Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative attribution of climate effects on Hurricane Harvey’s extreme rainfall in Texas

Hurricane Harvey made landfall in August 2017 as the first land-falling category 4 hurricane to hit the state of Texas since Hurricane Carla in September 1961. While its intensity at landfall was notable, most of the vast devastation in the Houston metropolitan area was due to Harvey stalling near the southeast Texas coast over the next several days. Harvey’s long-duration rainfall event was reminiscent of extreme flooding that occurred in the neighboring state of Louisiana: both of which were caused by a stalled tropical low-pressure system producing four days of intense precipitation. A quantitative attribution analysis of Harvey’s rainfall was conducted using a mesoscale atmospheric model forced by constrained boundary and initial conditions that had their long-term climate trends removed. The removal of the various trends of the boundary and initial conditions minimizes the effects of warming in the air and the ocean surface on Harvey. The 60 member ensemble simulations suggest that post-1980 climate warming could have contributed to the extreme precipitation that fell on southeast Texas during 26–29 August 2017 by approximately 20%, with an interquartile range of 13%–37%. While the attribution outcome could be model dependent, this downscaling approach affords the closest means possible of a case-to-case comparison for event attribution, complementing other statistics-based attribution studies on Harvey. Further analysis of a global climate model tracking Harvey-like stalling systems indicates an increase in storm frequency and intensity over southeast Texas through the mid-21st century.
Inequality in Education Outcomes : The Role of Sorting among Students , Teachers , and Schools ∗

This paper studies the contribution of non-random sorting (“assortative matching”) among students, teachers, and schools to test score inequality across classrooms, accounting for both observed and unobserved teacher and school inputs. I recover teacher and school unobservables based on teacher switching across schools using longitudinal data from the universe of public elementary schools in North Carolina. Assortative matching accounts for a substantial portion of the across-classroom variance in student achievement (17-19%). One-third of this contribution is due to teacher-classroom sorting within and across schools, and two-thirds are due to student-school sorting. This pattern is driven by urban and suburban areas.
CREATING CUSTOMER LOYALTY IN BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS MARKETS

The purpose of this research is to suggest and empirically test a customer loyalty model in a business-tobusiness (B2B) market. This research investigates the development and role of dependence and trust in relationship management from the customer's view and their impact on loyalty. Regarding social exchange theory, we argue that relationship maintenance should not only include economic restriction- regarding relationships, which are extracted from dependence, but also loyalty ‎ regarding relationships, which are extracted from trust. As such, this research suggests that dependence and trust are mediators by which to understand the confusing relationship between buyers and sellers. According to the research findings, we can conclude that customers develop restriction - regarding and loyalty ‎ regarding relationships with sellers. The influence of customer variables (CRSI, social sticking, and RCCs‎ ‎ and customer expertise) on CC and AC is mediated by restriction and loyalty ‎ motivations (dependence and trust). Interaction satisfaction plays an important role in moderating the effects of dependence and trust on loyalty. A survey study conducted with 522 firms in the timber distribution industry showed that customer relationship specific investment, social sticking, relationship conclusion costs and customer expertise have effects on calculative and affective loyalties via dependence and trust. It also shows that interaction satisfaction significant the positive effect of dependence on calculative loyalty and the positive effect of trust on affective loyalty. This research contributes to the relationship marketing literature by creating a customer loyalty model in B2B markets and also offers managerial implications.
A Radial Point Interpolation Method for Pricing Options on a Dividend Paying Asset

We present the radial point interpolation method (RPIM) to solve problems for pricing American and European put options on a dividend paying asset. Using RPIM, we get a system of ordinary differential equations which is then solved by a time integration methods . To resolve the difficulties associated with solving the free boundary problem associated with American options, we use a penalty approach. Numerical experiments are presented which prove the computational efficiency of the RPIM.
Future development challenges in Mongolia: Multi-state population projections by age, sex, and education

In this paper, the future development challenges in Mongolia are investigated through the application of multistate population projections by age, sex, and education. The present situation of the country is interesting on many aspects and its population development contrasts with what is observed elsewhere in East Asia. As the result of a very swift fertility decline in the early 1990s, the country is opening its demographic window of opportunity. Further, Mongolia became nowadays the fastest growing economy in Asia thanks to the recent exploitation of its mining resources. Yet, these favorable factors may be hindered by a series of challenges. On the demographic side, the fertility has increased by about 0.6-0.7 children since its nadir in 2005 to 2.61 children per woman in 2011. By introducing sudden shocks in the age structural transition, this fertility increase bears a series of challenges for the planning of the national development. Whether Mongolia can set the most appropriate conditions to benefit from its current economic boom remains an open question. Based on different assumptions on the future course of fertility and education in the country, the implications and challenges for development of the future population composition of Mongolia are discussed.
Gene Tagging with Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) Markers for Molecular Breeding in Plants

