Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatio-temporal variation in species composition of New Zealand's whitebait fishery

ABSTRACT Whitebait comprise a culturally, commercially and recreationally important fishery in New Zealand, where post-larvae are netted while returning from their marine phase. In this study, we expanded an historical (1964) sampling programme to gain a contemporary understanding of the species composition of the whitebait fishery; 87 rivers were sampled over six months in 2015. Over the entire country, >12 species were found in samples and 87.6% of these were īnanga (Galaxias maculatus). Kōaro (G. brevipinnis) and banded kōkopu (G. fasciatus) were abundant in some rivers and regions at particular times of the year. Buller was the most variable region, spatially and temporally, for species composition; Canterbury was the least variable. Banded kōkopu whitebait migrated one month earlier north of Cook Strait than in the south. There was a positive association between the abundance of kōaro and banded kōkopu in samples and the level of indigenous forest cover in catchments. Compared to samples from 50 years ago, there was a greater proportion of kōaro and banded kōkopu whitebait throughout the country. This spatio-temporal variability requires fishery regulations to be more tailored and flexible if they are to conserve the diversity of life-histories present in the catch and sustain the whitebait fishery.
Hydrological Variability of Water Level of Dianchi Lake and Its Application

The water level is an important indicator for lake operation management, and the variability of lake water level will have an important impact on the ecological suitability of aquatic vegetation. The ecological water level of lakes is the minimum water level for maintaining the structural and functional integrity and biodiversity of lake ecosystems. Therefore, it is very important to determine the ecological water level of lakes is for maintaining the harmony and stability of lake ecosystems. This paper analyzed the characteristics of water level, the lowest and suitable ecological water levels and the guarantee degree, by using the monthly water level data of Dianchi Lake from 1961 to 2016. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The water level of Dianchi Lake mainly had a change period of about 15 years; (2) The abrupt change point of water level of Dianchi Lake occurred in 1994; (3) The lowest and suitable ecological water levels of Dianchi Lake and its actual water level had a typical unimodal distribution. The ecological water level in spring and winter was high, while that in summer and autumn was low. Thereinto, the lowest and suitable ecological water levels in May were lowest, 1885.86m and 1886.04m respectively, while those in November were highest, 1886.60m and 1886.78m respectively. (4) The guarantee degree of the lowest ecological water level of Dianchi Lake was as high as 93%∼95% within the year, while the guarantee degree of the suitable ecological water level could only reach 46%∼50%. The guarantee rate of the ecological water level during the low water level period was higher than that during the high water level period, and the guarantee degree of the interannual ecological water level varied greatly over the years. The lowest guarantee degree occurred in 1988 and 1989 with 0%, followed by the guarantee degrees of 50% and 8% in 1993, and they had reached 100% since 1994.
Study on Intelligent Compaction-Equipment Logistics Scheduling and Propagation Characteristics of Vibration Wave in Nonlinear Systems with Multistability Based on Field Test

The equipment scheduling and propagation characteristics of vibration wave from vibratory roller ⟶ filling material nonlinear systems with multistability are the core problems of subgrade intelligent construction technology, and the logistics scheduling of the equipment is directly related to the construction efficiency. Aiming at the shortages, one typical subgrade located at the Gu’an station of Beijing-Xiong’an city railway is selected to research and finish the field tests; some findings are shown as follows: first, some valuable suggestions about the logistics scheduling of intelligent equipment are proposed, which can break the barriers between the organizations and improve construction efficiency; second, when the vibration wave propagates from the vibratory roller ⟶ surface of filling material ⟶ different buried depths of filling material, the peak acceleration of vibration wave gradually decreases and is hyperbolic distribution approximately. At the same time, the sensitive of attenuation is shown as follows: Z 0.9), and the concrete functional relationship among different amplitudes of harmonics can be summarized as y = Ae−BX; fourth, the vibration energy is mainly concentrated near 10–30 Hz in the vibratory roller, but when the vibration wave propagates from vibratory roller⟶filling material, the vibration energy gradually decreases with the increase in depth, and the marginal spectrum gradually changes from one peak to two peaks, that is, 30–50 Hz and 50–100 Hz; fifth, the vibration energy in the vibrational wheel is distributed averagely in the compaction process, and the effective compaction time is two seconds, which will be helpful for revealing the propagation characteristics of vibration wave, optimizing the compaction quality control models and providing some support for the development of intelligent compaction theory of railway subgrade.
Flexible and Wearable EMG and PSD Sensors Enabled Locomotion Mode Recognition for IoHT-Based In-Home Rehabilitation

