Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Indoor air quality and thermal comfort for elderly residents in Houston TX—a case study

The elderly population is more vulnerable to poor indoor environmental quality. They also spend a larger portion of their time indoors than the general public, further exacerbating the associated health risks. As part of a larger study which aims to understand the health risks for the elderly population resulting from extreme heat events in Houston, TX, this study gathered empirical data on thermal comfort and air quality in existing assisted living facilities and in individual homes of the elderly. We made continuous measurements of indoor dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and occupancy status in 25 buildings during summer months in 2016 and 2017. Then, using the measured data, we calculated the percentage of hours in which the thermal discomfort index or CO2 levels were above healthy thresholds for each site. Our results show that the indoor discomfort index and/or CO2 level exceeded the safe thresholds for at least 5% of the time in two-thirds of the buildings tested. Considering that research suggests more extreme summer weather in this region in the future, the results of this study highlight the need to consider changes in building management and occupant behavior as well as targeted improvements in the building stock to minimise adverse health impacts. In addition, the results also highlight a potential trade-off between thermal comfort and air quality in these building; air-tightening of the buildings will result in better thermal comfort at the expense of higher CO2 levels, especially in buildings with a higher number of occupants.
Image Acquisition and Techniques to Perform Image Acquisition

In the present scenario images have become the most suitable way to keep our past alive. Nowadays people are very busy in earning their livelihood and day to day life, even though they want to keep their golden moment alive for the rest of life. Images have touched almost all the fields like medical, sports, social networking and many more. It is the need of time to know how the images are being captured and stored into memory. To deal with images and before analyzing them the most important thing is to capture the image. This is called as Image Acquisition. Image Acquisition is achieved by suitable camera. We use different cameras for different application. If we need an X-Ray image, we use a camera (film) which is sensitive to X-Rays. If we want Infra Red image, we use cameras which are sensitive to Infra Red radiations. For normal images (family pictures etc.) we use cameras which are sensitive to visual spectrum.
Structural Heterogeneity and Anisotropy in the Source Zone of the 2018 Eastern Iburi Earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan

We investigate 3‐D seismic structures (Vp, Vs, and Poisson's ratio) and Vp azimuthal anisotropy in the source area of the 2018 Eastern Iburi earthquake (M 6.7) in Hokkaido, Japan. Its mainshock occurred at the edge of a high‐Vp (2–4%) seismogenic zone. Significant low‐Vs (−1% to −3%) and high Poisson's ratio (2–7%) anomalies are imaged in and below the source zone and extend to the upper surface of the subducting Pacific slab, most likely reflecting ascending fluids released by the slab dehydration. A high consistency between the fault plane and the low‐Vs and high Poisson's ratio anomalies indicates that the fluids may have entered the fault and affected the rupture nucleation. A high‐V (1–3%) anomaly is revealed in the fore‐arc mantle wedge and connects with the high‐V seismogenic zone, probably reflecting a lithospheric fragment and contributing to cool down the mantle wedge. Complex seismic anisotropy is revealed in the crust in and around the source area, which may reflect complicated stress regime and strong structural heterogeneities there.
Terrestrial microbialites provide constraints on the mesoproterozoic atmosphere

Palaeoclimate data indicate that Earth surface temperatures have remained largely temperate for the past 3.5 Byr despite significantly lower solar luminosity over this time relative to the present day. There is evidence for episodic early and late Proterozoic glaciation, but little evidence of glaciation in the intervening billion years. A prolonged equable Mesoproterozoic Earth requires elevated greenhouse gas concentrations. Two endmember scenarios have been proposed for maintaining global warmth. These include extremely high pCO2 or more modest pCO2 with higher methane concentrations. This paper reports on the δ13C of organic matter in 1.1 Ga stromatolites from the Copper Harbor Conglomerate (CHC) of the Mesoproterozoic Midcontinent Rift (North America) and δ18O and Δ47 temperatures of inorganic stromatolite carbonate to constrain formation and burial conditions and the magnitude of ancient carbon isotope discrimination. CHC sediments have never been heated above ~125–155°C, providing a novel geochemical archive of the ancient environment. Stromatolite Δ47 data record moderate alteration, and therefore, the occluded organic matter was unlikely to have experienced significant thermal alteration after deposition. The δ13C values of ancient mat organic matter and inorganic carbonate show isotope discrimination (εp) values ~15.5–18.5‰, similar to modern microbial mats formed in equilibrium with low concentrations of dissolved inorganic carbon. In combination, these data are consistent with a temperate climate Mesoproterozoic biosphere supported by relatively modest pCO2. This result agrees with Atmosphere‐Ocean Global Circulation Model reconstructions for Mesoproterozoic climate using 5–10 times present atmospheric levels pCO2 and pCH4 of >28 ppmv. However, given marine modelling constraints of CH4 production that suggest pCH4 was below 10 ppm, this creates a methane paradox. Either an additional source of CH4 (e.g. from terrestrial ecosystems) or another greenhouse gas, such as N2O, would have been necessary to maintain equable conditions in the Mesoproterozoic.
Sodicity-induced antioxidative system in roots of salt-tolerant and salt-sensitive cultivars of Indian mustard (Brassica juncea L.)

