Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multifunction Phased-Array Radar for Weather Surveillance

The U.S. Government operates seven distinct radar networks providing weather and aircraft surveillance for public weather services, air traffic control, and homeland defense. A next-generation, multifunction phased array radar (MPAR) concept has been proposed that could provide enhanced weather and aircraft surveillance services with potentially lower life-cycle costs than multiple single-function radar networks. If critical technology costs decrease sufficiently, MPAR radars might prove to be a cost-effective alternative to current surveillance radars, since the number of required radars would be reduced, and maintenance and logistics infrastructure would be consolidated. The National Weather Radar Testbed Phased-Array Radar (NWRT PAR) is an S-band phased-array radar located in Norman Oklahoma that was established to demonstrate the MPAR concept. Since its inception, a team of scientists and engineers at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) has enhanced the functionality of the NWRT PAR to bring it up to operational weather radar standards (such as those in the operational NEXRAD network) and, more importantly, to demonstrate new capabilities. Unlike conventional radars, which are constrained by inertial limitations of mechanical scanning, the NWRT PAR can exploit electronic beam steering to focus weather observations solely on areas of interest without having to collect data contiguously. This capability, termed adaptive scanning, produces higher temporal resolution data without sacrificing data quality or spatial resolution through more efficient use of radar resources. Every year, the NSSL conducts the Phased Array Radar Innovative Sensing Experiment (PARISE) to explore how to best capitalize on PAR capabilities to address 21st century forecast and warning needs (Heinselman et al. 2009). National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters are invited to participate in experiments designed to demonstrate and obtain user feedback on PAR weather surveillance capabilities. During PARISE, participants are asked to evaluate the operational utility of PAR technology during real-time operational warning situations as well as through playback of archived cases. The evaluations of PAR data given by PARISE participants positively impact meteorological research and engineering development on the NWRT PAR and are a very important component of the MPAR risk-reduction effort. This paper presents the technical and signal processing capabilities of the NWRT PAR, evolutionary scanning strategy developments that suit this unique instrument, and results from PARISE that have led to the advancement of a SPY-1A antenna from military-surveillance radar to a weather-surveillance radar with unique capabilities. Individual weather events sampled by the NWRT PAR will be used at the conference to illustrate the advantages of the high-temporal sampling capabilities provided by adaptive scanning. Finally, we present a plan for future enhancements that will continue to provide researchers and users with an optimum platform for demonstrating and evaluating the MPAR concept.
Taxi Demand Prediction Based on a Combination Forecasting Model in Hotspots

Accurate taxi demand prediction can solve the congestion problem caused by the supply-demand imbalance. However, most taxi demand studies are based on historical taxi trajectory data. In this study, we detected hotspots and proposed three methods to predict the taxi demand in hotspots. Next, we compared the predictive effect of the random forest model (RFM), ridge regression model (RRM), and combination forecasting model (CFM). Thereafter, we considered environmental and meteorological factors to predict the taxi demand in hotspots. Finally, the importance of indicators was analyzed, and the essential elements were the time, temperature, and weather factors. The results indicate that the prediction effect of CFM is better than those of RFM and RRM. The experiment obtains the relationship between taxi demand and environment and is helpful for taxi dispatching by considering additional factors, such as temperature and weather.
The development of constructive schemes of exoskeletons

The paper deals with the organization of controlled movement of the exoskeleton in the process of lifting the load. Development of an exoskeleton with a hydraulic drive controlled by the operator through a system of levers that control valves is described. Today the exoskeleton has no competitors in the market of means for medical rehabilitation at violation of musculoskeletal function. There are 4 good reasons for this. First, the exoskeleton automatically repeats the natural pattern of human walking, it helps to carry out more effective rehabilitation of patients after injuries, operations and serious diseases leading to partial loss of mobility. Secondly, the exoskeleton increases the mobility of people with reduced mobility: now they can not only take care of themselves, but even travel. Third, the exoskeleton significantly improves the quality of life of older people, whose opportunities have been limited due to diseases of the lower extremities or joint problems. Finally, an important feature of the exoskeleton is the principle of verticalization. The vertical position of the body allows all internal systems of the body to work in the usual, and most importantly, the right conditions, which restores normal blood pressure and circulation. Due to this, rehabilitation of patients with reduced mobility is much more effective
Chemostratigraphy and stable isotope stratigraphy of the Triassic and Lower Jurassic within the well Spoonbill C-30; an intergrated stratgiraphic approch

