Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thermal Remote Sensing and the Thermodynamics of Ecosystem Development

Thermal remote sensing can provide environmental measuring tools with capabilities for measuring ecosystem development and integrity. Recent advances in applying principles of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to ecology provide fundamental insights into energy partitioning in ecosystems. Ecosystems are nonequilibrium systems, open to material and energy flows, which grow and develop structures and processes to increase energy degradation. More developed terrestrial ecosystems will be more effective at dissipating the solar gradient (degrading its exergy content) and can be measured by the effective surface temperature of the ecosystem on a landscape scale. Ecosystems are viewed as open thermodynamic systems with a large gradient impressed on them by the exergy flux from the sun. Ecosystems, according to the restated second law, develop in ways that systematically increases their ability to degrade the incoming solar exergy, hence negating it's ability to set up even larger gradients. Thus it should be expected that more mature ecosystems degrade the exergy they capture more completely than a less developed ecosystem. The degree to which incoming solar exergy is degraded is a function of the surface temperature of the ecosystem. If a group of ecosystems receives the same amount of incoming radiation, we would expect that the most mature ecosystem would reradiate its energy at the lowest quality level and thus would have the lowest surface temperature (coldest black body temperature). Initial development work was done using NASA's airborne Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS) followed by the use of a multispectral visible and thermal scanner- Airborne Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS). Luvall and his coworkers have documented ecosystem energy budgets, including tropical forests, midlatitude varied ecosystems, and semiarid ecosystems. These data show that under similar environmental conditions (air temperature, relative humidity, winds, and solar irradiance) and within a given biome type, the more developed the ecosystem, the cooler it's surface temperature and the more degraded the quality of it's reradiated energy. HyspIRI is a hyperspectral visible/Near IR and multispectral thermal future global satellite mission that will collect data to study the world's ecosystems and will provide a benchmark on the state of the worlds ecosystems against which future changes can be assessed. HyspIRI will provide global data sets that will provide a means for measuring ecosystem development and integrity.
Reduction of Bacterial Burden and Pain in Chronic Wounds Using a New Polyhexamethylene Biguanide Antimicrobial Foam Dressing-Clinical Trial Results

OBJECTIVE:A randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) foam dressing compared with a similar non-antimicrobial foam for the treatment of superficial bacterial burden, wound-associated pain, and reduction in wound size. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS:This study was conducted in 2 wound healing clinics-a university hospital-based clinic and a community-based clinic. Forty-five chronic wound subjects, stratified to either foot or leg ulcers, were followed for 5 weeks. METHODS:A multicenter, prospective, double-blind, pilot, randomized controlled clinical trial with 3 study visits (Weeks 0, 2, 4) documented pain and local wound characteristics using NERDS and STONEES clinical criteria to determine superficial bacterial damage or deep/surrounding infection. RESULTS:The use of PHMB foam dressing was a significant predictor of reduced wound superficial bacterial burden (P = .016) at week 4 as compared with the foam alone. Pain reduction was also statistically significant at week 2 (P = .0006) and at week 4 (P = .02) in favor of the PHMB foam dressings. Polymicrobial organisms were recovered at week 4 in 5.3% in the PHMB foam dressing group versus 33% in the control group (P = .04). Subjects randomized to the PHMB foam dressing had a 35% median reduction in wound size by week 4, compared with 28% in the control group. CONCLUSIONS:PHMB foam dressing successfully reduced chronic wound pain and bacterial burden.
The University of Reading Unbiased Ensemble Square Root Filters

There is an established framework that describes a class of ensemble Kalman filter algorithms as square root filters (SRFs). These schemes carry out analyses by updating the ensemble mean and a square root of the ensemble covariance matrix. The matrix square root of the forecast covariance is postmultiplied by another matrix to give a matrix square root of the analysis covariance. The choice of post-multiplier is not unique, but can be multiplied by any orthogonal matrix to give another scheme that also fits into this framework. In this work we re-examine the ensemble SRF framework. The key result is that not all filters of this type bear the desired relationship to the forecast ensemble: there can be a systematic bias in the analysis ensemble mean and consequently an accompanying shortfall in the spread of the analysis ensemble as expressed by the ensemble covariance matrix. This points to the need for a restricted version of the notion of an ensemble SRF, which we call an unbiased ensemble SRF. We have established a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the scheme to be unbiased. Many (but not all) published ensemble SRF algorithms satisfy them. Whilst these conditions are not a cure-all and cannot deal with independent sources of bias such as model and observation errors, they should be useful to designers of ensemble SRFs in the future.
A Kalman Filter Approach for Exploiting Bluetooth Traffic Data When Estimating Time-Dependent OD Matrices

