Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulation of the last glacial inception and rapid ice sheet growth in the McGill Paleoclimate Model

A two‐dimensional (2‐D) dynamic ice sheet model coupled to the McGill Paleoclimate Model (MPM) under Milankovitch forcing and Vostok‐derived atmospheric CO2 levels is used to investigate the last glacial inception and subsequent rapid ice sheet growth in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The impacts on ice sheet growth of the elevation effect of orography and the freezing of rain/refreezing of meltwater are evaluated. The results show that while Milankovitch forcing only is sufficient to initiate the formation of permanent North American and Eurasian ice at around 120 kyr BP, rapid ice sheet growth during the next 10 kyr only occurs when the above two processes and an active ocean component are included. The modelled ice volume‐equivalent drop in sea level during this growth period is estimated to be about two‐thirds of that found from sea level reconstructions. Finally, the ice sheet‐thermohaline circulation interactions and ice sheet thickness distribution are also investigated.
Statistical Mechanics: J Theory and Experiment Statistical physics of language dynamics

Language dynamics is a rapidly growing ﬁeld that focuses on all processes related to the emergence, evolution, change and extinction of languages. Recently, the study of self-organization and evolution of language and meaning has led to the idea that a community of language users can be seen as a complex dynamical system, which collectively solves the problem of developing a shared communication framework through the back-and-forth signaling between individuals. We shall review some of the progress made in the past few years and highlight potential future directions of research in this area. In particular, the emergence of a common lexicon and of a shared set of linguistic categories will be discussed, as examples corresponding to the early stages of a language. The extent to which synthetic modeling is nowadays contributing to the ongoing debate in cognitive science will be pointed out. In addition, the burst of growth of the web is providing new experimental frameworks. It makes available a huge amount of resources, both as novel tools and data to be analyzed, allowing quantitative and large-scale analysis of the processes underlying the emergence of a collective information and language dynamics.
Static Hedging and Pricing American Exotic Options

This paper applies the static hedge portfolio (SHP) approach of Derman, Ergener, and Kani (1995) and Carr, Ellis, and Gupta (1998) to price and/or hedge American exotic options. We first show how to construct a static hedge portfolio to match the complicated boundary conditions of American barrier options and lookback options. Detailed analyses of the profit and loss distributions suggest that the static hedge portfolio is far less risky than the dynamic delta-hedged portfolio. Moreover, numerical results indicate that the efficiency of the proposed method is comparable to Boyle and Tian (1999) for pricing American barrier options under the constant elasticity of variance (CEV) model of Cox (1975) and comparable to Babbs (2000) for pricing American floating strike lookback options under the Black-Scholes model. In particular, the recalculation of the option prices and hedge ratios under the proposed method is much easier and quicker than the tree methods. JEL classification: G13
Automatic transfer of musical mood into virtual environments

This paper presents a method that automatically transforms a virtual environment (VE) according to the mood of input music. We use machine learning to extract a mood from the music. We then select images exhibiting the mood and transfer their styles to the textures of objects in the VE photorealistically or artistically. Our user study results indicate that our method is effective in transferring valence-related aspects, but not arousal-related ones. Our method can still provide novel experiences in virtual reality and speed up the production of VEs by automating its procedure.
The Financial Crisis Impact on Potential Output in Iran

Financial crisis Potential output VAR Blanchard and Quah decomposition In this study the quarterly data from 1996:1-2011:2 have been used to investigate the effect of financial crisis on potential output in Iran. For this purpose potential output, natural unemployment rate, spread between short-run and long-run interest rate and real money supply variables are used to estimate Auto Regressive Model and analyze Impulse-Response function and Variance Decomposition. The results show that financial crisis has negative impact on potential output in Iran. Also, monetary shocks have negative impact on potential output in Iran. As regards, monetary policy have no effect on actual output in long-run, it seems that monetary policies have considered the long-run targets. Variance decomposition of potential output shows that, potential output is influenced from natural unemployment about 51 percent and spread between short-run and long-run interest rate variable is influenced about 45 percent from real money supply in long-run. Also in this investigation, we used the Blanchard and Quah decomposition to decompose the real GDP to temporary & permanent shocks. The results suggest that permanent shocks have accumulated affect. These shocks have negative impact on output in Iran in long-run and temporary shocks have no impact on output and unemployment in long-run.
Visualising Business Data: A Survey

