Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extracting Crown Morphology with a Low-Cost Mobile Lidar Scanning System in the Natural Environment

To meet the demand for intelligent measurements of canopy morphological parameters, a mobile LiDAR scanning system with LiDAR and IMU as the main sensors was constructed. The system uses a LiDAR-IMU tight coupling odometry method to reconstruct a point cloud map of the area surveyed. After using the RANSAC algorithm to remove the map ground, the European clustering algorithm is used for point cloud segmentation. Finally, morphological parameters of the canopy, such as crown height, crown diameter, and crown volume, are extracted using statistical and voxel methods. To verify the algorithm, a total of 43 trees in multiple plots of the campus were tested and compared. The algorithm defined in this study was evaluated with manual measurements as reference, and the morphological parameters of the canopy obtained using the LOAM and LeGO-LOAM algorithms as the basic framework were compared. Experiments show that this method can be used to easily obtain the crown height, crown diameter, and crown volume of the area; the correlation coefficients of these parameters were 0.91, 0.87, and 0.83, respectively. Compared with the LOAM and LeGO-LOAM methods, they were increased by 0.004, 0.12, and 0.13 and 0.07, 0.15, and 0.04, respectively. The test results for this new system are positive and meet the requirements of horticulture and orchard measurements, indicating that it will have significant value as an application.
WATER USE EFFICIENCY AND SAVING THROUGH PITCHER AND POLYETHYLENE BAG OVER FURROW IRRIGATION

A field study was carried out at the Muhammad Khaskheli Farm, located at Taluka Thana Boula Khan, District Jamshoro during the year 2008. The pitcher, polyethylene bag, and furrow irrigation methods were compared on the basis of water use efficiency, yield, and water saving. The experimental setup for three irrigation methods was established. Irrigation to furrows was supplied through a watercourse and quantity of water was measured through a cutthroat flume. While a measured quantity of water to the pitcher and polyethylene bag methods was manually supplied. The results indicate that the water holding capacity of the pitchers ranged between 7.9 and 9.0 liters, whereas the seepage rate was between 1.1 and 1.5 l/day. The wetting front vertically moved to a maximum of 13.4 cm depth and it reached to a distance of 22.6 cm laterally. The results further suggest that the highest yield and WUEs were achieved under pitcher irrigation method as compared to furrow and polyethylene bag methods. The pitcher method had the higher WUE. It was higher by 90% and 40% as compared to polyethylene and furrow irrigation methods, respectively. An overall yield increase under pitcher over furrow was about 58% while, it was 18% over polyethylene bag method. The yield increase under polyethylene bag over furrow irrigation was calculated to about 49%. Pitcher irrigation method saved water by about 75.4% as compared to furrow irrigation method while it saved water by about 26.5% as compared to polyethylene bag method. Similarly, the polyethylene bag, saved 66.5% compared to furrow method. Thus, the highest water saving was achieved under pitcher irrigation method as compared to both under furrow and polyethylene bag irrigation methods.
Sensory-thresholded switch of neural firing states in a computational model of the ventromedial hypothalamus

The mouse ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) is both necessary and sufficient for defensive responses to predator and social threats. Defensive behaviors typically involve cautious approach toward potentially threatening stimuli aimed at obtaining information about the risk involved, followed by sudden avoidance and flight behavior to escape harm. In vivo neural recording studies in mice have identified two major populations of VMH neurons that either increase their firing activity as the animal approaches the threat (called Assessment+ cells) or increase their activity as the animal flees the threat (called Flight+ cells). Interestingly, Assessment+ and Flight+ cells abruptly decrease and increase their firing activity, respectively, at the decision point for flight, creating an escape-related “switch” in functional state. This suggests that the activity of the two cell types in VMH is coordinated and could result from local circuit interactions. Here, we used computational modelling to test if a local inhibitory feedback circuit could give rise to key features of the neural activity seen in VMH during the approach-to-flight transition. Starting from a simple dual-population inhibitory feedback circuit receiving repeated trains of monotonically increasing sensory input to mimic approach to threat, we tested the requirement for balanced sensory input, balanced feedback, short-term synaptic plasticity, rebound excitation, and inhibitory feedback exclusivity to reproduce an abrupt, sensory-thresholded reciprocal firing change that resembles Assessment+ and Flight+ cell activity seen in vivo. Our work demonstrates that a relatively simple local circuit architecture is sufficient for the emergence of firing patterns similar to those seen in vivo and suggests that a reiterative process of experimental and computational work may be a fruitful avenue for better understanding the functional organization of mammalian instinctive behaviors at the circuit level.
100 YEARS OF VITAMIN D: Global differences in vitamin D status and dietary intake: a review of the data

