Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Journal of Plant Production Effect of Planting Methods on the Productivity of some Egyptian Rice ( Oryza sativa cultivars

Two field experiments were carried out in two seasons (2020 and 2021) at Itay El-Baroud Agricultural Research Station, El-Beheira Governorate, Egypt to evaluate three Egyptian rice cultivars (Giza177, Sakha101 and Sakha108) under three planting methods (drilling seeded, regular transplanting and parachute transplanting). Days to heading, plant height, number of productive tillers m -2 , panicle length, panicle weight, number of filled grains panicle -1 , number of unfilled grains panicle -1 and 1000-grain weight, grain yield, biomass yield, harvest index and production efficiency were measured. There were no significant differences between regular and parachute transplanting methods on plant height, number of productive tillers\ m 2 and panicle length whereas the drill planting method recorded the lowest values in both seasons except days to heading showed no significant difference with parachute transplanting. The interaction between planting methods and rice cultivars had a significant effect on the number of days to heading, number of productive tillers m -2 and plant height. There were no significant differences between parachuting and regular transplanting methods in panicle weight, number of filled grains panicle -1 and 1000-grain weight where the parachute transplanting method recorded the highest values followed by regular transplanting in the first season. On contrary, the highest values were given by regular transplanting followed by parachuting in the second season. Also, there were no significant differences between regular and parachute transplanting in 1000-grain weight, grain yield, biomass yield and harvest index. These results revealed that regular and parachute transplanting methods are efficient and farmers can choose between them based on their capabilities.
From Stamps to Parabolas.

I am a child of Sputnik, the satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. That event created opportunities for me to escape the horrors of apartheid by emigrating from South Africa to the United States. There, fortuitously, I was given excellent opportunities to explore how an interplay between the waves and currents influences climate variability, from interannual El Niño events to millennial ice ages. During my career, I also witnessed intriguing facets of the interactions between the profoundly different worlds of science and of human affairs. Up to 1957, El Niño was welcomed as a blessing, but by 1982 it had become a curse-not because it changed, but because our human activities are making us vulnerable to natural climate variability. We have learned to cope admirably with the occasional failures of the Indian monsoons; the resultant famines are not as calamitous as they once were. What guidance does that limited success provide for a response to global warming, a climate change we humans are inducing? This article briefly summarizes how my career as a geoscientist brought me to the conclusion that a strategy to promote responsible stewardship of planet Earth should be based on love rather than fear. We can only love what we know, so warnings of imminent gloom and doom should be complemented with efforts to make everyone aware of the wonders of our amazing planet-the only one in the universe known to be habitable. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Marine Science, Volume 15 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews. org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Achievable rate regions for cooperative cognitive radio networks with complex channels and circular normal additive noises

– In this paper, we derive the achievable rate regions for a cooperative cognitive radio network composed of a licensed link and an opportunistic link, which is helped by a full-duplex relay node performing either CF or DF, when all channels are modeled as complex and the noises are assumed to follow a circular normal distribution.
Hydrodynamics of high-speed robots driven by the combustion-enabled transient driving method

