Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Satellite Observaltions

To develop a monitoring technique for estimating the shortwave radiation absorbed in the ocean (I:,.) from space, dependence of l: h. and the upward irrad1ancc at the top of the atmosphere (I') on cirrus cloud parameters arc investigated in a model atmosphere ocean system 1n the wavelength (~) region ranging from 0. 285ttm to 5.0ttm. The cirrus cloud 1s assumed to be composed of hexagonal icc crystals (columns and plates) . The effects of orientation of crystals arc also estimated , for cases in which they are randomly oriented 1n spacP and 111 wh ich they are randomly oriented in a horizontal plane with their long axes parallel to the ground. The relationships between r:b. (or I') and radiance measured by the NOAA AVIIRR radiometer are discussed. Numeri ca l simulation shows that the type and orientation of the icc c rystals cannot be neglected to achieve the accuracy of lOWm 2 that is required for climate undcrs Landing. A method is suggested for deriving cirrus cloud parameters over the oceans using the visible and near infrared channels(~ 0.63ttm, 0.86ttm, and 1.61 ttm) of the future series of NOAA AVHRR radiometers . Reflectance and radiance of the upwel ling radiation at the top of a mode l atmosphere ocean system arc computed at the above wavelengths . The computational results show the fcas•b• liLY of deri ving cirrus cloud parameters using the proposed channels. In particular, the following features are noted. (1) It IS possible to distinguish the thermodynamic phase of cloud particles using multi channels that include 1.6lttm. (2) Op t ica l phenomena such as subsun and subparhclic circle are noted only for two dimensional orientations of ice crystals. (3) Wavelength of 0.86 ttm is more suitable for thin ci rrus cloud observation than that of 0.63ttm because of the effects produced by absorption by st ratos phe ri c ozone and scattering by molecules. ii Table of
Synthesis and Characterization of Hierarchical Porous -FeOOH for the Adsorption and Photodegradation of Rhodamine B

Hierarchical porous α-FeOOH nanoparticles were controlled and prepared via a facile polystyrene (PS) microspheres-templated method. The α-Fe2O3 was obtained by the calcination of the as-prepared α-FeOOH. The resulting nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and N2-sorption techniques. The adsorption and photodegradation of Rhodamine B performance were evaluated under UV light at room temperature. The results indicated that the photocatalytic activity of the α-FeOOH nanoparticles is superior to α-Fe2O3-200 and α-Fe2O3-300 due to the hierarchically multiporous structure and high surface area. This convenient and low-cost process provides a rational synthesis alternative for the preparation of multiporous materials and the as-synthesis products have great foreground applications in many aspects.
High-Performance Concrete Compressive Strength Prediction Based Weighted Support Vector Machines

Concrete is the safest and sustainable construction material which is most widely used in the world as it provides superior fire resistance, gains strength over time and gives an extremely long service life. Unfortunately high performance concrete is undoubtedly one of the most innovativ e materials in construction. Its Designing involves the process of selecting suitable ingredients of concrete (water, cement, fine and aggregates and a number of additives like mineral and chemical admixture) and determining their relat ive amounts with the objective of producing a high performance concrete of the required, strength, durability, and workab ility as economically as possible. Their proportions have a high influence on the final strength of the product. These relations do not seem to follow a mathematical formula and yet their knowledge is crucial to optimize the quantities of raw materials used in the manufacture of high performance concrete. Therefore, it would be important to have a tool to numerically model such relationships, even before pro cessing. In this aspect the main purpose of this paper is to predict the compressive strength of the high performance concrete by using classification algorithms. For building these models, training and testing using the available experimental results for 1030 specimens produced with 8 d ifferent mixture proportions are used. The result from this study suggests that weighted Support Vector Machines (wSVM) based models perform remarkably well in predict ing the compressive strength of the concrete mix.
Conversion electrons from high-statistics β-decay measurements with the 8π spectrometer at TRIUMF-ISAC

The 8 π spectrometer, located at TRIUMF-ISAC, was the world’s most powerful spectrometer dedicated to β -decay studies until its decommissioning in early 2014 for replacement with the GRIFFIN array. An integral part of the 8 π spectrometer was the Pentagonal Array for Conversion Electron Spectroscopy (PACES) consisting of 5 Si(Li) detectors used for charged-particle detection. PACES enabled both γ − e − and e − − e − coincidence measurements, which were crucial for increasing the sensitivity for discrete e − lines in the presence of large backgrounds. Examples from a 124 Cs decay experiment, where the data were vital for the expansion of the 124 Cs decay scheme, are shown. With suffcient statistics, measurements of conversion coeffcients can be used to extract the E 0 components of J π → J π transitions for J ≠ 0, which is demonstrated for data obtained in 110 In→ 110 Cd decay. With knowledge of the shapes of the states involved, as obtained, for example, from the use of Kumar-Cline shape invariants, the mixing of the states can be extracted.
Image Annotation in Presense of Noisy Lables

