, sea-ice loss, and increased river discharge have altered carbon cycling. Upwelling and downwelling events are common on the shelf, caused by strong, fluctuating along-shore winds, resulting in cross-shelf Ekman transport, and an alternating estuarine and anti-estuarine circulation. Downwelling carries dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and other remineralization products off the shelf and into the deep basin for possible long-term storage in the world's oceans. Upwelling carries DIC and nutrient-rich waters from the Pacific-origin upper halocline layer (UHL) onto the shelf. Profiles of DIC and total alkalinity (TA) taken in August and September of 2014 are used to investigate the cycling of carbon on the Mackenzie Shelf. The along-shore transport of water and the cross-shelf transport of DIC are quantified using velocity field output from a simulation of the Arctic and Northern Hemisphere Atlantic (ANHA4) configuration of the Nucleus of European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) framework. A strong upwelling event prior to sampling on the Mackenzie Shelf took place, bringing CO 2 -rich (elevated p CO 2 ) water from the UHL onto the shelf bottom. The maximum on-shelf DIC flux was estimated at 16.9×103 mol C d −1 m −2 during the event. The maximum on-shelf transport of DIC through the upwelling event was found to be 65 ± 15 × 10 - 3 Tg C d −1 . TA and the oxygen isotope ratio of water ( δ18 O-H 2 O) are used to examine water-mass distributions in the study area and to investigate the influence of Pacific Water, Mackenzie River freshwater, and sea-ice melt on carbon dynamics and air–sea fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the surface mixed layer. Understanding carbon transfer in this seasonally dynamic environment is key to quantify the importance of Arctic shelf regions to the global carbon cycle and provide a basis for understanding how it will respond to the aforementioned climate-induced changes.
Effect of Visual Display Location on Human Performance in Simulated Laparoscopic Tasks

Laparoscopy is a minimally invasive surgery practiced through small incisions in the body, and requiring the use of long-reach instruments and a camera. Since the video feed is displayed on a monitor, depth perception can be significantly altered, and it is hypothesized that such alterations may depend on the relative position of the monitor with respect to the operator. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between monitor positioning and human performance in laparoscopic tasks. A total of eight male subjects volunteered to perform a variety of simulated laparoscopic tasks including object transfers, precision cutting, and suturing while three different monitor configurations were used (i.e., left, center, and right of the user). Tool trajectory was monitored using a motion capturing system, and task performance was evaluated using human performance quantitative metrics including completion time, depth of penetration, path length, axial speed, and motion smoothness. Results showed that human performance significantly increased when monitor location was centered with respect to the user during precision cutting. Moreover, subjects’ performance decreased when the monitor was placed on their dominant-hand side. The findings of this study suggest ergonomic guidelines for optimizing human performance in simulated and actual laparoscopic tasks. Specifically, placing the monitor in a central position with respect to the user should represent the standard configuration while conducting laparoscopy.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE OR CHILDREN AND CHEATING? JANE AUSTEN'S REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE MATING STRATEGIES

Empirical Literary Darwinists investigate how themes and patterns predicted by human evolutionary theory are evident in fictive works. The current study fills an important gap in this emerging literature, and provides additional information in an area currently underrepresented in human evolutionary research in general. Previous research demonstrated how proper and dark male heroes in British Romantic literature represent high paternal investment and high mating effort strategies, respectively. This past work showed that people infer reproductively relevant behaviors from brief character depictions, and report preferring interactions with these characters in ways that would enhance their own reproductive success. We conducted a similar experiment investigating variation in female reproductive strategies depicted by six female characters in novels written by Jane Austen. Three women were described as loyal, quiet, “mother” figures, while three were described as active, boisterous and untamed “lover” figures. Results show that men recognize the distinct strategies, expressing a preference to marry the “mother” and realizing that the “lover” would be more likely to cheat on them. Women recognize that men would prefer the “lover” for sexual relations, and believe that the “mother” would be better with children and a better mother. Once again, people intuitively recognized reproductively relevant behavior from brief character sketches. Austen’s intuitive evolutionary psychology may be one reason why her works remain so popular and well respected nearly 200 years after their publications.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF A VISITOR NUMBER FORECASTING MODEL FOR THE SHIHMEN RESERVOIR RECREATION AREA USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGY

Visitor number is an important reference for recreation area managers when developing tourism and marketing plans, and recreation area managers must be able to precisely forecast visitor numbers to possess sufficient information for establishing management strategies and plans. Developing an effective and accurate visitor number forecasting model can allow managers to respond in advance and adjust operating and development directions accordingly. Consequently, this study used an artificial neural network (ANN) to establish a visitor number forecasting model. The results of verification using actual data indicated that the absolute relative error (ARE) of the model developed in this study was 17.6565% and the correlation was 0.773. These results show that the model is highly accurate for forecasting visitor number.
D.1.2 – Modular quasi-causal data structures