Underwater vehicles play important roles in underwater observation, ocean resource exploration, and sample collection. Soft robots are a unique type of underwater vehicles due to their good environmental adaptability and motion flexibility, although they are weak in terms of actuation and response ability. The transient driving method (TDM) was developed to resolve these shortcomings. However, the interaction between the robots’ swift motions and flow fields has not yet been fully studied. In this study, a computational fluid dynamic model is developed to simulate the fluid fields disturbed by transient high-speed motions generated by the robots. Focusing on the dependence of robot dynamics on thrust force and eccentricity, typical structures of both flow and turbulence fields around the robots are obtained to quantitatively analyze robot kinematic performance, velocity distribution, vortex systems, surface pressure, and turbulence. The results demonstrate the high-speed regions at the robots’ heads and tails and the vortex systems due to sudden expansion, indicating a negative relationship between the maximum fluid velocity and eccentricity. The reported results provide useful information for studying the environmental interaction abilities of robots during operating acceleration and steering tasks. 目 的 水下航行器在水下观测、 海洋资源勘探和样本采集中发挥着重要作用. 软机器人是一种独特的水下机器人, 具有良好的环境适应性和运动灵活性, 但它们的驱动和响应能力较弱. 同时, 机器人的快速运动与流场之间的相互作用尚未得到充分研究. 为解决这些问题, 本文旨在开发一种计算流体动力学模型, 以模拟由机器人产生的瞬态高速运动所干扰的流场. 创新点 1. 通过流固耦合与动网格技术开发了瞬变速机器人水下运动的数模模型. 2. 基于偏心率和化学放能反应驱动过程, 建立二者与机器人水下运动表现、 压力场、 速度场和湍流结构的关系. 方 法 1. 关注机器人动力学对推力和偏心率的依赖性, 并开发基于流固耦合方法与动网格技术的计算流体力学模型. 2. 获得机器人周围湍流场的典型结构, 并定量分析速度分布、 涡流结构、 压力和湍流特性. 结 论 1. 机器人头部和尾部都会因突然加速而出现高流速区域, 且在推力较高的一侧拐角处出现湍涡; 机器人尾部产生的高 k (湍流动能) 区域随运动向内发展. 2. 本研究揭示了最大流速与偏心率之间的关系. 3. 机器人表面上的最大压力与推力呈正相关, 与偏心率呈负相关; 偏心率使机器人旋转, 会增强流场的扰动, 也会使头部区域的 k 和 ε (湍流耗散率) 降低.
Research Contributions Overview

My research concerns the development of efficient algebraic and geometric methods for discrete optimization, the investigation of the underlying mathematical structures, and the employment of such methods to applications in engineering and science. Below I describe some of my contributions, with emphasis on recent exciting developments in collaboration with several colleagues, which pave the way to an innovative comprehensive algorithmic theory of nonlinear discrete optimization, now culminating in my just-completed monograph Nonlinear Discrete Optimization: An Algorithmic Theory [1], based on my Nachdiplom Lectures given at ETH Zürich in Spring 2009. Most recent parts of the research described below were done at Technion, ETH Zürich, University of California at Davis, MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute) Berkeley, and during two Research-in-Pair stays at MFO (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach), Germany. Much of the research described below, recent and earlier, is the outcome of work with many colleagues. In particular, I have extensively collaborated (coauthored at least three joint papers) with Imre Bárány, Yael Berstein, Jesus De Loera, Antoine Deza, Raymond Hemmecke, Frank Hwang, Peter Kleinschmidt, Jon Lee, Uriel Rothblum, Bernd Sturmfels, and Robert Weismantel.
Delayed Stellar Mass Assembly in the Low Surface Brightness Dwarf Galaxy KDG 215

We present H i spectral line and optical broadband images of the nearby low surface brightness dwarf galaxy KDG 215. The H i images, acquired with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, reveal a dispersion-dominated interstellar medium with only weak signatures of coherent rotation. The H i gas reaches a peak mass surface density of 6 M⊙ pc−2 at the location of the peak surface brightness in the optical and the ultraviolet. Although KDG 215 is gas-rich, the Hα non-detection implies a very low current massive star formation rate. In order to investigate the recent evolution of this system, we have derived the recent and lifetime star formation histories from archival Hubble Space Telescope images. The recent star formation history shows a peak star formation rate ∼1 Gyr ago, followed by a decreasing star formation rate to the present day quiescent state. The cumulative star formation history indicates that a significant fraction of the stellar mass assembly in KDG 215 has occurred within the last 1.25 Gyr. KDG 215 is one of only a few known galaxies that demonstrates such a delayed star formation history. While the ancient stellar population (predominantly red giants) is prominent, the look-back time by which 50% of the mass of all stars ever formed had been created is among the youngest of any known galaxy.
A methodology for using eBPF to efficiently monitor network behavior in Linux Kubernetes clusters

