Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EcH2O-iso 1.0: water isotopes and age tracking in a process-based, distributed ecohydrological model

Abstract. We introduce EcH2O-iso, a new development of the physically based, fully distributed ecohydrological model EcH2O where the tracking of water isotopic tracers (2H and 18O) and age has been incorporated. EcH2O-iso is evaluated at a montane, low-energy experimental catchment in northern Scotland using 16 independent isotope time series from various landscape positions and compartments, encompassing soil water, groundwater, stream water, and plant xylem. The simulation results show consistent isotopic ranges and temporal variability (seasonal and higher frequency) across the soil profile at most sites (especially on hillslopes), broad model–data agreement in heather xylem, and consistent deuterium dynamics in stream water and in groundwater. Since EcH2O-iso was calibrated only using hydrometric and energy flux datasets, tracking water composition provides a truly independent validation of the physical basis of the model for successfully capturing catchment hydrological functioning, both in terms of the celerity in energy propagation shaping the hydrological response (e.g. runoff generation under prevailing hydraulic gradients) and flow velocities of water molecules (e.g. in consistent tracer concentrations at given locations and times). Additionally, we show that the spatially distributed formulation of EcH2O-iso has the potential to quantitatively link water stores and fluxes with spatiotemporal patterns of isotope ratios and water ages. However, our case study also highlights model–data discrepancies in some compartments, such as an over-dampened variability in groundwater and stream water lc-excess, and over-fractionated riparian topsoils. The adopted minimalistic framework, without site-specific parameterisation of isotopes and age tracking, allows us to learn from these mismatches in further model development and benchmarking needs, while taking into account the idiosyncracies of our study catchment. Notably, we suggest that more advanced conceptualisation of soil water mixing and of plant water use would be needed to reproduce some of the observed patterns. Balancing the need for basic hypothesis testing with that of improved simulations of catchment dynamics for a range of applications (e.g. plant water use under changing environmental conditions, water quality issues, and calibration-derived estimates of landscape characteristics), further work could also benefit from including isotope-based calibration.
Probabilistic Neural Network and Word Embedding for Sentiment Analysis

In the present days, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an attractive area of research along with numerous practicable purposes and vigorous subject matters and tasks, such as, understand speech, natural language, diagnose medicine and support basic research. In this study deep learning (DL) techniques, i.e. Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) and Word Embedding (WE) will be used for sentiment analysis. The entire proposed framework will be divided into three phases: (a) normalization, (b) word vectorization, and (c) execution of proposed model.
HADatAc: A Framework for Scientific Data Integration using Ontologies

To investigate the cause and progression of a phenomenon, such as chronic disease, it is essential to collect a wide variety of data that together explains the complex interplay of different factors, e.g., genetic, lifestyle, environmental and social. Sharing information between studies is therefore of paramount importance. However, data that needs to be analyzed must be appropriately integrated, conceptually aligned, and harmonized. This implies that data collection must be done either in a sufficiently similar or a sufficiently transparent way in order to support meaningful synthesis from different studies. We will demonstrate how the Human-Aware Data Acquisition (HADatAc) framework integrates and harmonizes data from multiple scientific studies and thus how to use it in interdisciplinary science investigations.
To Study the Factors of Consumer Involvement in Fashion Clothing

The today's trend is towards material possessions as criterion of success. Thus they use fashion clothing as a medium of expressing their self and also fit into the social environment. Fashion involvement is a consumer's perceived importance of fashion clothing. It is important to investigate fashion involvement to understand consumer behavior and to develop improved marketing strategies. The purpose of this study is to measure the fashion clothing involvement of teenagers, youth and adults consumers selected in Bangalore city. The research tries to explore the relationship between demographic characteristics and the factors of fashion involvement. The research focuses on fashion clothing because it is closely related to daily life, having essential, communicative, and psychological functions in consumers' lives. The sample size for the study chosen was 301. Samples were selected from schools, colleges, IT companies, government organizations and business establishments in Bangalore city. Factor analysis using principle components with varimax rotation was used. Also, the KMO and Bartlett's test was conducted in order to reveal interactions and relationship between different variables. The study shows, below 30 years customers tend to perform higher fashion clothing involvement. Correlation Analysis showed that there was significant positive correlation between purchase knowledge, confidence, social consciousness, materialism and the factors of fashion clothing involvement.
Working Paper Series 2018 / 008 Negative Parental Selection and Children ’ s Noncognitive Skills : Evidence from the Fall of the Berlin Wall