Markers are of interest to plant breeders as a source of genetic information on crops and for use in indirect selection of traits to which the markers are linked. In the classic breeding approach, the markers were invariably the visible morphological and other phenotypic characters, and the breeders expended considerable effort and time in refining the crosses as the tight linkage or association of the desired characters with the obvious phenotypic characters was never unequivocally established. Furthermore, indirect selection for a trait using such morphological markers was not practical due to (1) a paucity of suitable markers, (2) the undesirable pleiotropic effects of many morphological markers on plant phenotype, and (3) the inability to score multiple morphological mutant traits in a single segregating population. With the advancement in molecular biology, the use of molecular markers in plant breeding has become very commonplace and has given rise to “molecular breeding”. Molecular breeding involves primarily “gene tagging”, followed by “marker-assisted selection” of desired genes or genomes. Gene tagging refers to the identification of existing DNA or the introduction of new DNA that can function as a tag or label for the gene of interest. In order for the DNA sequences to be conserved as a tag, important prerequisites exist. This review also summarizes the achievements in gene tagging that have been made over the last 7 to 8 years.
Co-integration of Ge detectors and Si modulators in an advanced Si photonics platform

A Si photonics platform is described, co-integrating advanced passive components with Si modulators and Ge detectors. This platform is developed on a 200mm CMOS toolset, compatible with a 130nm CMOS baseline. The paper describes the process flow, and describes the performance of selected electro-optical devices to demonstrate the viability of the flow.
Marine ornamental trade in Puerto Rico: rapid population assessment of primary target species

Recent attempts to regulate the export marine ornamental fisheries in Puerto Rico encountered serious challenges rooted in information gaps concerning the nature and size of the fisheries and their impacts, as well as to communication deficiencies between resource managers and fishers. In response, regulators initiated a three-phase program to (1) characterize fisher numbers, methods and exports; (2) assess populations of exploited species; and (3) develop and propose appropriate fishery management approaches for subsequent application. This presentation summarizes the recently completed second phase of this program designed to produce popu- lation estimates of exploited species. This study evaluated wild populations of >20 fish and >20 invertebrate species targeted by the export fishery to develop minimum population estimates for comparison against annual harvest statistics. Field species counts in numerous habitat types were correlated with NOAA habitat maps to provide conservative population estimates, creating "at least as many as x" population totals useful for applying Precautionary Principal attributes to fishery management policy development. Impacts of the existing fisheries were determined to be low, but steady and dramatic increases in world demand for marine ornamentals will continue to build economic pressure for growth of these fisheries, creating urgency for development of rational management decision-making prior to the onset of uncontrolled growth. Rev. Biol. Trop. 56 (Suppl. 1): 65-88. Epub 2008 May 30.
Bank Distress in Nigeria and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation Intervention

The Banking Sector has been relied upon by many household, small savers and industrialists to provide their financial assistance at one time or the other. While it is expected that they do this very well, banks have fallen short-off expectations in this respect due to fraud, mismanagement, inexperience and the initial absence of regulatory laws and authorities. People lost their trust and confidence in the banking system, which the government couldnâ€™t afford. The government desirous to instill confidence on the banking system by the public put the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) in place. The objective of this project work is to see how the NDIC through its various activities have been able to restore confidence in the banking system. Secondary data were primarily used for this work because of the peculiar nature of the research work. Correlation coefficient and r-test were used to test the relationship between the variables. It was discovered that due to the increase in deposit guarantee, there is an increase in deposit mobilization. It was also discovered that the NDIC has transmitted from the flat rate premium assessment system to a differential premium assessment system. It is therefore recommended that from time to time, the deposit cover should be reviewed in conformity with the happenings in the economy.
Cantilever based mass sensor with hard contact readout

We present a method for microcantilever resonant frequency detection. We measure the direct current from an intermittent contact once every vibration cycle between the conducting cantilever and a counterelectrode at a low bias voltage with respect to the cantilever, while the excitation frequency and amplitude are varied. The result is an almost “digital” detection of the resonant frequency. A relative frequency resolution Δf∕f of 1∕80000 with high signal to noise ratio in ambient conditions is demonstrated. The detection method can be applied to portable sensor systems with very high frequency nanoelectromechanical cantilevers using simple off-chip electronics.
Willingness-to-Pay for Road Safety Improvement