Benefiting from the development of the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) in recent years, locomotion mode recognition using wearable sensors plays a more and more important role in the field of in-home rehabilitation. In this paper, a smart sensing system utilizing flexible electromyography (EMG) sensors and a forty-eight-channel plantar stress distribution sensor for locomotion mode recognition is presented, together with its use under the IoHT architecture. EMG and plantar stress distribution (PSD) information from ten healthy subjects in five common locomotion modes in daily life were collected, analyzed, and then transmitted to remote end terminals (e.g., personal computers). The data analysis process was implemented with machine learning techniques, through which the locomotion modes were determined with a high accuracy of 96.53%. This article demonstrates a feasible means for accurate locomotion mode recognition by combining wearable sensing techniques and the machine learning algorithm, potentially advancing the development for IoHT based in-home rehabilitation.
"Sterling Pound (Gbp) Exchange-Rate Volatility in the Brexit Context using the Egarch Model - A Comparison between the Effective Gbp Volatility and the Egarch Estimation for the Period June 2016 - September 2019"

This study investigates whether different specifications of univariate GARCH models can usefully forecast volatility on the foreign exchange market. The study uses only forecasts from an asymmetric GARCH model, namely Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) for GBP/USD exchange-rate and compares the estimates with the volatility for the period June 2016 to September 2019. The dataset is obtained from “Investing.com” and covers the period between June 2016 September 2019. The data encompasses the slump of the GBP to a 31-year low due to a major political crisis in the United Kingdom. Besides averting the decision-making factors about the worrying consequences of Brexit, this paper reaches the conclusion that the EGARCH model could be used to predict volatility of the currencies in the future.
Physi-Sorption of H2 on Pure and Boron–Doped Graphene Monolayers: A Dispersion–Corrected DFT Study

High-surface-area carbons are of interest as potential candidates to store H2 for fuel–cell power applications. Earlier work has been ambiguous and inconclusive on the effect of boron doping on H2 binding energy. Here, we describe a systematic dispersion–corrected density functional theory study to evaluate the effect of boron doping. We observe some enhancement in H2 binding, due to the presence of a defect, such as terminal hydrogen or distortion from planarity, introduced by the inclusion of boron into a graphene ring, which creates hydrogen adsorption sites with slightly increased binding energy. The increase is from −5 kJ/mol H2 for the pure carbon matrix to −7 kJ/mol H2 for the boron–doped system with the boron content of ~7%. The H2 binding sites have little direct interaction with boron. However, the largest enhancement in physi-sorption energy is seen for systems, where H2 is confined between layers at a distance of about 7 Å, where the H2 binding nearly doubles to −11 kJ/mol H2. These findings suggest that interplanar nanoconfinement might be more effective in enhancing H2 binding. Smaller coronene model is shown to be beneficial for understanding the dependence of interaction energy on the structural configurations and preferential H2 binding sites.
The acceptance of e-learning systems and the learning outcome of students at universities in Vietnam

e-Learning systems nowadays become vital for many universities in developing countries. They are useful for increasing educational quality and providing students with high-quality learning resources. However, how to attract students to use e-learning systems and how to improve their learning outcomes through e-learning are still difficult questions. This paper presents a survey study with 357 students from universities in Vietnam. The analysis results showed that e-learning acceptance was influenced by five factors including university support, students’ computer competency, infrastructure, content and design of courses, and student collaboration. Besides, the learning outcome was influenced by e-learning acceptance and student collaboration. Finally, some recommendations were suggested to improve e-learning acceptance and learning outcome of students in Vietnam.
Deep Audio-Visual Speech Separation with Attention Mechanism

