Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ON THE VARIABILITY OF LIGHTNING CHARACTERISTICS OVER THUNDERSTORM LIFECYCLES

Overall cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning parameters for different regions were studied by several authors in the past (Kitagawa et al., 1962, Rakov et al., 1994, Cooray and Perez, 1994, Cooray and Jayarante, 1994, Saba et al., 2006, Saraiva et al., 2010). Some differences among the lightning parameters were found for different regions, but the cause may rely on the use of different techniques to analyze some characteristics of CG lightning (Rakov et al., 1994). In Saraiva et al. (2010), lightning properties have been measured using the same instrumentation in different geographic locations in an attempt to determine if the key lightning parameters depend on the location and/or the meteorological environment. The study showed that the basic parameters were very similar in Arizona (USA) and São Paulo (Brazil), when averaged over a large number of storms. However, individual storms showed wide variation in lightning parameters both within and between regions. Other works like Orville et al. (2002), Steiger et al. (2002) and Kitterman (1980) showed possible variations of flash multiplicity and thunderstorms type or geographical location, although the authors did not arrive to any conclusions about what the effect could be. The objective of this work is to quantify how selected lightning parameters, such as flash duration and multiplicity, and the duration of the continuing current (CC), evolve over the lifecycles of thunderstorm cells in different geographic locations. The lightning data were acquired using highspeed cameras (up to 8000 frames per second) and Lightning Location System (LLS) reports. Radar imagery was used to identify cells, measure the horizontal extent of the reflectivity at the -10° C level and estimate the total duration of the storms. The LLS’s provide estimates of the 5-minute interval flash rates along with estimates of peak current, multiplicity and stroke locations which are used to characterize the overall cell behavior. The camera data are used to provide more precise measurements of the multiplicity, as well as the flash duration and CC, for a subset of flashes in each cell.
R 2 1 Reduced-Oil DDGS in Swine Diets

CORN DRIED DISTILLERS GRAINS WITH SOLUBLES (DDGS) has become the most popular, economical and widely available alternative feed ingredient for use in U.S. swine diets in all phases of production. Corn DDGS is used primarily as an energy source in swine diets because it contains approximately the same amount of metabolizable energy (ME) as corn. Therefore, DDGS primarily replaces a portion of the corn when added to swine diets, but it also partially replaces some of the soybean meal and inorganic phosphorus. Numerous studies have shown that DDGS can be included up to 30 percent in starter, growernisher, and lactation diets, and up to 50 percent in sow gestation diets, with no detrimental effects on performance. In fact, because of the high diet cost saving potential of DDGS, several swine integrators in the U.S. are evaluating the addition of up to 60 percent reduced-oil DDGS in growingnishing pig diets. However, to successfully achieve acceptable growth performance and carcass characteristics at these high dietary inclusion rates, accurate energy, digestible amino acids and digestible phosphorus values must be determined speci cally for the DDGS source being fed. Fortunately, numerous studies have been conducted to develop equations to predict ME and standardized ileal digestible (SID) amino acid content of reduced-oil DDGS sources to help nutritionists manage variability in precision nutrition swine feeding programs.
Quantitative titrimetric and spectrophotometric determination of dihydroartemisinin based on the redox reaction with cerium ammonium sulphate

Two titrimetric and one sensitive spectrophotometri c methods are developed for the determination of Dihydroartemisinin (DHA) in bulk and in tablets for mulations. Titrimetric method A is based on the gen eration of hydrogen peroxide from DHA in acid medium in situ; which is titrated against cerium ammonium sulphhate to a ferroin sky blue end point. The second titrimetric method B is based on the initial oxidation of the drug DHA with known excess of cerium ammonium sulphate and then b ack titrating the excess oxidant with ferrous ammon ium sulphate using ferroin as an indicator. In the thir d method the drug was oxidized by cerium ammonium s ulphate the oxidant in acid medium with the addition of ferroin i dicator resulting in a sky blue chromogen measur ed spectrophotometrically at 510nm. The amount of ceri um ammonium sulphate used was proportional to the d rug concentration in all three methods proposed. The ap plicable range for both titrimetric method A and B were 220mg/ml and 1-15mg/ml respectively. The calibration graph generated in the spectrophotometric method w as linear obeying Beer’s law in the range of 1.0 10μg/ml. T he method were validated for accuracy, precision, s electivity and successfully applied in the determination DHA table ts brands procured locally with no interference fro m pharmaceutical excipient. Statistically the propose d methods showed good congruence with official phar macopoeial
Development of High Speed Oblique X-ray CT System for Printed Circuit Board