Few studies have explored, to date, the issue of the monetary valuation of non-fatal injuries caused by road traffic accidents. The present paper seeks to raise interest in this question and to estimate, by contingent valuation, French households’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) to improve their road safety level and reduce their risk of non-fatal injuries following a road accident. More precisely, a Tobit and a type-II Tobit model were estimated to identify factors for WTP. The results highlighted the significant positive influence of injury severity on WTP. Experience of road traffic accidents seemed to play an important role, positively influencing valuation of non-fatal injury.
Practical Lessons of Distributed Deep Learning

With the advent of big data and big model, there are increasing needs on training deep learning model in distributed mode. Although the open source deep learning software such as TensorFlow and MXNet do support training deep learning model in parallel, it is still a challenging task for data scientists to implement scalable and high performance distributed deep learning algorithms. In this paper, we share several practical lessons on optimizing distributed deep learning training process, including optimization strategies for typical model architecture such as DNN and CNN. For DNN, we exploit its computationto-communication ratio to reduce the communication overhead. For CNN, we find hybridparallelism an effective way to squeeze the potential of strong-scaling. Experiments in off-theshelf deep learning software show that, with our optimization strategies we are able to have 10x speed-up on AlexNet against the standard distributed implementation.
Evaluating the Impacts of Regional Cluster Policies using Network Analysis

Implementing cluster policies is important to promote regional clusters. However, it has been difficult to estimate the quantitative impacts of such regional cluster policies. In this paper, we propose the method to evaluate the impacts of regional cluster policies quantitatively using network analysis. We focus on the structure of a large-scale inter-firm network in the Kanto and Koshinetsu region which includes ten prefectures around Tokyo and forms the largest regional cluster in Japan. The regional cluster policy called “New Coordination Business Support” has been implemented in the region. The policy aims at promoting the regional clustering by enhancing cooperation and coordination among small firms. We propose a new network measure to evaluate the coordination capability of a firm on the inter-firm network. Our results show that the proposed network measure can be used to evaluate the impacts of the regional cluster policy quantitatively.
The Impact of Urban Concentration on Countries' Competitiveness and Entrepreneurial Performance

This paper aims to elaborate the role of Jacobs-type of agglomeration effects on countries’ competitiveness and entrepreneurial performance. Our research allows for a better understanding of the relationship that exists between a country’s urban system, characterized by spatial agglomeration (concentration) or deglomeration (deconcentration) processes, and its competitiveness and entrepreneurial performance. Urbanization economies refer to considerable cost savings generated through the locating together of people, firms and organizations across different industries. It has recently become an axiom that the better performance of global cities (as they are important nodes of innovation and creativity) is derived from agglomeration effects. This general assumption follows that the more concentrated an urban system of a country, the more competitive and better its entrepreneurial performance. Even though this notion has gained quick and ardent acceptance from practitioners, the related literature shows contradictory results;this has induced a heated debate in academic circles, because it has raised serious doubts about the “bigger is better” theory. We hope to contribute to this debate with our detailed analysis. To understand the impact of urban concentration, we selected 70 countries and calculated the so-called ROXY Index measuring the degree of agglomeration or deglomeration in their urban systems. To exemplify country-level competitiveness, we applied the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) while the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI) was used to demonstrate country level entrepreneurial performance. Using these indexes correlation and cluster analysis were designed to obtain understanding of the relationship between them. Our analysis indicates that as urban concentration initially increases competitiveness, entrepreneurial performance also increases, but at a decreasing rate. Both of them eventually reaches a maximum, and then after a certain point decrease with further concentration. Therefore, the curve for this relationship is non-linear and folds back. This indicates that over- or under-concentration of the population within an urban system does not necessarily result in a better outcome. However, we should consider that a high concentration of population is only one important factor for competitiveness and entrepreneurial performance while other effects may exist.
Three Ethical Issues in Narrative Research of Women Coaches’ Lifelong Learning

It is important to reflect upon ethical issues in conducting narrative research beyond what may be considered in Research Ethics Board applications. Ethical issues were identified in a dissertation study that utilized a narrative research approach to explore the process of lifelong learning for five women coaches. Using journal reflections and participant and researcher conversations, three ethical issues are discussed. These issues arose during the process of collecting narratives from participants and in creating narrative analyses of the data. While there exists a broad range of views on narratives, all narrative researchers can benefit from reflecting on ethical issues within their research. Keywords: Ethical Issues, Narrative Research, Co-Creation, Representation, Authorship
Medicinal plant diversity in the flora of Leepa Valley, Muzaffarabad (AJK), Pakistan