Background Internationally, concern has been repeatedly raised about the little notable progress in the collection, analysis and use of population micronutrient status and deficiency data globally. The need for representative status and intake data for vitamin D has been highlighted as a research priority for well over a decade. Aim and methods A narrative review which aims to provide a summary and assessment of vitamin D nutritional status data globally. This review divides the world into the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) major regions: the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Africa and Asia. Emphasis was placed on published data on the prevalence of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) < 25/30 and <50 nmol/L (reflecting vitamin D deficiency and inadequacy, respectively) as well as vitamin D intake, where possible from nationally representative surveys. Results Collating data from the limited number of available representative surveys from individual countries might suggest a relatively low overall prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in South America, Oceania and North America, whereas there is more moderate prevalence in Europe and Asia, and possibly Africa. Overall, the prevalence of serum 25(OH)D < 25/30 and <50 nmol/L ranges from ~5 to 18% and 24 to 49%, respectively, depending on FAO world region. Usual intakes of vitamin D can also vary by FAO world region, but in general, with a few exceptions, there are very high levels of inadequacy of vitamin D intake. Conclusions While the burden of vitamin D deficiency and inadequacy varies by world regions and not just by UVB availability, the global burden overall translates into enormous numbers of individuals at risk.
Proactive Eavesdropping via Jamming Over Multiple Suspicious Links With Wireless-Powered Monitor

This letter studies jamming-assisted proactive eavesdropping over multiple orthogonal suspicious links with a wireless-powered monitor. Considering the shortage of energy, the monitor adopts the power splitting technique to divide each of the received suspicious signals into two parts for information decoding and energy harvesting, and then exploits the accumulated energy to jam over those suspicious links, to reduce the corresponding suspicious communication rate and facilitate the eavesdropping of the monitor itself. Our objective is to maximize the minimum eavesdropping success probability of the monitor for all received suspicious signals, by jointly optimizing its power splitting ratios and jamming power allocations. The formulated problem involves the complex Lambert function and is highly non-convex. To tackle this challenge, first we derive a very tight approximation of the Lambert function based on its key property. Then, we employ the general successive convex approximation (SCA)-based technique to iteratively find a locally optimal solution. Moreover, we propose a parallel coordinate descent (PCD)-based low-complexity algorithm to obtain a sub-optimal solution. Numerical results show the effectiveness of our proposed schemes compared to competitive benchmarks.
Metal–Phenolic‐Network‐Coated Dendrimer–Drug Conjugates for Tumor MR Imaging and Chemo/Chemodynamic Therapy via Amplification of Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress

Amplification of endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) to realize enhanced cancer therapy has been considered to be unique in current cancer nanomedicine design. Herein, the design of metal–phenolic‐network‐coated dendrimer–drug conjugates as a novel theranostic nanoplatform based on ERS amplification is reported. In the design, acetylated generation‐5 poly(amidoamine) dendrimers are conjugated with an ERS drug, toyocamycin (Toy), through the attached phenylboronic acid moiety, and coated with an iron (Fe)–tannic acid (TF) network. The generated nanocomplexes with a size of 50.2 nm are stable under the physiological environment, and can rapidly release Toy under the tumor microenvironment due to the pH‐ and reactive‐oxygen‐species‐responsive boronic ester bonds to effectively inhibit the ERS‐mediated cancer cell adaptation. Meanwhile, the coated TF network enables the nanocomplexes to generate cytotoxic hydroxyl radicals through a Fenton reaction, amplifying the ERS for improved chemo/chemodynamic therapy of cancer cells in vitro and a xenografted breast tumor model in vivo. Moreover, the coating of TF also renders the complexes with an eminent r1 relaxivity for in vivo T1‐weighted tumor magnetic resonance imaging. The created intelligent nanocomplexes may represent an advanced nanomedicine formulation uniquely integrated with a metal–phenolic network and dendrimer nanotechnology for imaging‐guided cancer therapy through ERS amplification.
Robust Diagnosability Analysis of Discrete Event Systems Using Labeled Petri Nets

Over the past decades, fault diagnosis of discrete event systems has many applications and attracts much attention from researchers and practitioners. With the increasingly high requirements on the reliability of cyber-physical systems such as automated manufacturing systems, fault detection technology has been unprecedentedly developed. Traditional approaches to diagnosability analysis of discrete event systems assume that all the communications between sensors and diagnosers work normally and correctly. However, communication failures may occur anytime, which may cause the loss of observations. This observation loss makes the traditional diagnoser fail or report incorrect information. The problem of fault diagnosis against intermittent loss of observations is addressed, i.e., robust diagnosability. In this paper, an approach to robust diagnosability analysis based on labeled Petri nets is presented. A necessary and sufficient condition for robust diagnosability is proposed. We also introduce a verification procedure of robust diagnosability using robust reachability diagnosers.
Phase compensated microstrip variable attenuator

This paper is devoted to an amplitude control device with compensated phase component based on the Q control of a microstrip resonator, so that the amplitude of S21 can be controlled without phase shifting at a certain frequency. The device consists of a PIN diode and two microstrip lines coupled by an aperture slot on a ground plane. In this paper, the authors have studied both numerically and experimentally the phase compensated variable attenuator. This can be applied to an adaptive array antenna to control the nulls with a fixed main beam directivity.
Small-Scale Depthwise Separable Convolutional Neural Networks for Bacteria Classification

Bacterial recognition and classification play a vital role in diagnosing disease by determining the presence of large bacteria in the specimens and the symptoms. Artificial intelligence and computer vision widely applied in the medical domain enable improving accuracy and reducing the bacterial recognition and classification time, which aids in making clinical decisions and choosing the proper treatment. This paper aims to provide an approach of 33 bacteria strains’ automated classification from the Digital Images of Bacteria Species (DIBaS) dataset based on small-scale depthwise separable convolutional neural networks. Our five-layer architecture has significant advantages due to the compact model, low computational cost, and reliable recognition accuracy. The experimental results proved that the proposed design reached the highest accuracy of 96.28% with a total of 6600 images and can be executed on limited-resource devices of 3.23 million parameters and 40.02 million multiply–accumulate operations (MACs). The number of parameters in this architecture is seven times less than the smallest model listed in the literature.
Effect of long term natural weathering on oil composition: study of the 41-years-old Amoco Cadiz and 20-years-old Erika oil spills