Time-dependent origin–destination (OD) matrices are essential input for dynamic traffic models such as microscopic and mesoscopic traffic simulators. Dynamic traffic models also support real-time traffic management decisions, and they are traditionally used in the design and evaluation of advanced traffic traffic management and information systems (ATMS/ATIS). Time-dependent OD estimations are typically based either on Kalman filtering or on bilevel mathematical programming, which can be considered in most cases as ad hoc heuristics. The advent of the new information and communication technologies (ICT) provides new types of traffic data with higher quality and accuracy, which in turn allows new modeling hypotheses that lead to more computationally efficient algorithms. This article presents ad hoc, Kalman filtering procedures that explicitly exploit Bluetooth sensor traffic data, and it reports the numerical results from computational experiments performed at a network test site.
Apoptotic Lymphocytes of H. sapiens Lose Nucleosomes in GC-Rich Promoters

We analyzed two sets of human CD4+ nucleosomal DNA directly sequenced by Illumina (Solexa) high throughput sequencing method. The first set has ∼40 M sequences and was produced from the normal CD4+ T lymphocytes by micrococcal nuclease. The second set has ∼44 M sequences and was obtained from peripheral blood lymphocytes by apoptotic nucleases. The different nucleosome sets showed similar dinucleotide positioning AA/TT, GG/CC, and RR/YY (R is purine, Y - pyrimidine) patterns with periods of 10–10.4 bp. Peaks of GG/CC and AA/TT patterns were shifted by 5 bp from each other. Two types of promoters in H. sapiens: AT and GC-rich were identified. AT-rich promoters in apoptotic cell had +1 nucleosome shifts 50–60 bp downstream from those in normal lymphocytes. GC-rich promoters in apoptotic cells lost 80% of nucleosomes around transcription start sites as well as in total DNA. Nucleosome positioning was predicted by combination of {AA, TT}, {GG, CC}, {WW, SS} and {RR, YY} patterns. In our study we found that the combinations of {AA, TT} and {GG, CC} provide the best results and successfully mapped 33% of nucleosomes 147 bp long with precision ±15 bp (only 31/147 or 21% is expected).
Köşk Höyük (Niğde) neolitik köyünde kil sıvalı insan başları

Between 1985-2008 field seasons, a total of nineteen human skulls were discovered at the Late Neolithic period site of Köşk Höyük, which lies within the borders of Bor, a district of the Niğde Province in Central Anatolia. One of the skulls belongs to a child and the remainder to adult males and females. The skulls were wrapped in a mat and preserved in specific places of the domestic area either as isolated skulls or in groups. Among thirteen of these skulls the mouths, noses, eyes and ears were depicted with clay and were painted with ocher, while the remaining six were untreated. Some remodeled skulls were provided with necks of plaster. While the faces of the dead were remodeled with clay and painted with red ochre, the top and back of the skull may also have been decorated with hair or some special plants. But, this remark remains purely speculative since all these decorations must have decayed and disappeared in time, if they ever existed. As seen on the computed tomography of two plastered skulls no teeth are present in the mandible and maxilla, and the well preserved alveolar sockets seem to be completely empty. Four headless skeletons were also unearthed in situ in the same domestic area. One of them belongs to a male aged approximately 15-16 years old and the others belong to adult of both sexes. All the normal burials and headless bodies were found beneath the floors of houses in the domestic architecture. The fact that we come across bodies without heads from the same cultural level where the human skulls were recovered provides us with important evidence about the proceedings of this mortuary practice. It appears that the corpse is first buries underneath the floor inside a house in a flexed position with or without mortuary gifts and after the flesh had decayed the grave was probably reopened in order to carefully remove the skull without disturbing the rest of the skeleton. If we take into consideration that no plastered skulls dating to the pre-pottery Neolithic period were found in Anatolia until now, we can suggest that this practice appeared in the Near East which thereafter spread to the North towards Anatolia in time. However, it is prudent to wait for new similar findings in our country to situate this mortuary tradition in the context of cultural diffusion. The remodeled human skulls dating approximately to late Neolithic period (7000 years ago B.P.) were encountered in the second and third cultural levels of this period indicating that this specific ritual behavior lasted for quite a long time and likely disappeared during the Chalcolithic in Köşk Höyük.
Transmission Mode Selection Algorithms for Spatially Correlated MIMO Interference Channels

In this paper, we study K-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channels (IC) in the presence of antenna correlations. Although interference alignment (IA) achieves the maximum multiplexing gain, i.e., degrees of freedom (DOF), the actual performance is degraded due to ill-conditioned channels caused by the antenna correlations. To enhance the overall system performance, we thus consider a transmission mode selection scheme which adaptively determines the number of data streams at each transmitter-receiver pair in a distributed fashion using local channel state information (CSI). A filter update process is exploited in order to estimate the performance regarding each transmission mode successively by considering the actual channel conditions as well as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Simulation results show that our mode selection scheme enhances the sum rate performance compared to the conventional full data stream transmissions in spatially correlated MIMO IC.
Single event transient tolerant frequency divider

