Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The long-term health status improvements seen after lung volume reduction surgery q

Objectives: To correlate the long-term changes in respiratory physiology, body mass index (BMI) and health status after lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS). Patients/methods: From 1995 to 2002 77 patients; 48 male: 29 female, median age 59 (41–72) years, have undergone LVRS (simultaneous bilateral in 27; staged bilateral in 3; unilateral in 47). FEV1, total lung capacity (TLC), residual volume (RV) and RV/TLC ratio were measured preoperatively and at 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years and 4 years post surgery. At the same time interval health status was assessed by Euroquol and Short Form 36 (SF 36) questionnaires. Seventeen patients have died within 4 years of their operation (30 day mortality 5%). Results: The changes in FEV1 are only significantly improved for 1 year post LVRS, while the improvements in TLC and RV remain significant up to 3 years postoperatively. The improvements in BMI also persist for 3 years. The best scores in Euroquol and SF 36 are obtained 6 months after LVRS but are only significantly improved up to 1 year. Conclusion: The physiological effects of volume LVRS are lasting but initial improvements in health status decline more rapidly. q 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Activity recognition in noisy environments: an evaluation of the robustness of machine learning algorithms

Studies in activity recognition have gained attention and matured in the past years. This is mainly due to advances in the sensor’s technology and in the underlying activity discovery and recognition process. Activity recognition in smart home environments aims to identify which activities are currently happening and predict which activities are going to happen in order to monitor the residents status and promote comfort and well-being. The sensor’s information extraction is the foundation of the activity recognition. If the data is not encrypted properly, it will become an easy target for interceptions and the resident will be more likely to suffer from malicious unauthorized attacks. Two of the major challenges in smart homes are privacy and security. In order to forbid hackers to retrieve resident data and determine which activities the resident is performing or learn the resident habits, one technique that has been studied is the insertion of noise in the data generated by the sensors. This work aims to analyze how real-world smart home datasets and machine learning techniques perform while being exposed to noise. Experiments are conducted over 10 different datasets. Using the 5-fold cross-validation method, each machine learning technique was evaluated against different noise ranges. Based on the results obtained, the machine learning algorithms suffered considerably from the noise insertion. Decision Tree, Random Forest, and K -NN achieved the best general accuracy and were affected signiﬁcantly by the noise. SVM did not experience drastic changes when exposed to noise but had bad results in most cases and Naive Bayes can be considered the worst of all classiﬁers under those circumstances.
INTENSE MUON SOURCES FOR MUON STORAGE RINGS AND COLLIDERS

Muon colliders have been discussed as an alternate route to very high energy lepton colliders. As a byproduct such a collider would produce very intense neutrino beams because of the decaying muons circulating in the storage ring. In a dedicated storage ring these neutrino beams could be produced in long straight sections which would point towards long, medium or short baseline detectors, opening up a whole new class of neutrino physics experiments because of the enormous neutrino flux that in principle could be achieved in such a facility as compared to more standard fixed target sources. Intense pion sources in combination with powerful emittance cooling strategies for the comparatively large muon emittance are necessary to make this type of Neutrino Source as well as a Muon Collider feasible for a possible future high energy physics facility. The Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider collaboration studies the different subsystems being required and presently focuses on the layout of a Neutrino Source based on a 50 GeV Muon Storage Ring.
Nonmonotonicity of the Frictional Bimaterial Effect

Sliding along frictional interfaces separating dissimilar elastic materials is qualitatively different from sliding along interfaces separating identical materials due to the existence of an elastodynamic coupling between interfacial slip and normal stress perturbations in the former case. This bimaterial coupling has important implications for the dynamics of frictional interfaces, including their stability and rupture propagation along them. We show that while this bimaterial coupling is a monotonically increasing function of the bimaterial contrast, when it is coupled to interfacial shear stress perturbations through a friction law, various physical quantities exhibit a nonmonotonic dependence on the bimaterial contrast. In particular, we show that for a regularized Coulomb friction, the maximal growth rate of unstable interfacial perturbations of homogeneous sliding is a nonmonotonic function of the bimaterial contrast and provides analytic insight into the origin of this nonmonotonicity. We further show that for velocity‐strengthening rate‐and‐state friction, the maximal growth rate of unstable interfacial perturbations of homogeneous sliding is also a nonmonotonic function of the bimaterial contrast. Results from simulations of dynamic rupture along a bimaterial interface with slip‐weakening friction provide evidence that the theoretically predicted nonmonotonicity persists in nonsteady, transient frictional dynamics.
Performance of Different Models for Estimating the Global Solar Radiation in Brazil

