Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seismic imaging studies of complex high and steep structures in Kuqa depression

Seismic imaging generally depends on data quality, velocity reliability, and migrator performance. Complex near-surface geological conditions in Kuqa depression cause extremely low signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios of seismic data. Salts penetrated into overthrust structures are widely distributed, vary in thickness and shape of complex geometries, and distort the imaging of subsalt faults, leading to complicated imaging problems. This article studies three key aspects. In the preprocessing of prestack data, some innovative techniques combined with commercial techniques are employed by three levels to improve data quality and reconstruct the reflections from depths. Three-stage migration velocity analyses, subtle DMO velocity analysis, prestack time-migration, and prestack depth-migration velocity analyses are implemented to build a topology-preservation prestack-migration velocity model. The time-depth conversion of the prestack time-migration velocity model is performed based on the Kuqa-depression modeling theory of salt-related overthrust complex structures combined with the velocity-varying mapping technique. The well-constrained seismic inversion for low-frequency velocities is conducted to handle the syncretization of the well-building and migration-building velocity fields. Finally, prestack time and depth migrations are performed by a semi-analytic degenerate Fourier migrator that improves the imaging of high-wavenumber components. Applications to the Dabei, Bozi, Quele, Xiqiu10, and Xiqiu4 structures result in well-positioned images for salt-related overthrust complex structures.
Editorial: Recent Advances in Survey Methods for Collecting Food Data

: Abstract : High-quality food data collected from consumption and expenditure surveys are essential for researchers and policy makers to better understand trends in social, economic, and human development. Over the last decade, food surveys have faced various challenges to sustain high data quality, such as declining response rates and increasing respondent burden. At the same time, new opportunities around the use of new technologies and alternative data sources have emerged that can potentially address some of these challenges. This special issue, inspired by the International Food Acquisition Research and Methods (iFARM) Workshop held at the University of Maryland, College Park, in October 2022, presents recent methodological advancements in the collection of food survey data. The four papers contained in this issue contribute to research about increasing and sustaining data quality in such surveys. They compare traditional paper-and web-based approaches vis-à-vis novel smartphone-based approaches for collecting food data, explore the measurement of food preparation and consumption through time-use diaries, and examine the feasibility of innovative technologies to reduce respondent burden in food surveys.
Experimental research on the vibration characteristics of canvas and primed canvas of paintings

Paintings inevitably bear severe mechanical loads during transportation. Understanding the dynamic characteristics of paintings helps to avoid damage during transportation and to effectively slow down their aging. In this contribution, the vibration characteristics of canvas and primed canvas of paintings and their influencing factors are studied experimentally. For this reason, two dummy paintings with canvas in a common orientation and a tilted orientation are investigated, and an experimental setup using an excitation mechanism and a laser Doppler vibrometer is developed. In order to avoid changes of the modal parameters related to humidity or temperature, all experiments were conducted in a climate box. The modal parameters of dummy paintings are identified by means of experimental modal analysis. Also, the difference in modal properties of the two dummy paintings before and after applying the primer are compared. The identified modal parameters are used to reconstruct their eigen-modes. From the identified modal parameters a numerical model is derived, which is then compared to measurements. The comparison shows a good agreement, hence is a hint for the correctness of assuming a modal structure and the quality of the modal parameter identification. Lastly, with the help of the climate box, the influences of humidity and temperature on the eigenfrequencies of dummy paintings are studied
IJP: Parasites and Wildlife

Two species of heterophyid trematodes were found in the Magellanic penguin, Spheniscus magellanicus (Forster), from Patagonia, Argentina. Ascocotyle (Ascocotyle) patagoniensis Hernández-Orts et al. (2012) is re-described based on new, properly fixed specimens (original material from South American sea lion, Otaria flavescens Shaw, was from frozen hosts). Metacercariae of this species are reported and described for the first time from the heart of the silversides, Odontesthes argentinensis (Valenciennes) and O. smitti (Lahille), from Patagonia. Ascocotyle (Phagicola) cameliae n. sp. is described from the intestine of S. magellanicus. The new species is placed into the subgenus Phagicola Faust, 1920 because of the presence of a single row of circumoral spines and uterine loops and vitelline follicles being confined posterior to the ventral sucker. However, it differs distinctly from other members of this subgenus by the number (19–24) and length (23–31 μm) of massive circumoral spines and by the morphology of the ventrogenital sac with a large, simple gonotyl devoid of refractile bodies. Molecular data (partial 28S rDNA sequences) for both species are also provided. Matching sequences from metacercarial and adult stages helped elucidate partially the life-cycle of A. (A.) patagoniensis. The interspecific relationships and phylogenetic position of Ascocotyle were further assessed on a broad phylogeny on the Opisthorchioidea Looss, 1899. Ascocotyle (P.) ornamentata Shalaby et al. (1993) described from decomposed worms (all circumoral spines were detached) found in a dog in Egypt, with no type-specimens of this species deposited in a repository collection, is considered to be species inquirenda.
Hippocampal neuropathology in suicide Gaps in our knowledge and opportunities for a breakthrough