The high density LSI packages such as BGA (ball grid array) and CSP (chip scale package) are being utilized in the car electronics and communications infrastructure products. These products require a high-speed and reliable inspection technique for their solder joints. In this paper, we propose the novel oblique CT system that can non-destructively obtain the 3D image representing solder shape of a printed circuit board at a high-speed. This system obtains the projection images from various directions using the rotational flat panel detector and the fixed mounted open-type X-ray generator that has a wide radiation angle, and it obtains the 3D CT image using the 3D FBP (Filtered Back Projection) method. In addition, we developed the CT reconstruction acceleration unit for our CT system, and thus the 3D CT image was obtained in real time. In the experiments, we analyzed the BGA mounted board and the solder crack that is subjected to a thermal shock. These results demonstrated that the proposed system obtained the information that was able to judge the good or defective situation in soldering.
ffects of the shallow water table on water use of winter wheat and cosystem health : Implications for unlocking the potential of roundwater in the Fergana Valley ( Central Asia ) kmal

This paper analyzes the effect of the shallow water table on water use of the winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) that has replaced alfalfa (Medicago sativa) on the irrigated lands of the Fergana Valley, upstream of the Syrdarya River, in Central Asia. The effect of the shallow water table is investigated using HYDRUS-1D. Numerical simulations show that the contribution of the groundwater to evapotranspiration increases with a rising water table and decreases with increasing irrigation applications. Under irrigation conditions, an increase in the groundwater evapotranspiration is associated mainly with an increase in evaporation loss, causing a buildup of salinity in the crop root zone. Evaporation losses from
NEW MEASUREMENTS OF THE ENERGY BALANCE COMPONENTS IN ŁÓD Ź

The new point of eddy-covariance energy balance measurements have been worked in Łódź since June 2005. As previous system (worked in years 2000-2003) this point is located in the edge of urban core on the tower high above roof level (measurement height 42m). Similar vegetation cover and urban structure cause that the observations show consistent diurnal patterns of energy partitioning between two points. Dry autumn 2005 resulted significant increase of Bowen ratio from ~2 in the summer to ~7 in the end of October.
Chapter 2 Modelling and Simulation of Brain Energy Metabolism : Energy and Parkinson ’ s Disease

The brain is the most energy intensive organ in the human body, so it is to be expected that weaknesses in brain energy metabolism could be a potential factor in neurodegenerative conditions. This is the starting point for a systems biology study of how known Parkinson’s disease (PD) risks can weaken brain energy metabolism and contribute to the preconditions for disease. We begin by describing PD as a multifactorial condition in which energy deficits form a common denominator for known risk factors. This is followed by a description of a mathematical model of brain energy metabolism, and its structural and dynamic properties. Simulations of the model are then used to illustrate how external risk factors, plus structural and dynamic weaknesses in neural energy supplies, particularly affect neurons most vulnerable to PD damage. Taken together, these issues form the basis of an energy-deficit theory for how the preconditions for PD are formed.
Passivity-based Control of Visual Feedback Systems with a Movable Camera

This paper deals with the visual feedback control with a movable camera instead of a fixed camera in the fixed camera configuration. Firstly the brief summary of the visual feedback system with a fixed camera is given with the fundamental representation of a relative rigid body motion. Secondly we construct the new error system in order to enlarge the field of view. Next, we derive the passivity of the visual feedback system. Finally, stability and L2-gain performance analysis are discussed based on the passivity and the dissipative systems theory.
Delineation of Antioxidant Activity of Acetone Extract / Fractions of Fruits of Terminalia chebula Using TA 102 Strain of Salmonella typhimurium