This study represents an integrated stratigraphic study on the stratigraphy of the Triassic and Lower Jurassic sequences of the well Spoonbill C-30, from the Jeanne d’Arc Basin. This basin formed as a result of a failed triple rift system that developed during the North Atlantic Mesozoic Rift. Overall, across the Grand Banks penetrations of the Lower Jurassic and Triassic are limited with the key sections occurring in the southern wells of the Jeanne d’Arc, Carson and Whale Basins. The deposition during the Tethys Phase of rifting (during the Late Triassic – Early Jurassic) sediments are predominantly deposited in continental and lacustrine settings. There were some marine incursions resulting in the deposition of salts and carbonates, which are contemporaneous with equivalent salt deposits across the Scotian Shelf (Enachescu, 2013).
Heterostructure Silicon and Germanium Alloy Based Thin Film Solar Cell Efficiency Analysis

Thin film solar cell along with enhanced absorption property will be the best, so combination of SiGe alloy is considered. The paper presented here consists of a numerical model of Si/Si1−xGex heterojunction solar cell. The addition of Ge content to Si layer will affect the property of material. The research has investigated characteristics such as short circuit current density (Jsc), generation rate G , absorption coefficient (α), and open circuit voltage (Voc), power, fill factor (FF) with optimal Ge concentration. The speculative determination of appropriate germanium mole fraction is done to get the maximized thin-film solar cell efficiency.
Only So Many Hours in a Day: Early Childhood Screen Time in Boston and Mexico City

According to the displacement hypothesis, screen media use might displace time children have to devote to other activities. In this study, we tested the displacement and related hypotheses, and explored how associations varied cross-culturally. We collected time-use diaries from 198 children in Boston, United States (U.S.), and Mexico City, Mexico. Comparing across research sites, children in Mexico City invested more time consuming media, while Boston children spent more time playing outdoors. In Boston, time spent using media was negatively associated with engagement in play and several other in-home activities, while in Mexico City, media use was positively associated with indoor activities like play. In both sites, media use and time spent outside were inversely related. We interpret these findings considering (a) the displacement and other competing hypotheses on the effects of media on children’s time use and (b) known cultural/regional differences between the U.S. and Mexico.
ERAD 2010-THE FIFTH EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON RADAR IN METEOROLOGY AND HYDROLOGY Monitoring volcanic eruption using ground-based C-band weather radar and model-based techniques

The explosive eruptions of active volcanoes with a consequent formation of ash clouds represent a severe threat in several regions of the urbanized world. Real-time and areal monitoring of a volcano eruption, in terms of its intensity and dynamics, is not always possible by conventional visual inspections. Remote sensing techniques both from ground and from space represent unique tools to be exploited [Rose et al., 2000]. In this respect, microwave weather radars can gather three-dimensional information of atmospheric scattering volumes up several hundreds of kilometers, in all weather conditions, at a fairly high spatial resolution (less than a kilometer) and with a repetition cycle of few minutes [Harris and Rose, 1983; Marzano et al., 2006a, 2006b; Marzano et al., 2010a]. Ground based radars has a limited coverage with respect to satellite sensors and their installation should be close to the volcanic vent, a situation which is not usually verified. The radar proximity to the volcano is of fundamental importance since the quantitative estimation of the erupted materials (e.g. height, concentration and composition of ejected debris) is vital for transportation models initializations, used to forecast the evolution of volcanic ash at continental spatial scales. There are still several open issues about microwave weather radar capabilities to detect and quantitatively retrieve ash cloud parameters. A major issue is related to the aggregation of volcanic ash particles within the eruption column of explosive eruptions. It influences the residence time of ash in the atmosphere and the radiative properties of the “umbrella” cloud. Numerical experiments are helpful to explore processes occurring in the eruption column. In this study we use the plume model ATHAM (Active Tracer High Resolution Atmospheric Model) to investigate, in both time and space, processes leading to particle aggregation in the eruption column.
LINC00265 targets miR-382-5p to regulate SAT1, VAV3 and angiogenesis in osteosarcoma

