Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial–Temporal Evolution and Correlation Analysis of Ecosystem Service Value and Landscape Ecological Risk in Wuhu City

The comprehensive application of ecosystem service value (ESV) and ecological risk index (ERI) assessment can provide better decision support for regional ecological environment protection. Based on the remote sensing image data of Wuhu city of 1995, 2005 and 2016, the paper analyzed the spatial-temporal evolution of ESV and ERI in Wuhu city and its associated characteristics using an ESV, ERI assessments and a bivariate spatial autocorrelation method. The results showed that (1) the total ESV of Wuhu city continued to decline from 1995 to 2016, with a decrease of US$ 363.664 million. The total ESV per unit area of the sampling plot decreased, and the high-value was mainly distributed in areas within 5–10 km along the Yangtze River floodplain. (2) Wuhu city was mainly dominated by a relatively low ERI and medium ERI from 1995 to 2016. The high-value areas were mainly distributed in the mainstream of the Yangtze River, and the overall ERI improved. (3) There was a positive spatial correlation between the total ESV per unit area and ERI in Wuhu city, and these areas were mainly distributed in the Yangtze River mainstream region. According to this research, it is necessary to pay attention to the protection of wetland and forest landscapes, strengthen wetland ecological protection based on the Yangtze River and protect and restore natural mountain forests, all of which play important roles in improving the ecosystem service function of Wuhu city and protecting the ecological environment of the Yangtze River. We should act on that knowledge, and produce effective environmental regulations and habitat restoration efforts that improve the ESV and reduce the ERI. The findings of the study can serve as a reference for the management and protection of ecological environments in river-crossing cities.
A validated business process modelling success factors model

PurposeBusiness process modelling (BPMo) projects are core to digital transformation projects as they provide the conceptual foundation to the orchestration of technologies along a process. Yet, success factors of BPMo projects have received little research attention to date. This study empirically validates a BPMo project success model, pointing to normative practice guidelines and important future research.Design/methodology/approachThis research reports on the quantitative re-specification and validation of a business process modelling success model, employing survey responses from 261 process modellers worldwide.FindingsThe study distilled and validated a final set of success antecedents: Top Management Support, Project Management Capabilities, Stakeholder Input, Modeller Expertise and Modelling Tool Usage; and clearly evidences their relationships with each other and with two moderating variables – Importance and Complexity. The paper offers a nuanced explanation of the indirect role of top management support in building stakeholder involvement and explains how complex projects that are perceived as important being more likely to attract high levels of necessary stakeholder involvement. The authors conclude that top management needs to create an environment of co-ordinated excellence which spans both technical skills and resources, and a high level of committed engagement between stakeholders and technicians in order for BPMo projects to succeed.Originality/valueThis study is the first to operationalize and quantitatively test antecedents of BPMo project success and their interactions, presenting novel insights into how the success factors interact. Awareness of the more influential antecedents of successful process modelling projects offers valuable guidance for the planning, management and conduct of BPMo projects.
Machine Learning to Improve Multi-Hop Searching and Extended Wireless Reachability in V2X

Multi-hop relay selection is a critical issue in vehicle-to-everything networks. In previous works, the optimal hopping strategy is assumed to be based on the shortest distance. This study proposes a hopping strategy based on the lowest propagation loss, considering the effect of the environment. We use a two-step machine learning routine: improved deep encoder-decoder architecture to generate environmental maps and ${Q}$ -learning to search for the multi-hopping path with the lowest propagation loss. Simulation results show that our proposed method can improve environmental recognition and extend the reachability of multi-hop communications by up to 66.7%, compared with a shortest-distance selection.
Improving Architectures of Binary Signed-Digit CORDIC With Generic/Specific Initial Angles

Coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) is widely used in digital signal processing (DSP) to calculate functions. One of the elegant ways to accelerate CORDIC is employment of the redundant binary signed-digit (BSD) number systems, so-called BSD-CORDIC. This paper aims to achieve efficient BSD-CORDIC structures for generic/specific initial angles. First, three generic BSD-CORDIC algorithms are optimized by exploiting a suitable data gating technique as well as appropriate BSD encodings. The synthesis results demonstrate that for generic CORDIC, the proposed BSD-CORDIC schemes enhance the existing ones in terms of speed, power consumption, and area overhead. Second, the look-ahead BSD-CORDIC is proposed as a special case of BSD-CORDIC with specific initial angles. We also show that for the applications like fast Fourier transform (FFT), where the initial angles are known in advance, the proposed look-ahead BSD-CORDIC with the posibit-negabit encoding, as our best presenting structure, noticeably improves speed, power consumption, and area overhead.
Underlying motivating factors for movie-induced tourism among Emiratis and Indian expatriates in the United Arab Emirates

This study explores the underlying motivating factors of Emiratis and Indian expatriates to visit destinations featured in movies. The results revealed a five-factor structure for Indians: novelty, fantasy-driven, personal connection, prestige and movie connection, vis-à-vis a three-factor structure for Emiratis: novelty, fantasy-driven and personal connection with the movie location. An analyses of variance analysis (ANOVA) showed significant differences in the individual mean scores of items, with the exception of novelty. Regarding gender, while no significant differences were found between the male and female Indian expatriate populations across all factors and underlying items, differences for some items were observed between male and female Emiratis, with male participants demonstrating higher motivation than female participants. These findings support the notion that the underlying factors influencing movie-induced tourism differ between cultures, while the influence of gender was found to be limited. Overall, the study enhances the understanding of practitioners and policymakers tasked with attracting tourists to movie destinations.
Machine, Machine! Stories about How Border Breaking Experiences from a Combat Fatique Course Relates to the Development of Willpower and the Educational Concept of Bildung

Abstract This paper investigates how border-breaking experiences among officer cadets can contribute to the development of character. The object of investigation is the “Combat Fatigue” course and the reported reflections and outputs about this in extremis learning experience. The findings are analyzed using the theoretical concepts of hardiness, willpower, and resilience. These concepts suggest that a warrior’s leadership ethos is related to the mind at the cost of the body, and that team spirit is fostered in harsh conditions. Hallucinations are reported during the training by the cadets as being valuable to their future leadership, because they can represent border-breaking experiences, strengthening their belief of mastery in harsh leadership environments.
A magnetic solid-phase extraction method using Fe3O4@coPANI-PTH for microsample injection system-flame atomic absorption spectrometric determination of nickel and copper in soft drinks and spice samples

ABSTRACT A magnetic solid-phase extraction using magnetite coated with polyaniline-polythiophene copolymer (Fe3O4@coPANI-PTH) was applied for preconcentration of Ni(II) and Cu(II) in some soft drinks and spice samples followed by microsample injection system-flame atomic absorption spectrometry (MIS-FAAS). Preconcentration optimisations including pH, amount of adsorbent, eluent type and volume, sample volume, interfering ion effects were investigated. Relative recoveries of 85.2–96.8% were satisfactorily obtained by extracting both analytes from 50 mL sample solution buffered at pH 10 to 0.5 mL eluent using 100 mg Fe3O4@coPANI-PTH. Good linearity was obtained ranging from 5 to 80 µg L−1 with a regression coefficient of 0.999. Limits of detection for Ni(II) and Cu(II) were 2.8 and 1.2 µg L−1, respectively. The accuracy of the method was confirmed by the analysis of certified reference samples and real samples spiked with the analytes. The relative error and standard deviation of the current method for both analytes were smaller than 6%. The established method was applied to commercially available some local soft drinks and spice samples.
Zinc-biofortified wheat required only a medium rate of soil zinc application to attain the targets of zinc biofortification