A differential response of sodicity was observed on enzymatic and non-enzymatic components of antioxidant system in roots of salt-sensitive RH 8113 and salt-tolerant CS 52 varieties of Indian mustard (Brassica juncea L.). The antioxidative enzymes viz. superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione reductase (GR), peroxidase (POX), and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) showed higher basal activities in roots of salt-tolerant CS 52 cultivar as compared to salt-sensitive RH 8113. Imposition of sodicity stress (15-45 ESP) had no effect on SOD and APX activity in roots of CS 52, but it resulted in reduction in activity in salt-sensitive RH 8113. In both varieties, the POX activity decreased progressively with increase in stress level , but the level of decrease was more in RH 8113 as compared to that in salt-tolerant CS 52. Contrarily, GR activity increased in tolerant cultivar CS 52, but showed a continuous reduction with increment in sodic stress in the sensitive cv. RH 8113. The amount of ascorbic acid, reduced glutathione, and ratio of reduced (GSH)/ oxidized glutathione (GSSG) were higher in tolerant than in sensitive ciltivar under sodic conditions. It is inferred that roots of tolerant cv. CS 52 tend to attain greater capacity to perform reaction of antioxidative pathway under sodic conditions to combat sodicity-induced oxidative stress.
Contribution of shipping NOx emissions to the marine nitrogenbudget of the western Baltic Sea – A case study

Abstract. The western Baltic Sea is impacted by various anthropogenic activities and stressed by high riverine and atmospheric nutrient loads. Atmospheric deposition accounts for up to a third of the nitrogen input into the Baltic Sea and contributes to eutrophication. Amongst other emission sources, the shipping sector is a relevant contributor to atmospheric concentrations of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in marine regions. Thus, it also contributes to atmospheric deposition of bioavailable oxidized nitrogen into the Baltic Sea. In this study, the contribution of shipping emissions to the nitrogen budget in the western Baltic Sea is evaluated with the coupled three-dimensional physical biogeochemical model MOM-ERGOM in order to assess the relevance of shipping emissions for eutrophication. The input of bioavailable nitrogen impacts eutrophication differently depending on time and place of input – e.g. nitrogen is processed and denitrified faster in flat coastal regions. The shipping sector contributes up to 5 % to the total nitrogen concentrations in the water. The impact of shipping-related nitrogen is highest in the off-shore regions distant to the coast in early summer but is considerably reduced during blooms of cyanobacteria in later summer. Although absolute shipping-related total nitrogen concentrations are high in some coastal regions, the relative contribution of the shipping sector is low in the vicinity to the coast because of high riverine nutrient loads.
Wind‐Based Estimations of Ocean Surface Currents From Massive Clusters of Drifters in the Gulf of Mexico

During the Lagrangian submesoscale experiment (LASER), 1,000 drifters were launched to sample the surface ocean flow in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Due to half a dozen strong winter storms, about 40% of the drifters lost their drogue. This unintended situation facilitated documentation of both near-surface (5 cm) and deeper (60 cm) flows. These depths are relevant to transport of oil spills, as well as marine debris, such as microplastics, a rapidly growing environmental problem. Here, we improve the surface Lagrangian current prediction by combining a state-of-the-art ocean forecast model with wind and wave data. The ocean surface velocities are obtained from the Navy Coordinate Ocean Model at 1-km horizontal resolution, while the wind and wave fields are from the Unified Wave INterface Coupled Model coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model. Two Lagrangian parameterizations are tested: one is based on Ekman dynamics, and the other directly on the surface winds. LASER data set is then used to assess the performance of these formulations, as a function of wind/wave conditions, as well as geographic region. It is found that incorporation of wind and wave data into the ocean circulation model can lead to major prediction improvement, by reducing the average 2-day separation from the modeled and real LASER trajectories by a factor ranging from 1.4 to 4.9. This is a significant improvement for applications, where a rapid deployment of assets is needed, such as oil spill response, or other tracking problems.
Adaptive Urban Design Principles for Land Subsidence and Sea Level Rise in Coastal Area of Tambak Lorok, Semarang