Labels associated with social images are valuable source of information for tasks of image annotation, understanding and retrieval. These labels are often found to be noisy, mainly due to the collaborative tagging activities of users. Existing methods on annotation have been developed and verified on noise free labels of images. In this paper, we propose a novel and generic framework that exploits the collective knowledge embedded in noisy label co-occurrence pairs to derive robust annotations. We compare our method with a well-known image annotation algorithm and show its superiority in terms of annotation accuracy on benchmark Corel5K and ESP datasets in presence of noisy labels.
Evaluating the influences of heterogeneous combinations of internal/external factors on product design

Several factors could affect the effectiveness of product design activities. These factors can be internal to the designers like skill, knowledge and personality traits, as well as external like instructions and examples provided. Up to now, researchers and designers in the academic and industrial fields analysed the effects of at most two factors at the same time, always of the same type (internal or external). This paper describes the activities and results of the preliminary stage of a wider research that aims at understanding the relationships among heterogeneous factors (internal and external together) and at defining the best combinations of any number of them to maximize the effectiveness of product design activities. This preliminary stage aims at verifying the possibility of overcoming the limits in the number of the factors to consider as well as in their membership to the same type (internal or external). To implement this verification, some heterogeneous combinations composed by more than two factors are defined and tested. The results of the tests show that the limits can be overcome; this, in turn, allows the wider research to be carried on.
Efficient visualization of urban spaces

This chapter presents a new method for calculating efficiency and applies that method to the issues of selecting simulation media and evaluating the contextual fit of new buildings in urban spaces. The new method is called "meta-analysis". A meta-analytic review of 967 environments indicated that static color simulations are the most efficient media for visualizing urban spaces. For contextual fit, four original experiments are reported on how strongly five factors influence visual appeal of a street: architectural style, trees, height of a new building relative to the heights of existing buildings, setting back a third story, and distance. A meta-analysis of these four experiments and previous findings, covering 461 environments, indicated that architectural style, trees, and height had effects strong enough to warrant implementation, but the effects of setting back third stories and distance were too small to warrant implementation.
Cavity optomechanics in gallium phosphide microdisks

We demonstrate gallium phosphide (GaP) microdisk optical cavities with intrinsic quality factors >2.8 × 105 and mode volumes <10(λ/n)3, and study their nonlinear and optomechanical properties. For optical intensities up to 8.0 × 104 intracavity photons, we observe optical loss in the microcavity to decrease with increasing intensity, indicating that saturable absorption sites are present in the GaP material, and that two-photon absorption is not significant. We observe optomechanical coupling between optical modes of the microdisk around 1.5 μm and several mechanical resonances, and measure an optical spring effect consistent with a theoretically predicted optomechanical coupling rate g0/2π∼30 kHz for the fundamental mechanical radial breathing mode at 488 MHz.
Redefining Region: Social Construction in a Regional Watershed Education Partnership.

What constitutes a region? In what ways do people define or construct the regions in which they live and work? This paper presents findings of a case study of a regional watershed partnership that examined the social ecological processes of social construction-in-action. The study sought to examine how a major watershed's educators collaborated to coconstruct a regional partnership and to determine whether these processes reflected a broader social construction of "watershed-as-region. " If so, that would mean that collaborative efforts among regional partners had established a greater sense of coherence than other existing constructs, either political or spatial. The study spanned an 18-month period, tracing conceptual changes in individual participants' perspectives about region and partnership. The social constructs of "watershed" and "partnership" were examined through participant observation, two sets of interviews with each of the eight participants, and analysis of participants' geographic representations. Participants were asked during the interviews to produce graphic representations, or sketch maps, of the partnership. The findings indicate that cognitive representations of watershed region are influenced by persistent political boundaries and that the tension between natural and political boundaries remained even while collaborative efforts were in process. However, no organization or individual dominated the partnership process. Ten figt.res and two tables are included. (Contains 59 references.) (LMI) ********************************i.AAA*********. ************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. * ***********************************************************************
Community Analysis of Fashion Coordination Using a Distance of Categorical Data Sets