Previous work shows that audio-visual fusion is a practical approach to deal with the speech separation task in the cocktail party problem. In this paper, we explore a better strategy to utilize visual representations with the attention mechanism. Compared to the previous baseline only using one visual stream of the target speaker, both speaker-dependent visual streams in the mixed audio are fed into the model, and it also predicts two separated speech streams simultaneously. To further enhance the performance, the attention mechanism is designed on the audio-visual speech separation architecture. The results show that the proposed approach works well in audio-visual speech separation. Our best model achieves an obvious and consistent improvement in speech separation when compared to the traditional method only using the target speaker visual stream.
Spoken Document Retrieval Leveraging Bert-Based Modeling and Query Reformulation

Spoken document retrieval (SDR) has long been deemed a fundamental and important step towards efficient organization of, and access to multimedia associated with spoken content. In this paper, we present a novel study of SDR leveraging the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) model for query and document representations (embeddings), as well as for relevance scoring. BERT has produced extremely promising results for various tasks in natural language understanding, but relatively little research on it is devoted to text information retrieval (IR), let alone SDR. We further tackle one of the critical problems facing SDR, viz. a query is often too short to convey a user’s information need, via the process of pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF), showing how information cues induced from PRF can be aptly incorporated into BERT for query expansion. In addition, such query reformulation through PRF also works in conjunction with additional augmentation of lexical features and confidence scores into the document embeddings learned from BERT. The merits of our approach are attested through extensive sets of experiments, which compare it with several classic and cutting-edge (deep learning-based) retrieval approaches.
Current views on endocytosis in filamentous fungi

ABSTRACT Filamentous fungi grow by adding cell wall and membrane exclusively at the apex of tubular structures called hyphae. Growth was previously believed to occur only through exocytosis at the Spitzenkörper, an organised body of secretory macro- and microvesicles found only in growing hyphae. More recent work has indicated that an area deemed the sub-apical collar is enriched for endocytosis and is also required for hyphal growth. It is now generally believed that polarity of filamentous fungi is achieved through the balancing of the processes of endocytosis and exocytosis at these two areas. This review is an update on the current progress and understanding surrounding the occurrence of endocytosis and its spatial regulation as they pertain to growth and pathogenicity in filamentous fungi.
Push-Pull Finite-Time Convergence Distributed Optimization Algorithm

With the widespread application of distributed systems, many problems need to be solved urgently. How to design distributed optimization strategies has become a research hotspot. This article focuses on the solution rate of the distributed convex optimization algorithm. Each agent in the network has its own convex cost function. We consider a gradient-based distributed method and use a push-pull gradient algorithm to minimize the total cost function. Inspired by the current multi-agent consensus cooperation protocol for distributed convex optimization algorithm, a distributed convex optimization algorithm with finite time convergence is proposed and studied. In the end, based on a fixed undirected distributed network topology, a fast convergent distributed cooperative learning method based on a linear parameterized neural network is proposed, which is different from the existing distributed convex optimization algorithms that can achieve exponential convergence. The algorithm can achieve finite-time convergence. The convergence of the algorithm can be guaranteed by the Lyapunov method. The corresponding simulation examples also show the effectiveness of the algorithm intuitively. Compared with other algorithms, this algorithm is competitive.
Methods of estimation of reference crop evapotranspiration for the conditions of northeastern semi-arid, Brazil

