Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geodesic Normal Coordinate-Based Manifold Filtering for Target Detection

Recently, the matrix information geometry (MIG) detector, which characterizes sample data as a Hermitian positive definite (HPD) matrix located on the HPD manifold, was rapidly developed and demonstrated extraordinary performance in numerous applications, especially in heterogeneous clutter backgrounds. In this article, the geodesic normal coordinate (GNC)-based manifold filter is proposed to improve the detection performance of the MIG detector in strong clutter backgrounds. Using the GNC system, the distribution of target echoes and clutter on the high-dimensional manifold can be visualized and analyzed. Moreover, by exploiting the information concerning the distribution of matrices, the manifold filter is proposed to enhance target echoes and suppress strong clutter. Then, the manifold-filter-based MIG detector is designed, and its superiority is theoretically analyzed. The actual clutter data are utilized to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed manifold filter achieves a signal-to-clutter ratio improvement of more than 5 dB over the existing MIG detectors.
Taking Decisions Too Seriously: Why Maximizers Often Get Mired in Choices

Maximizing is a topic that has received significant attention from researchers and corporate organizations alike. Although extensive previous research has explored how maximizers behave in a decision scenario, a fundamental question remains about why they prefer a larger assortment regardless of whether the decisions are important or not. This study attempts to explore the underlying mechanism of this phenomenon. Four surveys were conducted, and participants from Mturk or Credamo online platforms were recruited (N = 922). The maximizing tendency was measured by either maximization scale or maximizing tendency scale, and perceived importance and preference for a large assortment were measured in different decision scenarios. Across four studies, we find that maximizers perceive the same decision as more important than satisficers (Study 1), and perceived importance serves as the mechanism underlying the maximizers’ preference for a large assortment (Study 2). In other words, in maximizers’ perceptions and interpretations, even seemingly trivial decisions are important enough to spend great effort on a large assortment. We additionally identified a boundary condition for the effect – cost salience (Studies 3a and 3b). These findings illustrate a pioneering empirical exploration of the difference in the way maximizers and satisficers perceive their decision importance and the reason for maximizers’ preference for a large assortment.
Local tourism effects of HSR in small cities: three synthetic control case studies

ABSTRACT The inauguration of high-speed rail (HSR) services is often associated with renewed expectations of revitalization of local tourism activity in sparsely populated regions. However, the empirical literature on the actual ex-post effects of this transport mode is scarce. This paper contributes to this line of research by estimating the causal impact of the HSR on the number of visitors in three small cities located in low-density areas in Spain. Our results, using the synthetic control method, robustly show that the ex-post causal effects of the HSR on overnight visitors are insignificant and, if any, they seem to exert a negative influence rather than a positive contribution. This suggests that smaller cities should be very cautious about the short-run expected impacts of transport improvements, and policy makers and planners should be aware of the actual contribution of such investments in their assessment of the net social benefits of HSR projects.
A Machine Learning-Based Optimization Approach for Pre-Copy Live Virtual Machine Migration

Organizations widely use cloud computing to outsource their computing needs. One crucial issue of cloud computing is that services must be available to clients at all times. However, the cloud services may be temporarily unavailable due to maintenance of the cloud infrastructure, load balancing of services, defense against cyber attacks, power management, proactive fault tolerance, or resource usage. The unavailability of cloud services impacts negatively on the business model of cloud providers. One solution to tackle the service unavailability is Live Virtual Machine Migration (LVM), that is, moving virtual machines (VMs) from the source host machine to the destination host without disrupting the running application. Pre-copy memory migration is a common LVM approach used in most networked systems such as the cloud. The main difficulty with this approach is the high rate of frequently updating memory pages, referred to as "dirty pages. Transferring these updated or dirty pages during the pre-copy migration approach prolongs the total migration time. After a predefined iteration, the pre-copy approach enters the stop-and-copy phase and transfers the remaining memory pages. If the remaining pages are huge, the downtime or service unavailability will be very high -resulting in a negative impact on the availability of the running services. To minimize such service downtime, it is critical to find an optimal time to migrate a virtual machine in the pre-copy approach. To address the issue, this paper proposes a machine learning-based method to optimize pre-copy migration. It has mainly three stages (i) Feature selection (ii) Model generation and (iii) Application of the proposed model in pre-copy migration. The experiment results show that our proposed model outperforms other machine learning models in terms of prediction accuracy and it significantly reduces downtime or service unavailability during the migration process.
Design and Fabrication of Paddy Cleaning Machine