A rapidly increasing number of businesses rely on visualisation solutions for their data management challenges. This demand stems from an industry-wide shift towards data-driven approaches to decision making and problem-solving. However, there is an overwhelming mass of heterogeneous data collected as a result. The analysis of these data become a critical and challenging part of the business process. Employing visual analysis increases data comprehension thus enabling a wider range of users to interpret the underlying behaviour, as opposed to skilled but expensive data analysts. Widening the reach to an audience with a broader range of backgrounds creates new opportunities for decision making, problem-solving, trend identification, and creative thinking. In this survey, we identify trends in business visualisation and visual analytic literature where visualisation is used to address data challenges and identify areas in which industries use visual design to develop their understanding of the business environment. Our novel classification of literature includes the topics of businesses intelligence, business ecosystem, customer-centric. This survey provides a valuable overview and insight into the business visualisation literature with a novel classification that highlights both mature and less developed research directions.
M-Health Service for Train Passengers Using Mobile GPS System: An ArchiMate Service Layer Model

EA (Enterprise Architecture) is an instrument that is employed to describe the organization’s structure, business layout and operations within the IT (Information Technology) environment. Different types of organizations extensively employed EA for aligning their business and operations with IT resources. EA may also be employed in non-organizational setting such as service providing agencies; rescue, medical emergency and education services. This paper suggests an EAF (Enterprise Architecture Framework) for non-organizational setting by critically analyzing the top four EAs. The paper also proposes a new m-Health service model based on the mobile GPS (Global Positioning System) for train/ rail passengers by employing the ArchiMate modeling language and compares the proposed model with existing service providers.
On the Use of Automatic Speech Recognition to Facilitate Increased Literacy Rates in Jamaica

This paper makes the case for the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) in addressing the issue of increasing the rates of literacy of children in the developing world, using Jamaica as a test case. It gives an overview of the current state of affairs, which underscores the need for developing innovative ways of delivering literacy education. Following a review of the state of the art in ASR-based literacy tutors, the technical and pedagogical challenges of developing such a system for Jamaica are discussed.
Macroalgal traits and the feeding and fitness of an herbivorous amphipod: the roles of selectivity, mixing, and compensation

Selective feeding, compensatory feeding, and diet mixing have all been proposed as adap- tive strategies allowing herbivores to enhance nutrient intake from low quality plant and algal foods. However, little is known about the relative importance of these alternative feeding strategies for con- sumer fitness or about how these strategies are affected by prey nutritional traits. To address this, we studied the effects of algal nutritional value and toughness on feeding choices, feeding rates, and sur- vival, growth and fecundity of the amphipod Ampithoe longimana. To assess the value of diet mixing, we compared fitness of amphipods cultured on each of 15 algal species or on 4 different mixtures of algae. We also quantified how sequentially switching between algae that supported higher and lower fitness affected fitness compared to monospecific diets of these algae and to a constant mixture of the algae. Protein, nitrogen, organic content, or toughness of algae did not correlate with food choice by A. longimana. In contrast, we found a strong inverse correlation between feeding rates and algal organic content (ash free dry mass/wet mass (AFDM:WM) and total organic carbon (TOC)), and, to a lesser extent, protein (but not nitrogen). Thus, when confined with algae having lower nutritional value, A. longimana used quantity to compensate for quality. This compensatory feeding was confirmed by feed- ing amphipods on artificial diets that varied only in their amount of AFDM:WM. Despite broad differ- ences in algal nutrient content or other traits, compensatory feeding allowed this amphipod to maintain high fitness when cultured on most, but not all, algae. Access to algal mixtures did not enhance fitness compared to feeding on several algae offered alone, suggesting that A. longimana need not rely on a mixed diet. Even when significant differences in survivorship or growth occurred between a mono- specific diet and a mixed diet, fecundity or size of eggs produced by egg-bearing survivors were gen- erally unaffected. Furthermore, when amphipods were switched sequentially (every 24 h) between 2 different quality algae, only growth (but not survivorship, fecundity, or egg size) was affected, with growth determined primarily by the higher quality alga offered. Amphipods confined with the green alga Codium fragile ovulated significantly later than conspecifics on one mixed diet, but this effect was observed only in 1 of 2 long-term assays. Thus, dietary mixing offered only a moderate benefit to this am- phipod under very restrictive conditions. For A. longimana, food selection is relatively unresponsive to algal nutritional quality, apparently because compensatory feeding allows this amphipod to successfully exploit a variety of algal foods. Compensatory feeding also may reduce the need to move among host algae in order to mix diets, thus decreasing the risk of movement-associated detection by predators.
Comparing Organizational Structures: Two Case Studies of Engineering Companies

Carlye is a 2nd year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Design. She is originally from Pittsburgh, PA and received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. At the University of Colorado Boulder, she is advised by Dr. Mark Rentschler and co-advised by Dr. Daria Kotys-Schwartz. For the past two years, she has worked as a Graduate Research Assistant on the NSF-funded project entitled ”Cognitive Ethnographies of Engineering Design. ” In this project, she is studying how design in constructed in different environments to better understand what is needed to ensure successful design projects.
Biogenic Hydrocarbons in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer: A Review