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar metodos de estimativa da evapotranspiracao de referencia (ETo) em condicoes de baixa e elevada umidade relativa usando o metodo de Penman Monteith-FAO 56 como referencia. Foram utilizados dados de uma estacao meteorologica convencional pertencente a Universidade Federal Rural do Semiarido, em Mossoro-RN referentes ao periodo de janeiro de 2002 a junho de 2008. A avaliacao do desempenho foi realizada por meio do indice de precisao “ r ”, um indice de exatidao “ d ”, e de confianca ou desempenho “ c ”. Os metodos Kimberly-Penman 1982, Kimberly-Penman 1972, Benevides-Lopez 1970 e Hargreaves-Samani 1985 tiveram um aumento substancial nos seus desempenhos quando utilizados em condicoes de elevada umidade (UR > 70%), em comparacao com as condicoes de baixa umidade (UR < 70%). As equacoes de Makkink 1957 e Hamon 1961 subestimaram a ETo em ambos os periodos e o metodo Penman modificado-FAO24 tendeu a superestimar o metodo padrao. Os metodos Penman 1948, FAO24-Radiacao, FAO24-Blaney-Criddle e Frere-Popov apresentaram melhor desempenho entre os avaliados.
Screening, partial purification and characterization of the hyper-thermophilic lipase produced by a new isolate of Bacillus subtilis LP2

Abstract Lipases are one of the most important catalysts for several industries such as detergent, dairy, and textile industry due to their bio-catalytic ability in aqueous and non-aqueous media. Stability to extreme conditions is an important property since it makes enzymes suitable to several industrial processes. In this study, lipase producing soil bacteria were screened and identified with 16S rDNA sequencing. A new hyper-thermophilic lipase named as Bacillus subtilis LP2 isolate was partially purified by ammonium sulphate precipitation with 17.8-fold purification and 583 U/mg specific activity. Maximum activity was exhibited at pH 7 and 80 °C with the substrate tween 80 KM and Vmax values were calculated as 18.3 mM and 680 U/mg with a catalytic efficiency (kcat/KM) of 307 s−1M−1. These results indicate that lipase from Bacillus subtilis LP2 can be a valuable candidate for industrial applications such as organic synthesis and fats and oils industry due to their efficient catalysis in higher temperatures.
DNN-based Mask Estimation Integrating Spectral and Spatial Features for Robust Beamforming

Spectral mask based beamforming has showed competitive performance on multi-channel speech enhancement in recent years. However, such methods apply mask estimation on each channel and ensemble the masks from multiple channels into one for speech and noise covariance estimation. Spectral-spatial mask estimation has not been well extended yet. In this paper, we propose a novel spectral-spatial mask based beamforming method for two-channel noisy signals, where spectral amplitude and cross-channel spatial features are integrated to improve mask estimation. Multi-channel masks are not merged in order to preserve channel characteristics for robust beamforming. Furthermore, this two-channel method is extended to six-channel scenario. Experiments on CHiME3 evaluation confirm the superior performance of the proposed method over two spectral mask estimation approaches in terms of word error rates (WER) improvement.
Tracking Lake and Reservoir Changes in the Nenjiang Watershed, Northeast China: Patterns, Trends, and Drivers

In terms of evident climate change and human activities, investigating changes in lakes and reservoirs is critical for sustainable protection of water resources and ecosystem management over the Nenjiang watershed (NJW), an eco-sensitive semi-arid region and the third-largest inland waterbody cluster in China. In this study, we established a multi-temporal dataset documenting lake and reservoir (area ≥ 1 km2) changes in this region using an object-oriented image classification method and Landsat series images from 1980 to 2015. Using the structural equation model (SEM), we analyzed the diverse impacts of climatic and anthropogenic variables on lake changes. Results indicated that lakes experienced significant changes with fluctuations over the past 35 years including obvious declines in the total area (by 42%) and number (by 51%) from 1980 to 2010 and a slight increase in the total lake area and number from 2010 to 2015. More than 235 lakes in the size class of 1–10 km2 decreased to small lakes (area < 1 km2), while 59 lakes covering 243.75 km2 disappeared. Total reservoir area and number had continuous increases during the investigated 35 years, with an areal expansion of 54.9% from 919 km2 to 1422 km2, and a number increase by 65.3% from 78 to 129. The SEM revealed that the lake area in the NJW had a significant correlation with the mean annual precipitation (MAP), suggesting that the MAP decline clarified most of the lake shrinkage in the NJW. Furthermore, agricultural consumption of water had potential impacts on lake changes, suggested by the significant relationship between cropland area and lake area.
Control of a Supercapacitor-Battery-PV Based Stand-Alone DC-Microgrid