Agriculture is the largest single industry in the world, and seed production is an important segment of this industry. Seed, as it comes from the field, contains various contaminants like weed seeds, other crop seeds, and such inert material as stems, leaves, broken seed, and dirt. Therefore, cleaning of paddy is required. Additionally, non-availability of appropriate paddy cleaning machine at reasonable price is one of the major constraints for initiating small/medium scale manufacture of paddy cleaning machine. Therefore, this working is undertaken to develop an efficient low cost paddy cleaner in view of improving the quality paddy cleaning using conventional methods. To check the performance of the paddy cleaner, a total volume of 1.15kg of uncleaned paddy consisting of 1kg of paddy, 0.05kg of dust and 0.1kg of sand was fed into the hopper. After the cleaning process, the output obtained was 1.022kg of cleaned paddy with 0.994kg of paddy, 0.021kg of dust and 0.006kg of sand. Hence the performance of this machine is very efficient where most of the paddy produced is cleaned.
Prestressed concrete: The present attitude of the ministry of works

It has been pointed out that any attempt to build up a code of practice would tend to restrict individual designers and so hinder development. One cannot but agree that the individualism of European designers has been responsible for nearly all the progress in reinforced concrete, but in New Zealand there are not sufficient opportunities for specialization. For this reason, codes of practice do become rather more necessary for the guidance of average designing and construction engineers. If the tentative standards which these notes will suggest are considered too restrictive no doubt this will be made plain in the discussion.
Concentration‐dependent response of soil parameters and functions to trifluoroacetic acid

Despite growing environmental concerns about perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) worldwide, the ultra‐short‐chain PFAS, for example, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), have been largely neglected in the context of soil pollution. Given the persistence and increasing occurrence of TFA in the soil environment, accumulated TFA could impact soil properties and functions. Therefore, we investigated the effects of a wide range of concentrations of TFA (0.001–100 μg g−1) on chemical, physical and biological indicators of soil health, using a six‐week microcosm experiment. Our results showed that TFA treatments decreased soil pH, sulphate content, soil respiration, litter decomposition and bacterial abundance, and increased phosphate content (p < 0.05). These effects were observed for TFA concentrations ≥1 μg g−1. As expected, because of its strong acidity, TFA decreased soil pH, and this change likely contributed to effects on other soil parameters and functions, for example, reducing bacterial abundance and soluble nutrients. However, importantly, TFA clearly also affected soil parameters at concentrations at which soil pH was not changed. Soil aggregation, fungal abundance, and enzyme activities were not affected by TFA in this study. Considering the current reported environmental levels of TFA of <2.4 μg g−1, only litter decomposition would be affected under current field conditions. Our data also show that future accumulation of higher concentrations, or hotspots of TFA, will likely negatively affect soils with similar properties as our test soil. Thus, we demonstrated that microbial processes can be impacted by the accumulation of the ‘forever chemical’ TFA in the tested sandy, low organic matter soil.
The Influence of DNA Extraction Methods on Species Identification Results of Seafood Products