This study presents a single event upset (SEU) tolerant frequency divider that compares the counted number of rising clock edges with the expected value. The number of counted rising edges being less than expected generally implies that the state is corrupted resulting in faulty output, so the faulty frequency divider is reset to a proper state to correct errors. The number of counted rising edges being greater than expected generally implies that the output is corrupted by a single event transient (SET) without changing the state, hence SET tolerance does not require a reset. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can achieve high operational clock frequency and good SEU hardening capability.
Ground-Water-Level Monitoring and the Importance of Long-Term Water-Level Data

How can you change your mind to be more open? There many sources that can help you to improve your thoughts. It can be from the other experiences and also story from some people. Book is one of the trusted sources to get. You can find so many books that we share here in this website. And now, we show you one of the best, the ground water level monitoring and the importance of long term water level data.
Estimation of the moisture content of bare soil from RADARSAT-1 SAR using simple empirical models

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) provides a remote sensing tool to estimate soil moisture. Mapping surface soil moisture from the grey level of SAR images is a demonstrated procedure, but several factors can interfere with the interpretation and must be taken into account. The most important factors are surface roughness and the radar configuration (frequency, polarization and incidence angle). This Letter evaluates the influence of these variables for estimation of bare soil moisture using RADARSAT-1 SAR data. First, the parameters of two linear backscatter models, the Ji and Champion models (Ji et al . 1995, Champion 1996), were tested and the constants recalculated. rms error based on the backscattering coefficient was reduced from 6.12 and 6.48 dB to 4.28 and 1.68 dB for the Ji and Champion models respectively. Secondly, a new model is proposed which had an rms error of only 1.21 dB. The results showed a marked increase in accuracy compared with the previous models.
TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 abundance in liver diseases of mice and men

TGF-β1 is a major player in chronic liver diseases promoting fibrogenesis and tumorigenesis through various mechanisms. The expression and function of TGF-β2 have not been investigated thoroughly in liver disease to date. In this paper, we provide evidence that TGF-β2 expression correlates with fibrogenesis and liver cancer development. Using quantitative realtime PCR and ELISA, we show that TGF-β2 mRNA expression and secretion increased in murine HSCs and hepatocytes over time in culture and were found in the human-derived HSC cell line LX-2. TGF-β2 stimulation of the LX-2 cells led to upregulation of the TGF-β receptors 1, 2, and 3, whereas TGF-β1 treatment did not alter or decrease their expression. In liver regeneration and fibrosis upon CCl4 challenge, the transient increase of TGF-β2 expression was accompanied by TGF-β1 and collagen expression. In bile duct ligation-induced fibrosis, TGF-β2 upregulation correlated with fibrotic markers and was more prominent than TGF-β1 expression. Accordingly, MDR2-KO mice showed significant TGF-β2 upregulation within 3 to 15 months but minor TGF-β1 expression changes. In 5 of 8 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)/hepatoblastoma cell lines, relatively high TGF-β2 expression and secretion were observed, with some cell lines even secreting more TGF-β2 than TGF-β1. TGF-β2 was also upregulated in tumors of TGFα/cMyc and DEN-treated mice. The analysis of publically available microarray data of 13 human HCC collectives revealed considerable upregulation of TGF-β2 as compared to normal liver. Our study demonstrates upregulation of TGF-β2 in liver disease and suggests TGF-β2 as a promising therapeutic target for tackling fibrosis and HCC.
A GMM based residual prediction method for voice conversion

The purpose of a voice conversion (VC) system is to change the perceived speaker identity of a speech signal to sound as if a target speaker had spoken it. In this paper, we propose a residual prediction method for the spectral detail transformation component of a VC system. The algorithm described here is based on the LPC analysis/synthesis framework, and achieves residual prediction from LPC parameters during voiced speech. This step consists of a GMM based LPC parameter classifier and a LPC residual codebook. The predicted residual is then combined with all-pole LPC spectrum to synthesize speech signal. Several aspects of this residual prediction method, including the validation of the codebook and the performance of the coded speech are tested using objective measures. The converted speech is found nearly indistinguishable from the target speaker's individuality in informal listening tests.
Chapter 1 UTILITYCOMPUTINGFORINTERNETAPPLICATIONS

With the growing demand for computing resources and network capacity, providing scalable and reliable computing service on the Internet becomes a challenging problem. Recently, much attention has been paid to the “utility computing” concept that aims to provide computing as a utility service similar to water and electricity. While the concept is very challenging in general, we focus our attention in this chapter to a restrictive environment Web applications. Given the ubiquitous use of Web applications on the Internet, this environment is rich and important enough to warrant careful research. This chapter describes the approaches and challenges related to the architecture and algorithm design in building such a computing platform.
Vietnamese Text Accent Restoration with Statistical Machine Translation

