Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A weather generator for obtaining daily precipitation scenarios based on circulation patterns

Based on principal component analysis (PCA) and k-means clustering algorithm, 4 daily circulation patterns, which are associated with daily precipitation in southern Portugal, have been identified from observed daily mean sea level pressure (MSLP) fields over the northeastern Atlantic and western Europe. A weather generator based on daily circulation patterns was calibrated with 3 dif- ferent schemes to simulate daily precipitation occurrence and a 2-parameter gamma distribution was applied to generate daily precipitation amounts on rain days in southern Portugal. Parameters of the weather generator were estimated for every month in the winter half of the year (October to March) subject to each of the 4 daily circulation patterns. The weather generator was validated by hindcast using independent observational data. The synthetic daily precipitation series generated from the weather generator kept most of the important attributes of the observed series, such as the empirical distribution of daily precipitation amounts, the autocorrelation structure of the sequence of wet and dry days, the distributions of durations of wet and dry spells, and even the distributions of precipitation totals on several consecutive days. Furthermore, the daily MSLP fields over the northeastern Atlantic and western Europe simulated by the Hadley Centre's second generation coupled ocean-atmosphere GCM (HADCM2) control run (HADCM2CON) were validated by comparison with observed daily MSLP fields. It is clear that HADCM2 is able to reproduce very well daily MSLP fields and their sea- sonal variability over the region. Four daily circulation patterns, associated with daily precipitation in Portugal, identified from the observed daily MSLP fields over the area, were also classified well from the simulated daily MSLP fields. The weather generator was then applied to the sequence of daily cir- culation patterns in simulated MSLP fields of HADCM2CON, and validated. Essentially, the conclu- sions of previous validation analysis remained the same in the present case. The results imply that the weather generator can reproduce well important features of the 'present climate', including local pre- cipitation in southern Portugal, and can therefore be applied to obtain future precipitation scenarios from daily MSLP fields simulated by the 2 transient experiments of HADCM2, HADCM2GHG (green- house gases) and HADCM2SUL (greenhouse gases plus sulphate aerosols). However, it should be kept in mind that the use of the weather generator in obtaining future precipitation scenarios is dependent on the assumption that the present relationship between local precipitation and large-scale atmos- pheric circulation will remain valid in the future changing climate.
The Scholarship of College Teaching: Research Opportunities in the New Millennium

This paper examines some of the challenges facing contemporary Canadian community colleges and explores research opportunities related to (a) measuring the effectiveness of college teaching, (b) preparing beginning college teachers, and (c) re-conceptualizing professional development programs. First, the criteria for measuring teaching effectiveness at colleges are often derived from those used in elementary and secondary schools; questions remain as to whether, or to what degree, these criteria are appropriate measures of effective teaching in the college setting. Second, unprecedented retirements are creating an influx of beginning faculty with extensive subject expertise but often with little or no training as professional teachers; while traditional mentorship models often function as in-house induction programs, innovative pre-service training programs are being developed to more fully prepare aspirants to the profession of college teaching. Finally, some colleges are re-conceptualizing their professional development programs, employing innovative models such as Teaching Circles which are designed to build communities of scholars focused on institutional excellence in teaching. Numerous opportunities exist for research into teaching effectiveness, faculty induction, and professional development amid the changes and challenges that currently face the community colleges.
Developing occupational skills profiles for the UK: a feasibility study

Skills are a major policy priority both nationally and internationally. Yet we only have imperfect measures of the skills available and in use in employment in the UK today. This report explores the feasibility of the development of a new and comprehensive set of detailed, multi-dimensional occupational skills profiles for the UK which describe the skills required by employers and used by individuals in the modern workplace. The US-based Occupational Information Network (O*NET) system provides almost 250 measures of skills, abilities, work activities, training, work context and job characteristics for each of around 1,000 different US occupations (based on a modified version of the US Standard Occupational Classification), with information gathered from both job incumbents through standardised survey questionnaires, as well as assessments by professional job analysts. This study examines how we could potentially exploit comprehensive occupational-level information collected and used within the US via the Occupational Information Network system (O*NET). The report describes the approach the authors took to match information from O*NET to UK Standard Occupational Classification codes to enable it to be used in a UK context. Overall, the authors believe that the process is robust, and could be built upon further in a multitude of ways by organisations who have an interest in skills, and are concerned about their importance and impact for individual labour market outcomes as well as macro-economic performance.
Limitations to bit rate and spatial capacity of an optical data transmission channel