ABSTRACT Zinc (Zn) deficiency is prevalent in human populations in developing countries. The present study compared two wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars [Jauhar-2016 (standard wheat) and Zincol-2016 (Zn-biofortified wheat)] for Zn biofortification with optimum soil Zn application. For this, Zn (at 0, 3, 6, 12 and 24 mg Zn kg−1) was applied to pots having an alkaline calcareous soil. Grain yield, grain Zn concentration and grain Zn bioavailability in both cultivars were significantly increased by Zn fertilization. However, Zn application decreased iron (Fe) and phytate concentration in grains of both cultivars. As compared to Jauhar-2016, Zincol-2016 had significantly higher grain Zn concentration and grain Zn bioavailability at all the respective soil Zn rates excepting only at control. At 6 mg Zn kg−1, Zincol-2016 attained in grains a desired concentration of Zn (53 mg Zn kg−1) and a desired level of human Zn bioavailability (2.8 mg d−1 for women and was 3.0 mg d−1 for men). Jauhar-2016 also attained such comparative levels but only at a plant toxic rate of Zn (24 mg Zn kg−1). Conclusively, soil Zn application (agronomic biofortification) to Zn-biofortified wheat (Zincol-2016) may be a promising approach to decrease human Zn deficiency in population groups dependent on wheat-based diets.
Capability memory protection for embedded systems

This dissertation explores the use of capability security hardware and software in real-time and latency-sensitive embedded systems, to address existing memory safety and task isolation problems as well as providing new means to design a secure and scalable real-time system. In addition, this dissertation looks into how practical and high-performance temporal memory safety can be achieved under a capability architecture. State-of-the-art memory protection schemes for embedded systems typically present limited and inflexible solutions to memory protection and isolation, and fail to scale as embedded devices become more capable and ubiquitous. I investigate whether a capability architecture is able to provide new angles to address memory safety issues in an embedded scenario. Previous CHERI capability research focuses on 64-bit architectures in UNIX operating systems, which does not translate to typical 32bit embedded processors with low-latency and real-time requirements. I propose and implement the CHERI CC-64 encoding and the CHERI-64 coprocessor to construct a feasible capability-enabled 32-bit CPU. In addition, I implement a real-time kernel for embedded systems atop CHERI-64. On this hardware and software platform, I focus on exploring scalable task isolation and fine-grained memory protection enabled by capabilities in a single flat physical address space, which are otherwise difficult or impossible to achieve via state-of-the-art approaches. Later, I present the evaluation of the hardware implementation and the software run-time overhead and real-time performance. Even with capability support, CHERI-64 as well as other CHERI processors still expose major attack surfaces through temporal vulnerabilities like use-after-free. A näıve approach that sweeps memory to invalidate stale capabilities is inefficient and incurs significant cycle overhead and DRAM traffic. To make sweeping revocation feasible, I introduce new architectural mechanisms and microarchitectural optimisations to substantially reduce the cost of memory sweeping and capability revocation. Another factor of the cost is the frequency of memory sweeping. I explore tradeoffs of memory allocator designs that use quarantine buffers and shadow space tags to prevent frequent unnecessary sweeping. The evaluation shows that the optimisations and new allocator designs reduce the cost of capability sweeping revocation by orders of magnitude, making it already practical for most applications to adopt temporal safety under CHERI.
Malware Visualization Techniques

Malware basically means malicious software that can be an intrusive program code or anything that is designed to perform malicious operations on system and executes malicious actions such as clandestine, listening, monitoring, saving, and deleting without the user's knowledge and consent. Malware review and analysis requires an advanced level of programming knowledge, in-depth file systems knowledge, deep code inspection, and reverse engineering capability. New techniques are needed to reduce indirect costs of malware analysis. This paper aims to provide insights into the malware visualization techniques and its applications, most common malware types and the extracted features that used to identify the malware are demonstrated in this study. In this work, Systematic Literature Review (SLR) conducted to investigate the current state of knowledge about Malware detection techniques, data visualization and malware features. An advanced research has been carried out in most relevant digital libraries for potential published articles. 90 preliminary studies (PS) were determined on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The analytical study is based mainly on the PSs to achieve the goals. The results clarify the importance of visualization techniques and which are the most common malware as well as the most useful features. Several ways to visualize malware to help malware analysts have been suggested.
Fitness of the small brown planthopper (Laodelphax striatellus) on different plants.

