Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structure of High-Resolution SAR Winds Over the Venice Lagoon Area

The spatial characteristics at mesoscale <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula> of the strongest sea surface winds blowing on the Adriatic Sea and Venice Lagoon, Italy, have been investigated through 500 m <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times500$ </tex-math></inline-formula> m wind fields extracted, without external information, from the C-band Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images interferometric wide (IW) swath ground range detected high resolution (GRDH) level 1 (L1) by a deep learning method based on a residual neural network (ResNet). The derived SAR wind directions have been used to retrieve the wind speed using the <monospace>C_SARMOD2</monospace> geophysical model function (GMF). The resulting wind fields have been compared with European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and <italic>in situ</italic> data: the wind direction bias <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$|\beta _\theta |\le 1 {\textstyle ^\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> indicates a very good agreement and the value of RMS difference against <italic>in situ</italic> winds of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$16 {\textstyle ^\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> results smaller than those reported in the literature; the wind speed bias <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\beta _{w}=-1.5\,\, {\textstyle \text {ms}^{-1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> with respect to <italic>in situ</italic> data indicates an underestimation of SAR speed. However, the innovation brought by ResNet results is evident in the study of the spatial structure of the wind fields, showing unprecedented details. The spatial gradients of wind direction and speed obtained (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\approx 6 {\textstyle ^\circ }/\text {km}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.5\,\, {\textstyle \text {ms}^{-1}}/\text {km}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively) are well consistent with those derived from previous experimental campaigns. The maps of the atmospheric wind stress curl derived from the ResNet wind fields exhibit the presence of contiguous cells with positive and negative values roughly elongated in the wind direction, not reproducible with such profusion of details by any other existing datasets. ResNet wind fields provide exhaustive coverage of the Venice lagoon, allowing to study their spatial structure: under northeasterly winds, the wind speed increases on average from northern to southern lagoon by 30% in agreement with a case study reported in the literature. Local differences of ResNet wind direction with respect to ECMWF (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm 30 {\textstyle ^\circ }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> maximum) generate local differences of wind speed as large as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm 2\,\, {\textstyle \text {ms}^{-1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>.
Simulation of power heterojunction bipolar transistors on gallium arsenide

We demonstrate the results of two-dimensional (2-D) hydrodynamic simulations of one-finger power heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) on GaAs. An overview of the physical models used and comparisons with experimental data are given. We present models for the thermal conductivity and the specific heat applicable to all relevant diamond and zinc-blende structure semiconductors. They are expressed as functions of the lattice temperature and in the case of semiconductor alloys, of the material composition.
Systemic lupus erythematosus : nurse and patient education

Systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus) is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks healthy cells, tissue and organs, including the skin, kidney, heart, lungs, brain, joints and blood vessels. Symptoms of lupus vary between patients. The most common symptoms include unexplained fever, skin rash, swollen or painful joints, fatigue and kidney problems. Lupus can be treated effectively, but there is presently no cure for the condition. People with lupus may experience periods of exacerbation of symptoms, which are termed ‘flares’, as well as periods of remission. Nurses need to have a good understanding of the disease to provide patients with appropriate support and advice about how to maintain wellbeing and lead active lives.
The influence of external factors on routine ERP usage

Purpose – Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been implemented in most organizations for a few years. ERP solutions go through three phases of lifecycle: selection, implementation and operation phase; the operation phase consists of the stabilization stage and the routine stage. To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ERP system use in the operation phase, organizations need to research the factors that have impact on users' satisfaction. A literature shows that few published studies have examined users' adoption of ERP systems through a technological acceptance model (TAM) or examined external factors that have influence the intention to use an ERP system, or ERP use in the stabilization stage. The purpose of this paper is to expose and research external factors which have influence on ERP users in the operation phase of ERP lifecycle and to investigate the impact of those factors on ERP system use.Design/methodology/approach – The TAM proposed by Davis has been the most widely‐used mo.
In winter.