In large scale systems such as the Internet, replicating data is an essential feature in order to provide availability and fault-tolerance. Attiya and Welch proved that using strong consistency criteria such as atomicity is costly as each operation may need an execution time linear with the latency of the communication network. Weaker consistency criteria like causal consistency and PRAM consistency do not ensure convergence. The different replicas are not guaranteed to converge towards a unique state. Eventual consistency guarantees that all replicas eventually converge when the participants stop updating. However, it fails to fully specify the semantics of the operations on shared objects and requires additional non-intuitive and error-prone distributed specification techniques. In addition existing consistency conditions are usually defined independently from the computing entities (nodes) that manipulate the replicated data; i.e., they do not take into account how computing entities might be linked to one another, or geographically distributed. In this deliverable, we address these issues with two novel contributions. The first contribution proposes a notion of proximity graph between computing nodes. If two nodes are connected in this graph, their operations must satisfy a strong consistency condition, while the operations invoked by other nodes are allowed to satisfy a weaker condition. We use this graph to provide a generic approach to the hybridization of data consistency conditions into the same system. Based on this, we design a distributed algorithm based on this proximity graph, which combines sequential consistency and causal consistency (the resulting condition is called fisheye consistency). The second contribution of this deliverable focuses on improving the limitations of eventual consistency. To this end, we formalize a new consistency criterion, called update consistency, that requires the state of a replicated object to be consistent with a linearization of all the updates. In other words, whereas atomicity imposes a linearization of all of the operations, this criterion imposes this only on updates. Consequently some read operations may return outdated values. Update consistency is stronger than eventual consistency , so we can replace eventually consistent objects with update consistent ones in any program. Finally, we prove that update consistency is universal, in the sense that any object can be implemented under this criterion in a distributed system where any number of nodes may crash.
Orbital angular momentum of mixed vortex beams

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of the single vortex beam depends on its power and wavefront helicity. In the paper, this relation is generalized for mixed vortex beams composed of several coaxial vortices with different topological charges. The presented interference law indicates interference effects of the OAM resulting in local spatial gradients of the OAM density. Description of the OAM of mixed vortex beams is used for demonstration of a possibility to tune the OAM density of a composite vortex field without changing topological charges or intensity distribution. Experimental realization of the OAM tuning is discussed for interference of two focused vortex beams generated by means of a spiral phase mask.
Robustness of mutualistic networks under phenological change and habitat destruction

Climate change can alter species phenologies and therefore disrupt species interactions. Habitat destruction can damage biodiversity and population viability. However, we still know very little about the potential effects of these two factors on the diversity and structure of interaction networks when both act simultaneously. Here we developed a mutualistic metacommunity model to explore the effects of habitat destruction and phenological changes on the diversity and structure of plant–pollinator networks. Using an empirical data set of plant and pollinator interactions and their duration in days, we simulated increasing levels of habitat destruction, under projected scenarios of phenological shifts as well for historically recorded changes in phenologies. On one hand, we found that habitat destruction causes catastrophic collapse in global diversity, as well as inducing alternative states. On the other hand, phenological shifts tend to make interactions weaker, increasing local extinction rates. Together, habitat destruction and phenological changes act synergistically, making metacommunities even more vulnerable to global collapse. Metacommunities are also more vulnerable to collapses under scenarios of historical change, in which phenologies are shortened, not just shifted. Furthermore, connectance and nestedness tends to decrease gradually with habitat destruction before the global collapse. Small phenological shifts can raise connectance slightly, due novel interactions appearing in a few generalist species, but larger shifts always reduce connectance. We conclude that the robustness of mutualistic metacommunities against habitat destruction can be greatly impaired by the weakening of positive interactions that results from the loss of phenological overlap.
Developmental temperature stress and parental identity shape offspring burst swimming performance in sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka)

The persistent effects of embryonic temperature stress and individual parentage on fry swimming performance were examined in a cross-fertilisation experiment using sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). A fixed- velocity test of burst swimming was used to assess the endurance capacity and behavioural performance of individual fry from 10 offspring families incubated at 12, 14 or 16 � C to hatch and then reared through yolk absorption and exogenous feeding stages in a common posthatch environment (average 6.9 � C). Fry burst swim time (BST) was influenced by an interaction between incubation temperature and family identity. Average BST was longer for fry from the 12 � C prehatch treatment compared to 14 and 16 � C, although differences were largely attributable to temperature effects on average fry size. Behavioural observations revealed that fish incubated at 16 � C performed more poorly, having a larger proportion of individuals that required stimulation to swim, fatigued more frequently or were classified as 'nonswimmers'. Within all three incubation temperature treatments, mean BST varied significantly among offspring families, independent of fry mass and length. An interesting relationship was observed within the 16 � C treatment, whereby families with higher survivorship were characterised with lower mean BSTs. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that exposure to high temperatures in early sockeye salmon development can result in persistent, parentally mediated effects on fry performance. As such, these results provide important insight into how elevated temperature events during egg incubation may affect early life history selection processes and survival in stages beyond when the stressor is experienced.
Digital methods contributions to citizen hearings: A techno-anthropological approach to Twitter and technology assessment

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