The development and reproduction of the small brown planthopper(SBPH) on 57 plants including Oryza sativa,Zea mays,Sorghum vulgare and Echinochloa crusgalli were studied by the caging method in laboratory.The results indicated that nymphal development duration,emergence rate,adult weight,adult longevity and fecundity of SBPH on different plants were significantly different.According to principal component analysis and population trend index analysis,five plants(Echinochloa crusgalli etc.) were the most suitable host plants,with the emergence rates of SBPH on these plants ranging from 59.4% to 86.9%,and the population trend indexes above 27.8. Nine plants(Lolium perenne etc.) were also suitable for the small brown planthopper,27.0%-64.5% individuals could emerge on those plants with the population trend indexes above 10.Five plants such as Eleusine indica were scarcely suitable for the survival of SBPH,with 13.0%-35.6% emergence rate,and 1-10 population trend index.Thirteen plants(Bromus inermi etc.) were unfit for SBPH's survival,less than 10% individuals could emerge on them,with the population trend indexes below 1.Nymphs of SBPH on other twenty-five plants such as Zea mays could not emerge.Lolium maloiforam,Beckmannia syzigachne,Polypogon fugax,Poa acroleuca,Avena fatua and Capsella bursapastoris were the newly-confirmed host plants.
A multi-year timeseries of observation-based 3D horizontal and vertical quasi-geostrophic global ocean currents

Estimates of 3D ocean circulation are needed to improve our understanding of ocean dynamics and to assess their impact on marine ecosystems and Earth climate. Here we present the OMEGA3D product, an observation-based time series of (quasi-)global 3D ocean currents covering the 1993–2018 period, developed by the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche within the European Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). This dataset was obtained by applying a diabatic quasi-geostrophic (QG) diagnostic model to the data-driven CMEMS-ARMOR3D weekly reconstruction of temperature and salinity as well as ERA Interim fluxes. Outside the equatorial band, vertical velocities were retrieved in the upper 1500 m at 1/4 nominal resolution and successively used to compute the horizontal ageostrophic components. Root mean square differences between OMEGA3D total horizontal velocities and totally independent drifter observations at two different depths (15 and 1000 m) decrease with respect to corresponding estimates obtained from zero-order geostrophic balance, meaning that estimated vertical velocities can also be deemed reliable. OMEGA3D horizontal velocities are also closer to drifter observations than velocities provided by a set of reanalyses spanning a comparable time period but based on data assimilation in ocean general circulation numerical models. The full OMEGA3D product (released on 31 March 2020) is available upon free registration at https://doi.org/ 10.25423/cmcc/multiobs_glo_phy_w_rep_015_007 (Buongiorno Nardelli, 2020a). The reduced subset used here for validation and review purposes is openly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3696885 (Buongiorno Nardelli, 2020b).
Paclobutrazol in olive trees under different water levels

A adaptacao de cultivares de oliveiras as condicoes climaticas de algumas regioes no Brasil tem despertado o interesse de produtores para o seu cultivo. Entretanto, para a expansao das areas produtoras torna-se necessario estudar os fatores que interferem no crescimento e na reproducao da especie. Assim, o presente trabalho foi realizado com o objetivo de avaliar o crescimento vegetativo e o comportamento reprodutivo da oliveira submetida a aplicacao de paclobutrazol (PBZ) sob condicoes diferentes de disponibilidade hidrica (DH). Foi utilizado o esquema fatorial 4 x 2 x 2, em blocos casualizados, com tres repeticoes e duas plantas por parcela. Plantas da variedade Arbequina, com tres anos, foram submetidas a aplicacao de quatro doses de PBZ (0,0; 2,0; 4,0 e 8,0 g por planta), duas formas de aplicacao (no solo e pulverizacao foliar) e dois regimes de DH (com e sem restricao hidrica). O PBZ foi efetivo para retardar o crescimento das plantas em ambas as formas aplicadas. Quando o PBZ foi aplicado no solo sua atuacao na planta ocorreu de forma lenta. O deficit hidrico favoreceu a acao do PBZ na planta quando aplicado via foliar e retardou quando a aplicacao foi realizada no solo. Nao foi observado o florescimento da oliveira com a aplicacao de paclobutrazol e deficit hidrico nas condicoes estudadas.
Food recognition using neural network classifier and multiple hypotheses image segmentation