In terms of species identification, the ultimate aim of extracting DNA is the subsequent amplification of the selected marker; therefore, the quality and quantity of the extracted DNA must be sufficient for PCR-based methods. The purpose of this study is to compare five DNA extraction methods according to the parameters of quantity, quality and simplicity, among others, in order to determine the most suitable method for identification for Cephalopoda, Gadiformes and Pleuronectiformes. The Wizard DNA clean-up system kit (Promega), MPure-12TM automated nucleic acid purification system (MP Biomedicals), Chelex 100 resin (Biorad), DNeasy blood and tissue kit (Qiagen) and a swab method were examined. The obtained DNA quantity was determined by fluorescence, and quality was evaluated with ratios of absorbance of A260/A280 and A260/A230 by agarose gel visualization of the extracts and by analyzing the success of PCR amplifications of 720 bp fragments of cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) for Cephalopods and 465 bp fragments of cytochrome b for Gadiformes and Pleuronectiformes. Statistical results confirmed significant differences between the tested methods according to yield, efficiency and purity and no significant differences with respect to the species employed. The best yields were obtained with the Wizard kit, whereas other methods stand out in terms of their affordability (Chelex) and automation (Mpure).
The Mediating Effect of Physical Fitness and Dietary Intake on the Relationship of Physical Activity with Body Composition in High School Students

We aimed to investigate the relationship between physical activity (PA) and health-related physical fitness (PF) in adolescents and analyze if the associations of PA with body composition (BC) in adolescents are mediated by physical fitness or energy intake (EI). The participants were 236 adolescents (140 girls 16.1 ± 0.92 years). Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) was assessed using the Yo-YoITL1, and the push-up test was used to evaluate strength. BCs were measured on an electrical weight scale. Triaxial accelerometers were used to determine PA levels and moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) levels. EI was estimated with a validated questionnaire. Mediation effects were estimated using bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals and were deemed significant if zero was not included in the intervals. The mediation analysis revealed an indirect effect of MVPA only through PF on BC, specifically through CRF on body fat (B = −0.0146, 95% BootCI (−0.0219; −0.0076)) and on lean body mass (B = 0.0096, 95% BootCI (0.0049; 0.0152)), as well as through upper body strength on body fat (B = −0.012, 95% BootCI (−0.0171; −0.0072)) and on lean body mass (B = 0.0059, 95% BootCI (0.003; 0.0095)). These results suggest that PA of at least a moderate intensity is relevant to BC and health-related PF in adolescents, regardless of the EI.
Agreement between Two Swept-Source Optical Coherence Tomography Biometers and a Partial Coherence Interferometer

Purpose To evaluate the level of agreement between ANTERION (Heidelberg Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany), OA-2000 (Tomey, Nagoya, Japan), and IOLMaster 500 (Carl Zeiss AG, Jena, Germany). Methods Fifty-one eyes of 51 patients were included in the study. Flat keratometry (K) and steep K, vector component of astigmatism (Jackson cross-cylinder at 0° and 90° [J0] and Jackson cross-cylinder at 45° and 135° [J45]), anterior chamber depth, and axial length were compared using the three devices. Repeated measures analysis of variance was conducted to compare the mean values of the biometrics. Pearson correlation test was conducted to analyze the correlations of the measured values, and a Bland-Altman plot was used to assess the agreement between the three devices. The predicted intraocular lens power of each device was compared to the others using the SRK/T, Haigis, Barrett Universal II, and Kane formulas. Results All K values measured using ANTERION were flatter than those of other instruments. However, good agreement was observed for flat K (ANTERION - OA-2000; 95% limits of agreement [LoA], 0.86 diopters [D]) and steep K (ANTERION - OA-2000; 95% LoA, 0.93 D) and OA-2000 - IOLMaster 500 (95% LoA, 0.93 D). J0 and J45 vector components of astigmatism were not statistically different; however, the agreements were poor between the devices (95% LoA ≥1.97 D). Anterior chamber depth values of ANTERION and OA-2000 were interchangeable (95% LoA, 0.15 mm). The axial length showed a high agreement (95% LoA ≤0.17 mm) among the three devices. The predicted intraocular lens powers of the three devices were not interchangeable regardless of formulas (95% LoA ≥1.04 D). Conclusions Significant differences in ocular biometrics were observed between ANTERION and the other two devices. This study demonstrated that only axial length showed good agreement among devices.
Field investigation of novel self-sensing asphalt pavement for weigh-in-motion sensing