Nonmethane hydrocarbons are ubiquitous trace atmospheric constituents yet they control the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere. Both anthropogenic and biogenic processes contribute to the release of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere. In this manuscript, the state of the science concerning biosynthesis, transport, and chemical transformation of hydrocarbons emitted by the terrestrial biosphere is reviewed. In particular, the focus is on isoprene, monoterpenes, and oxygen-ated hydrocarbons. The generated science during the last 10 years is reviewed to explain and quantify hydrocarbon emissions from vegetation and to discern impacts of biogenic hydrocarbons on local and regional atmospheric chemistry. Furthermore, the physiological and environmental processes controlling biosynthesis and production of hydrocarbon compounds are reported on. Many advances have been made on measurement and modeling approaches developed to quantify hydrocarbon emissions from leaves and forest ecosystems. A synthesis of the atmospheric chemistry of biogenic hydrocarbons and their role in the formation of oxidants and aerosols is presented. The integration of biogenic hydrocarbon kinetics and atmospheric physics into mathematical modeling systems is examined to assess the contribution of biogenic hydrocarbons to the formation of oxidants and aerosols, thereby allowing us to study their impacts on the earth's climate system and to develop strategies to reduce oxidant precursors in affected regions.
Efficiency of Women Agricultural Labourers in Rice Farming Systems of Kerala and Tamil Nadu

The study was conducted in Kollam district of Kerala and Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu. A labour efficiency scale was developed by functional approach and the same was used to measure the labour efficiency of women agricultural labourers. Using cluster analysis, the items were grouped into different dimensions and labeled based on the content of the items. In general, majority (63%) of the women agricultural labourers were low in labour efficiency. The analysis revealed significant difference between the women agricultural labourers of Kerala and Tamil Nadu with respect to their overall labour efficiency level. The difference was mainly due to labour attachment practices and increasing demand for non-agricultural works. Dimension-wise analysis of labour efficiency showed that majority of them belonged to the high group under the dimension adjustability and competency, whereas majority had low efficiency with respect to dimensions such as determination in work situation, inter-personal relationship, team spirit, commitment, work environment, socio-economic and situational. The respondents were observed to have neither high nor low efficiency in case of confidence dimension.
Cotton Sector Strategies in West and Central Africa (French Version)

Cotton production is truly a success story in West and Central Africa. The region is now the second largest exporter of lint, after the United States, with a world market share of 15 percent. Despite its strong performance in the past, the sector is characterized by several institutional and structural weaknesses that jeopardize its viability in an era of increasing globalization of the cotton industry. The sector's future performance will also depend on the implications of cotton sector policies in major producing countries such as the United States, the European Union, and China. This paper examines how the above factors may affect future growth of the region's cotton industry. It also identifies the changes that are required to enable countries in the region to fully exploit the sector's significant growth potential.
A comparative study of the dispersion of carbon nanofibres in polymer melts

The dispersion of carbon nanofibres (CNF) in a polymer matrix using two melt mixing methods is studied. Distributive and dispersive mixing were ev aluated by optical and electron microscopy. The CNF were chemically modified to improve the interface with t he matrix. The results showed that the two methods produced good distribution of the filler, but exten sional stresses induced higher dispersion. The latt er correlated well with a decrease in electrical resis tivity. Also, the chemical modification largely imp roved the CNF/polymer interface.
Greedy Hash: Towards Fast Optimization for Accurate Hash Coding in CNN

To convert the input into binary code, hashing algorithm has been widely used for approximate nearest neighbor search on large-scale image sets due to its computation and storage efficiency. Deep hashing further improves the retrieval quality by combining the hash coding with deep neural network. However, a major difficulty in deep hashing lies in the discrete constraints imposed on the network output, which generally makes the optimization NP hard. In this work, we adopt the greedy principle to tackle this NP hard problem by iteratively updating the network toward the probable optimal discrete solution in each iteration. A hash coding layer is designed to implement our approach which strictly uses the sign function in forward propagation to maintain the discrete constraints, while in back propagation the gradients are transmitted intactly to the front layer to avoid the vanishing gradients. In addition to the theoretical derivation, we provide a new perspective to visualize and understand the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm. Experiments on benchmark datasets show that our scheme outperforms state-of-the-art hashing methods in both supervised and unsupervised tasks.
Welfare Analysis of Policy Measures for Financial Stability

We introduce the financial market friction through the search and matching in the loan market into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. We reveal that the second order approximation of social welfare includes the terms relating credit, such as credit market tightness, the volume of credit, and a loan separation rate, in addition to the inflation rate and the output gap under the financial market friction. Our analytical result justifies the reason why the optimal policy should take the credit variation into account. We introduce a monetary policy and other policy measures for the financial stability into the model. The optimal outcome is achieved through the monetary and other policy measures by taking into account not only price stability but also financial stability.
Retrieval of aerosol single-scattering albedo and polarized phase function from polarized sun-photometer measurements for Zanjan's atmosphere