With the rise of container orchestration systems, such as Kubernetes and microservice based application architectures there has been a corresponding growth in tools aimed at monitoring these systems. As monitoring approaches have evolved the implementation of instrumentation has shifted from the application level to the platform level. The extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) can enable high performance and low overhead collection for platform level monitoring. Existing commercial eBPF monitoring systems are often tightly integrated systems with large dependencies and little flexibility in integration into alternative monitoring systems. This thesis presents a methodology for developing modular self-contained eBPF monitoring systems which are portable across various kernel versions, Container Network Interface (CNI) plugins, and cluster configurations. The choice of stable hook points and the BPF CO-RE approach to development using the libbpf or Cilium/ebpf loaders is recommended in this methodology. A proof of concept monitor was developed which captures network traffic on a cluster using the stable Traffic Control direct-action hook point. Packet capture at pod virtual ethernet network interfaces was selected to allow for CNI independent correlation of packets to cluster workloads. The prototype developed provides a suitable platform for implementing additional monitoring functionality on top of and was integrated with an existing NetApp cloud monitoring system. Thesis Supervisor: Tomas Palacios Title: Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Thesis Supervisor: Aleks Ryabin Title: Senior Manager – Engineering, NetApp, Inc.
SliceSecure: Impact and Detection of DoS/DDoS Attacks on 5G Network Slices

5G Network slicing is one of the key enabling technologies that offer dedicated logical resources to different applications on the same physical network. However, a Denial-of-Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack can severely damage the performance and functionality of network slices. Furthermore, recent DoS/DDoS attack detection techniques are based on the available data sets which are collected from simulated 5G networks rather than from 5G network slices. In this paper, we first show how DoS/DDoS attacks on network slices can impact slice users' performance metrics such as bandwidth and latency. Then, we present a novel DoS/DDoS attack dataset collected from a simulated 5G network slicing test bed. Finally, we showed a deep-learning-based bidirectional LSTM (Long Short Term Memory) model, namely, SliceSecure can detect DoS/DDoS attacks with an accuracy of 99.99% on the newly created data sets for 5G network slices.
Fair Blackout Rotation for Distribution Systems under Extreme Weather Events

This paper presents an optimization-based method for scheduling fair blackout rotation for distribution systems under extreme-weather induced power shortages. The method first partitions the system into a set of feeder sections according to the locations of switches, then simplifies the system as a connected network by modeling feeder sections as nodes and switches as links. The method simultaneously minimizes the total lost energy, total number of switch operations, maximal section isolation duration, and maximal section isolation frequencies of the system, while minimizing the maximal deviations of isolation durations and frequencies between any two feeder sections. The multiple-objective model is converted into a single objective one through defining each objective’s satisfaction degree using a generalized Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) function. The resulted nonlinear model is further converted into a standard mixed integer linear programming by replacing each nonlinear item including satisfaction function, binary variable operation, and logic operation with an embedded optimization problem with a linear objective function constrained by its feasible region represented using linear equations. The method can be implemented either using a static horizon or rolling horizon strategy. The numerical examples on the modified IEEE 123-node test feeder are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
ZnO thin films for high frequency SAW devices

Sezawa wave on a ZnO/sapphire substrate is applied to low insertion loss surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters in microwave band of 1.5 GHz to 2.5 GHz range. RF planar magnetron sputtering (RF-Mg) is used for the fabrication of epitaxial ZnO film. Sputtering conditions and the dopant are decided to realize a stable and reproducible process. Details of ZnO epitaxial growth and practical application results are reviewed. To improve the piezoelectric properties of ZnO film, electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) sputtering is investigated. The ZnO/quartz substrate has small temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) and medium electromechanical coupling coefficient (ks) comparable to ST cut quartz and Li2B4O7 respectively. Theoretical and experimental results are also discussed.
The Motion of a Losing Mass Plasmon