We explored the mechanism by which LINC00265 regulates angiogenesis of osteosarcoma cells via the miR-382-5p/spermidine/spermine N1-acetyltransferase-1 (SAT1) and miR-382-5p/vav guanine nucleotide exchange factor 3 (VAV3) axis. Cell scratch assay, Transwell assay and tube formation assay were applied to detect cell migration, invasion and tube formation abilities. The effects of LINC00265 targeting miR-382-5p in osteosarcoma in vivo were studied using a tumour-burden assay. A total of 70 genes potentially involved in osteosarcoma angiogenesis were identified, and a Gene Ontology (GO) analysis found that SAT1 and VAV3 were closely related to angiogenesis. Bioinformatics analysis and clinical experiments confirmed that LINC00265, SAT1 and VAV3 were overexpressed in osteosarcoma and related to a poor prognosis, whereas miR-382-5p was downregulated and associated with a poor prognosis. It was confirmed that LINC00265 promoted the proliferation, migration, invasion and angiogenesis of osteosarcoma cells by targeting miR-382-5p to mediate SAT1 and VAV3. Collectively, LINC00265 might promote proliferation, migration, invasion and angiogenesis by targeting miR-382-5p/SAT1 and miR-382-5p/VAV3 in osteosarcoma.
Heterosis Levels and Yield Improvement: Comparison Between F2 Hybrid Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and Their Parents

This work in the north east of Algeria is focused on the comparison between six F2 bread wheat (Triticum aestivm L.) crosses obtained during 2013 with their respective parents. This material has been layed out and evaluated in a randomized complete block. The main goal was to select hybrids according to their heterosis estimations. Morphological, physiological and biochemical parameters have been measured. In general, data showed that overall heterosis was noticed for plant height, last internodes length, number of grains per spike, leaf area, number of spikes per m2 and grain yield. Five (05) hybrids had values above the mid-parent. By these results, hybrid vigor displayed a marked trend with regard to the variables studied. These hybrids have acquired and maintained a level of higher hybrid vigor in F2 than the mid-parent. Thus, we agreed with the conclusion of several authors that want to use large-scale of F2 or F3 hybrids, given the difficulties and high cost in obtaining F1 hybrids.
Working with Deep Generative Models and Tabular Data Imputation

Datasets with missing values are very common in industry applications. Missing data typically have a negative impact on machine learning models. With the rise of generative models in deep learning, recent studies proposed solutions to the problem of imputing missing values based various deep generative models. Previous experiments with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) showed promising results in this domain. Initially, these results focused on imputation in image data, e.g. ﬁlling missing patches in images. Recent proposals addressed missing values in tabular data. For these data, the case for deep generative models seems to be less clear. In the process of providing a fair comparison of proposed methods, we uncover several issues when assessing the status quo: the use of under-speciﬁed and ambiguous dataset names, the large range of parameters and hyper-parameters to tune for each method, and the use of different metrics and evaluation methods.
Nesterov’s Momentum, Stochastic Gradient Descent

In the previous lecture we presented Polyak’s momentum algorithm (or heavy-ball method), in which the iteration step is given by: xt+1 = xt − α∇f(xt) + β(xt − xt−1), α > 0, β ∈ [0, 1] (1) This method is known to be robust and effective in many real-world applications. However, in a paper published in 2015, Lessard et al. [2] have shown that there exist strongly-convex and smooth functions for which, by choosing carefully the hyperparameters α and β and the initial condition x0, the heavy-ball method fails to converge. We give here merely the intuition behind the malfunction of the algorithm as well as empirical results taken from the paper. Let f be a piece-wise quadratic function whose gradient is:
Exploring the Correlation Between Random Convolutional Architectures and the Trained Equivalent

In this paper we explore the correlation between Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures with random weights in the convolutional layers to the same architectures with trained weights. We show that this correlation extends to deep CNN architectures of up to 10 or even 12 layers to the extent that untrained model accuracy could be a useful proxy for trained model accuracy. We also find that for models with fewer layers much of this relationship comes from the strong correlation between the number of features output from the final CNN layer and final accuracy. With 10 and 12 layers there is a moderate correlation even when the size of the fully connected layer is held constant. We anticipate our findings in extending these correlations to deeper networks will be useful in designing faster Neural Architecture Search (NAS) models. Analytically solving for the weights of the final prediction layer is orders of magnitude faster than training the weights via backpropagation
Direction and Scale Preserving Image Analogies

Image Analogies is an eﬀective technique for transferring the relationship between the texture features of a source image pair onto a target image for processing. Conventional Image Analogies may fail to preserve the local texture directions or texture scales of the target image if the source image does not have the textures of similar directions or scales. This paper proposes a new technique that involves linking the regions between source image and target image based on texture scale and then rotating the regions in the source image so as to align its texture direction with that of the corresponding region in the target image. This enables the reproduction of textures of the proper directions and scale even when there are no common elements linking the scale and directions of the textures in the source and target images.
Overhead and Drip Irrigation System Effects on Tomato Growth and Yield in California’s Central Valley

