Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative Analysis of Approaches to Consider Rationale of use of Solar Panel Plants for Power Supply of Off-Grid Consumers

The values of solar radiation for different monitoring periods from reference books were compared with calculated values taking into account recent data of meteorological stations. The choice of meteorological stations depended on the differences of their latitude location, their position in the zone of the off-grid power supply, available data in different reference books on solar potential of the stations under study and presence of power plants located in different latitude zones using power resources for energy generation. The Sakha Republic (Yakutia) corresponded to these conditions. The comparative analysis of the initial values of solar potential showed that deviations amounted to 5–10%. The authors compared the results of recalculation of solar radiation values on the inclined surface using two approaches and showed the advantages of these approaches. They also investigated how the application of different approaches affected the optimal power of solar panel plants and calculated the payback periods of their construction. The payback period of the existing solar panel plants on the territory of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) was compared with the calculated one. The application of different methodological approaches at different stages of rationale of solar panel plant construction was efficient for the power supply of off-grid consumers. It was proved that a simplified approach was reasonable for investigations of economic viability of power potential use on the territory under study. Detailed calculations are necessary for the determination of technical and economic parameters of a solar panel plant in a concrete settlement and for the estimation of economic effectiveness of its construction taking into account recent meteorological data.
Determinants of Economic Growth in a Panel of Countries

Growth rates vary enormously across countries over long periods of time. The reason for these variations is a central issue for economic policy, and crosscountry empirical work on this topic has been popular since the early 1990s. The findings from cross-country panel regressions show that the differences in per capita growth rates relate systematically to a set of quantifiable explanatory variables. One effect is a conditional convergence term-the growth rate rises when the initial level of real per capita GDP is low relative to the starting amount of human capital in the forms of educational attainment and health and for given values of other variables that reflect policies, institutions, and national characteristics. For given per capita GDP and human capital, growth depends positively on the rule of law and the investment ratio and negatively on the fertility rate, the ratio of government consumption to GDP, and the inflation rate. Growth increases with favorable movements in the terms of trade and with increased international openness, but the latter effect is surprisingly weak.
The Morphophonemics of Vowel Compensatory Lengthening in Ekegusii

Literature shows that not much is known about the prosodic systems in Ekegusii, a Bantu language spoken by about 2.2 million people in south western Kenya. This paper presents an analysis of vowel compensatory lengthening in Ekegusii. Synchronic evidence for hiatus resolution strategies is provided in order to describe the vowels that are lengthened compensatorily and determine the morphological processes that trigger compensatory lengthening in Ekegusii. Guided by native speaker intuition and triangulation by other native speakers, data in the form of nominals and verbals were elicited from four Ekegusii texts and qualitatively analysed for emerging patterns. Findings revealed that all the seven basic Ekegusii vowels undergo compensatory lengthening when their phonetic environments are altered. Vowel compensatory lengthening is brought out as a surface realisation of the interaction of morphemes through the morphological process of prefixation. The lengthening is further seen as a conspiracy to eliminate ill-formed sequences created by prefixation. The height of the first vowel and whether it is followed by another vowel or a consonant determines how the hiatus situation is eliminated. It is expected that the analyses done in this study will have practical pedagogical implications in the teaching of segmental and suprasegmental aspects of Ekegusii.
3D Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks for Detecting Temporal Irregularities in Videos

In this work, we introduce a novel method for video temporal irregularity detection using the discriminative framework of 3D convolutional generative adversarial networks (3D-GANs). Temporal irregularities indicate unusual video segments. Detecting such irregularities is essential to video analysis applications like video anomaly detection and video summarization. To detect temporal irregularities in videos we need to address two problems: 1) temporal irregularities are difficult to define, different situations have different irregularities, and 2) irregularities are scarce in videos. Therefore, we formulate video temporal irregularity detection as fake data detection via the discriminative framework of a designed 3D-GAN. This new formulation only employs regular videos during the training phase and detects irregularities according to the deviation estimated by the discriminator of 3D-GAN. We take regular videos as real data and construct a 3D-GAN to learn the distribution of regular videos during the training phase. Since testing data contain irregular videos or fake data, whose distribution is different from regular videos or real data, the trained discriminator of our networks is able to detect temporal regularities and irregularities. Experiments show that 3D-GANs outperforms 2D-GANs in temporal irregularity detection, and demonstrate the effectiveness and competitive performance of our approach on anomaly detection datasets.
Structural change in agriculture – an equilibrium approach

