Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global-scale drought risk assessment for agricultural systems

Abstract. Droughts continue to affect ecosystems, communities and entire economies. Agriculture bears much of the impact, and in many countries it is the most heavily affected sector. Over the past decades, efforts have been made to assess drought risk at different spatial scales. Here, we present for the first time an integrated assessment of drought risk for both irrigated and rainfed agricultural systems at the global scale. Composite hazard indicators were calculated for irrigated and rainfed systems separately using different drought indices based on historical climate conditions (1980–2016). Exposure was analyzed for irrigated and non-irrigated crops. Vulnerability was assessed through a socioecological-system (SES) perspective, using socioecological susceptibility and lack of coping-capacity indicators that were weighted by drought experts from around the world. The analysis shows that drought risk of rainfed and irrigated agricultural systems displays a heterogeneous pattern at the global level, with higher risk for southeastern Europe as well as northern and southern Africa. By providing information on the drivers and spatial patterns of drought risk in all dimensions of hazard, exposure and vulnerability, the presented analysis can support the identification of tailored measures to reduce drought risk and increase the resilience of agricultural systems.
EFFECT OF DEFICIT IRRIGATION AND RAISED BED ON WHEAT YIELD , WATER PRODUCTIVITY AND WATER SAVING IN NORTH NILE DELTA, EGYPT

The limitation of water resources and the remarkable increase in population should be forced research workers to find ways for saving water without significant reduction in yield. The objective of this paper is to study the interaction effect of deficit irrigation and raised bed on wheat yield, water productivity and water saving in north Nile delta, Egypt. Two field experiments were conducted at Sakha Agricultural Research Station, Kafr El-Sheikh governorate during the two successive seasons of 2012/2013 and 2013/2014. A split plot design with four replications was used. Irrigation treatments occupied the main plots, while planting methods arranged in subplots. Three planting methods were flat (traditional method, F1), bed 70cm wide (F2) and raised bed 140cm wide (F3). Four deficit irrigation treatments were irrigated every 21 days (farmer treatment, I1); the second one after 60% (I2) , the third one after 70% (I3) and the fourth one after 80% (I4) depletion of available soil moisture (ASMD). Results showed that mean of amount of irrigation water applied for DI1, DI2, DI3 and DI4 were 4759.2, 4497.6, 3808.8, and 3360.0 m 3 /ha. , respectively, and means of water table contribution to ETc were 559.2 and 765.6 m 3 /ha. for I3 and I4 , respectively. Means of irrigation water applied were 4524, 4034.4 and 3763.2 m 3 /ha. for F1, F2 and F3, respectively. F3 and F2 saved 17% and 11% of irrigation water compared with F1, respectively. F3 significantly increased grain and straw yields by 16 and 18% compared to F1. The interaction between DI2 and F3 and between DI1 and F1 resulted in higher grain and straw yields. Means values of water productivity were 5.7, 6.1 and 6.1 L.E /m 3 correspond to 1.2 , 1.18 and 1.5 kg grain/m 3 water applied for F1, F2 and F3 respectively .
La Personalidad como Vulnerabilidad Unidimensional y Bidimensional: el Papel Mediador de las Variables Cognitivas en la Gravedad Sintomatológica en una Muestra de Personas con Trastorno Grave de Personalidad

espanolRESUMEN Los problemas de conceptualizacion de los trastornos de personalidad (TP) y su acomodo con el resto de las patologias siguen suscitando un prometedor esfuerzo investigador y clinico que va dando frutos al identificar procesos transdiagnosticos y proponer modelos heuristicos de interaccion. Desde el marco de la personalidad como diatesis, estudiamos en una muestra de personas con TP grave (N = 310) el papel mediador de diversas variables en la gravedad sintomatologica. Mediante analisis de conglomerados hallamos una tipologia bidimensional que divide de manera exhaustiva y exclusiva al 100% de los participantes. El analisis de mediacion revela que el efecto de la personalidad como continuum unidimensional en gravedad sintomatologica esta mediado por pensamientos automaticos negativos y fusion cognitiva; su efecto como tipologia bidimensional (internalizacion y externalizacion) parece mediado solo por pensamientos automaticos. Se discuten los hallazgos e implicaciones de cara al nuevo paradigma de una ciencia clinica basada en procesos EnglishABSTRACT The problems of conceptualization of personality disorders (PD) and their adjustment within the rest of pathologies continue to boost a promising research and clinical effort that helps to identify transdiagnostic processes and suggestheuristic interaction models. Understanting personality from the framework of diathesis, we analized the mediating role of a number of variables in symptom severity in a sample of people with severe PD (N = 310). By means of cluster analysis, we found a two-dimension typology that divides exhaustively and exclusively 100% of the participants. Mediation analyses found that personality as a one-dimension continuum has an effect on symptomatic severity mediated by negative automatic thoughts and by cognitive fusion; its effect as a two-dimension typology (internalization and externalization) appears to be mediated only by automatic thoughts. These findings and their implications are discussed in the context of a new paradigm of a process-based clinical science.
Novel Mammograms Classification for Breast Cancer Detection based on Multi-Layer Perceptron