Antimutagenic or antioxidant properties elicited by plant species have many prospective applications in human healthcare. The fruits of Terminalia chebula are a rich source of tannins and other bioactive constituents. In Ayurveda, the plant is known as the “wonder healer” due to its extraordinary power of healing. In the present study, the Ames Salmonella histidine reversion assay was used to assess the antioxidant activity of the acetone extract of T. chebula fruits in the TA 102 strain of Salmonella typhimurium using hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as a direct acting oxidant. The acetone extract was prepared by maceration and further fractionated with ethyl acetate and water. The antioxidant activity of ethyl acetate and water fractions was comparatively higher than that of the crude extract. The ethyl acetate fraction inhibited reduction of H2O2 by 72.48 and 72.83% in co and pre-incubation modes, respectively although there was no difference in coand pre-incubation modes of experimentation. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Treatment and survival of Asian women diagnosed with breast cancer in

Purpose This study aims to examine the differences in characteristics, treatment and survival between Asian and European women diagnosed with stage I–III breast cancer in New Zealand. Methods The studied population included European women and Asian women diagnosed with stage I–III breast cancer between June 2000 and May 2013 identified from the combined Waikato and Auckland Breast Cancer Registers. Characteristics and treatment were compared between Asian and European women. Kaplan–Meier method was used to examine the survival difference. Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) of mortality. Results The studied cohort included 8608 European and 949 Asian women. Asian women were younger, had less comorbidities and were less likely to be obese than European women. Asian women were more likely to have grade 3, larger and HER2+ breast cancers. Asian women were more likely to receive mastectomy, less likely to have reconstruction after mastectomy, less likely to have chemotherapy, less likely to be treated with trastuzumab if HER2+, and had better adherence to endocrine therapy (adjusted odds ratio: 1.54; 95% CI 1.22–1.93). Asian women had better cancer-specific survival and all-cause survival than European women. The adjusted HR of cancer-specific mortality and all-cause mortality were 0.64 (95% CI 0.49–0.82) and 0.68 (95% CI 0.55–0.84), respectively. Conclusions Asian women are more likely to have high grade, larger and HER2+ breast cancers than European women. In spite of this, they had better breast cancer outcomes. Possible explanations include the differences in adherence to endocrine therapy, age, BMI and comorbidities.
Masked trends in field data : nematode population assessments as an example

Ferris, H. and Prot, J.-C. , 1993. Masked trends in field data: nematode population assessments as an example. EcoL Modelling, 69: 243-265. Nematode population and plant yield data from a field experiment were subjected to a range of analyses in an attempt to reveal underlying trends and relationships. Rank correlation proved to be a useful technique for preliminary indication of relationships. Several moving-average techniques were convenient, but introduced significant bias. A robust, locally-weighted regression procedure, although computationally intensive, was the most useful tool for investigating the nature of the relationships among plant-parasitic nematode populations at different densities, and between crop yield and nematode population density. In a field in which cotton and cowpea were grown in rotation, cotton yield was more strongly related to total numbers of plant-parasitic nematodes than it was to numbers of any individual species. There were indications of incompatible or antagonistic associations among the plant-parasitic nematode species, especially at higher population densities. These interactions would not have been revealed by more conventional analyses, and may provide a basis for hypothesis formulation and additional experimentation.
High-availability mechanisms in MySQL

With MySQL, the popular commercial open source relational database engine, been implemented several mechanisms to provide high availability and resistance to hardware failures. This paper looks at ways to build a fault-tolerant MySQL installation by creating a active/passive setup using either MySQL’s standard replication, shared storage or DRBD, the Distributed Replicated Block Device. The paper also takes a look at MySQL Cluster and NDB Storage Engine, which can be used to create a setup with multiple active server instances with redundant, distributed storage for data.
Specification and Verification of the Model of Component and the Model of Function