The interaction of a high velocity clump of gas has been described by the plasmon model, which considers balance between ram pressure and the internal stratified structure of the decelerated clump. In this paper we propose an analytical model to describe the mass loss of such a clump due the interaction with the environment, describing its influence on the plasmon dynamics. We carry out comparisons between an analytic model and axisymmetric gas dynamic simulations of plasmon evolution. From our simulations we were able to find the values of the friction constants α and λ. Comparing with the complete analytic model from which we can infer the position and the mass loss of the clump as a function of the clump’s density and the environment ratio.
Data-driven controller tuning based on a frequency criterion

An iterative controller auto-tuning method based on a frequency criterion is proposed. The frequency criterion is defined as the weighted sum of squared errors between the desired and measured gain margin, phase margin and crossover frequency. A relay feedback test is used to automatically obtain a non-parametric model of the open-loop system in a very important region for control design. The gain and phase margins as well as the crossover frequency are estimated with the non-parametric model using interpolations. The gradient and Hessian of the frequency criterion can be expressed in terms of the derivatives of the open-loop system with respect to the frequency. These derivatives can also be estimated with a good accuracy thanks to the non-parametric model. Since no assumptions are made on the plant, the method is valid for a very wide class of linear systems. Simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness and simplicity of the proposed method.
Cosmic microwave background constraints on secret interactions among sterile neutrinos

Secret contact interactions among eV sterile neutrinos, mediated by a massive gauge boson X (with MX ≪ MW), and characterized by a gauge coupling gX, have been proposed as a mean to reconcile cosmological observations and short-baseline laboratory anomalies. We constrain this scenario using the latest Planck data on Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, and measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). We consistently include the effect of secret interactions on cosmological perturbations, namely the increased density and pressure fluctuations in the neutrino fluid, and still find a severe tension between the secret interaction framework and cosmology. In fact, taking into account neutrino scattering via secret interactions, we derive our own mass bound on sterile neutrinos and find (at 95 % CL) ms < 0.82 eV or ms < 0.29 eV from Planck alone or in combination with BAO, respectively. These limits confirm the discrepancy with the laboratory anomalies. Moreover, we constrain, in the limit of contact interaction, the effective strength GX to be < 2.8 (2.0) × 1010 GF from Planck (Planck+BAO). This result, together with the mass bound, strongly disfavours the region with MX ∼ 0.1 MeV and relatively large coupling gX∼ 10−1, previously indicated as a possible solution to the small scale dark matter problem.
When Good Becomes Evil: Tracking Bluetooth Low Energy Devices via Allowlist-based Side Channel and Its Countermeasure

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is ubiquitous today. To prevent a BLE device (e.g., a smartphone) from being connected by unknown devices, it uses allowlisting to allow the connectivity from only recognized devices. Unfortunately, we show that this allowlist feature actually introduces a side channel for device tracking, since a device with the allowed list behaves differently even though it has used randomized MAC addresses. Worse even we also find that the current MAC address randomization scheme specified in Bluetooth protocol is flawed, suffering from a replay attack with which an attacker can replay a sniffed MAC address to probe whether a targeted device will respond or not based on its allowlist. We have validated our allowlist-based side channel attacks with 43 BLE peripheral devices, 11 centrals, and 4 development boards, and found none of them once configured with allowlisting is immune to the proposed attacks. We advocate the use of an interval unpredictable, central and peripheral synchronized random MAC address randomization scheme to defeat passive device tracking (introducing 1% power consumption overhead for centrals and 6.75% for peripherals, and 88.49 μs performance overhead for centrals and 94.46 μs for peripherals), and the use of timestamps to derive randomized MAC addresses such that attackers can no longer be able to replay them to defeat active device tracking (introducing 3.04% overhead for peripherals, and 63.58 μs and 20.54 μs performance overhead for centrals and peripherals). We have disclosed our findings to Bluetooth SIG and many other stake-holders in October 2020. Bluetooth SIG assigned CVE-2020-35473 to track this logical-level protocol flaw. Google assigned our findings as a high severity design flaw and awarded us with a bug bounty.
Acceleration of Pedestrian Detection in High Resolution Image