We investigate the effects of negative parental selection and social upheaval on noncognitive skills. Our identification strategy exploits the steep drop in fertility that occurred in the former East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the socialist regime. Our measures of noncognitive skills are the Big 5 personality traits available in the German Socioeconomic Panel. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, with women and men from the former West Germany as a control group, we find that women born in East Germany in the three-year period immediately following the fall the Berlin Wall are less conscientious and less extraverted compared to women born right before this period. The results are robust to the inclusion of individual characteristics that are plausible correlates of noncognitive skills and parental characteristics, and a consideration of possible stress experienced by parents and transmitted to children. These findings have strong policy implications given the link between noncognitive skills and labor market and health outcomes reported in recent literature. In contrast, we find no detrimental effects of negative parental selection on the noncognitive skills of men born in East Germany during the same time period.
Structural Properties and Macrophage Activation of Cell Wall Polysaccharides from the Fruiting Bodies of Hericium erinaceus

In this study, water-soluble and alkali-soluble cell wall polysaccharides were obtained from fruiting body extracted residual micropowders of Hericium erinaceus, harvested at seven different growing stages. The structural properties and in vitro immunity activities of cell wall polysaccharides extracted successively by hot water and sodium hydroxide solution were studied, and the results indicated that the yield and content of polysaccharides increased during the reproductive growth stage and decreased with the maturity of the fruiting body. Water-soluble cell wall polysaccharides mainly composed of glucose and galactose at a molar ratio of 3.4–14:1.0, and also contained a small ratio of glucuronic acid. The alkali-soluble cell wall polysaccharides were glucans with lower molecular weight and higher macrophage activation activity in vitro than water-soluble ones. Our findings suggest that the growth stages (H4 and H5) are suitable for harvesting H. erinaceus fruiting bodies with higher cell wall polysaccharide yield and functional benefits.
Oxygen metabolism of intertidal oyster reefs measured by aquatic eddy covariance

Oyster reef restoration is pursued at numerous places worldwide, yet little is known about how ecosystem function changes as these reefs develop. In this study, we used the noninvasive aquatic eddy covariance technique to measure the in situ oxygen flux of 4 intertidal sites on the Virginia (USA) coast: a natural oyster reef, 2 restoration reefs, and a mudflat. Oyster densities of the 3 reefs were 350, 295, and 186 oysters m−2. Mean summer values of nighttime oxygen flux (FluxDARK) were −488, −428, −300, and −56 mmol m−2 d−1 over the natural reef, 2 restoration reefs, and mudflat, respectively. All 4 sites had smaller daytime vs. nighttime oxygen uptake, with mean summer differences between FluxDARK and FluxLIGHT of 360, 250, 239, and 27 mmol m−2 d−1. Light was an important short-term driver of daytime reef oxygen flux due to its effect on microalgal photosynthesis. All 3 oyster reefs were significantly heterotrophic, with summer net ecosystem metabolism values ranging from −157 to −298 mmol m−2 d−1. FluxDARK values were similar across the 3 reefs when normalized by density, with values between −1.8 and −2.3 mmol m−2 d−1 oyster−1. This study represents the most detailed measurements to date of in situ oyster reef oxygen flux, and shows that benthic microalgae can significantly impact reef oxygen dynamics. FluxDARK values scale with oyster density, and consequently can be used as a metric for reef restoration success.
An Efficient Fault Tolerance Technique for Through-Silicon-Vias in 3-D ICs

Three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D-ICs) based on Through-Silicon-Vias (TSVs) interconnection technology appeared as a viable solution to overcome problems of cost, reliability, yield and stacking area. In order to be commercially feasible, the 3D-IC yield must be as high as possible, which requires a tested and reparable TSVs. To overpass this challenge, an integration of interconnect built-in self-test (IBIST) methodology for 3D-IC is given in the aims to test the defectives TSVs. Once the interconnection has been tested, the result extracted from IBIST initiate the repairing defectives TSVs based on the built-in self-repair (BISR) structure. This paper superposed two fault tolerance techniques in particularly the redundant TSV and the time division multiplexing access (TDMA) in case of multi defectives TSV. This novel repair architecture increase the yield of 3D-ICs in a high failure rate. It leads to 100% reparability for 30% failure rate. A parallel processing approach of the proposed structure is presented to accelerate the test and repair operations. Achieved experimental results with the proposed methodology scheme show a good performance in terms of repair rate and yield.
Wage Rate Determinants : A Survey Addressing Christian Minority in Lahore , Pakistan

Socioeconomic status of people in a society is mainly affected by the human capital returns, higher returns mean better living standard and for higher wage returns it is important to address wage rate determinants. First time in Pakistan a research study is carried out to tackle with wage rate determinants at Christian community level. Mincerian (1974) human capital earning function is estimated by taking data of 403 households, yielded an accomplished sample of 614 wage employee. Results elaborate positive and significant association of years of schooling and experience with wage rate. Male gender earns higher returns as compared to female Christian workers while estimated coefficients highlights higher private returns. Attained results affirm serious policy implications for the economic and social improvement and growth strategy of Christian minority of Lahore Pakistan. Every household should focus on education as primary goal for their children especially for girls. Private and public schools should be opened in Christian colonies, financial assistance should be provided and job going parents should be accommodated with educational allowances for their offsprings. Under higher private returns private sector should fix reasonable quota for Christians. Lastly to encourage female Christian workers, social allowances and educational training centers should be introduced.
Mass fluctuations suggest different functions of bimodal foraging trips in a central-place forager