While various clustering methods have been proposed for categorical data, few studies exist on the clustering of the categorical variables that are represented as item sets (groups), e.g. fashion coordination data. In order to fill this gap, this study focuses on the patterns of similarities that are found between coordinated fashion items, so as to define a new set of score value rows for calculating similarity indexes from the patterns. These similarity indexes are then inverted into distances, based on which the clustering method proposed in this study (hereinafter ―the Proposed Method‖) is achieved. Then, it was do two evaluated experiment using about 150,000 coordination data obtained from the wear's web site. Firstly, a silhouette analysis confirms that the Proposed Method offers better cluster partitioning in comparison to previous studies. And secondly, an efficacy evaluation reveals seasonal patterns in fashion coordination, as well as trends for brands and colors of individual fashion items.
Trends in the Real Interest Rate and Inflation : Role of aging

This paper explores a causal link between the aging of the labor force and declining trends in the real interest rate and inflation in Japan. We develop a new Keynesian search/matching model that features heterogeneities in age and firm-specific skill levels. Using the model, we examine the long-run implications of the sharp drop in labor force entry in the 1970s. We show that the changes in the demographic structure driven by the drop induce significant low-frequency movements in per-capita consumption growth and the real interest rate. They also lead to similar movements in the inflation rate when the monetary policy rule follows the standard Taylor rule, failing to recognize the time-varying nature of the natural rate of interest. The model suggests that the aging of the labor force accounts for roughly 40% of the decline in the real interest rate observed between the 1980s and 2000s in Japan.
1 Selected Techniques to Decontaminate Minimally Processed Vegetables

Production ofminimally processed vegetables entails a big challenge. The product should be stable, fresh-looking and safe. Cutting and/or peeling accelerate physiological degradation and expose inner tissues to contamination, decreasing produce shelf life and increasing the risk of foodborne pathogen growth. Use of decontamination techniques to control microbial populations is limited because they must be mild enough to avoid impairing sensory characteristics of the product. As a consequence, novel decontamination techniques and decontaminating agents are being tested to cope with the challenge posed by this kind of product. This chapter addresses some novel developments and chemicals potentially useful to prolong the shelf life of minimally processed vegetables, namely continuous UV light, pulsed light, electrolysed oxidizing water, ozone and lowtemperature blanching. It defines every technique or decontaminant, and then focuses on the effects on microbial population, produce physiology, sensory quality and nutritional consequences,
Electron-multiplying CCD technology: application to ultrasensitive detection of biomolecules

A novel Charge Coupled Device (CCD) has been commercially produced by Marconi Applied Technology, UK under the trade name of L3Vision, incorporating a solid-state electron multiplying structure based on the Impact Ionization phenomenon in silicon. Here we review this technology, and evaluate the first electron multiplying CCD camera, in particular using it to image weak emissions form microtitre plates. A theoretical model was constructed to predict S/N and Z-factor performances, which were compared to actual measurements, verifying that a greater than one order of magnitude improvement can be achieved over conventional CCDs. The demonstrations of remarkable sensitivity enhancement presented here are discussed in terms of the EMCCD camera's suitability for use in life sciences applications such as High-Throughput Screening (HTS), and other approaches requiring ultrasensitive detection of biomolecules, including Single Molecule Detection.
Multiscale modeling of spatially variable water and energy balance processes

This paper presents the model development component of a body of research which addresses aggregation and scaling in multiscale hydrological modeling. Water and energy balance models are developed at the local and catchment scales and at the macroscale by aggregating a simple soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer scheme (SVATS) across scales in a topographic framework. A spatially distributed approach is followed to aggregate the SVATS to the catchment scale. A statistical-dynamical approach is utilized to simplify the large-scale modeling problem and to aggregate the SVATS to the macroscale. The resulting macroscale hydrological model is proposed for use as a land surface parameterization in atmospheric models. It differs greatly from the current generation of land surface parameterizations owing to its simplified representation of vertical process physics and its statistical representation of horizontally heterogeneous runoff and energy balance processes. The spatially distributed model formulation is explored to understand the role of spatial variability in determining areal-average fluxes and the dynamics of hydrological processes. The simpler macroscale formulation is analyzed to determine how it represents these important dynamics, with implications for the parameterization of runoff and energy balance processes in atmospheric models.
Development of Finite Element Domain Decomposition Method Using Local and Mixed Lagrange Multipliers

In this paper, a finite element domain decomposition method using local and mixed Lagrange multipliers for a large scal structural analysis is presented. The proposed algorithms use local and mixed Lagrange multipliers to improve computational efficiency. In the original FETI method, classical Lagrange multiplier technique was used. In the dual-primal FETI method, the interface nodes are used at the corner nodes of each sub-domain. On the other hand, the proposed FETI-local analysis adopts localized Lagrange multipliers and the proposed FETI-mixed analysis uses both global and local Lagrange multipliers. The numerical analysis results by the proposed algorithms are compared with those obtained by dual-primal FETI method.
On the Non-Dimensionalisation, Scaling and Resulting Interpretation of the Classical Governing Equations for Water Waves