Plants are inevitable and indispensable in the life of mankind. They are a major source of nutrition and medicament in the world. In this regard, the Leepa valley (LV), Muzaffarabad Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) was identified as the case study. The main objectives of this research were to explore and document the medicinal plant diversity (MPD) in the area. In this study, irrespective of gender, age, demography and literacy, 42 informants were approached and information was documented by using rapid rural appraisal (RRA) method comprising of open-ended and closed-ended interviews. Visual appraisal approach (VAA) was also performed as complimentary tool to support the data. In the study, some quantitative analysis tools: informant consensus factor (ICF), fidelity level (FL), priority ranking (PR) and data matrix ranking (DMR) were employed to find reliability and validity of methods used and informations obtained. This exploratory study revealed a profile of 36 medicinal plants (MPs) of 22 families with their botanic name, local name, family, plant part used, mode of medicament preparation, ethnomedicinal recipes and commercial importance. Family Pinaceae (4 spp.) was the first in the family index ranking followed by Lamiaceae (3 spp.). In health problems, snake bite and sting were the most prevailing (ICF: 0.94) and, hyperglycemia and hypertension were least encountered (ICF: 0.06) in the LV. Ajuga bracteosa (FL: 100%) and Berberis lycium (FL: 93%) were predominantly used in folklore therapies and FL analysis is good indicator for further pharmaceutical research taxa. Abies pindrow, Pinus wallichiana and Taxus wallichiana were found to be multifarious in use. Illicit export, incessant agriculture expansion and wooden house construction were determined as the major threats for MPD in the area. The pharmaceutical potential of MPD in drug discovery and development is discussed, and recommendations for sustainable use of MPs and their in situ and ex situ conservation is suggested for the socio-economic uplift of local communities.
TRANSPORT PROPERTIES OF PARTIALLY IONIZED GASES

An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus including a three-dimensional scanner for carrying out a three-dimensional scanning by ultrasonic waves. The apparatus also includes a three-dimensional image data former for forming three-dimensional image data based on scanning data obtained from the three-dimensional scanner. An image data memory is included as part of the apparatus for storing in time series a plurality of pieces of three-dimensional image data formed by the three-dimensional image data former. The apparatus includes a memory controller for controlling write and read of the three-dimensional image data into or from the image data memory. And the apparatus further includes a display image former for forming a display image based on three-dimensional image data read out from the image data memory by the memory controller, and for displaying the formed display image on a display unit.
The influence of natural and anthropogenic factors on major stratospheric sudden warmings

Major stratospheric sudden warmings are prominent disturbances of the Northern Hemisphere polar winter stratosphere. Understanding the factors controlling major warmings is required, since the associated circulation changes can propagate down into the troposphere and affect the surface climate, suggesting enhanced prediction skill when these processes are accurately represented in models. In this study we investigate how different natural and anthropogenic factors, namely, the quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO), sea surface temperatures (SSTs), anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and ozone‐depleting substances, influence the frequency, variability, and life cycle of major warmings. This is done using sensitivity experiments performed with the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Earth System Model (CESM). CESM is able to simulate the life cycle of major warmings realistically. The QBO strengthens the climatological stratospheric polar night jet (PNJ) and significantly reduces the frequency of major warmings through reduction of planetary wave propagation into the PNJ region. Variability in SSTs weakens the PNJ and significantly increases the major warming frequency due to enhanced wave forcing. Even extreme climate change conditions (RCP8.5 scenario) do not influence the total frequency but determine the prewarming phase of major warmings. The amplitude and duration of major warmings seem to be mainly determined by internal stratospheric variability. We also suggest that SST variability, two‐way ocean/atmosphere coupling, and hence the memory of the ocean are needed to reproduce the observed tropospheric negative Northern Annular Mode pattern after major warmings.
Exploring Practical Estimates of the Ensemble Size Necessary for Particle Filters

AbstractParticle filtering methods for data assimilation may suffer from the “curse of dimensionality,” where the required ensemble size grows rapidly as the dimension increases. It would, therefore, be useful to know a priori whether a particle filter is feasible to implement in a given system. Previous work provides an asymptotic relation between the necessary ensemble size and an exponential function of , a statistic that depends on observation-space quantities and that is related to the system dimension when the number of observations is large; for linear, Gaussian systems, the statistic can be computed from eigenvalues of an appropriately normalized covariance matrix. Tests with a low-dimensional system show that these asymptotic results remain useful when the system is nonlinear, with either the standard or optimal proposal implementation of the particle filter. This study explores approximations to the covariance matrices that facilitate computation in high-dimensional systems, as well as different.