The function of a foraging trip (self-feeding or provisioning) and the spatial distribution of food resources play an essential role in foraging decisions of central-place foragers. Theory predicts that if foraging patches optimal for self-feeding and provisioning are spatially separated, a bimodal foraging strategy should often be favored. A bimodal foraging strategy involves the alternation of short feeding trips (ST) to collect food for offspring with long trips (LT) for self-feeding, as previously described in some procellariiform seabirds. Using an automated passage recording and weighing system, we tested whether the bimodal trip pattern observed in little auks (Alle alle), a small Arctic alcid, reflects a corresponding functional difference of bimodal foraging trips. We found that the body mass trajectory of little auks was closely related to their bimodal trip pattern. Little auks weighed significantly more returning from a LT and lost an equivalent amount of mass during subsequent ST. The decision to start a LT was not directly related to body mass but seemed to depend on the individual strategy of a bird. During LT, birds likely utilized distant foraging areas suitable for self-feeding while relying on near-shore areas during ST. These results support predictions of recent foraging models and indicate that the function of long and short trips of little auks is similar to procellariiforms independent of large differences in the temporal and spatial scale of feeding trips among these taxa. We suggest that bimodal foraging might be more widespread among central-place foragers than previously thought.
Control of Irregular Expansion of Bearing Races after Heat Treatment

Through hardenable bearing races are prone to distortion and size changes during heat treatment as a result of the complex interaction of stress induce by thermal gradient and phase transformation dimensional changes essentially depend on precipitation of fine carbide from martensite and decomposition of transformation of retained austenite. In the present work, an attempt has been made to provide the required dimensional stability to bearing races after heat treatment by optimization of the heat treatment process parameters through design of experiments. Results have been discussed in light of phase transformation, i.e., stabilization of retained austenite
SWAN: an easy-to-use web-based annotation system

We present the Saar Web ANnotation sys-tem (SWAN), a lean web-based annotation system, which is optimized for anno-tator and project management usability. 1 SWAN is well-suited for various discourse annotation tasks, as arbitrarily large documents can be annotated seamlessly due to dynamic loading and rendering. A graph-based visualization box supports the user by providing both an overview of the existing annotations and a navigation option through the text. The admin view includes the web-based conﬁguration of projects, annotation schemes and users. SWAN is based on JEE technology and compatible with several web browsers.
Designing an Adaptive VM That Combines Vectorized and JIT Execution on Heterogeneous Hardware

Modern hardware tends to become increasingly heterogeneous which leads to major challenges for existing systems: (a) Given that performance on modern hardware should be maximized, hardware features should be fully exploited. Together with the increasing heterogeneity this leads to more complex systems. (b) In general it is non-trivial for a system to determine the most efficient way to execute a program on a specific piece of hardware. Based on (a) and (b) we believe it is necessary to extend code generation in data processing systems. First, to mitigate the increasing complexity we propose the usage of domain-specific languages (DSL) that abstract specific details away. Our DSL is based on data-parallel operations and control-flow statements which allows to easily exploit SIMD (on multiple architectures: CPU, GPU etc.). We briefly sketch our idea of such a DSL. Second, we propose a virtual machine executing this DSL. We plan to exploit different implementation flavors (adaptivity) and dynamically compile & optimize hot paths in the program (JIT-compilation). We sketch ideas about which paths to compile, how to achieve adaptive execution of different JIT-compiled paths and elaborate a bit more on our ideas on workload-specific optimizations. Finally, we present our plan for future research and ideas for major publications.
New Postcranial Hominin Fossils from the Central Narmada Valley, India

Hathnora in Central Narmada valley (Madhya Pradesh) has earlier yielded a partial skullcap, and two clavicles and a 9th rib of Middle Pleistocene hominin. Recent explorations have brought to light two more human fossils-a humerus and a femur from a new locality, Netankheri. The femur is derived from the Middle Pleistocene stratigraphic horizon as the Hathnora skullcap, and shares similar “archaic” mosaic morphology of Homo heidelbergensis, also attested by new bio-stratigraphic and Palaeolithic data. The humerus is derived from the pre-YTA (~75 Kya) Upper Pleistocene strata in association with unique fossilized bone artifacts and documents the early emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in South Asia.
Changes in Neighborhood Quality Relate to Changes in Well-Being