The maximum bit rate of a slab waveguide is ultimately determined by the waveguide dispersion. We show that while the maximum bit rate in a waveguide is inversely proportional to the waveguide's width, the bit rate per unit width (i.e., spatial capacity (SC)) decreases, and in the limit of a zero-width waveguide it converges to ~ ω/√(λL) (where L is the length and ω and λ are the beam frequency and wavelength respectively). This result, which is independent of the waveguide's refractive indices, is qualitatively equivalent to the transmission rate per unit of width in free space. We also show that in a three-dimensional waveguide (e.g., fibres), unlike free space, the SC vanishes in the same limit.
Constructing Semantic Knowledge Networks from the ground up: livelihoods and employment outcomes in Anmatjere region, central Australia

People need real opportunities to live the kind of life to which they aspire - to undertake livelihood activities they have reason to value, to achieve good health and well being outcomes, and to have resilience to shocks and stresses. A range of stakeholders consider that economic development is constrained by lack of engagement between Aboriginal people and labor markets, particularly given planned expansion of horticultural and mining operations. Aboriginal people of the Anmatjere region of Central Australia speak their own languages at home, have customary responsibilities for care of the region's natural and cultural resources, and have low levels of formal mainstream education. They aspire to jobs in their region and are engaged relatively strongly in employment in the community services sector and seasonal work in the pastoral industry, but not in other private sector employment. Their high dependence for income on social security payments and government funded jobs makes their livelihoods vulnerable to changes in government institutions. The modelling work presented in this paper is based on the views, attitudes and experiences of people living in the Anmatjere region about jobs and livelihoods. We have organized these as a collective knowledge representation, using semantic networks. This has elicited understanding of the structure, strength and quality of connections amongst social, economic, environmental and cultural dimensions important in people's livelihoods. The qualitative data were analysed using (a) natural language processing and linguistic algorithms; (b) exploration of semantic associations among knowledge constructs using a Hopfield-type Artificial Neural Network; and (c) graph-theoretic network analyses. We present the findings of this analysis in light of critical challenges that the Anmatjere community is facing. We show that culturally-explicit local Aboriginal institutions, world views and behaviours play significant and central roles in maintaining the community's knowledge representations. They connect people and establish the social and cultural roles that are critical in people's search for opportunity, income and the sustainability of their livelihoods in the region. 'Top down' actions including changes to government institutions aimed at enhancing individual Aboriginal people's engagement with employment have little chance of success unless they take into account the locally and culturally-specific ways in which the community is collectively functioning.
PIV and μ-PTV investigations of turbulent flow over a flexible wall undergoing traveling surface wave motions

Drag reduction effects by spanwise traveling surface waves with wall deformation are investigated experimentally using particle-image velocimetry (PIV) and micro-particle tracking velocimetry (μ-PTV) in a fully developed zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer. Since the wave parameters, i.e., wave amplitude (A+), and frequency (T+) are relevant factors for the drag reduction effect, a parametric study is performed to analyze their influence on the drag reduction. Within the range of the parameters investigated, the maximum drag reduction (DR) of 3.8% is found at A+ = 11.8 and T+ =158. Furthermore, the turbulent boundary layer (TBL) flow above the wave crest and trough is investigated by phase-locked measurements. The results show that the drag reduction effect is not only enhanced by increasing the amplitude, but also by raising the frequency in the range of the current parameters. Regarding the turbulence statistics downstream and above the moving surface, the velocity fluctuations in the streamwise and the wall-normal directions are damped by the traveling surface wave motion. A quadrant analysis of the turbulent productions shows that the sweep and ejection events are also weakened.
Temperature dependence of band gap energies of GaAsN alloys

The temperature dependence of band gap energies of GaAsN alloys was studied with absorption measurements. As the N concentration in GaAsN increased, the temperature dependence of the band gap energy was clearly reduced in comparison with that of GaAs. The redshift of the absorption edge in GaAsN for the temperature increase from 25 to 297 K was reduced to 60% of that of GaAs for the N concentration larger than ∼1%. The differential temperature coefficient of the energy gap at room temperature was also reduced to 70% of that of GaAs. The main factor for this reduced temperature dependence in GaAsN was attributed to the transition from band-like states to nitrogen-related localized states with detailed studies of the temperature-induced shift of the absorption edge.
Reactive Ion Beam Etching of GaN and AlGaN/GaN for Nanostructure Fabrication Using Methane-Based Gas Mixtures

The basic etching characteristics of electron cyclotron resonance reactive ion beam etching (ECR-RIBE) of GaN and AlGaN/GaN using methane-based mixtures have been studied in view of application to nanostructure fabrication. GaN could be etched by using a gas mixture of CH4/H2/Ar at a rate of about 10 nm/min, which is suitable for nanostructure fabrication. The etching process was also applicable to the standard AlGaN/GaN heterostructure. Etching along <1100> and <2110> stripe patterns revealed {0111} and {1121} sidewall facets, respectively, indicating that the etching is a facet-revealing process, being dominated by chemical reactions with low physical damage. However, the etching depth showed anomalous saturation at 400–500 nm, and the roughness of the surface increased with time. An in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) study detected the formation of Ga droplets. By adding N2 into the gas mixture, Ga droplet formation was suppressed, etch depth saturation disappeared and a smooth etched surface was obtained. Using the optimized etching conditions with N2 addition, an AlGaN/GaN nanowire structure with a wire width of 110 nm has been successfully fabricated.
The effect of viscosity and diffusion on the HO 2 uptake by sucrose and secondary organic aerosol particles