Vietnamese accentless texts exist on parallel with official vietnamese documents and play an important role in instant message, mobile SMS and online searching. Understanding correctly these texts is not simple because of the lexical ambiguity caused by the diversity in adding diacritics to a given accentless sequence. There have been some methods for solving the vietnamese accentless texts problem known as accent prediction and they have obtained promising results. Those methods are usually based on distance matching, n-gram, dictionary of words and phrases and heuristic techniques. In this paper, we propose a new method solving the accent prediction. Our method combine the strength of previous methods (combining n-gram method and phrase dictionary in general). This method considers the accent predicting as statistical machine translation (SMT) problem with source language as accentless texts and target language as accent texts, respectively. We also improve quality of accent predicting by applying some techniques such as adding dictionary, changing order of language model and tuning. The achieved result and the ability to enhance proposed system are obviously promising.
Mobility Data Mining and Privacy

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 12331 “Mobility Data Mining and Privacy”. Mobility data mining aims to extract knowledge from movement behaviour of people, but this data also poses novel privacy risks. This seminar gathered a multidisciplinary team for a conversation on how to balance the value in mining mobility data with privacy issues. The seminar focused on four key issues: Privacy in vehicular data, in cellular data, contextdependent privacy, and use of location uncertainty to provide privacy. Seminar 12. –17. August, 2012 – www.dagstuhl. de/12331 1998 ACM Subject Classification K.4. 1 Public Policy Issues: Privacy
On the Feasibility of Ad-Hoc Localization Systems

Ad-hoc localization systems enable nodes in a sensor network to fix their positions in a global coordinate system using a relatively small number of anchor nodes that know their position through external means (e.g., GPS). Because location information provides context to sensed data, such systems are a critical component of many sensor networks and have therefore received a fair amount of recent attention in the sensor networks literature. The efficacy of these systems is a function of the density of deployment and of anchor nodes, as well as the error in distance estimation (ranging) between nodes. In this paper, we examine how these factors impact the performance of the system. This examination lays the groundwork for the main question we consider in this paper: Can the ability to estimate bearing to neighboring nodes greatly increase the performance of ad-hoc localization systems? We discuss the design of ad-hoc localization systems that use range together with either bearing or imprecise bearing (such as sectoring) information, and evaluate these systems using analysis and simulation.
Changing profile of infective endocarditis: results of a 1-year survey in France.

CONTEXT Since the first modern clinical description of infective endocarditis (IE) at the end of the 19th century, the profile of the disease has evolved continuously, as highlighted in epidemiological studies including a French survey performed in 1991. OBJECTIVE To update information gained from the 1991 study on the epidemiology of IE in France. DESIGN AND SETTING Population-based survey conducted from January through December 1999 in all hospitals in 6 French regions representing 26% of the population (16 million inhabitants). PATIENTS Three hundred ninety adult inpatients diagnosed with IE according to Duke criteria. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Incidence of IE; proportion of patients with underlying heart disease; clinical characteristics; causative microorganisms; surgical and mortality outcomes. RESULTS The annual age- and sex-standardized incidence was 31 (95% confidence interval [CI], 28-35) cases per million, not including the region of New Caledonia, which had 161 (95% CI, 117-216) cases per million. There was no previously known heart disease in 47% of the cases. The proportion of prosthetic-valve IE was 16%. Causative microorganisms were: streptococci, 48% (group D streptococci, 25%; oral streptococci, 17%, pyogenic streptococci, 6%); enterococci, 8%; Abiotrophia species, 2%; staphylococci, 29%; and other or multiple pathogens, 8%. Blood cultures were negative in 9% and no microorganism was identified in 5% of the cases. Early valve surgery was performed in 49% of the patients. In-hospital mortality was 16%. Compared with 1991, this study showed a decreased incidence of IE in patients with previously known underlying heart disease (20.6 cases per million vs 15.1 cases per million; P<.001); a smaller incidence of oral streptococcal IE (7.8 cases per million vs 5.1 cases per million; P<.001), compensated by a larger proportion of IE due to group D streptococci (5.3 cases per million vs 6.2 cases per million; P =.67) and staphylococci (4.9 cases per million vs 5.7 cases per million; P =.97); an increased rate of early valve surgery (31.2% vs 49.7%; P<.001); and a decreased in-hospital mortality rate (21.6% vs 16.6%; P =.08). CONCLUSION Although the incidence of IE has not changed, important changes in disease characteristics, treatment, and outcomes were noted.