A non-linear control structure for a Photovoltaic (PV), battery and supercapacitor based stand-alone DC-microgrid is presented in this paper. Most of the conventional PI-based linear control structures reported in the literature have been designed around a single operating point and also supercapacitor voltage has not been regulated. Though supercapacitor voltage is regulated in some of the works, a dedicated controller has been used which increases controller count and makes designing/tuning of controllers together for desired system performance complicated. However, due to self-discharge or frequent discharge during operation, supercapacitor voltage can reach the lowest value which affects controller performance and even makes the system unstable. So, a robust non-linear controller: Interconnection Damping Assessment-Passivity Based Controller (IDA-PBC) is implemented as an outer loop controller to regulate DC-link and supercapacitor voltages. Also, a Finite Control Set-Model Predictive Control (FCS-MPC) which is intuitive in nature is implemented as inner current controllers. The proposed control structure is digital-friendly and can address the limitations of linear PI-control structure such as (i) Controller conflicts in designing the multiple controllers, (ii) Small region of stability (iii) Supercapacitor voltage regulation. Finally, the proposed control structure is verified through simulation and experimental results.
A Cladistic Analysis of Ten Lizard Families (Reptilia: Squamata) Based on Cranial Musculature

The cranial musculature of species of ten families of lizards (Gekkonidae, Teiidae, Gymnophthalmidae, Anguidae, Scincidae, Lacertidae, Tropiduridae, Liolaemidae, Leiosauridae, and Polychrotidae) was analyzed. Using 93 myological cranial characters, a cladistic analysis was performed. To root the trees, data of Sphenodon were added to the matrix. The cladistic analysis yielded 129 equally parsimonious trees with a fit of 426.0 (39%) and 467 steps. In the consensus tree we observed only five nodes congruent with traditional phylogenetic hypothesis of the groups analyzed: teiids + gymnophthalmids (node 128); geckos (node 136); liolaemids (node 116); genus Liolaemus (node 115); and genus Phymaturus (node 92). Thus in these groups, phylogeny seems to be better predictor of muscle morphology than ecology or diet. They are many problematic groups whose monophyly requires further analysis (tropidurids, polychrotids, and scincids). In no case we were able to recognize differences that could be attributed to functional features.
HUBUNGAN GETARAN LENGAN-TANGAN DENGAN KELUHAN CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME PADA PEKERJA HOME INDUSTRY PANDAI BESI DI KECAMATAN SOKOBANAH SAMPANG

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) adalah salah satu penyakit akibat kerja. CTS disebabkan oleh disfungsi saraf median yang terjadi karena peningkatan tekanan di terowongan karpal. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis hubungan antara keluhan getaran lengan-tangan Carpal Tunnel Syndrome di pandai besi Industri Rumah Tangga di Kabupaten Sokobanah. Desain penelitian dengan pendekatan Cross-Sectional. Populasi dan sampel yang diperoleh adalah semua pekerja pandai besi Industri Rumah Tangga di Kabupaten Sokobanah dengan 33 orang. Teknik pengambilan sampel menggunakan sampel jenuh adalah bahwa populasi memiliki kesempatan yang sama untuk dijadikan sampel. Variabel yang diteliti adalah getaran lengan-lengan dan keluhan Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan adalah lembar kuesioner dan alat ukur (Vibration Meter). Analisis data menggunakan uji korelasi Spearman. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa sebagian besar (75,8%) terkena getaran tidak nyaman, sebagian besar (63,6%) memiliki keluhan CTS parah dan ada hubungan yang signifikan antara getaran lengan-tangan dan keluhan Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (p = 0,01). Disimpulkan bahwa paparan getaran lengan yang lebih tinggi dapat meningkatkan keluhan Carpal Tunnel Syndrome pada pekerja Home Industri pandai besi di Kabupaten Sokobanah. Direkomendasikan bagi Industri Rumah Tangga untuk meningkatkan pengawasan pekerja pandai besi melalui evaluasi kinerja dengan aspek kehati-hatian dalam bekerja dan menggunakan Alat Pelindung Diri (APD) untuk pekerja.