As is true of many urban areas, Spokane has little information on winter raptor populations. Even outside urban areas, many authors have pointed to the lack of available data on wintering raptor populations (Woffinden and Murphy 1977; Craig et al. 1984; Beauvais et al. 1992; and Bunn et al. 1995). To establish a baseline documenting this valuable winter raptor resource in and around a rapidly urbanizing area, a 3-year winter raptor study was conducted around Spokane from 1995-1998. A total of 110 roadside surveys were conducted covering more than 2,510 km (1,560 mi) of secondary roads. Over 1200 raptors of 12 different species were recorded during the 3-year period. The 4 most common species, red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) (65% of total), roughlegged hawk (Buteo lagopus) (18%), bald eagle (Haliaetus leucocephalus) (6%), and northern harrier (Circus cyaneus) (5%), comprised almost 95% of all birds sighted. Red-tailed hawks were seen on 58% of all surveys, rough-legged hawks on 42%, bald eagles on 28%, northern harriers on 26%, and American kestrels on 19%. For the entire study, 48 birds were observed for every 100 km (2.1 km/bird) driven. Significantly more birds were observed in the morning than in the afternoon. More wintering raptors were observed between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. than any other time period. When first observed, over 70% of the 5 most common species were perched while 27% were flying. Bald eagles and red-tailed hawks were observed most often in evergreen trees and rough-legged hawks were observed to perch most frequently on power poles and fence posts. Kestrels were observed most often on wires. Both the number of raptors and the number of species were lowest near the city and both consistently increased as distance from the city center increased. Results show that the Spokane urban area has one of the highest relative abundance and species richness levels of wintering raptors in the West.
Decoherence in a superconducting quantum bit circuit

Decoherence in quantum bit circuits is presently a major limitation to their use for quantum computing purposes. We present experiments, inspired from NMR, that characterize decoherence in a particular superconducting quantum bit circuit, the quantronium. We introduce a general framework for the analysis of decoherence, based on the spectral densities of the noise sources coupled to the qubit. Analysis of our measurements within this framework indicates a simple model for the noise sources acting on the qubit. We discuss various methods to fight decoherence.
Power control schemes for TDD systems with multiple transmit and receive antennas

This paper investigates the performance of narrowband, slowly-fading, and delay-limited multiple-antenna systems where channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmission end. This situation can arise in time-division duplex (TDD) based two-way systems where channel state estimation can be performed using the signal received from the opposite link. Power control methods which attempt to keep the transmission rate constant at the expense of randomizing the transmit power are considered. It is shown that significant savings in the average transmit power (sometimes on the order of tens of dB) can be expected compared to systems which keep the total transmit power constant. Several practical channel coding examples are illustrated and their bit and frame error rate performance are discussed.
The Clinical Outcome of Hydroxyurea Chemotherapy after Incomplete Resection of Atypical Meningiomas

Background The aim of this study is to investigate the clinical results of adjuvant chemotherapy with hydroxyurea and to compare those with the results of postoperative radiotherapy after incomplete resection of atypical meningiomas (ATMNGs). Methods We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 84 patients with ATMNGs diagnosed in the period from January 2000 to December 2014. Clinical data included patient sex and age at the time of surgery, presenting symptoms at diagnosis, location and size of tumor, extent of surgery, use of postoperative radiotherapy or hydroxyurea chemotherapy, duration of follow-up, and progression. In terms of the extent of surgical resection, incomplete resection was defined as Simpson grade II–V. Results Among the 85 patients, 55 (65.5%) patients underwent incomplete resection; 24 (43.6%) were treated with adjuvant hydroxyurea (group A), and 20 (36.4%) with postoperative radiotherapy (group B), and 11 (20.0%) underwent conservative treatment after surgery (group C). Twenty-five (45.5%) patients experienced the progression of tumors during the follow-up period (mean 47.7 months, range 12.4-132.1 months); 8 of 24 (33.3%) patients in group A, 7 of 20 (35.0%) patients in group B, and 10 of 11 (90.9%) patients in group C. The mean progression-free survival (PFS) was 30.9 months (range 6.4-62.3 months); 46.2 months in group A, 40.4 months in group B, and 11.9 months in group C (p=0.041). Multivariate analysis showed that Simpson grade (p=0.040), adjuvant treatment after surgery (p<0.001), increased Ki67 (p=0.017), mitotic index (p=0.034), and overexpression of p53 (p=0.026) predicted longer PFS. Conclusion This investigation suggested that adjuvant treatment after incomplete resection of ATMNGs are associated with longer PFS than conservative treatment, and that there is no difference of PFS between hydroxyurea chemotherapy and radiotherapy after surgery. Therefore, hydroxyurea chemotherapy can be considered as another adjuvant tool for the ATMNGs if the postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy cannot be applicable.
SURFACTANT-ASSISTED BALL MILLING: A NOVEL ROUTE TO NOVEL MATERIALS WITH CONTROLLED NANOSTRUCTURE - A REVIEW