is a major global hazard. There is a need for increasing suicide awareness and effective and evidence-based interventions, targeting both suicidal ideation and conduct. However, anti-suicide pharmacological effects are unsatisfactory. The human hippocampus is vulnerable to neuropsychiatric damages and subsequently releases psychobiological signals. Human hippocampal studies of suicide completers have shown mechanistic changes in neurobiology, which, however, could not reflect the neuropathological ‘fingerprints ’ of fatal suicide ideations and suicide attempts. In this review, we provide several leading theories of suicide, including the serotoninergic system, Wnt pathway and brain-derived neurotrophic factor/tropomyosin receptor kinase B signalling, and discuss the evidence for their roles in suicide and treatment. Moreover, the cognitive dysfunctions associated with suicide risk are discussed, as well as the novel evidence on cognitive therapies that decrease suicidal ideation. We highlight the need to apply multi-omics techniques (including single-nucleus RNA sequencing and mass spectrometry histochemistry) on hippocampal samples from donors who died by suicide or legal euthanasia, to clarify the aetiology of suicide and propose novel therapeutic strategies.
University of Birmingham Kolmogorov-Smirnov type testing for structural breaks

A popular self-normalization (SN) approach in time series analysis uses the variance of a partial sum as a self-normalizer. This is known to be sensitive to irregularities such as persistent auto-correlation, heteroskedasticity, unit roots and outliers. We propose a novel SN approach based on the adjusted-range of a partial sum, which is robust to these aforementioned irregularities. We develop an adjusted-range based Kolmogorov–Smirnov type test for structural breaks for both univariate and multivariate time series, and consider testing parameter constancy in a time series regression setting. Our approach can rectify the well-known power decrease issue associated with existing self-normalized KS tests without having to use backward and forward summations as in Shao and Zhang (2010), and can alleviate the ‘‘better size but less power’’ phenomenon when the existing SN approaches (Shao, 2010; Zhang et al., 2011; Wang and Shao, 2022) are used. Moreover, our proposed tests can cater for more general alternatives. Monte Carlo simulations and empirical studies demonstrate the merits of our approach.
Spatiotemporal independent component analysis for the detection of functional responses in cat retinal images

In the early stages of some retinal diseases, such as glaucoma, loss of retinal activity may be difficult to detect with current clinical instruments. Because current instruments require unattainable levels of patient cooperation, high sensitivity and specificity are difficult to attain. We have devised a new retinal imaging system that detects intrinsic optical signals which reflect functional changes in the retina and that do not require patient cooperation. Measured changes in reflectance in response to the visual stimulus are on the order of 0.1% to 1% of the total reflected intensity level, which makes the functional signal difficult to detect by standard methods. The desired functional signal is masked by other physiological signals and by imaging system noise. In this paper, we quantify the limits of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) for detecting the low intensity functional signal and apply ICA to 60 video sequences from experiments using an anesthetized cat whose retina is presented with different patterned stimuli. The results of the analysis show that using ICA, in principle, signal levels of 0.1% can be detected. The study found that in 86% of the animal experiments the patterned stimuli effects on the retina can be detected and extracted.
Bulk composition and early differentiation of Mars

[1] We report the concentrations of K, Th, and Fe on the Martian surface, as determined by the gamma ray spectrometer onboard the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft. K and Th are not uniformly distributed on Mars. K ranges from 2000 to 6000 ppm; Th ranges from 0.2 to 1 ppm. The K/Th ratio varies from 3000 to 9000, but over 95% of the surface has K/Th between 4000 and 7000. Concentrations of K and Th are generally higher than those in basaltic Martian meteorites (K = 200–2600 ppm; Th = 0.1–0.7 ppm), indicating that Martian meteorites are not representative of the bulk crust. The average K/Th in the crust is 5300, consistent with the Wanke-Dreibus model composition for bulk silicate Mars. Fe concentrations support the idea that bulk Mars is enriched in FeO compared to Earth. The differences in K/Th and FeO between Earth and Mars are consistent with the planets accreting from narrow feeding zones. The concentration of Th on Mars does not vary as much as it does on the Moon (where it ranges from 0.1 to 12 ppm), suggesting that the primary differentiation of Mars differed from that of the Moon. If the average Th concentration (0.6 ppm) of the surface is equal to the average of the entire crust, the crust cannot be thicker than about 118 km. If the crust is about 57 km thick, as suggested by geophysical studies, then about half the Th is concentrated in the crust.
Cross cultural adjustment of female expatriates in the tourism and hospitality sector.