Empirical investigations suggest that the farm size distribution in Western European countries has changed over the last decades. This paper analyses the impact of limited sectoral production capacity on entry and exit of farms in the agricultural industry. We present a dynamic stochastic framework which accounts for firm specific uncertainty and captures the close interdependency between exit of firms and fluctuating entry costs. In an equilibrium firms base their entry/exit decision on its expectations on future output prices and entry costs. We illustrate that the output price is higher and inefficient firms tend to stay longer in the industry if capacity constraints are binding at the sector level.
Evaluating a Parametrization of the Coupling in a Fast-Slow System using the Wasserstein Distance

using the Wasserstein Distance Gabriele Vissio1,2 and Valerio Lucarini2,3,4 1International Max Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling, Hamburg, Germany 2CEN, Meteorological Institute, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany 3Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Reading, Reading, UK 4Walker Institute for Climate System Research, University of Reading, Reading, UK Correspondence: Gabriele Vissio (gabriele.vissio@mpimet.mpg.de)
History of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions Derived from Observations in Mountaintop Clouds in Puerto Rico

ABSTRACTAerosol particles in the atmosphere play a fundamental role in the formation of cloud droplets. Moreover, cloud-processing of aerosols is an important component of the changes observed in aerosol composition and size. In this study we present measurements of the physical and optical properties of interstitial and droplet residual particles in clouds made at a tropical mountain site. The measurements were made with the Aerosol Particle Spectrometer with Polarization Detection (APSPD) that was deployed at the mountaintop observatory of Pico del Este in Puerto Rico, between 25 August and 10 September, 2011 as part of the Puerto Rico African Dust and Cloud Study (PRADACS). We evaluate the optical signatures and equivalent optical diameters of the sampled aerosol with respect to the origin and meteorological history of the air mass in which the aerosol were embedded. Additionally, the aerosol properties are related to the liquid water content present in the cloud. The origin of the air mass is the most important factor that modulates the optical signatures, volume size distributions and total volume concentration of the sampled aerosol. Differences in the aerosol volume concentrations were significant (up to a factor of 4) between air masses originating in Africa, the North Atlantic and the South Atlantic. In addition, African aerosols have a much higher ratio of residual to interstitial volume concentration, suggesting that these particles had a higher fraction of cloud condensation nuclei than in the other air masses. Finally, the amount of precipitation along the air mass trajectories impacts the aerosol volume concentration, as does the residence time of the air mass in the moist, oceanic boundary layer, below 500 m.
The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: baryon acoustic oscillations in the Fourier space

Here, we analyse the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) signal of the final Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) data release (DR12). Our analysis is performed in Fourier-space, using the power spectrum monopole and quadrupole. The dataset includes 1 198 006 galaxies over the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.75. We divide this dataset into three (overlapping) redshift bins with the effective redshifts zeff = 0.38, 0.51 and 0.61. We demonstrate the reliability of our analysis pipeline using N-body simulations as well as 1000 MultiDark-Patchy mock catalogues, which mimic the BOSS-DR12 target selection. We apply density eld reconstruction to enhance the BAO signal-to-noise ratio. By including the power spectrum quadrupole we can sep-arate the line-of-sight and angular modes, which allows us to constrain the angular diameter distance DA(z) and the Hubble parameter H ( z ) separately. We obtain two independent 1 : 6% and 1 : 5% constraints on DA(z) and 2.9% and 2.3% constraints on H(z) for the low (zeff = 0.38) and high (zeff = 0.61) redshift bin, respectively. We obtain two independent 1% and 0.9% constraints on the angular averaged distance DV(z), when ignoring the Alcock-Paczynski e ect. The detection significance of the BAO signal is ofmore » the order of 8σ (post-reconstruction) for each of the three redshift bins. Our results are in good agreement with the Planck prediction within CDM. This paper is part of a set that analyses the final galaxy clustering dataset from BOSS. The measurements and likelihoods presented here are combined with others in Alam et al. (2016) to produce the final cosmological constraints from BOSS. « less
Mineralogy, geochemistry, and melt evolution of the Kalaymyo peridotite massif in the Indo-Myanmar Ranges (western Myanmar), and tectonic implications