Global solar irradiance (Qg) is an important variable of the physical environment that has been constantly used in agrometeorological models, either for climatic characterization or to give support to radiometric studies developed for irrigation planning and crop weather modeling approaches. The current study aimed to compare measured daily values of Qg with estimates of this variable by means of four different methods. For that throughout the period comprised between March 28th of 2008 and August 8th of 2011 at Ponta Grossa, PR, Brazil, a simple linear regression study confronting radiometric data measured by a pyranometer and estimates of Qg was proposed herein. Global transmittance was conditioned by atmospheric cloudiness. The models based on mean global transmittance in daily basis performed more satisfactorily and generated values of Qg with accuracy and exactness at the site in study, as confirmed by the statistical parameters employed to validate the USAge of models proposed by Angstrom-Prescott. However, the performance of the methodologies based on the determination of mean global transmittance under extreme atmospheric conditions, showed the highest Willmott coefficients, which was to be close to 1, reflecting then precision and reliability for the calculated values of Qg, when compared to observed values monitored at an automatic weather station.
Using Scuba for In Situ Determination of Chlorophyll Distributions in Corals by Underwater Near Infrared Fluorescence Imaging

Studies reporting quantitation and imaging of chlorophyll in corals using visible fluorescent emission in the red near 680 nm can suffer from competing emission from other red-emitting pigments. Here, we report a novel method of selectively imaging chlorophyll distributions in coral in situ using only the near infrared (NIR) fluorescence emission from chlorophyll. Commercially available equipment was assembled that allowed the sequential imaging of visible, visible-fluorescent, and NIR-fluorescent pigments on the same corals. The relative distributions of chlorophyll and fluorescent proteins (GFPs) were examined in numerous corals in the Caribbean Sea, the Egyptian Red Sea, the Indonesian Dampier Strait, and the Florida Keys. Below 2 m depth, solar induced NIR chlorophyll fluorescence can be imaged in daylight without external lighting, thus, it is much easier to do than visible fluorescence imaging done at night. The distributions of chlorophyll and GFPs are unique in every species examined, and while there are some tissues where both fluorophores are co-resident, often tissues are selectively enriched in only one of these fluorescent pigments. Although laboratory studies have clearly shown that GFPs can be photo-protective, their inability to prevent large scale bleaching events in situ may be due to their limited tissue distribution.
Demographic consequences of the Great Leap Forward in Chinas provinces.

This article examines the demographic consequences of Chinas Great Leap Forward--the massive and ultimately unsuccessful drive during 1958-62 to leap ahead in production by mobilizing society and reorganizing the peasantry into large-scale communes. Severe excess mortality and massive fertility shortfalls are documented but with wide variations among provinces and between rural and urban areas. The demographic crisis was caused in the first instance by nationwide food shortages. However these are attributable to declines in grain production entitlement failure and changes in consumption patterns all of which are ultimately traceable to political and economic policies connected with the Great Leap. (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA) (EXCERPT)
LARGE EDDY SIMULATION OF TURBULENT FLOWS

Large eddy simulation (LES) is a technique intermediate between the direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent flow and the solution of the Reynolds-averaged equations. The technique of LES is now gradually used to simulate turbulent flows in engineering. Methods for LES will be reviewed in this paper. Applying LES for simulating turbulent flows, both incompressible and compressible, is outlined. This review article would be useful for those starting to consider using LES for turbulent flow simulations.
Towards a Rewriting Framework for Textual Entailment

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the problem of textual inference, that is, automatically determining whether a natural-language hypothesis can be inferred from a given premise. This surge has been followed by an interest from the logical community in finding suitable logics for textual inference. The Textual Inference Logic (TIL) is one of these logics. This paper details our first steps towards a rewrite framework for textual inference using TIL. We implement our framework in the computational tool Maude and demonstrate by example that it can be used for textual inference.
Security and Privacy in Vehicular Ad Hoc Network and Vehicle Cloud Computing: A Survey

Vehicular networks are becoming a prominent research field in the intelligent transportation system (ITS) due to the nature and characteristics of providing high-level road safety and optimized traffic management. Vehicles are equipped with the heavy communication equipment which requires a high power supply, on-board computing device, and data storage devices. Many wireless communication technologies are deployed to maintain and enhance the traffic management system. The ITS is capable of providing services to the traffic authorities and precautionary measures to the drivers and passengers. Several methods have been proposed for discussing the security and privacy issues for the vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) and vehicular cloud computing (VCC). They receive a great deal of attention from researchers around the world since they are new technologies, and they can improve road safety and enhance traffic flow by utilizing the vehicles resources and communication system. Firstly, the VANETs are presented, including the basic overview, characteristics, threats, and attacks. The location privacy methodologies are elaborated, which can protect the confidential information of the vehicle, such as the location detail and driver information. Secondly, the trust management models in the VANETs are comprehensively discussed, followed by the comparison of the cryptography and trust models in terms of different kinds of attacks. Then, the simulation tools and applications of the VANETs are discussed, and the evolution is presented from the VANETs to VCC in the vehicular network. Thirdly, the VCC is discussed from its architecture and the security and privacy issues. Finally, several research challenges on the VANETs and VCC are presented. In sum, this survey comprehensively covers the location privacy and trust management models of the VANETs and discusses the security and privacy issues in the VCC, which fills the gap of existing surveys. Also, it indicates the research challenges in the VANETs and VCC.
Shortest Connection Networks on Triangular Grids