On 16 March 1978, the oil tanker the Amoco Cadiz, transporting 223,000 tons of crude oil and 4,000 tons of bunker fuel oil, suffered a failure of her steering mechanism and ran aground on Portsall Rocks, on the Breton coast. The entire cargo spilled out as the breakers split the vessel in two, progressively polluting 360 km of French shoreline from Brest to Saint Brieuc. This was the largest oil spill caused by a tanker grounding ever recorded in the world. The consequences of this accident were significant, and it caused the French Government to revise its oil response plan (the Polmar Plan), to acquire equipment stocks (Polmar stockpiles), to impose traffic lanes in the Channel and to create Cedre. On 12 December 1999, the tanker Erika broke up and sank off the coast of Brittany (France) leading to the spill of 20,000 tons of a heavy fuel oil. 400 km of the French Atlantic coastline were polluted. Because of the characteristics of the oil (a very heavy fuel oil with a high content of light cracking oil) and the severe weather conditions (a centennial storm with spring tides) when the oil came on shore, the Erika spill was one of the most severe accidental releases of oil along the French coastlines. All types of habitat were concerned, and pollution reached the supratidal zone affecting terrestrial vegetation and lichens. In 2019, respectively 41 years and 20 years after these major oil spills affecting the French shoreline, a sampling round was conducted at two sites recorded to present some residual traces of oil. Samples of weathered oil were collected, extracted with methylene chloride and then purified through an alumina-silica microcolumn. SARA fractionation and GC-MS analyses were performed in order to assess respectively the total degradation of the weathered oil (amount of saturates, aromatics and polar fraction) and the specific degradation of nalkanes from n-C9 to n-C40, biomarkers (such as terpanes, hopanes and steranes) and PAHs (parents and alkylated derivatives).
Information-Seeking Under Threat: How the Characteristics of Web Searches Changed During the Pandemic

To adjust to novel and threatening environments people seek information. Here, we examine whether and how a threatening global event -–the pandemic– altered the characteristics of the information people sought out online. An analysis of queries submitted to Google search engine revealed that people were more likely to submit queries for information that could guide action (i.e., “How to” and “How do” searches) during the pandemic relative to before, controlling for total search volume. This tendency may have contributed to the rapid adaptation observed in response to the pandemic. Indeed, stress levels reported weekly by 17K individuals predicted the proportion of “How to” and “How do” searches, controlling for COVID-19 related confinement. Markedly, population stress levels were more strongly associated with this high-level feature of web searches than they were with searches for specific terms such as “anxiety” or “stress”. In contrast, COVID-19 related confinement, but not stress levels, was associated with the proportion of “What” and “Why” questions submitted to Google, suggesting that the confinement was related to increased desire for general knowledge. Key results were replicated across two countries (UK and US). The study suggests that in situations of high stress people ask questions that can guide action. An intriguing possibility is that tracking of this feature could be used to monitor population stress levels beyond the pandemic.
Stabilisation of a W/O/W Multiple Emul- sion using a Natural Polymers

(a) University of Vienna, Research Platform “Characterisation of Drug Delivery Systems on Skin and Investigation of Involved Mechanisms”, Althanstrase 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria, phone: +43 1 4277 55404, fax: +43 1 4277 9554, email: magdalena.hoppel@univie.ac. at (b) University of Vienna, Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics, Faculty of Life Sciences, Althanstrase 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria
The deep impacting microwave irradiation on the quality and antioxidant capacity of rosemary essential oils obtained by solvent-free microwave extraction

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on microwave power (180, 300, 450, 600 and 800 W) effect on the quality and composition of rosemary leaves essential oils obtained by solvent-free microwave extraction (SFME). The results were compared to the effect of conventional hydrodistillation (HD). The analyses revealed 29 compounds for all extracts. α-pinene, camphor, borneol and (E)-caryophyllene were the major constituents, depending on extraction parameters. The antioxidant assay showed that the lowest value of the median inhibitory concentration (IC50) was for SFME 180. The statistical assessment allowed the possibility to distinguish a new simple approach to evaluate the synergistic and antagonistic effects between essential oils constituents on the antiradical activity. Results exhibit the interest in microwave power impact on essential oils extraction. This constitutes the novelty of this study, which is the possibility of improving the quality of the extract by adjusting the abundance of target compounds characterized by a strong antioxidant effect. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Experimental Studies on the Thermal and Moisture Properties of Rammed Earth Used in Adobe Buildings in China