Due to globalisation, the role of expatriates has become more critical. However, there is a dearth of studies on the combined effect of emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and spiritual intelligence on the cultural adjustment of female expatriates. This study examined the effect of emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and spiritual intelligence on the cultural adjustment of female expatriates in a developing country. This was a quantitative study, and the target population were female expatriates in the Maldives. By using a survey method, primary data was collected from 151 respondents. The results revealed that cultural and spiritual intelligence positively and significantly affected expatriates' cross-cultural adjustment. Cultural intelligence had the strongest effect on the cross-cultural adjustment of expatriates. Surprisingly, emotional intelligence did not significantly affect the cross-cultural adjustment of expatriates. The results of the study filled
Barycentre Averaging for the Move-Split-Merge Time Series Distance Measure

: Distance functions play a core role in many time series machine learning algorithms for tasks such as clustering, classiﬁcation and regression. Time series often require bespoke distance functions because small offsets in time can lead to large distances between series that are conceptually similar. Elastic distances compensate for misalignment by creating a path through a cost matrix by warping and/or editing time series. Time series are most commonly clustered with partitional algorithms such as k -means and k -medoids using elastic distance measures such as Dynamic Time Warping (DTW). The distance is used to assign cases to the closest cluster representative. k -means requires the averaging of time series to ﬁnd these representative centroids. If DTW is used to assign membership, but the arithmetic mean is used to ﬁnd centroids, k -means performance degrades signiﬁcantly. An averaging technique speciﬁc to DTW, called DTW Barycentre Averaging (DBA), overcomes the averaging problem however, can only be used with DTW. As such alternative distance functions such as Move-Split-Merge (MSM) are forced to use the arithmetic mean to compute new centroids and suffer similar degraded performance as k -means-DTW without DBA. To address this we propose a averaging method for MSM distance, MSM Barycentre Averaging (MBA) and show that when used to ﬁnd centroids it signiﬁcantly improves MSM based k -means and is better than commonly used alternatives.
A MICROSIMULATION MODEL OF URBAN SYSTEMS

This paper presents a status report concerning on-going research and development work by a team of Canadian researchers to develop a microsimulation-based, integrated model of urban land use and transportation. The paper briefly discusses the microsimulation approach to modelling dynamic, complex systems, in which the behaviour of individual actors/agents is simulated over time and space. It then describes in some detail the overall design and current status of the ILUTE (Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment) modelling system under development. The overall purpose of ILUTE is to simulate the evolution of an entire urban region over an extended period of time. Such a model is intended to replace conventional, aggregate, static models for the analysis of a broad range of transportation, housing and other urban policies
Impact of cement industries on potentially toxic elements’ contamination and other characteristics of topsoil: A case study

ABSTRACT Due to the elevated levels of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in the environment, we measured the PTE concentration in topsoils at a distance of 500, 1000, and 2000 m from 3 cement production factories (1 = DG Cement, 2 = Bestway Cement, Kallar Kahar, and 3 = Bestway Cement, Chakwal) toward east, west, north, and south direction. Soil samples were collected and analyzed for cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), zinc (Zn), and cobalt (Co) concentrations. It was recorded that the maximum PTE concentrations were found at 500 m distance and in north direction in 93% of the samples. The maximum Cd, Cr, Fe, Mn, Ni, Zn and Co concentrations were found around Bestway Cement, Chakwal at 4.13, 27.82, 6552.20, 93.47, 99.54, 46.83, and 72.62 mg kg−1, respectively. Similar results were found for the other two industries at same distance and direction. It was also revealed that contamination factor and geo-accumulation index were exceeding in the 84% and 81% of the total samples collected. The findings of the study indicate that there could be toxicity in soil and food crop in vicinity of the area, which should be studied. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Proposal of a New Approach Using Deep Learning for QR Code Embedding

: The purpose of this research is to enhance the technique of embedding QR codes into arbitrary images using deep learning. Previous approaches faced the issue of compromising the quality when embedding QR codes into arbitrary images. We address this problem by proposing a deep learning model and learning method that can improve the quality of embedded images and accurately recover QR codes. Specifically, we design a new model using deep learning that embeds QR codes into images while minimizing the degradation of image quality. The effectiveness of the proposed model and learning method is validated through experiments, demonstrating the enhancement of image quality in the embedded images and accurate QR code recovery.
Study on Influencing Factors of Microblog User's Malicious Disinhibition Behavior