The shortest path problem, or the Steiner problem, is an interesting problem with numerous real-world applications. Historically the Steiner problem has been studied for the Euclidean plane and for rectilinear distances. Both problems have been proven to be NP-hard. In this research, we look into the Steiner problem on a triangular grid and show that the problem is NP-hard. We explore exact algorithms for constructing a shortest network that optimally interconnects a set of terminal points on a grid. Moreover, we look at a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem and provide a conjecture on the bound of the approximation it produces.
Engineering enzyme stability for liquid detergents

With electron tomography, we can reconstruct a three-dimensional (3D) volume of a specimen from a series of its two-dimensional (2D) projection images on the nanoscale. In a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), element-speciﬁc maps and mass-contrast projections can be simultaneously acquired from the X-ray spectrometer and electron detector. The X-ray tomogram has high chemical speciﬁcity but low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), while the electron tomogram has poor compositional information but high SNR. In this paper, we adopt and modify a regression-based image fusion algorithm to combine these two complementary modalities, so that the fused version would maintain both high chemical speciﬁcity and high SNR. We demonstrate that our method improves reconstruction quality on an experimental dataset of a core-shell nanoparticle. Speciﬁcally, it delivers tomograms with sharper edges and smoother fore- and background, and hence can enable easier and more accurate 3D characterization of such nanostructures.
Waste-derived activated carbons for control of nitrogen oxides

Activated carbons were produced from waste and investigated for their efficiency for the removal of mono-nitrogen oxides (NOx) in simulated flue gases at a low temperature. The wastes used were waste biomass (date seeds), processed municipal solid waste in the form of refuse-derived fuel and waste tyres. The morphology, porous texture and surface chemistry of the prepared activated carbons were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry, nitrogen adsorption and Boehm titration, and were compared with several commercial activated carbons. The carbons were then investigated in terms of their use in adsorbing NOx at a low temperature. The waste-derived activated carbons had NOx adsorption efficiencies at 50°C which were between 50 and 70% of those achieved for the commercial activated carbons. Increasing the adsorption temperature from 25 to 100°C significantly reduced nitrogen oxide (NO) adsorption. It was also shown that the NO adsorption efficiency depends on the porou.
Analysis of the paratexts of Simone de Beauvoir’s works in Turkish

Paratexts played a significant role in the translations of Simone de Beauvoir’s works in Turkey between 1962 and 2001, particularly in the way they reflected ideological stances on “the woman question” and feminism within the Turkish cultural climate. The concept of “paratext” as used by Gérard Genette refers to the verbal or other materials (prefaces, postfaces, titles, dedications, illustrations etc.) accompanying a text and presenting it. The study of translational paratexts is particularly important because they offer valuable insights into the presentation and reception of translated texts within the target historical and cultural climate. This article analyzes eleven specific examples, focusing on the uses of paratexts and their connections to the cultural context.
FPGA-Based Implementation of Finite Set-MPC for a VSI System Using XSG-Based Modeling

Finite set-model predictive control (FS-MPC) is used for power converters and drives having unique advantages as compared to the conventional control strategies. However, the computational burden of the FS-MPC is a primary concern for real-time implementation. Field programmable gate array (FPGA) is an alternative and exciting solution for real-time implementation because of the parallel processing capability, as well as, discrete nature of the hardware platform. Nevertheless, FPGA is capable of handling the computational requirements for the FS-MPC implementation, however, the system development involves multiple steps that lead to the time-consuming debugging process. Moreover, specific hardware coding skill makes it more complex corresponding to an increase in system complexity that leads to a tedious task for system development. This paper presents an FPGA-based experimental implementation of FS-MPC using the system modeling approach. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of FS-MPC in stationary αβ and rotating dq frame is considered for simulation as well as experimental result. The FS-MPC for a three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) system is developed in a realistic digital simulator integrated with MATLAB-Simulink. The simulated controller model is further used for experimental system implementation and validation using Xilinx FPGA: Zedboard Zynq Evaluation and Development Kit. The digital simulator termed as Xilinx system generator (XSG) provided by Xilinx is used for modeling-based FPGA design.
Eccentric Resistance Training in Youth: Perspectives for Long-Term Athletic Development