Abstract. The polarized phase function of atmospheric aerosols has been investigated for the atmosphere of Zanjan, a city in northwest Iran. To do this, aerosol optical depth, Angstrom exponent, single-scattering albedo, and polarized phase function have been retrieved from the measurements of a Cimel CE 318-2 polarized sun-photometer from February 2010 to December 2012. The results show that the maximum value of aerosol polarized phase function as well as the polarized phase function retrieved for a specific scattering angle (i.e., 60°) are strongly correlated (R = 0.95 and 0.95, respectively) with the Angstrom exponent. The latter has a meaningful variation with respect to the changes in the complex refractive index of the atmospheric aerosols. Furthermore the polarized phase function shows a moderate negative correlation with respect to the atmospheric aerosol optical depth and single-scattering albedo (R = −0.76 and −0.33, respectively). Therefore the polarized phase function can be regarded as a key parameter to characterize the atmospheric particles of the region – a populated city in the semi-arid area and surrounded by some dust sources of the Earth's dust belt.
Biosorption of chromium(VI) using immobilized Bacillius subtilis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Heavy metals like chromium do contaminate the environment that comprises of soil, water and air. It affects the growth of flora and fauna which in turn affect human health negatively. Chromium could also bio-accumulate in plants and animals and this becomes dangerous for survival of human if adequate steps are not taken for treatment of industrial and agricultural wastes. Therefore, the batch removal of Cr (VI) from environment water bodies becomes necessary. Its removal from aqueous solution using immobilized Bacillus subtilis (IBBS), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (IPBS), mixed biomass (IMBS) and Alginate alone (IABS) was carried out. The conditions of influence of initial Cr (VI) concentrations, solution pH, contact time, biomass dosage and temperature were studied. The sorption kinetic models of Cr (VI) onto the biosorbents were examined with pseudo first-order, pseudo second-order, and Elovich kinetics respectively. It was found that the experimental conditions affected the extent of removal of Cr (VI) from aqueous solution. The higher the initial concentration, the larger the amount of Cr (VI) removed while the higher the temperature the lesser the amount removed. The optimum contact time and adsorbent dose for effective removal of Cr (VI) from aqueous solution were found to be 60 mins and 0.01 g respectively. Pseudo second-order kinetic model best correlates the experimental data. Among isotherm models studied, Freundlich adsorption isotherm model gave the best fit. Key Words: Chromium (VI), Adsorption Kinetics, Adsorption Isotherms, Spectrophotometric Determination, Immobilized Biosorbents
Preparation and Characterization of 1-(5-Azido-1H-1,2,4-triazol-3-yl)tetrazole

: This study presents the preparation of 1-(5-azido-1 H -1,2,4-triazol-3-yl)tetrazole ( 5 ) from commercially available chemicals in a five step synthesis. The energetic title compound was comprehensively characterized by various means, including vibrational (IR, Raman) and multinuclear ( 1 H, 13 C, 14 N, 15 N) NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and differential scanning calorimetry. The sensitivities towards various outer stimuli (impact, friction) were determined according to BAM standards. The enthalpy of formation was calculated at the CBS-4M level of theory.
Adsorption behavior of calcium ions and its effect on cassiterite flotation

Naturally, most of the cassiterite co-exists with sparingly soluble calcite, which makes it difficult to be fully utilized. Due to the adsorption of calcium ions dissolved from calcite, surface properties of cassiterite and its floatability can be influenced. Adsorption tests show calcium ions can adsorb on cassiterite surface. In the presence of Ca2+, the zeta potentials of cassiterite shift to more positive values and the isoelectric point of cassiterite increases from pH 4.4 to pH 4.9. XPS results show that after calcium ions treatment, a strong calcium spectral peak at 347.65 eV is detected on the cassiterite surface and the chemical circumstance of oxygen atoms is changed. The presence of Ca2+ can significantly depressed the flotation behavior of cassiterite with salicylhydroxamic acid (SHA) as collector. Its recovery is decreased by 26.03% compared to that without Ca2+ at SHA dosage of 8.0×10-4 mol/dm3. When increasing SHA concentration to 9.0×10-4 mol/dm3 and above, the depression effect is partly compensated and the recovery rises by about 20%. Contact angle values of cassiterite measured by the bubble method correspond well to the flotation performance. Hence the depression mechanism of Ca2+ in cassiterite flotation can be interpreted in two aspects: 1) the consumption of SHA due to complexation reactions in pulp; 2) a decrease of effective adsorption site for SHA on cassiterite because of the adsorption of Ca2+.