Due to increasing complexity and competitiveness, automated production systems make, nowadays, higher demands on powerful techniques used to guarantee the requirements of performance and safety. Modeling production systems according to their operating modes allows obtaining a simplified view of these systems. The main difficulty is thus to insure mode changing while guaranteeing the system compatibility and coherence. The solution to this problem relate to modeling methods as well as verification tools. In this paper, we extend our modeling approach of mode handling by introducing adequate verification methods so that the design process will be carried correctly. The Model of Component (MoC) and the Model of Function (MoF) are the basic models of our modeling approach. Thus, we formalize some properties of the MoC and the MoF and we present the corresponding verification methods. We illustrate these methods through an application example. A computer aided tool for specification and verification is developed to illustrate our approach.
9 WIND AND THERMODYNAMIC RETRIEVALS IN A SUPERCELL THUNDERSTORM : ENSEMBLE KALMAN FILTER RESULTS

Atmospheric state estimation on the scales of deep, moist convection will be an important component of operational high-resolution numerical weather prediction. For the foreseeable future, radar measurements of Doppler velocity and reflectivity will continue to be the primary source of volumetric observations on these scales. A variety of techniques have been developed for retrieving the wind, temperature, and moisture fields from radar observations of convective storms (e.g., Armijo 1969; Hane et al. 1981; Brandes 1984; Roux 1985; Ziegler 1985; Shapiro et al. 1995; Sun and Crook 1997, 1998; Weygandt et al. 2002a,b). These retrieval techniques range from direct solutions of limited sets of governing equations to data assimilation methods employing a 3D cloud model. Recently, Snyder et al. (2001) evaluated a relatively new data assimilation method – the ensemble Kalman filter (Evensen 1994; Houtekamer and Mitchell 1998) – for convective scale retrievals and forecasts. In tests on a simulated supercell thunderstorm, the ensemble Kalman filter scheme was stable and was able to reproduce rather accurately the original model fields from a limited number of observations (i.e., perturbed samples from the control simulation) (Snyder et al. 2001). An attractive feature of the ensemble Kalman filter approach is that once a forward model has been developed, relatively little additional coding is necessary to assimilate observations into the model. Therefore, this approach is being considered as an alternative to four-dimensional variational (4DVar) data assimilation, which requires the design and coding of an adjoint model. In this paper, we describe the first attempts to use the ensemble Kalman filter to retrieve the wind, temperature, and other fields from radar observations of a real thunderstorm. For the retrievals, we selected the 17 May 1981 Arcadia, Oklahoma tornadic supercell case, which includes observations from two 10-cm research Doppler radars that were separated by 40 km and that were 25-55 km from the target storm (Dowell and Bluestein 1997). Although our focus here is on the basic issues of using the ensemble Kalman filter on real data, we also plan to evaluate for the same case the strengths and weaknesses of the ensemble Kalman filter compared to the 4DVar method (Crook et al. 2002) and a single-Doppler retrieval method (Weygandt et al. 2002a, b).
Improved Optical Music Recognition (OMR)

This project focuses on identifying and ordering the notes and rests in a given measure of sheet music using a novel approach involving a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Past efforts in the ﬁeld of Optical Music Recognition (OMR) have not taken advantage of neural networks. The best architecture we developed involves feeding proposals of regions containing notes or rests to a CNN then removing conﬂicts in regions identifying the same symbol. We compare our results with a commercial OMR product and achieve similar results.
Effect of different levels of palm oil on the compositional quality of Mozzarella cheese during storage 1