We present new whole-rock major, trace, and platinum group element (PGE) and mineral chemistry data from the Kalaymyo peridotite massif in the central part of the Indo-Myanmar Ranges (western Myanmar) and discuss its mantle melt evolution. The Kalaymyo peridotites consist mainly of harzburgites, which show typical porphyroclastic or coarse-grained equigranular textures. They are composed of olivine (forsterite, Fo = 89.8–90.5), orthopyroxene (enstatite, En 86–91 , wollastonite, Wo 1–4 , ferrosilite, Fs 8–10 ; Mg# = 89.6–91.9), clinopyroxene (En 46–49 Wo 47–50 Fs 3–5 ; Mg# = 90.9–93.6), and spinel (Mg# = 67.1–78.9; Cr# = 13.5–31.5), and have relatively homogeneous whole-rock compositions with Mg#s of 90.1–90.8 and SiO 2 (41.5–43.65 wt%), Al 2 O 3 (1.66–2.66 wt%), and CaO (1.45–2.67 wt%) contents. They display light rare earth element (LREE)–depleted chondrite-normalized (CN) REE patterns with (La/Yb) CN = 0.04–0.21 and (Gd/Yb) CN = 0.40–0.84, and show a slight enrichment from Pr to La with (La/Pr) CN in the range of 0.98–2.36. The Kalaymyo peridotites are characterized by Pd-enriched chondrite-normalized PGE patterns with superchondritic (Pd/Ir) CN ratios (1.15–2.36). Their calculated oxygen fugacities range between the quartz-fayalite-magnetite (QFM) oxygen buffers, QFM–0.57 and QFM+0.90. These mineralogical and geochemical features collectively suggest that the Kalaymyo peridotites represent residual upper mantle rocks after low to moderate degrees (5%–15%) of partial melting at a mid-oceanic ridge environment. The observed enrichment in LREE and Pd was a result of their reactions with enriched mid-oceanic ridge basalt–like melts percolating through these already depleted residual peridotites. The Kalaymyo and other ophiolites in the Indo-Myanmar Ranges therefore represent mid-oceanic ridge–type Tethyan oceanic lithosphere derived from a downgoing plate and accreted into a westward-migrating subduction-accretion system along the eastern margin of India.
Nesti-Net: Normal Estimation for Unstructured 3D Point Clouds Using Convolutional Neural Networks

In this paper, we propose a normal estimation method for unstructured 3D point clouds. This method, called Nesti-Net, builds on a new local point cloud representation which consists of multi-scale point statistics (MuPS), estimated on a local coarse Gaussian grid. This representation is a suitable input to a CNN architecture. The normals are estimated using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture, which relies on a data-driven approach for selecting the optimal scale around each point and encourages sub-network specialization. Interesting insights into the network's resource distribution are provided. The scale prediction significantly improves robustness to different noise levels, point density variations and different levels of detail. We achieve state-of-the-art results on a benchmark synthetic dataset and present qualitative results on real scanned scenes.
ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF EXTERNAL FLOODING TO NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS

The German regulatory body has issued probabilistic safety assessment guidelines, elaborated for a comprehensive integrated safety review of all NPP in operation and containing a newly developed graded approach for the probabilistic assessment of external flooding. Main aspects are explained such as the underlying probabilistic considerations and the mathematical procedures for the calculation of exceedance frequencies. Exemplarily it has been investigated if extreme events such as tsunami waves could be a hazard for NPP at coastal sites in Germany.
High-resolution hard x-ray photoemission investigation of La2-2xSr1+2xMn2O7 (0.30 ≤ x < 0.50): Microscopic phase separation and surface electronic structure of a bilayer colossal magnetoresistance manganite