ABSTRACT This paper proposes the multiple-hypotheses image segmentation and feed-forward neural network classifier for food recognition to improve the performance. Initially, the food or meal image is given as input. Then, the segmentation is applied to identify the regions, where a particular food item is located using salient region detection, multi-scale segmentation, and fast rejection. Then, the features of every food item are extracted by the global feature and local feature extraction. After the features are obtained, the classification is performed for each segmented region using a feed-forward neural network model. Finally, the calorie value is computed with the aid of (i) food volume and (ii) calorie and nutrition measure based on mass value. The experimental results and performance evaluation are validated. The outcome of the proposed method attains 0.947 for Macro Average Accuracy (MAA) and 0.959 for Standard Accuracy (SA), which provides better classification performance.
Interest through necessity? The impact of personal health on the stability of political interest in the United Kingdom

Interest in politics is a key indicator of citizens’ attitudes towards politics. Scholars disagree whether interest is a stable trait developed during adolescence, or if it changes over the life course. We hypothesise that deteriorating health can destabilise the stable sense of political interest because worsening health makes individuals more dependent on public healthcare and increase their attention to politics. Furthermore, we assume that the impact of health on interest is conditional on income as people with low incomes are dependent on public healthcare. Our results show only limited support for the first hypothesis. However, we found a negative relationship between declining health and increasing interest in the lowest income group. The results are consistent with the life-cycle theory, which presumes that important events in life have consequences even for the most endurable political attitudes. Deteriorating personal health can be a source of motivation to make persons more interested in politics.
PSSCC: Provably secure communication framework for crowdsourced industrial Internet of Things environments

Internet of things environment is adopted widely in different industries and business organizations with varying capacity. It provides a favorable environment to outsource the crowdsourced data in the cloud to minimize the cost of computation, which is called crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a technique where individuals or organizations obtain goods and services. A professional or industry outsource the crowdsourced data in the cloud, where confidentiality and authenticity of data become essential. Signcryption is the cryptographic technique that serves both the authenticity and the privacy of transmitted messages. This technique ensures secure authentic data transmission and storage. Therefore, this paper proposes an identity‐based signcryption scheme. In the proposed PSSCC framework, the user does pairing free computation during signcryption, which makes efficient calculation on user‐side. Moreover, PSSCC framework is proved secure under modified bilinear Diffie‐Hellman inversion and modified bilinear strong Diffie‐Hellman problems. The performance analysis of PSSCC with related schemes indicates that the proposed system supports efficient communication along with less computation cost.
Use of recycled carbon staple fibers in an advanced thermoforming process and analysis of its crash performance

Abstract Carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites (CFRPC) are one of the promising lightweight materials in car production and show excellent energy absorption potential. In this paper, crash absorbers made of recycled carbon staple fibers (rCSF) and polyamide 6 are manufactured by an advanced thermoforming process in a multi-segment mold. The innovative wave design is meant to prevent the crash absorber from unintended crushing effects like bending or buckling and easy to manufacture by the investigated process. The formed crash absorbers were tested in a horizontal test rig by using a crash sled with an impact energy of 1925 J. The rCSF based crash absorbers feature a specific energy absorption (SEA) of 58.12 ± 0.58 J/g. Also, the standard deviation of the rCSF crash absorbers is remarkably low (1.0%). Thus, rCSF based crash absorbers represent a viable alternative to crash absorbers made of virgin fibers. Graphical Abstract