Abstract. We report the first measurements of HO2 uptake coefficients, γ, for secondary organic aerosol (SOA) particles and for the well-studied model compound sucrose which we doped with copper(II). Above 65 % relative humidity (RH), γ for copper(II)-doped sucrose aerosol particles equalled the surface mass accommodation coefficient α = 0.22 ± 0.06, but it decreased to γ = 0.012 ± 0.007 upon decreasing the RH to 17 %. The trend of γ with RH can be explained by an increase in aerosol viscosity and the contribution of a surface reaction, as demonstrated using the kinetic multilayer model of aerosol surface and bulk chemistry (KM-SUB). At high RH the total uptake was driven by reaction in the near-surface bulk and limited by mass accommodation, whilst at low RH it was limited by surface reaction. SOA from two different precursors, α-pinene and 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene (TMB), was investigated, yielding low uptake coefficients of γ
Hebridean Norse community of NW Scotland

The excavation at Cnip, Isle of Lewis, Scotland of the largest, and only known family, cemetery from the early Norse period in the Hebrides, provided a unique opportunity to use Sr isotope analysis to examine the origins of people who may have been Norwegian Vikings. Sr isotope analysis permits direct investigation of a person’s place of origin rather than indirectly through acquired cultural and artefactual affiliations. Sr isotope data suggest that the Norse group at Cnip was of mixed origins. The majority were consistent with indigenous origins but two individuals, of middle-age and different sex, were immigrants. They were, however, not from Norway but were raised separately, most probably on Tertiary volcanic rocks (e.g. the Inner Hebrides or NE Ireland) or, for the female, on marine carbonate rocks.
OC-Cache: An Open-channel SSD Based Cache for Multi-Tenant Systems

In a multi-tenant cloud environment, tenants are usually hosted by virtual machines. Cloud providers deploy multiple virtual machines on a physical server to better utilize physical resources including CPU, memory, and storage devices. SSDs are often used as an I/O cache shared among the tenants for large storage systems using hard disk drives (HDDs) as their main storage devices, which can receive much of SSD's performance benefit and HDD's cost advantage. A key challenge in the use of the shared cache is to ensure strong performance isolation and maintain its high utilization at the same time. However, conventional SSD cache management approaches cannot effectively address this challenge. In this paper, we propose OC-Cache, an open-channel SSD cache framework which utilizes SSD'd internal parallelism to adaptively allocate cache to tenants for both good performance isolation and high SSD utilization. In particular, OC-Cache uses a tenant's miss ratio curve to determine the amount of cache space allocation and where the allocation is (in dedicated or shared SSD channels) and dynamically manages cache space according to the workload characteristics. Experiments show that OC-Cache significantly reduces interference among tenants, and maintains high utilization of the SSD cache.
The investigation of the folding pathway of trp-cage miniprotein using explicit solvent molecular dynamics simulation

The objective of this study is to investigate the folding pathway of Trp-cage miniprotein. The structure and trajectories of this protein has been studied using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation. The simulation was run at 300K for 250ns. Clustering analysis was conducted to group the trajectories according to the RMSD value and six clusters were generated. From this, the best conformation was identified to best represent the Trp-cage miniprotein. The formation of the hydrogen bond that involved Gly11-Ser14 assisted the formation of 3 10 -helix. In this study, it is strongly suggested that the hydrogen bond interactions determined the formation of secondary structures.
PHYSIOLOGICAL REGULATION OF PROTEASE AND ANTIBIOTICS IN PENICILLIUM SP. USING SUBMERGED AND SOLID STATE FERMENTATION TECHNIQUES

A fungal strain belonging to the genus Penicillium was isolated from soil sample and has been diagnosed as Penicillium sp. according to its morphological characteristics of the colonies on solid media and also microscopical examination of the fungal parts. Antibiotics, protease activity and pH values were determined after cultivation of the fungus using submerged fermentation (SF) and solid state fermentation (SSF). The two different patterns of fermentation processes seem to influence the physiological behavior of the fungus differently. Experiments were made using nutrient broth medium (N.B) for SF and wheat bran in SSF. The pH values were adjacent to 5.5. Wheat bran was enriched with fish scales and egg shale in a ratio of (1:2:0.005 w/w) and the mixture was moistened by adding (30 ml) whey solution. After 7 days of incubation, the pH value of SF was increased to 8.0 at 30oC. The SF was appeared efficient for antibiotics production. Using well diffusion technique the extracted antibiotics solution was active against some pathogenic bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Proteus sp. , Salmonella sp. , Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptococcus sp. In SSF relative proteases concentrations were found to be highly reactive than SF. This was proved by the appearance of the zone (20 mm and 32 mm) due to the hydrolysis of milk and blood proteins respectively using pH 5.5 at 30oC for 24 hrs. The activity of proteases was (10.4 U/ml).
Active SU(1,1) atom interferometry