The effect of different levels of palm oil and storage period on quality of Mozzarella cheese was investigated. Four Mozzarella cheese samples were prepared from skim cow milk, standardized at four different levels of palm oil (0, 1, 2 and 3% respectively) and stored at 4C for 40 days. The stored samples were examined for quality changes at 10 days interval. The results indicated that, pH values of Mozzarella cheese decreased while the total solids, fat, ash and titratable acidity were increased significantly (P≤0.05) as levels of palm oil increased and storage time progressed similarly. The total volatile fatty acids of cheese increased significantly (P≤0.05), the increase in sample 3% palm oil (17.0 mls 0.IN NaOH) was significantly (P≤0.05) more compare to sample 0% palm oil (15.0 mls 0.IN NaOH). The formol ripening index also showed increasing trend towards the the end of storage period. Organoleptic quality of mozzarella cheese revealed that, 2% palm oil secured the best (4.60) acceptability, followed by 1% (4.30) and 3% (4.10) and the poorest (3.80) was recorded for sample 0% palm oil. Storage period significantly (P≤0.05) affected the acceptability. The best score was obtained at day 20, while the poorest score at the beginning of the storage period.
ESTIMATE EARTH SURFACE ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION EXPOSURE P . 3 . 3 FROM ISCCP-D 1 AND TOMS MEASUREMENTS

The response of the biosphere to UV radiation is proportional to both instant high and daily-accumulated amounts of UV exposure (Tevini, 1993). Hence, a “snapshot” of UV intensity derived from a single satellite measurement is insufficient to understand the ecological impact of increased surface UV radiation. By combining TOMS total ozone amount with ISCCP-D1 3hourly reflectance measurements, we have obtained global diurnal and daily-integrated UV data over a long period (1983-1994). The inversion algorithm of Li et al. (2000) was employed with a newly developed VIS-UV reflectance conversion model. The data were validated against ground–based measurements at 6 stations. Finally, The effect of diurnal variation in atmospheric opacity, due primarily to cloud, on the estimation of daily erythemal UV doses is investigated with both ground-based and ISCCP-D1 data.
Developing an Ultrasonography Simulator Training Tool : From Platform to Interface to Graphics

This paper presents the development of an Ultrasonography Simulator Training Tool. Ultrasonography is a user-dependent technology requiring Operator motor skills for appropriate probe manipulation and cognitive skills to capture images, acquire situational awareness, and interpret pathology. Three challenges arise in developing a cost-effective simulator training tool that provides physical (hardware) and cognitive (software-visualization) learning experiences: 1) ability to place pathology on a body-like shape (mannequin) without attaching sensors to the surface, 2) ability to track and register pathology and the probe using Commercial Off the Shelf gaming devices, and 3) engaging gaming development software for simulating echo patterns of ultrasound beams from animated 3D surface data in real-time and display a realistic 2D dynamic ultrasound image. With medical collaboration this project produces a prototype real-time, dynamic ultrasound simulator trainer specific for cardiac interrogation. It accommodates extendable dedicated teaching components with additional 3d anatomical data and teaching materials for instructor observation capability.
A HYPOTHESIS ON CONCEALED MAGMATISM IN SOUTHERN TIBET

High-temperature geothermal resources are known along extensional grabens in southern Tibet where a well reached 329.8 oC at a depth of 1850 m and seismological studies detected a partially molten layer at a depth form 15 to 18 km. Nevertheless, neither Plio-Pleistocene volcanoes nor Plio-Pleistocene volcanic rocks are observed at the surface, suggesting that magmatism is concealed without any eruptions in southern Tibet. A new Ar/Ar age, 10 Ma, obtained on a possible volcanic edifice in Yanyi also supports this idea. A special tectonic situation in Tibet is that the deeper zone is constrained by contraction tectonics due to continental collision and the shallower zone is constrained by extension tectonics due to gravity collapse. A hypothesis is proposed on the density and stress profiles on the special tectonic regime in Tibet. According to the analysis, the buoyancy-driven magma rise is constrained by the low density host rocks at the shallow depth due to extension tectonics and the pumping type magma rise is difficult to occur by the high tectonic stress at the greater depth due to contraction tectonics. Therefore, the buoyancy-driven magma bodies could be only expected along the grabens at a several kilometer depth in southern Tibet.