User's Malicious Commenting Behavior is one kind of toxic disinhibition on the Internet, and it has a bad effect on Internet governance. Microblog is a wide-ranging instant messaging platform. It is important to research on microblog malicious behavior. The influencing factors of the toxic uninhibited behavior of Internet users are different from other Internet environments because of Microblog's special environment. This paper starts from the microblog environmental characteristics and conducts the Internet users’ toxic uninhibited behavior questionnaire survey. Then this paper establishes the analysis framework of microblog users’ uninhibited behavior, and conduct an empirical study based on the structural equation model and analysis of variance. The results demonstrate that: Network environment factors of microblog and personal factors of microblog users have different impacts on toxic uninhibited behavior; compared with the Internet users, the influence of personal factors on the user's behavior is more significant; there is a significant difference in the number of toxic uninhibited behavior in different anonymous environments and personal cognition levels.
Development of Kendo Motion Prediction System for VR Kendo Training System

: In this study, we developed and evaluated a system within the system to predict the user’s Kendo (Japanese fencing) motions which is the function of the VR Kendo system that enables easy Kendo training at home or in similar settings. We utilized markerless motion capture and machine learning based on recurrent neural networks (RNN) to learn and predict kendo motions. As a result, the proposed system successfully predicted Kendo motions as it started with high accuracy.
Adaptive Image-Based Moving-Target Tracking Control of Wheeled Mobile Robots With Visibility Maintenance and Obstacle Avoidance

This article presents an adaptive image-based visual servoing (IBVS) for nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots to solve the moving-target tracking problem in obstacle environments. A pinhole camera that is equipped with the following robot to monitor the target’ motion is limited field of view (FOV), which relates to the issue of visibility maintenance. Safety navigation is another concern, which requires that the following robot can avoid collisions with the target and static obstacles. Under the IBVS framework, we design novel constrained boundary functions based on pixel coordinate, which can be deviated away from zero to ensure that the following robot drives away from obstacles because obstacle avoidance is a higher priority rather than the tracking task. When there is no obstacle detected, the constrained boundary functions are taken as exponentially decaying functions of time. Using fixed-time stability and control Lyapunov synthesis, the tracking errors are shown to converge in fixed time to a small neighborhood of the desired obstacle-avoidance trajectory generated from the centerline of constrained boundaries while guaranteeing visibility maintenance and obstacle/collision avoidance. The proposed fixed-time IBVS controller (FTIBVSC) only depends on locally relative information acquired by onboard sensors without the need of knowing the feature height and target’s velocity. Simulation and experiment studies are carried out to show the efficacy of the proposed FTIBVSC.
Direct simulation of electrical and hydraulic tortuosity in porous solids

We directly evaluate the fluid-flow and electrical conductivity of model three dimensional random porous medium at a microscopic level. This allows a direct test of the popular assumption that fluid-flow and electrical current follow equivalent flow paths in porous solids. Visualisation of the fluid-flow and electric-current streamlines within identical porous samples show this assumption is incorrect. The tortuosity factors, characterising the geometry of the flow paths associated with fluid-flow and electrical current transport, are directly evaluated. Fluid-flow tortuosity is systematically larger than the electrical tortuosity, and can differ by as much as an order of magnitude at lower porosities.
The Extent of Finger Millet Production in South Omo Zone in the Case of South Ari Woreda

In Ethiopia finger millet occupies 4% of the total area allocated to cereals (nearly half a million hectares) each year and also contributes about 4% to the total annual cereal grain production in the country. The production area increased from 342,120 ha to 368,999 ha with an increase of 7.3%, and the productivity increased from 3,769,290 to 5,241,911 quintals with a proportion of 28%. Six varieties (Tadesse, Padet, Wama, Baruda, Degu and Boneya) have been identified for cultivation to date. Though the varieties were initially released for cultivation in the sub-humid and mid altitude areas, their inadvertent introduction in to low rainfall areas found new adaptation zones. The production of these varieties has expanded to dry low altitude areas including regions where the crop was previously unknown. As a result of frequent drought, farmers in the dry rift valley region of Ethiopia widely adopted the variety that it is currently grown as one of the most important crops in this region. Therefore this study was initiated to discuss the production of finger millet in South Omo Zone, Ari woreda and generates information on the extent of finger millet production which is useful in designing suitable approaches for identifying gaps and intervening production constrains in the target area.The study areas comprised major finger millet producing kebeles of Ari woreda. Ten kebeles were selected systematically. Six year data on finger millet production and productivity was taken from woreda and each kebele. Data were collected through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and questionnaires during a three-month period . Research in south omo zone, southern research institute and several national programs have resulted in considerable progress and identification of some improved finger millet varieties. The production of the crop in the study area is increasing.