The Problem: Although most middle-aged and older adults prefer to remain in their own homes as they age (Spencer, Patrick & Steele, 2009), little is known about the consequences of those decisions. It is often thought that staying in one’s home can challenge the well-being of residents as they deal with changes that occur within the neighborhood. To assess how changes in neighborhood relate to well-being over time, longitudinal research must be conducted. Thus, few studies have examined these relations. The Resolution: Using the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) data, our analysis shows that adults reported declines in neighborhood quality over the 17-year study. These declines were associated with greater declines in self-acceptance, purpose in life, and personal growth. Tips for Success: Such longitudinal studies may help providers to identify adults most at-risk for poor outcomes in the community. An important public health need may be addressed by monitoring perceived neighborhood change, which may assist service providers in identifying atrisk seniors before negative effects to their well-being accrue.
Adaptation to Best Fit Learning Rate in Batch Gradient Descent

: The efficient training of a supervised machine learning system is commonly viewed as minimization of a cost function that depends on the parameters of the proposed hypothesis. This perspective gives some advantages to the development of better training algorithm, as the problem of minimization of a function is well known in many fields. Typically many learning system use gradient descent to minimize the cost function but has a problem of slow convergence and exploding on choosing learning rate beyond a threshold. We often make mistake on choosing learning rate as there is no known generic way of choosing learning rate and we need to do it manually. In this paper a method for the adaptation of learning rate is presented and also solving the problem of slow convergence and exploding of the algorithm. The main feature of proposed algorithm is that it speeds up the convergence rate and does not affect the result or number of epochs requires to converge on changing the learning rate.
A System Approach to Avoid Unwanted Messages from User Walls

: In recent years, Online Social Networks have become an important part of daily life for many. One fundamental issue in today user wall(s) is to give users the ability to control the messages posted on their own private space to avoid that unwanted content is displayed. Up to now user walls provide little support to this requirement. To fill the gap, I propose a system allowing user wall users to have a direct control on the messages posted on their walls. This is achieved through a flexible rule-based system, that allows users to customize the filtering criteria to be applied to their walls, and Machine Learning based soft classifier automatically labeling messages in support of content-based filtering.
Performance Analysis of TCP Variants under MANET Environment and using NS-2

TCP was designed for wired networks and the sender assumes that packet loss is an indicator of network congestion, but this assumption may not apply to Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). In Mobile Ad Hoc networks, performance of the standard TCP is significantly degraded due to characteristics of MANET such as route failures due to node mobility and link errors. In this paper, the authors investigate the performance of TCP variants such as New Reno, SACK, TCP Tahoe and Vegas. Simulation results from the implementation of different static scenarios have been obtained. Different routing protocols such as Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Destination Sequence Distance Vector (DSDV) have been investigated to obtain the performance of TCP variants in this paper.
Social Success Factors Affecting Implementation of Agile Software Development Methodologies in Software Industry of Pakistan: An Empirical Study

During the past few years it has been observed that the implementation of Agile software development methodologies have become a part and parcel in software development projects not only in large and developed organizations but also in small organizations despite the existence of misapprehension that Agile methodologies are only valid for large scale projects and established organizations. Keeping in view the potential of Agile software methodologies and with the aim of eliminating this misconception, a mixed method methodology was adopted to conduct a study for determining the social factors that contribute or have influence in the successful implementation of Agile software development methodologies. In this study, face-to-face interview sessions were conducted with 271 software professionals that include Portfolio/Program/Project Managers, Scrum Masters and Product Owners representing 28 software development companies operating in Pakistan to gauge the influence of social factors on the success of Agile software projects. The study concluded that the size of the project has nothing to do with the success of a project or otherwise but there exist certain other factors like visionary leadership, degree or level of Agile software practices, congruence value, etc. contribute significantly in success of a project.
Choline Promotes Growth and Tabtoxin Production in a Pseudomonas syringae Strain

Some Pseudomonas syringae pathovars secrete tabtoxin, a monocyclic β-lactam antibiotic, responsible for chlorosis, the principal halo blight symptom in susceptible plants as oats, rye, barley, wheat and sorghum, among other. Here, we demonstrated that the production of tabtoxin in a P. syringae strain increased at least 150%, when choline, betaine or dimethylglycine were used as nitrogen source, or when choline was added as osmoprotectant in hyperosmolar culture media. Besides, we investigated the induction of phosphorylcholine phosphatase (PchP) activity when choline or its metabolites were used as nitrogen sources. PchP is an enzyme involved in Pseudomonas aeruginosa pathogenesis through its contribution to the breakdown of choline-containing compounds of the host cells. Considering these results and that the success of a pathogenic microorganism depends on its ability to survive and proliferate in its target tissue, we propose that choline is one of the plant signals that contribute to establishment of the infection by tabtoxin-producing strains of P. syringae.