Abstract In this note we describe the underlying principles — and pitfalls — of the process of non-dimensionalising and scaling the equations that model the classical problem in water waves. In particular, we introduce the two fundamental parameters (associated with amplitude and with wave length) and show how they are used, independently, to represent different approximations (with corresponding different interpretations and applications). In addition, and most importantly, we analyse how these two parameters play a role in the derivation of the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, which then lead to predictions for the regions of physical space where solitons might be expected to appear. In particular, we address the issue of whether KdV theory can be used effectively to predict tsunamis. We argue that for tsunamis the propagation distances are much too short for KdV dynamics to develop.
Short-term assessment of bt maize on non-target arthropods in Brazil

Although not yet available for cultivation in Brazil, the effect of Bt maize hybrids on natural enemies and soil dwelling arthropods should be assessed prior to its release to growers. Trials were carried out during one growing season in two different locations with the genetically modified maize hybrids 7590-Bt11 and Avant-ICP4, comparing with their respective non-Bt isogenic hybrids. Arthropods were evaluated through direct observation on plants and pitfall traps. In general, no differences were observed between populations of earwig (Dermaptera: Forficulidae), lady beetles (Coleptera: Coccinellidae), minute pirate bug (Coleoptera: Anthocoridae), ground beetles (Carabidae), tiger beetles (Cicindelidae), and spiders (Araneae). There was no difference in egg parasitism of Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) by Trichogramma sp. (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae). Thus, Bt maize hybrids expressing insecticide proteins Cry1A(b) and VIP 3A do not cause reduction of the main maize dweeling predators and parasitoids.
The Impact of the Audit Quality on that of the Earnings Management: Case Study in Tunisia

The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of the audit quality on that of the accounting earnings. We chose the accrual quality, the accounting conservatism and the profit relevance as a measure of the quality of the accounting earnings. The empirical study, which was carried out in this article on a sample of 20 Tunisian firms listed on the TSE (Tunisian Stock Exchange) for the period (2005-2009), confirms the significant impact of the audit quality on that of the accounting earnings. The study results also show that the variables: size of the audit firm, sectorbased specialization of the audit firm, the co-auditing and the size of the audit committee, improve the quality of the accounting earnings.
An exploration of factors associated with student attrition and success in enabling programs

University-based enabling programs (EPs) provide a tertiary pathway for up to twenty percent of undergraduate enrolments at Australian universities. Attrition from these programs and the resulting costs to students, universities and society at large is an important issue deserving research attention. This research project aimed to investigate the factors that impacted the attrition of students from EPs and compared their experience with those students who successfully completed an EP. The study used a qualitative methodology involving individual participant interviews with students who participated in EPs at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. The qualitative interviews supported existing research into the complexity of student attrition. The dominant themes emerging from the data broadly reflected the four factors identified in the existing literature; time pressures, personal circumstances, use of support services and level of student engagement. The use of qualitative interviews provided insight into the operation of these factors and assisted in developing pragmatic actions that could be taken to reduce attrition. The paper concludes that any attempts to reduce attrition in EPs must focus on developing more personal interventions with students as early as possible, aimed at addressing time management, providing more flexible study options, facilitating evening and mature age support and addressing self confidence. These implications lend further understanding to the reasons behind attrition and retention in EPs.
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillation scale in the distribution of galaxies to redshift 1

We present angular diameter distance measurements obtained by locating the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) scale in the distribution of galaxies selected from the first year of Dark Energy Survey data. We consider a sample of over 1.3 million galaxies distributed over a footprint of 1336 deg2 with 0.6 < $z$photo < 1 and a typical redshift uncertainty of 0.03(1 + $z$). This sample was selected, as fully described in a companion paper, using a colour/magnitude selection that optimizes trade-offs between number density and redshift uncertainty. We investigate the BAO signal in the projected clustering using three conventions, the angular separation, the comoving transverse separation, and spherical harmonics. Further, we compare results obtained from template-based and machine-learning photometric redshift determinations. We use 1800 simulations that approximate our sample in order to produce covariance matrices and allow us to validate our distance scale measurement methodology. We measure the angular diameter distance, DA, at the effective redshift of our sample divided by the true physical scale of the BAO feature, rd. We obtain close to a 4 per cent distance measurement of DA($z$eff = 0.81)/rd = 10.75 ± 0.43. These results are consistent with the flat Λ cold dark matter concordance cosmological model supported by numerous other recent experimental results.