– High resolution (HR) images provide more detail information while creating a heavy computational load, resulting in slower detection speed. We propose a novel pedestrian detection acceleration algorithm called Non-Pedestrian Area Estimation (NPAE). The NPAE algorithm estimates and removes non-pedestrian areas of the image, followed by pedestrian detection of the NPAE output image. The proposed NPAE algorithm is a plug-and-play module that can be used on both GPU and CPU platforms. Our algorithm increases the detection speed with 42% on the GPU platform and with 52% speed increase on the CPU platform, for the test images with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixel. In terms of detection accuracy, NPAE improves by up to 37.94% compared to classical data optimization acceleration methods.
A Local Leaky-Box Model for the Local Stellar Surface Density-Gas Surface Density-Gas Phase Metallicity Relation

We revisit the relation between the stellar surface density, the gas surface density, and the gas-phase metallicity of typical disk galaxies in the local Universe with the SDSS-IV/MaNGA survey, using the star formation rate surface density as an indicator for the gas surface density. We show that these three local parameters form a tight relationship, confirming previous works (e.g., by the PINGS and CALIFA surveys), but with a larger sample. We present a new local leaky-box model, assuming star formation history and chemical evolution is localized except for outflowing materials. We derive closed-form solutions for the evolution of stellar surface density, gas surface density and gas-phase metallicity, and show that these parameters form a tight relation independent of initial gas density and time. We show that, with canonical values of model parameters, this predicted relation match the observed one well. In addition, we briefly describe a pathway to improving the current semi-analytic models of galaxy formation by incorporating the local leaky-box model in the cosmological context, which can potentially explain simultaneously multiple properties of Milky Way-type disk galaxies, such as the size growth and the global stellar mass-gas metallicity relation.
Single-shot energy measurement of a single atom and the direct reconstruction of its energy distribution

An ensemble of atoms in steady-state, whether in thermal equilibrium or not, has a well defined energy distribution. Since the energy of single atoms within the ensemble cannot be individually measured, energy distributions are typically inferred from statistical averages. Here, we show how to measure the energy of a single atom in a single experimental realization (single-shot). The energy distribution of the atom over many experimental realizations can thus be readily and directly obtained. We apply this method to a single-ion trapped in a linear Paul trap for which energy measurement in a single-shot is applicable from 10 K and above. Our energy measurement agrees within 5% to a different thermometry method which requires extensive averaging. Apart from the total energy, we also show that the motion of the ion in different trap modes can be distinguished. We believe that this method will have profound implications on single particle chemistry and collision experiments.
Magnetized Reverse Shock: Density-fluctuation-induced Field Distortion, Polarization Degree Reduction, and Application to GRBs

The early optical afterglow emission of several gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) shows a high linear polarization degree (PD) of tens of percent, suggesting an ordered magnetic field in the emission region. The light curves are consistent with being of a reverse shock (RS) origin. However, the magnetization parameter, σ, of the outflow is unknown. If σ is too small, an ordered field in the RS may be quickly randomized due to turbulence driven by various perturbations so that the PD may not be as high as observed. Here we use the “Athena++” relativistic MHD code to simulate a relativistic jet with an ordered magnetic field propagating into a clumpy ambient medium, with a focus on how density fluctuations may distort the ordered magnetic field and reduce PD in the RS emission for different σ values. For a given density fluctuation, we discover a clear power-law relationship between the relative PD reduction and the σ value of the outflow. Such a relation may be applied to estimate σ of the GRB outflows using the polarization data of early afterglows.