The integration of weigh-in-motion (WIM) sensors within highways or bridge structural health monitoring systems is becoming increasingly popular to ensure structural integrity and users safety. Compared to standard technologies, smart self-sensing materials and systems present a simpler sensing setup, a longer service life, and increased durability against environmental effects. Field deployment of such technologies requires characterization and design optimization for realistic scales. This paper presents a field investigation of the vehicle load-sensing capabilities of a newly developed low-cost, eco-friendly and high durability smart composite paving material. The novel contributions of the work include the design and installation of a full-scale sensing pavement section and of the sensing hardware and software using tailored low-cost electronics and a learning algorithm for vehicle load estimation. The outcomes of the research demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system for traffic monitoring of infrastructures and WIM sensing by estimating the gross weight of passing trucks within a 20% error during an autonomous sensing period of two months.
Simulation and fabrication of silicon oxynitride array waveguide grating for optical communication

Silicon oxynitride (SiOxNy) grown by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) is well-suited for the realized application of high contrast waveguides for the range of the refractive index can be largely tuned (1.45-2.0). SiOxNy AWG device with 3% refractive index difference (Δ) and the transmission spectrum of AWG's device indicated the insertion loss, crosstalk and side-lobe were lower than -3 dB, -15 dB and -40 dB, respectively, by 3D beam propagation method were investigated in this study. The chip size of the whole device is smaller than 4 cm x 1.5 cm, and the highest coupling loss of the rib waveguide for single mode fiber was about -1.6 dB. Based on the simulation results, the device can be really fabricated by thin-film deposition, photo-lithography and dry-etching processes. Microstructural evolution analysis revealed over-supplied silicon atoms would form silicon nano-crystallized structure in the amorphous optical films for lower N2O/(N2+NH3) ratio, and resulted in higher refractive index and extinction coefficient. From the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) features of rib-type silicon oxynitride waveguide, we found the profile, and the roughness of side- and top-walls of waveguide reached to the manufacturing criteria of AWG device. We had successfully fabricated an AWG device with 8 channels and 1.6nm channel spacing, and the coupling loss and propagation loss were about -2.24 dB and -0.15 dB/cm, respectively. While, the AWG device performances need further improvements by modified design, uniform thin film deposition, and accurate dry-etching processes.
Effects of substituting melon seed peel meal for yellow maize meal on haematological and serum biochemical indices in Clarias gariepinus fingerlings

A feeding trial was conducted to assess the effects of substituting melon (Citrullus lanatus) seed peel meal (MSPM) for yellow maize meal on the haematological and serum biochemical indices of Clarias gariepinus fingerlings for 56 days. Fifteen fish each were stocked in eighteen plastic bowls (50-litre capacity) and fed six iso-nitrogenous diets at graded MSPM levels of 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% twice daily at 5% of their body weight. Selected haematological and serum biochemical parameters were determined by standard procedures and data analyzed using analysis of variance at p = 0.05. The results showed that the fish fed with diet 6 had the highest PCV (45.00%), Hb (15.03 gm/100mL), RBC (4.81 x 1012/mL), Platelets (34.73 x 109/mL), MCH (31.32 μg/mL), total protein (74.00%) and albumin (40.00%). The fish fed with diet 4 had the highest WBC (12.68×109/mL) and globulin (35.00%) while those fed diet 3 had the least WBC (9.36×109/mL) and globulin (33.00%). Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) increased and varied (p < 0.05) between 10.00 - 30.67 mg/dL and 11.00 –17.05 mg/dL respectively. Blood glucose significantly (p < 0.05) increased in fish fed with diets 3 to 6. This study revealed that melon seed peel meal can replace yellow maize meal in the diet of C. gariepinus without adverse effects on its haematological and serum biochemical indices.
A New Discovery of Argon Functioning in Plants: Regulation of Salinity Tolerance