Controlled Structure nanomaterials have played important roles in the advancement of targeted drug-delivery, gene silencing, therapeutics, catalysis, water purification and optoelec- tronics. These are probably because of their convenient and versatile sizes and shapes, large specific surface area, desirable surface properties, high chemical reactivity and physical affinity as well as attractive opto-electrical and electro-magnetic properties. However, the synthesis of materials with controlled micro/nano-structures and desired surface properties have been re- maining a challenging task. Various approaches have been proposed for the commercial pro- duction of nanostructured particles from solid state. Chemical methods to synthesis control- structured nanoparticles from rare-earth solid compounds have numerous limitations. Recently, surfactant assisted high energy ball milling has been exploited for the synthesis of various nanomaterials, nanograins, and nanocomposites from solid bulk materials. Promising results have been obtained in terms of nanostructure assembly, micro/nano-environment, surface functionalities and dispersion. In high-energy ball milling, plastic deformation, cold-welding and fracture predominantly contribute to bring a change in size, shape and microenvironment of nanoparticles. This review systematically presented the basic concept and applications of sur- factant assisted mechanical milling in the synthesis of various nanomaterials and nanocomposites.
Changing High School Students' Attitudes towards Mathematics in a Summer Camp: Happiness Matters

The purpose of this study is to examine if and how high school students’ attitudes towards mathematics can be positively changed through a summer math village experience and whether happiness exerts an influence on this change process. We employed a mixed research design in our study, and examined an existing intervention. We administered the Mathematics Attitude Scale and the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale to 57 students before and after they attended summer camp at a math village. We also conducted individual interviews with three lecturers and focus group interviews with 12 students to supplement the quantitative measures. The results indicated that the intervention had a positive impact on the students’ attitudes and approach towards mathematics and their personal improvement process. The results further indicated that happy students benefited more from the math village in terms of changes to their mathematics attitudes.
Determination of rare earth elements in saline matrices using dispersed particle extraction and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

RATIONALE Rare earth elements play an important role in identifying and indexing the origin of historical and geological samples. In this work, a new approach for the characterization of rare earth elements (REEs) in aqueous sample solutions with high salinity is presented. METHODS Prior to analysis by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) the target analytes were separated from interfering matrix constituents by the use of surface-functionalized nanoparticles. Compared with common matrix separation techniques, such as solid-phase extraction (SPE), the strength of the method lies in the combination of an advanced extraction procedure with internal standard correction. Thus, known limitations of SPE such as column clogging or incomplete analyte elution could be completely circumvented. Furthermore, time-consuming approaches for signal quantification such as matrix-matched calibration could be avoided since the applied internal standard allows the correction of matrix-induced deviations in sample extraction and ICP-MS analysis. RESULTS With the developed procedure detection limits <1 ng L(-1) could be achieved for all the investigated elements, with satisfactory relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 3-26% for unspiked samples and <1-2% for spiked samples. Results derived from recovery experiments with spiked oil accumulation water samples confirmed the applicability of the proposed procedure for the determination of REEs in highly saline sample solutions. The procedure was successfully applied to the study of oil accumulation water samples from different oil fields in Lower Austria. CONCLUSIONS A sample pretreatment procedure with subsequent ICP-MS analysis for the accurate determination of REEs in aqueous sample solutions with high salinity has been developed.
A semi-analytical radiobiological model may assist treatment planning in light ion radiotherapy

A semi-analytical model of light ions' Bragg peaks is presented and used in conjunction with a detailed probabilistic radiobiological module to predict the biological effectiveness of light ion irradiation for hadrontherapy applications. The physical Bragg peak model is based on energy-loss calculations with the SRIM code and phenomenological formulae for the energy-loss straggling. Effects of nuclear reactions are accounted for on the level of reducing the number of primary particles only. Reaction products are not followed at all and their contribution to dose deposition is neglected. Beam widening due to multiple scattering and calculations of spread-out Bragg peaks are briefly discussed. With this simple physical model, integral depth–dose distributions are calculated for protons, carbon, oxygen and neon ions. A good agreement with published experimental data is observed for protons and lower energy ions (with ranges in water up to approximately 15 cm), while less satisfactory results are obtained for higher energy ions due to the increased role of nuclear reaction products, neglected in this model. A detailed probabilistic radiobiological module is used to complement the simple physical model and to estimate biological effectiveness along the penetration depth of Bragg peak irradiation. Excellent agreement is found between model predictions and experimental data for carbon beams, indicating potential applications of the present scheme in treatment planning in light ion hadrontherapy. Due to the semi-analytical character of the model, leading to high computational speed, applications are foreseen in particular in the fully biological optimization of multiple irradiation fields and intensity-modulated beams.
Transarterial Embolisation for Major Iatrogenic Renal Vascular Injuries: Retrospective Study