Among the rich diversity of Chinese vernacular buildings, adobe building is a special kind of building using rammed earth for its external walls. The primary aim of this study is to examine quantitatively the thermal and moisture properties of the rammed earth. This paper presents the experimental results of these properties, which include the density, thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, moisture sorption isotherms and the surface absorption/desorption mass flux rates.
A Family of Fitness Landscapes Modeled through Gene Regulatory Networks

Over 100 years, Fitness landscapes have been a powerful metaphor for understanding the evolution of biological systems. These landscapes describe how genotypes are connected to each other and are related according to relative fitness. Despite the high dimensionality of such real-world landscapes, empirical studies are often limited in their ability to quantify the fitness of different genotypes beyond point mutations, while theoretical works attempt statistical/mechanistic models to reason the overall landscape structure. However, most classical fitness landscape models overlook an instinctive constraint that genotypes leading to the same phenotype almost certainly share the same fitness value, since the information of genotype-phenotype mapping is rarely incorporated. Here, we investigate fitness landscape models through the lens of Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs), where the regulatory products are computed from multiple genes and collectively treated as the phenotypes. With the assumption that regulatory mediators/products exhibit binary states, we prove topographical features of GRN fitness landscape models such as accessibility and connectivity insensitive to the choice of the fitness function. Furthermore, using graph theory, we deduce a mesoscopic structure underlying GRN fitness landscape models that retains necessary information for evolutionary dynamics with minimal complexity. We also propose an algorithm to construct such a mesoscopic backbone which is more efficient than the brute-force approach. Combined, this work provides mathematical implications for fitness landscape models with high-dimensional genotype-phenotype mapping, yielding the potential to elucidate empirical landscapes and their resulting evolutionary processes in a manner complementary to existing computational studies.
Near unity input displacement factor for current source PWM drives

A simple control scheme for near unity input displacement factor (IDF) operation of the three phase current source type PWM rectifier is proposed. The rectifier is operated by a conventional selective harmonic elimination pattern with 420 Hz switching frequency, which is feasible for GTO switches used in high power applications. The article includes a description of the proposed control scheme, IDF compensation limitations based on power circuit components, and simulation results for steady state and transient conditions. We also investigate the IDF values for PWM CSRs with various control strategies supplying CSI based AC drives with different types of industrial loads. Based on the results presented, a power factor correction scheme may not be necessary for a CSR-CSI AC drive supplying a particular type of load. Experimental results on a 10 kVA GTO PWM rectifier are included to confirm the feasibility of the proposed scheme for high power applications.
Study on Stable Estimation Method for Lead-acid Battery SOC by Extended Kalman Filter

A stable state of charge (SOC) estimation method which can adapt to variable current environment through adjusting noise covariance is proposed in this study. The accuracy of battery SOC estimation is the important factor in battery management system. First, the cause of instability on SOC estimation using Kalman filter is analyzed, and then an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is used to build up state space equation. The experimental results show that the SOC estimation error within 10%. Meanwhile, the variety of SOC is decreased from 1% to 0.6%.
Model Driven Rule Engine Using Meta Programming : A Case Study from Ericsson Company

The growing request of using new technologies, leads to an increased usage of more complex software domains. In addition, it may cause number of challenges, which can be resolved by changing the way systems are designed. Companies have applied instructions and standards within their organizations to reduce the problems and increase the consistency between their software applications and reusing components in different systems. A generic or specific approach can be used to implement such systems. As a specific approach delivers a better solution with significant advantages and ease of use for particular application domains, this study followed this methodology. This study presents the result of an exploratory case study at the Ericsson telecom company where the challenges of defining an external and internal Domain Specific Language were investigated. The possibilities of how to transfer from a manually built Radio Base Station configuration towards a more automated and reliable system configuration was investigated. Moreover, the results of developing an internal and external DSL based on the company’s requirements are presented. Benefits, shortcomings, example DSLs, and implementation techniques are discussed in this report. The outcome of this thesis work will be used as a configuration part that is included in a larger in-house tool within the company. This provides an effective method to handle complicated system in a simple manner.