In recent years, the upward trend of sea level rise caused by climate change continues to increase. This condition threatens urbanization that occurs in urban areas, especially in coastal area. Coastal is a strategic location for various activities such as ports, recreation, fisheries and agriculture, but it is vulnerable to changes caused by community and natural activities. Semarang is one of the coastal city located in the north of Central Java. Dense and slum settlements are dominating the coastal area of Semarang, one of them is fisherman’s settlement in Tambak Lorok. This area has been undergoing land subsidence for a long time and is now threatened by sea level rise due to climate change. The purpose of this study is to formulate adaptive urban design principles on land subsidence and sea level rise in Tambak Lorok, Semarang. This study is carried out with qualitative method using the approach of research and development in building a formula that applies to the conditions formed by land subsidence and sea level rise. The design principles formulated from this study are general principles that serve as guidelines for designing coastal areas that adaptive to land subsidence and sea level rise. We believe, the adaptation of urban space can reduce the impact of the disaster and create a resilient coastal area to reduce the risk of natural-induced disasters.
Coreference resolution for biomedical pathway data

The study of biological pathways is a major activity in the life sciences. Biological pathways provide understanding and interpretation of many different kinds of biological mechanisms such as metabolism, sending of signals between cells, regulation of gene expression, and production of cells. If there are defects in a pathway, the result may be a disease. Thus, biological pathways are used to support diagnosis of disease, more effective drug prescription, or personalised treatments. Even though there are many pathway resources providing useful information discovered with manual efforts, a great deal of relevant information concerning in such pathways is scattered through the vast biomedical literature. With the growth in the volume of the biomedical literature, many natural language processing methods for automatic information extraction have been studied, but there still exist a variety of challenges such as complex or hidden representations due to the use of coreference expressions in texts. Linguistic expressions such as it, they, or the gene are frequently used by authors to avoid repeating the names of entities or repeating complex descriptions that have previously been introduced in the same text. This thesis addresses three research goals: (1) examining whether an existing coreference resolution approach in the general domain can be adapted to the biomedical domain; (2) investigation of a heuristic strategy for coreference resolution in the biomedical literature; and (3) examining how coreference resolution can improve biological pathway data from the perspectives of information extraction, and of evaluation of existing pathway resources. In this thesis, we propose a new categorical framework that provides detailed analysis of performance of coreference resolution systems, based on analysis of syntactic and semantic characteristics of coreference relations in the biomedical domain. The framework not only can identify weaknesses of existing approaches, but also can provide insights into strategies for further improvement. We propose an approach to biomedical domain-specific coreference resolution that combines a set of syntactically and semantically motivated rules in terms of coreference type. Finally, we demonstrate that coreference resolution is a valuable process for pathway information discovery, through case studies. Our results show that an approach
Ambient Ammonia Concentrations Across New York State

Ammonia (NH3) was monitored at four locations (two urban and two rural) across New York State from April 2016 to October 2017 using active and passive systems. The two rural sites were Pinnacle State Park (PIN) and the Village of Potsdam, and the two urban sites were the City of Rochester and Queens College in New York City. Active and passive concentrations were well correlated across all sites (r2 = 0.866), but the active systems measured 6.2% higher NH3 concentrations. The mean (±SD) NH3 concentrations measured using active systems in Queens College, City of Rochester, Village of Potsdam, and PIN were 3.22 ± 2.23, 2.84 ± 1.91, 1.29 ± 1.12, and 0.82 ± 0.64 ppb, respectively. Ambient NH3 concentrations varied with diel vehicular and seasonal agricultural activities. NH3 concentrations at the urban sites had lower seasonal variability than the rural sites. NH3 concentrations were generally related to regional and in‐state NH3 emissions although less regional influence was observed at the urban sites. Local NH3 source directions were identified using conditional bivariate probability function. The urban sites were affected by local NH3 sources such as vehicular emissions and urban population centers. Likely distant NH3 source locations affecting the four sites were identified using simplified quantitative transport bias analysis model. Rural sites were more highly affected by transported NH3. Midwestern and Atlantic were major NH3 source areas. NH3 emissions from the south of PIN were probably due to the use of diesel trucks and other diesel engines in the hydraulic fracturing industry in Pennsylvania near the New York State border.
Designing a Scalable Network Analysis and Monitoring Tool with MPI Support