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of renal angiography and transarterial embolisation in the management of major iatrogenic renal vascular injuries. Patients and Methods: Records of 9 patients with major renal vascular complications (pseudoaneurysm or arteriovenous fistula) after percutaneous renal procedures were reviewed. They were investigated with digital subtraction angiography followed by transarterial embolisation using various embolic agents. Indications for embolisation were gross or persistent haematuria that resulted in unstable haemodynamic status or that required blood transfusion. Postembolisation angiography was performed for all patients. Results: All the pseudoaneurysms and arteriovenous fistulas were successfully embolised in 1 session without any procedure-related complications. In all patients, clinical symptoms disappeared and haemodynamic status returned to normal after embolisation. Conclusion: Transarterial embolisation is an effective and safe technique in the management of major iatrogenic renal vascular injuries, and should be the first treatment option in acute clinical situations. In most cases, technical success can be achieved with minimal renal parenchymal tissue loss.
Using Hybrid HMM/BN Acoustic Models: Design and Implementation Issues

In recent years, the number of studies investigating new directions in speech modeling that goes beyond the conventional HMM has increased considerably. One promising approach is to use Bayesian Networks (BN) as speech models. Full recognition systems based on Dynamic BN as well as acoustic models using BN have been proposed lately. Our group at ATR has been developing a hybrid HMM/BN model, which is an HMM where the state probability distribution is modeled by a BN, instead of commonly used mixtures of Gaussian functions. In this paper, we describe how to use the hybrid HMM/BN acoustic models, especially emphasizing some design and implementation issues. The most essential part of HMM/BN model building is the choice of the state BN topology. As it is manually chosen, there are some factors that should be considered in this process. They include, but are not limited to, the type of data, the task and the available additional information. When context-dependent models are used, the state-level structure can be obtained by traditional methods. The HMM/BN parameter learning is based on the Viterbi training paradigm and consists of two alternating steps - BN training and HMM transition updates. For recognition, in some cases, BN inference is computationally equivalent to a mixture of Gaussians, which allows HMM/BN model to be used in existing decoders without any modification. We present two examples of HMM/BN model applications in speech recognition systems. Evaluations under various conditions and for different tasks showed that the HMM/BN model gives consistently better performance than the conventional HMM.
PCR-RFLP is used to investigate relations among species in the entomopathogenic genera Eryniopsis and Entomophaga

The shape and nucleation of primary conidia are important characters in the classification of the Entomophthoraceae (Zygomycetes). The five species in the genus Eryniopsis vary in the shapes of primary conidia, although within most genera in the order Entomophthorales species have the same shapes of primary conidia. Using PCR-RFLP, we investigated two species in Eryniopsis, Ery. caroliniana with oblong-ovoid primary conidia and Ery. ptychopterae with pear-shaped primary conidia, with five species of Entomophaga, all having pear-shaped conidia. Molecular results merged with morphological data indicate that Ery. ptychopterae belongs in the genus Entomophaga while Ery. caroliniana clearly differs from Entomophaga. Ery. ptychopterae and Ery. transitans are transferred to the genus Entomophaga. Our results support the idea that morphology of primary conidia is of major importance in defining entomophthoralean genera. These results also show that such studies can be conducted with species that have not been isolated, if fungal-filled cadavers can be obtained.
Piecewise quadratic stability of fuzzy systems

Presents an approach to stability analysis of fuzzy systems. The analysis is based on Lyapunov functions that are continuous and piecewise quadratic. The approach exploits the gain-scheduling nature of fuzzy systems and results in stability conditions that can be verified via convex optimization over linear matrix inequalities. Examples demonstrate the many improvements over analysis based on a single quadratic Lyapunov function. Special attention is given to the computational aspects of the approach and several methods to improve the computational efficiency are described.
Event-Driven High-Priority First Data Scheduling Scheme for P2P VoD Streaming

The peer churn rate in the peer-to-peer (P2P) video-on-demand streaming service is much higher than in the P2P live streaming service, which makes the data scheduling problem more challenging. First, the available upload bandwidth information used in the data scheduling scheme is often inaccurate due to the peer churn, which lets a peer make bad scheduling decisions and leads to load imbalance. The higher peer churn makes this problem worse. Secondly, the higher peer churn exacerbates the bandwidth contention problem which occurs between a newly joined peer and some already-existing peers. To tackle the above two challenges, we propose an event-driven high-priority first data scheduling scheme, called EHPF scheme. To tackle the first challenge, we design a piggyback mechanism based on the event-driven mechanism. To tackle the second challenge, we design a priority calculation strategy to differentiate the requests from the newly joined peers and those from the already-existing peers, and use the high-priority first policy to allocate the upload bandwidths of peers. Through simulations and a real environment experiment, we demonstrate that the EHPF scheme outperforms the periodical data scheduling scheme in terms of startup delay, streaming quality and load balancing.