Active interferometers use amplifying elements for beam splitting and recombination. We experimentally implement such a device by using spin exchange in a Bose–Einstein condensate. The two interferometry modes are initially empty spin states that get spontaneously populated in the process of parametric amplification. This nonlinear mechanism scatters atoms into both modes in a pairwise fashion and generates a non-classical state. Finally, a matched second period of spin exchange is performed that nonlinearly amplifies the output signal and maps the phase onto readily detectable first moments. Depending on the accumulated phase this nonlinear readout can reverse the initial dynamics and deamplify the entangled state back to empty spin states. This sequence is described in the framework of SU(1,1) mode transformations and compared to the SU(2) angular momentum description of passive interferometers.
On measurements of aerosol-gas composition of the atmosphere during two expeditions in 2013 along the Northern Sea Route

Abstract. We presented the results of expedition measurements of the set of physical-chemical characteristics of atmospheric aerosol in areas of the Arctic and Far East seas, performed onboard RV Akademik Fedorov (17 August–22 September 2013) and RV Professor Khljustin (24 July–7 September 2013). The specific features of spatial distribution and time variations of aerosol optical depth (AOD) of the atmosphere in the wavelength range of 0.34–2.14 μm and boundary layer height, aerosol and black carbon mass concentrations, and disperse and chemical composition of aerosol are discussed. Over the Arctic Ocean (on the route of RV Akademik Fedorov) there is a decrease in aerosol and black carbon concentrations in a northeastern direction: higher values were observed in the region of Spitsbergen and near the Kola Peninsula; and minimum values were observed at northern margins of the Laptev Sea. Average AOD (0.5 μm) values in this remote region were 0.03; the aerosol and black carbon mass concentrations were 875 and 22 ng m−3, respectively. The spatial distributions of most aerosol characteristics over Far East seas show their latitudinal decrease in the northern direction. On transit of RV Professor Khljustin from the Japan Sea to the Chukchi Sea, the aerosol number concentration decreased on average from 23.7 to 2.5 cm−3, the black carbon mass concentration decreased from 150 to 50 ng m−3, and AOD decreased from 0.19 to 0.03. We analyzed the variations in the boundary layer height, measured by ship-based lidar: the average value was 520 m, and the maximal value was 1200 m. In latitudinal distribution of the boundary layer height, there is a characteristic minimum at a latitude of ~ 55° N. For water basins of eight seas, we present the chemical compositions of the water-soluble aerosol fraction (ions, elements) and small gas-phase species, as well as estimates of their vertical fluxes. It is shown that substances are mainly (75–89 %) supplied from the atmosphere to the sea surface together with gas-phase species. The deposited ions account for from 11 to 24.5 %, and trace elements account for 0.2–0.4 % of the total sum of water-soluble components. The average vertical fluxes of aerosol substance are a factor of 4–7 larger in the Japan Sea than in the water basins of Arctic seas.
Does Obesity influence Perioperative Outcomes of PancreaticResections? A Systematic Review of Literature and Meta-Analysis

Background Obesity is assuming world-wide epidemic proportions and is an independent risk factor for pancreatic cancer and surgical morbidity in general. It is essential to determine if obesity influences perioperative pancreatic surgical outcomes. Methods A thorough literature search was conducted using PubMed, Medline, Cochrane and Embase databases, using the search terms “pancreatic surgery”, “pancreatoduodenectomy”, “pancreaticoduodenectomy”, “obesity”, “body mass index”, “body mass index”, “surgical outcome”, “postoperative complications”, “complications” from January 1990 to June 2013 without restrictions. All publications from past 23 years were considered for review. Results Of the 598 articles retrieved, 22 studies were identified describing impact of obesity on perioperative outcomes following pancreatoduodenectomy. Obese individuals (with body mass index≥25) are at 2.2 times (relative risk=2.169; confidence interval=1.572-2.994) more risk for developing post-operative pancreatic fistula compared to non-obese individuals. Obese individuals had more wound infections (relative risk =1.69; confidence interval=1.225-2.274). 10 of 22 studies reported a significant increase in blood loss with increasing body mass index/visceral fat area. No evidence to suggest impact of obesity on other parameters was noted. Conclusions Obesity increases the risk of post-operative pancreatic fistula and wound infections but not operating time or development of delayed gastric emptying, post-pancreatectomy haemorrhage and intra-abdominal collections. Obesity contributes to an increase in intra-operative blood loss.