According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is the second most leading cause of cancer in women. In the modern technological era, computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system are widely used to classify the breast tumor based on mammogram screening. Various algorithms have been developed for mammography analysis to obtain better classification efficiency, robustness and accuracy. However for three class classification (malignant, benign and normal), it is still an open research area. In this paper, an improved three class classification technique for mammograms images using a Multi Layer Perception (MLP) is proposed. Initially a two class (abnormal and normal) classification is presented. Then, a three class classification study is carried out by using our proposed model. The mammogram patches are filtered by contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). Enhanced patches are further decomposed into four sub bands by using two - Dimensional Discrete Wavelet Transform (2D-DWT). Dense Scale Invariant Feature Transform (DSIFT) method is use to extract the Six rotation and scale invariant features for all the sub bands. By using these sub bands of all the patches a feature matrix is created that is further processed to MLP. The proposed method is tested using the Image Retrieval in Medical Application (IRMA) dataset. Simulation results verify the significance of proposed scheme as compared to state of art existing schemes.
Building Rural Household Resilience Due to Environmental Changes in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands, Northeastern Nigeria

Environmental changes in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands have grossly affected the functionality of the ecosystem with multiplier effects on livelihoods of more than 1.5 million people. The most critical change occurred through the invasion of the water bodies by Typha grass, which has hampered the predominant activities, fishing and farming, thereby subjecting the people into abject poverty conditions. This has attracted the attention of Nigerian Government, International Development Agencies and Non-Government Organizations in designing and implementing several intervention measures. In many communities, the failure of the interventions in up-lifting the quality of life has been attributed to the wetlands resource utilization strategies prescribed. This study uses the concept of sustainable livelihood framework by focusing on the occurrence of Typha grass (external vulnerability factor), capital assets and policy/institutional structures to construct alternative livelihood strategy model in order to develop household resilience against environmental changes. Data for the study was obtained from household surveys in fifteen communities of the wetlands region and analyzed using descriptive statistics, multiple regression and Foster Greer Thorbeke models. The results indicate that a combination of five capital assets: physical (power, road and markets); human (experience, skills and schooling), social (cooperative, remittance and linkages), natural (land, forest and fisheries); and financial (savings, disposables, credit) resources serve as the optimum factors in yielding higher incomes and thus developing a resilience against environmental vulnerability and poverty.
An examination of strategy disclosure in the annual reports of South African listed companies

This study examines the extent of strategy disclosure in the Annual Reports of South Africa’s top one hundred companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). Disclosure of strategy is voluntary and not required by law. Investigation into the strategy disclosure was carried out by scoring the amount of disclosure companies reported in their Annual Reports. Variables included items such as mission, goals and objectives. Two additional criteria, Human Immunodefiency Virus (HIV) / Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), were included specifically for the South African context. Results showed that maximum disclosure per criteria was low. Overall the scores of the variables indicate that although South African companies generally do disclose a lot more information on their strategy, only six per cent of companies made maximum disclosure on all twelve criteria. The lowest scores were obtained for HIV/AIDS and BEE. The low disclosure overall has implications for users of annual reports.
A Simple Provably Secure AKE from the LWE Problem

We first propose an authenticated key exchange (AKE) from the LWE problem. The AKE is simple since it does not involve any other cryptographic primitives to achieve authentication and depends on solely the LWE problem in the worst-case (e.g., SVP and SIVP). We give its security under the BR model, which captures wPFS and might be appealing in specific applications.
Extreme precipitation over East Asia under 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming targets: a comparison of stabilized and overshoot projections