The purpose of this narrative review is to discuss the role of eccentric resistance training in youth and how this training modality can be utilized within long-term physical development. Current literature on responses to eccentric exercise in youth has demonstrated that potential concerns, such as fatigue and muscle damage, compared to adults are not supported. Considering the importance of resistance training for youth athletes and the benefits of eccentric training in enhancing strength, power, speed, and resistance to injury, its inclusion throughout youth may be warranted. In this review we provide a brief overview of the physiological responses to exercise in youth with specific reference to the different responses to eccentric resistance training between children, adolescents, and adults. Thereafter, we discuss the importance of ensuring that force absorption qualities are trained throughout youth and how these may be influenced by growth and maturation. In particular, we propose practical methods on how eccentric resistance training methods can be implemented in youth via the inclusion of efficient landing mechanics, eccentric hamstrings strengthening and flywheel inertia training. This article proposes that the use of eccentric resistance training in youth should be considered a necessity to help develop both physical qualities that underpin sporting performance, as well as reducing injury risk. However, as with any other training modality implemented within youth, careful consideration should be given in accordance with an individual’s maturity status, training history and technical competency as well as being underpinned by current long-term physical development guidelines.
STUDIES ON LEAF SPOT OF TOMATO CAUSED BY Septoria lycopersici Speg

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L) regarded as poor man’s apple, is one of the widely grown and most popular vegetable crops belonging to family solanaceae. Septoria leaf spot (Septoria lycopersici Speg.) is one of the most devastating foliar diseases in humid regions, particularly during the periods of rainfall, incurring loss both at pre and post-harvest stages in tomato. The isolated fungus grown on potato dextrose agar produced dull white mycelium conidia were hyaline, flexuous and filiform with 1-9 septations. The conidia measured 30.30 to 75.00 m in length and 2.2 to 3.0 m in breadth. Successful pathogenicity of the fungus on tomato was proved following Koch’s postulates by inoculating using the spore suspension. Cultural studies revealed that among solid media, potato dextrose agar and tomato leaf extract agar were found to be good for growth of S. lycopersici. Among the liquid media, Potato dextrose broth and Tomato leaf extract broth supported maximum dry mycelial weight of fungus on 13 day of incubation. Physiological studies revealed that optimum pH range of 6 to 7 was favourable for growth and sporulation of pathogen. Maximum dry mycelial weight was obtained in temperature range of 20 to 25oC. Alternate cycles of 12 hours light and 12 hours darkness favoured the maximum radial growth and dry mycelial weight of S. lycopersici. Tomato variety L-15 was found to be resistant against Septoria leaf spot under glasshouse conditions. Among the ten fungicides evaluated in vitro against S. lycopersici, Hexaconazole, Propiconazole and Carboxin + Thiram gave total inhibition of the fungal growth at all concentrations. Among antagonists tested in vitro, Trichoderma harzianum gave maximum inhibition of mycelial growth. Effective field management of the disease was obtained by Azoxystrobin with B:C ratio of 4.71:1.
Photometric Depth Super-Resolution – Supplementary Material

This supplementary material explores the three proposed approaches of the paper “Photometric Depth Super-Resolution” in more detail towards experimental evaluation on self-generated and publicly available synthetic and real-world datasets. Also, a more thorough discussion on the theoretical aspects of the RGB image formation model and the problems arising in depth super-resolution and shape-from-shading are drawn. A unified comparison on a publicly available photometric stereo benchmark eventually highlights the pros and cons of each proposed method.
Physical properties of AM CVn stars: New insights from Gaia DR2

AM CVn binaries are hydrogen deficient compact binaries with an orbital period in the 5–65 min range and are predicted to be strong sources of persistent gravitational wave radiation. Using Gaia Data Release 2, we present the parallaxes and proper motions of 41 out of the 56 known systems. Compared to the parallax determined using the HST Fine Guidance Sensor we find that the archetype star, AM CVn, is significantly closer than previously thought. This resolves the high luminosity and mass accretion rate which models had difficulty in explaining. Using Pan-STARRS1 data we determine the absolute magnitude of the AM CVn stars. There is some evidence that donor stars have a higher mass and radius than expected for white dwarfs or that the donors are not white dwarfs. Using the distances to the known AM CVn stars we find strong evidence that a large population of AM CVn stars has yet to be discovered. As this value sets the background to the gravitational wave signal of LISA this is of wide interest. We determine the mass transfer rate for 15 AM CVn stars and find that the majority has a rate significantly greater than expected from standard models. This is further evidence that the donor star has a greater size than expected.