Photoemission data taken with hard x-ray radiation on cleaved single crystals of the bilayered, colossal magnetoresistant manganite La2−2xSr1+2xMn2O7 (LSMO) with 0.30<=x<0.50 are presented. Making use of the increased bulk sensitivity upon hard x-ray excitation it is shown that the core-level footprint of the electronic structure of the LSMO cleavage surface is identical to that of the bulk. Furthermore, by comparing the core-level shift of the different elements as a function of doping level x, it is shown that microscopic phase separation is unlikely to occur for this particular manganite well above the Curie temperature.
Exploring the Relationship between Economic Growth and Employment in the Czech Republic and Belgium

The paper addresses the issue of employment policy development and implementation in the selected European countries with a similar economic structure and population, namely the Czech Republic and Belgium. The existing approaches used by Ministries of Labour and Social Affairs are based either on d rawing subsidies from EU structural funds within the frameworks of various Operational Programmes or direct job creation that is realized as a consequence of GDP growth. The retrospective observation of the development of such macroeconomic indicators as GDP per capita and employment rate in Belgium reminded us the Okun’s law. This encouraged us to verify the inverted version of the latter and conduct a time series analysis with the use of ARIMA model. The conducted calculations revealed the existence of determined relationship between GDP per capita and employment rate, namely with GDP per capita increase by 2% corresponds to an increase in employment by 1%. This relationship applies vice versa as well. The obtained result may be considered as an extension of the classical Okun’s law theoretical framework. The main aim was to explore these relationships and on the basis of comparative analysis between macroeconomic indicators in the Czech Republic and Belgium to suggest recommendations aimed at development of employment policies.
Financial Constraints and Investment Decisions

In what follows we show that liquidity constraints can affect a firm's investment even when the constraints are not currently effective. This happens when, at any given time, the firm believes that internal finance is likely to become a constraint in the future. In these circumstances, the value of the firm becomes a non-monotonic functional form of the fundamental. Thus, in a dynamic setting, the potential barrier to internal liquidity expansion exerts a global effect on the firm's investment policy, lowering its desired investment profile. Copyright 2001 by Scottish Economic Society.
One Bayesian Network Construction Algorithm Based On Dimensionality Reduction

Bayesian network is a common probabilistic graphical model. It often can achieve good result in expression of uncertainty for knowledge and regular as well as in data classification. Since Bayesian network construction is a relatively complex problem, we propose a Bayesian network construction dimensionality reduction algorithm (BNDR). This algorithm maps a set ofassociated features to an abstract feature node by feature clustering and mapping. It can ensure no loss in accuracy and improve the time efficiency. For more complex industrial scenario, using the BNDR, you can get better practical efficiency.
A DEEP CAMPAIGN TO CHARACTERIZE THE SYNCHRONOUS RADIO/X-RAY MODE SWITCHING OF PSR B0943+10

Observations of PSR B0943+10 with XMM-Newton and the LOFAR, LWA, and Arecibo radio telescopes in 2014 November confirm the synchronous X-ray/radio switching between a radio-bright (B) mode and a radio-quiet (Q) mode, in which the X-ray flux is a factor ∼2.4 higher than in the B-mode. We discovered X-ray pulsations during the B-mode (0.5–2 keV pulsed fraction of (38 ± 5)%) and confirm their presence in the Q-mode, where the pulsed fraction increases with energy from ∼20% to ∼65% at 2 keV. We found marginal evidence for an increase in the X-ray pulsed fraction during the B-mode on a timescale of hours. The X-ray spectrum during the Q-mode requires a fit with either a power law plus blackbody or the sum of two blackbodies, while in the B-mode it is well fit by a single blackbody (a single power law is rejected). In the Q-mode, the pulsed emission has a blackbody spectrum with temperature K and the unpulsed emission is a power law with photon index ∼2.5, while during the B-mode both the pulsed and unpulsed emission can be fit by either a blackbody or a power law with similar values of temperature and index. A Chandra image does not show diffuse X-ray emission. These results support a scenario in which unpulsed non-thermal emission, likely magnetospheric, and pulsed thermal emission from a small polar cap (∼1500 m2) with a non-dipolar field (∼1014 G) are present during both modes and vary in a correlated way. This is broadly consistent with the partially screened gap model and does not necessarily imply global magnetospheric rearrangements to explain the mode switching.
Regulation of Hematopoietic Stem Cells