Highly populated East Asia is vulnerable to extreme precipitation. Here, we use Community Earth System Model low-warming simulations to examine how extreme precipitation events may change in East Asia under the Paris Agreement global warming targets. The frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation will increase markedly over East Asia in the warmer climates. Limiting end-of-century warming to 1.5 °C, in comparison with 2 °C, will reduce the risks of extreme precipitation frequency and intensity in East Asia by 26%–31%, with the greatest reductions (38%–54%) in Japan. A brief overshoot of the 1.5 °C target would affect Mongolia, the Korean Peninsula and Japan from the aspects of regional average. More than 25% of the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation in these regions can be avoided during the end of the 21st century (2081–2100) if there is no temperature overshoot, according to the best estimate. Vertical moisture advection is the main contributor to changes in precipitation-minus-evaporation in East Asia in the warmer climates. The increased low-level specific humidity and cyclonic circulation changes are the dominant thermodynamic and dynamical processes that contribute to the increase of precipitation over South China and Japan. Our work suggests that limiting warming to 1.5 °C without overshoot is beneficial to minimizing the impacts associated with precipitation extremes across East Asia.
An Investigation into the Effects of Image Resolution on a Facial-Image-Based Personal Authentication System

The issues associated with image resolution in automated authentication or identification systems has become one of the important challenges for researchers' in biometrics. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effect of variable resolutions on the performance of a Facial-Image-Based Person Authentication System. Image resolution may vary significantly especially in uncontrolled acquisition environments or when sensing from a distance and so on. The detail available in the data thus reduces which may deteriorate the performance of such system. In this project we investigated the impact on system accuracy when image resolution is gradually reduced by a given factor. As a remedy, we investigated different methods for increasing image resolution prior to using those images for authentication and compared the relative gains in accuracy. The main procedure of the face image authentication system based on comparing landmarks of the face remains the same. In this study, we found that several issues related to image resolutions might have an impact on the recognition rate performance such as facial expressions, image background, and others. The influence of image resolution on the recognition rate increases roughly with the increasing resolution at a specific degree, high-image resolution would not be good for recognition rate always; reducing high image resolution makes it easier to achieve high face recognition rates.
Online Efficient And Effective Search In Large And Noisy Sequence Databases

ONLINE EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE SEARCH IN LARGE AND NOISY SEQUENCE DATABASES Alexios Kotsifakos, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2014 Supervising Professor: Vassilis Athitsos This thesis investigates the problem of similarity search in large and noisy sequence databases. A key application domain of interest in this work is the very challenging Query-By-Humming (QBH) problem, according to which, given a hummed part of a song, we would like to identify the closest matches in a large music repository. The problem of selecting the most appropriate, based on each specific query, distance measure out of a pool of measures for classification in time series data is also investigated. In addition, searching time series databases via examples, which may be either time series or models, is also part of this work. Moreover, motivated by the nature of music notes in the noisy QBH application, we explore the problem of interval-based sequence matching in a variety of application domains. More specifically, this thesis makes contributions both by defining novel similarity measures that are used to identify the best database matches, and by proposing methods to improve efficiency. Referring to the similarity measures, the thesis contributes a method, named SMBGT (shorthand for Subsequence Matching with Bounded Gaps and Tolerances), for finding the closest subsequence matches from a
Towards a simplified approach for assessing bird food requirements on shellfisheries. A report to the Welsh Government.

In northwest Europe conflicts have routinely occurred between economic and conservation interests regarding shellfish such as cockles and mussels. The harvest of these species is economically important, but shellfish also constitute the main overwinter food supply of the oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus. In this report we describe attempts to produced a simplified modelling approach to predict the quantities of shellfish which need to be left unharvested in order to ensure high overwinter survival of oystercatcher. We review oystercatcher diet and prey selection in order to quantify the dependence of this species on shellfish, and determine the size ranges of shellfish which the birds consume. We also review the food requirements of oystercatchers, based on their energetic needs and the nutritional quality of shellfish. In general the data agree well with those used in previous oystercatcher modelling studies. However, there is a possibility that the daily energy requirements, calculated from an all bird allometric equation, may yield an underestimate of oystercatcher food requirements. A comparison of the physiological food requirements, i.e. the quantity directly consumed, and the ecological food requirements, i.e. the quantity required to avoid high mortality, indicated that the ecological food requirement was between 2.0 and 7.8 times greater, with the value depending on the proportion of cockles Cerastoderma edule and mussels Mytilus edulis in a site. These ratios are calculated from empirical data on oystercatcher survival and the predictions of individual-based models predicting the relationship between mortality rate and the abundance of the food supply. Data from the Burry Inlet indicated that the mean ecological food requirement was 3.3 times greater at this site. We describe a simplified spreadsheet model, which we used to predict the food requirements of the oystercatcher population of the Burry Inlet, and thus the quantity of shellfish which must be left unharvested in order to maintain low mortality rate. The model is based on parameter values derived from the literature reviews in this study, including the energy requirements of the birds, the energy content of shellfish, the minimum size of cockles and mussels consumed, and the ratio of the ecological and physiological requirements. We describe the assumptions and limitations of the model, and compare the model with more detailed individual-based models that can be used to predict the mortality rate of shorebirds in relation to the amount of food available.
Modeling of Electromechanical Systems