State-of-the-art high-performance computing is powered by the tight integration of several hardware and software components. While on the hardware side, we have multi-/many core architectures (including accelerators and co-processors) and high end interconnects (like InfiniBand, Omni-Path), on the software front we have several high performance implementations of parallel programming models which help us to take advantage of the advanced features offered by the hardware components. This tight coupling between both these layers helps in delivering the multi-petaflop level performance to the end application allowing scientists/engineers to tackle the grand challenges in their respective areas. Understanding and gaining insights into the performance of the end application on these modern systems is a challenging task. Several tools have been developed to inspect the network level or MPI level activities to address this challenge. However, these existing tools inspect the network and MPI layer in a disjoint manner and are not able to provide a holistic picture correlating the data generated for network layer and MPI. Thus, the user can miss out on critical information which could have helped in understanding the interaction between MPI applications and the network they are running on. In this thesis, we take up this challenge and design OSU INAM. OSU INAM allows users to analyze and visualize the communication happening in the network in conjunction with the data obtained from the MPI library. Our experimental analysis shows that the tool is able to profile and visualize the communication with very low performance overhead at scale.
Effect of Thyme on The Quality and Shelf Life of Block Processed Cheese

Effect of incorporation of thyme powder in making block processed cheese was investigated. Thyme powder was added in 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5% as a substitution in the base blend of Ras cheese. The processed product was tested for chemical composition (total solids, fat, total&soluble nitrogen, ash, salt and total volatile fatty acids) in fresh cheese. Physicochemical properties (pH, meltability, and oils separation) and sensory attributes were examined in the fresh processed cheese and throughout 3 months of storage at refrigerator (5oC) or room temperature (25oC). Incorporating thyme powder decreased TN, ash, salt in the resultant block processed cheese. Higher pH values with an increase in oil separation and firmness were noticed in cheese with thyme powder. The effect was more noticeable by increasing thyme powder in the blend. The SN and meltability were lower in the treatments with thyme powder than that of the control treatment. All processed cheese treatments were acceptable, and the addition of thyme powder in the blend up 0.1% to 0.3% improved the body & texture and enhanced the flavor and resulted in a better organoleptic quality. Storage of block cheese samples lowerd the pH values, meltability and sensory quality, while SN, oil separation and firmness increased.
Mean Velocity and Shear Stress Distribution in Floating Treatment Wetlands: An Analytical Study

Floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) are efficient at wastewater treatment; however, data and physical models describing water flow through them remain limited. A two‐domain model is proposed dividing the flow region into an upper part characterizing the flow through suspended vegetation and an inner part describing the vegetation‐free zone. The suspended vegetation domain is represented as a porous medium characterized by constant permeability thereby allowing Biot's Law to be used to describe the mean velocity and stress profiles. The flow in the inner part is bounded by asymmetric stresses arising from interactions with the suspended vegetated (porous) base and solid channel bed. An asymmetric eddy viscosity model is employed to derive an integral expression for the shear stress and the mean velocity profiles in this inner layer. The solution features an asymmetric shear stress index that reflects two different roughness conditions over the vegetation‐induced auxiliary bed and the physical channel bed. A phenomenological model is then presented to explain this index. An expression for the penetration depth into the porous medium defined by 10% of the maximum shear stress is also derived. The predicted shear stress profile, local mean velocity profile, and bulk velocity agree with the limited experiments published in the literature.
Characteristics of Ground Motion Generated by Wind Interaction With Trees, Structures, and Other Surface Obstacles

Analysis of continuous seismic waveforms from a temporary deployment at Sage Brush Flats on the San Jacinto fault reveals earthquake‐ and tremor‐like signals generated by the interaction of wind with obstacles above the surface. Tremor‐like waveforms are present at the site during wind velocities above 2 m/s, which occur for 70% of the deployment duration. The response to the wind has significant spatial variability with highest ground motions near large surface objects. The wind‐related signals show ground velocities that exceed the average ground motions of M1.0–1.5 earthquakes for 6–31% of the day. Waveform spectra indicate a modulation of amplitude that correlates with wind velocity and distance from local structures. Earthquake‐like signals are found to originate from local structures and vegetation, and are modified on length scales of tens of meters. Transient signals originating beyond the study area are also observed with amplitudes greater than some microseismic events. The wind‐related ground motions contribute to local high‐frequency seismic noise. Some of these signals may be associated with small failures of the subsurface material. During elevated wind conditions a borehole seismometer at a depth of 148 m shows increased energy in the 1–8‐Hz band that is commonly used for earthquake and tremor detection. The wind‐related earthquake‐ and tremor‐like signals should be accounted for in earthquake detection algorithms due to the similar features in both time and frequency domains. Proper recognition of wind‐related ground motions can contribute to understanding the composition of continuous seismic waveforms and characterize mechanical properties of the shallow crust.