This thesis is about the regulation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that represent rare cells residing in the bone marrow (BM) of adults. They are multipotent cells that have the capacity to differentiate to all mature cells of the blood system and have the capacity to self-renew, i.e. generate new HSCs. These cells have tremendous therapeutic potential to treat a variety of hematopoietic disorders through blood and marrow transplantation. Today, peripheral blood (PB) is the most commonly used source of HSCs since HSCs can be mobilized from BM to peripheral blood. A third more convenient source for harvesting HSCs is cord blood (CB). However, the yield of HSCs in CB is too low for successful transplantation to most adult patients. Thus, ideally HSCs from CB needs to be increased in number (expanded) ex vivo before transplantation. Expansion of HSCs holds great promise but has been met with limited success due to incomplete knowledge regarding regulation of HSCs. Thus, deeper understanding of the regulatory mechanisms that govern HSCs fate is critical to allow expansion of HSC ex vivo and improve HSC-based therapies. The studies presented in this thesis have identified factors involved in the regulation of HSC fate decisions. In summary, our results demonstrate that increased Smad4 expression, a key component in the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling pathway, sensitizes human CB HSPCs to TGF-β. This leads to growth arrest and apoptosis in vitro and reduced HSPC reconstitution capacity in vivo with no effect on lineage distribution. Together, these findings demonstrate an important role for TGF-β signaling in the regulation of human HSCs in vivo (Article I). Furthermore, with the purpose to investigate and characterize a novel regulator, we have studied the role of pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF) in murine HSCs. Absence of PEDF leads to reduced HSC numbers and impaired engraftment following transplantation. Here, we report for the first time that PEDF is a critical regulatory factor for HSC function (Article II). Last, we have identified the cell surface antigen CD9 as a positive marker for HSCs that provides a simple alternative for stem cell isolation at high purity. Using CD9 as a tool we have dissected heterogeneity within the HSC pool as defined by CD9 expression (Article III). Taken together, we have identified several molecules of human and murine HSCs that are important for stem cell function and fate outcome.
Spatial Distribution of Scorpionism in Ardabil Province, North West of Iran

Background Scorpion stings are the most important health problems in tropical and subtropical countries. The aim of this study was to assess spatial distribution of scorpions and scorpionism in Ardabil province, Iran. Materials and Methods This descriptive–analytic study wascarried out in all 10 counties of Ardabil province, Northwestern Iran.The clinical and demographic data of scorpion sting cases were collected from questionnaires belonging to an 8 year - period of 2010 to 2017. In addition, scorpions were captured using Ultra-violet (UV) light, Pitfall traps and digging methods. After species identification, Arc GIS 9.3 software was applied for mapping spatial distribution of them. Data were analyzed by SPSS software (version 21.0). Results A total of 958 scorpion sting cases were documented. One hundred ninety cases (19.83%) of them were occurred in age group <19 years. Stings were mostly recorded in rural areas after midnight and in the early morning hours from April to September. Also, nocturnal envenomation was observed with the highest frequency (52.50%). A total of 142 scorpions were collected and identified. The collected scorpions belonged to Butidae and Scorpionidae families. They were classified into two genera (Mesobuthus, Scorpio), and two species: Mesobotus eupeus (99.29%), and Scorpio maurus (0.71%). Conclusion There was a high prevalence of scorpion stings in rural areas in Ardabil province among age group less than 19 years old. This finding suggests the necessity of preventive programs for decreasing this higher incidence.