S. BURIAK – doctor of philosophy, Dnipropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, ser.buryak@gmail.com, ORCID: 0000-0002-8251-785X V. HAVRILIUK – doctor of physics and mathematics, Dnipropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, gvi_dp@ukr.net, ORCID: 0000-0001-9954-4478 O. HOLOLOBOVA – assistant, Dnipropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, gololobova_oksana@i.ua, ORCID: 0000-0003-1857-8196
Factors affecting customers satisfaction towards the use of automated teller machines (ATMS): A case in commercial bank of Ethiopia, Chiro town

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting customers’ satisfaction towards the use of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). To address the research objectives, 200 questionnaires were distributed to respondents. A total of 176 were returned which is equivalent to 88% of the total response rate. Data were collected using semi-structured questionnaires and they were organized, coded and analyzed using Minitab18 software. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive Statistics, correlation and multiple regression model. Descriptive analysis showed half of the respondents (50%) agreed that time saving is the main reason to use ATM services. Majority of customers use ATM Banking for Cash withdrawal services and majority of the CBE customers were satisfied by the ATM services provided to them. However, customers were facing different problems associated with ATM service. Some of the problems were the unreliable network for ATM services, limited amount of money to be withdrawn per day, reduction in balance without cash payment, bank charges for ATM services, machine out of cash, card gets blocked or locked up and waiting in line to use ATM Machines. The multiple regression findings also revealed that responsiveness, efficiency, appearance, reliability and convenience of ATM have a significant and positive influence on customers’ satisfaction. Key words: Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), automated teller machine (ATM), customer satisfaction, service quality.
Testing Okun’s law. Theoretical and empirical considerations using fractional integration

ABSTRACT Full employment remains at the center of any economic policy. Following Okun’s conclusion regarding the trade-off relation between unemployment and real gross national product growth, new studies on different aspects of variable and methodological issues have brought new light to the theory. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the unemployment/GDP relationship, i.e. Okun’s Law, in order to test the basic Okun’s assumption taking into account modern economic circumstances and new methodological specifications. This study analyzes the series for 24 selected countries using fractionally integrated methods. Using these techniques, the results substantially change across countries and also depending on the specification of the error term. Unemployment and output growth rates series show some degree of long memory behavior for most countries while the stability of Okun’s coefficient is also challenged since it changes drastically. Estimated gaps are quite high, not only for −0.30 standard coefficient values but also when compared with other studies’ results. Policy makers can be assisted with these techniques in their efforts to design optimal economic policy to achieve full employment.
Information theory based crystallographic symmetry classifications of a noisy 2D periodic scanning tunneling microscope image

Modern scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) are often employed in the imaging of crystalline surfaces at atomic resolution, Fig. 1. In recent years, we adapted crystallographic image processing (CIP) techniques that originated in the field of electron crystallography some 50 years ago to the imaging with scanning probe microscopes [1-3]. In cases of images from STMs and atomic force microscopes, our CIP method allows for the removal of the effects of a blunt scanning probe tip [2,3]. Recent improvements to our method allow for fully objective, i.e. completely researcher independent, classifications of noisy 2D periodic images into Bravais lattice types [3,4], Laue classes [4], and plane symmetry groups [4]. The preconditions that need to be fulfilled for the application of our new information theory based method are a sufficiently long-range ordered crystalline material, a sufficient number of repeats of the unit cell in the image, and a relatively modest amount of generalized Gaussian noise [4,5]. Because discrete Fourier transforms are involved, noise in the images reduces to “noise per unit cell” with the square root of the number of unit cells that are processed [4]. Generalized noise arises from multiple sources in all imaging and image processing steps as well as from structural defects in the crystalline sample itself. None of these sources is allowed to dominate so that the central limit theorem applies and the sum total of all errors possesses approximately a Gaussian distribution [4,5]. The type of the microscope is not important; it is only important that its operation is reasonably stable and uncorrected systematic errors are small compared to the sum total of generalized random errors. We applied our method to a STM image from a graphite sample that is openly available (in the on-line supporting material of [6]), Fig. 1. Utilizing sets of ratios of geometric-bias corrected squared residuals for the involved symmetry hierarchy branches, see right hand side of Fig. 1, the plane symmetry group of the selected region of the STM image was