S UMMARY . Despite the worldwide importance of overhead, mechanized irrigation for crop production, the potential of this technology has been poorly studied in California. Field studies were conducted at Five Points, CA, in 2010 and 2012 to compare the effects of overhead irrigation (OH) and drip irrigation (DR) on transplanted tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum) crop growth and yield. Similar amounts of water were applied to both systems in each year to match crop evapotranspiration demands. Crop growth measured by percent canopy coverage and aboveground biomass accumulation were similar between the OH and DR systems early in the growing season in both years but were lower in the OH system during the second half of each season. Tomato yield was 38% greater in 2012 than in 2010 and averaged over the 2 years, 48% higher in the DR than in the OH systems, respectively, due presumably to the higher soil water evaporation losses of the OH system relative to the DR system and also, we propose, to the ability of the drip system to very precisely apply in-season fertigations directly to the crop root zone while OH fertigations were applied at the soil surface and over a greater area. Soluble solids concentration of fruit in 2010 was 5.99% for the DR system and 6.65% for the OH system providing further evidence of water stress in the OH tomatoes. Production costs associated with transitioning from a subsurface drip tomato crop to a sprinkler or surface drip-irrigated crop such as onion ( Allium cepa ) or garlic ( Allium sativum ) could be $130 to $420 per acre lower with the OH system compared with the drip system, if yields were maintained. Because operation and labor costs of OH systems are typically lower than those of DR systems, further research on OH irrigation of tomato is warranted to address the shortcomings of OH management that this study has identiﬁed.
Characteristics of winter climate in Finland in a warming world

In northern countries, such as Finland, winter climate conditions affect the functionality of society in many ways. Due to the climate warming, the winter conditions are facing changes. Changes in snow and ice act as an indicator of the climate conditions in a region. The aim of this thesis is to examine what the winters are like in Finland in a changing climate. The main results of this work are based on gridded observations, FMIClimGrid and E-OBS, and CMIP5 global climate model simulations. Using these, the observed snow, temperature and precipitation conditions in 1961-2014 were analyzed, and the future changes in Baltic Sea ice cover were projected for the ongoing century. In addition, two modeling studies were performed: The first assessed the performance of ECHAM5 atmospheric general circulation model in simulating snow melt timing in spring, and the second studied the ability of numerical convection-permitting weather prediction model HARMONIE to simulate a sea-effect snowfall case. The results showed that, in Finland, the snow depth has decreased throughout the year and the snow season has shortened. Increasing liquid precipitation in winter was one of the main reasons for the changes. In spring, increasing air temperature has had an effect. The annual maximum sea ice extent and sea ice thickness in the Baltic Sea were projected to decrease during the ongoing century. However, the Baltic Sea is unlikely to become totally ice-free during typical winters in the coming decades. When climate models are used to predict future climate conditions, it is essential that they describe the snow cover realistically, since it is an important element of the climate system. In the ECHAM5 climate model, Northern Eurasian snow melt timing was generally produced quite well when compared to satellite observations, but regional differences were also found. The reasons for the discrepancies turned out to be the simplifications in the calculations of the model’s surface energy budget. The HARMONIE model also managed to simulate a known sea-effect snowfall case reasonably well. The simulation results improved when radar reflectivities were assimilated into the model. As climate warming proceeds, the winter conditions will continue to change. The results of this thesis highlight the importance of continuous monitoring of climate conditions in the northern areas. Publishing unit Finnish Meteorological Institute, Weather and Climate Change Impact Research Classification (UDC)
BACTERIOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS OF QUANTUM DOTS

Quantum Dots are nanocrystals which are fluorescent in nature and their unique optical properties depend on their size. Quantum Dots have replaced conventional fluorophores which have disadvantages like photobleaching, narrow absorption spectra, stability and short period of fluorescence. Due to the possibility of conjugating the Quantum Dots to various types of bio molecules like streptavidin, antibodies, mannose etc there have been numerous applications in the detection, enumeration and differentiation of various bacteria. Quantum Dots can be applied to various matrices like food, water, tissue and blood samples. Quantum Dots have been used to detect pathogenic bacteria like E.coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhimurium, Bacillus anthracis, Listeria monocytogenes and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Quantum dots can detect bacteria at the levels of 1010 CFU/ml in contaminated water samples. The minimum time for detection of bacteria using Quantum Dots ranges from 15 minutes to 2 hours. The major hindrance in using the Quantum Dots is its cost of production. This review summarises the properties, synthesis and applications of Quantum dots in the detection of bacteria which can have major implications in food and water safety evaluation, diagnosis of bacterial diseases and environmental enumeration of bacteria.