Argon, a non-polar molecule, easily diffuses into deeper tissue and interacts with larger proteins, protein cavities, or even receptors. Some of the biological effects of argon, notably its activity as an antioxidant, have been revealed in animals. However, whether and how argon influences plant physiology remains elusive. Here, we provide the first report that argon can enable plants to cope with salinity toxicity. Considering the convenience of the application, argon gas was dissolved into water (argon-rich water (ARW)) to investigate the argon’s functioning in phenotypes of alfalfa seed germination and seedling growth upon salinity stress. The biochemical evidence showed that NaCl-decreased α/β-amylase activities were abolished by the application of ARW. The qPCR experiments confirmed that ARW increased NHX1 (Na+/H+ antiporter) transcript and decreased SKOR (responsible for root-to-shoot translocation of K+) mRNA abundance, the latter of which could be used to explain the lower net K+ efflux and higher K accumulation. Subsequent results using non-invasive micro-test technology showed that the argon-intensified net Na+ efflux and its reduced Na accumulation resulted in a lower Na+/K+ ratio. NaCl-triggered redox imbalance and oxidative stress were impaired by ARW, as confirmed by histochemical and confocal analyses, and increased antioxidant defense was also detected. Combined with the pot experiments in a greenhouse, the above results clearly demonstrated that argon can enable plants to cope with salinity toxicity via reestablishing ion and redox homeostasis. To our knowledge, this is the first report to address the function of argon in plant physiology, and together these findings might open a new window for the study of argon biology in plant kingdoms.
Would you like your receipt? : Sustainability perspectives of consumer paper receipts

This report researches and analyses the sustainability perspectives of paper receipts, focusing on the economical, environmental and social aspects using a qualitative research method and by simultaneously drawing inspiration from the Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) model. The result section is conducted by using a literature review where a combination of previously used sources within my masters program is analysed and by reviewing articles and statistics in the search engine at the Uppsala University e-library database. The overall research purpose, to assess the sustainability of consumer receipts, is achieved by using the concept of sustainable development as the theoretical framework. This report suggests that there are some sustainability concerns with the current consumption of the traditional paper receipt, mainly in the context of environmental and social considerations. Three different alternatives to the traditional paper receipt are furthermore discussed as examples of potential routes forward. Two of the alternatives, electronic receipts and introducing a charge on paper receipts, are arguably the two most sustainable alternatives to regular paper receipts. The third alternative cannot be perceived as equally sustainable since “BPA/Bisphenol-free” receipts contain other chemicals equivalently hazardous to humans and the environment.
Fabrication of large free-standing nanostructured zone plates for focusing a Bose-Einstein condensate

Matter wave optics is a fascinating area of physics touching many scientific disciplines ranging from microscopy to high precision gravity measurements. One of the major recent breakthroughs was the realization in 1995 of a Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms a perfectly coherent atom source. Bose-Einstein condensates have been studied intensely over the last couple of decades, but surprisingly little work has been done on manipulation of the condensates using their de Broglie wavelength. The original aim of this thesis was to create a Fresnel zone plate for the first focusing of a Bose-Einstein condensate via the de Broglie wavelength. The zone plate design parameters were chosen to fit the experimental setup of Prof. Zeilinger in Vienna, currently one of the only setups in the world where this experiment can be carried out. The original aim of the thesis has been fulfilled. A free-standing silicon nitride zone plate with a diameter of 5 mm, and a focal length of 60 cm for a wavelength of 100 nm has been successfully created, tested with laser light and is now ready for experiments in Vienna. The zone plate has 44 zones, a 2 mm central stop and the width of the outermost zone is 12 μm. To the best of our knowledge this zone plate has a diameter more than an order of magnitude larger than any zone plates previously created for the focusing of matter waves. The much larger wavelength of the Bose-Einstein condensate compared to previous experiments meant that previously used fabrication methods could not be applied and new methods had to be developed as part of this thesis. Aluminium wet etching, dry-etching of SiO2 and silicon nitride using only a PMMA mask and quantified wet-etching of silicon were all established for the first time at the UiB NanoStructures laboratory as part of this thesis.