Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial Dependency of Buruli Ulcer on Land Surface Temperatures and Elevations in some Endemic and Non-Endemic Districts of Ghana

This research examined the effect of Land Surface Temperatures (LSTs) and elevations by the synthesis of remote sensing and landscape metrics on the spread of Buruli Ulcer (BU) caused by Mycobacterium Ulcerans (MU) in the Amansie West District (AWD), Upper Denkyira West District (UDWD), with Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipal (TNM) as a case control study area. LST maps were derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) and Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI). In-situ ground truth temperatures were used together with the derived LSTs from the Landsat data. Elevation maps were also generated from ASTER Global Digital Elevation Models (GDEM) and from fieldwork. Epidemiological data of disease were collected from the National Buruli Ulcer Control Programme, District Hospitals and from fieldwork. Twenty-seven (27) communities were found to have cases of BU in the three study areas. Statistical analysis was applied to the epidemiological data to identify the relationship between LSTs, elevations and BU disease spread. Results showed that, landscape factors, such as rural and low-lying elevations of between 85 m and 202 m above Mean Sea Level as well as LST ranges of 20.8 C to 34.2 C, strongly correlated with BU disease. This research offers an opportunity to explore the effects of elevation and LST conditions on the spread of BU disease caused by MU. Results will contribute to public health and environmental management in the study areas.
The University of Amsterdam's Concept Detection System at ImageCLEF 2011

The University of Amsterdam participated in the photo annotation task and the concept-based retrieval task of ImageCLEF 2011. In the per-image evaluation of the photo annotation task, we achieve the highest score overall. For the concept-based retrieval task, we submitted the best visual-only run. For the concept-based retrieval task, we considered three ways to perform visual retrieval: fully automatic, human topic mapping and human topic inspection. For a fully automatic system, including more random negatives to train a topic model improves results. For a human selecting relevant concepts to the topic, multiplication fusion works better than summation. For human topic inspection, a relevance feedback scheme on the train data gives an 8-fold increase in the number of positive examples per topic. Depending on the topic, the human topic mapping (best for 21 topics) and inspection (best for 17 topics) give the best results. An oracle fusion of the diﬀerent methods would increase MAP from 0.100 for our best run to 0.128 overall.
Children Without Permanent Parents: Research, Practice, and Policy

Inhoud Deze Monograph geeft een overzicht van de wetenschappelijke literatuur over kinderen die op jonge leeftijd in een tehuis geplaatst zijn. De hoofdstukken bespreken (1) de ontwikkeling van kinderen terwijl ze in een kindertehuis verblijven; (2) de ontwikkeling van kinderen wanneer ze vanuit een tehuis in een familie terechtkomen (bv door adoptie); de effecten van een tehuisopvoeding op (3) gehechtheid, (4) lichamelijke groei en (5) neurobiologische ontwikkeling; (6) de mogelijkheid dat tijdens de vroege ontwikkeling gevoelige periodes bestaan waarin het verblijf in een tehuis het meest schadelijk is; (7) goede procedures in landen met weinig middelen om gezins-alternatieven voor tehuizen te vinden; (8) uitdagingen waar deze landen voor geplaatst worden bij het formuleren en uitvoeren van een dergelijk beleid; en (9) meer bespiegelende interpretaties van belangrijkst onderzoek, beleid en politieke kwesties in dit veld.
The interplay between deformation, erosion and sedimentation in the deep‐water Mexican Ridges foldbelt, western Gulf of Mexico basin

We analyse a regional 2D seismic section of the Mexican Ridges foldbelt (MRFB), western Gulf of Mexico, and construct excess‐area diagrams for each of the structures comprising the foldbelt to estimate shortening, the onset of folding and the degradation of the folded seafloor. From the chronostratigraphy, we derive rates of tectonic and superficial mass transport and illustrate how they change across the MRFB. The resulting tectonic transport in the MRFB is 11.8 km forming a train of twelve buckle folds above a detachment at a depth of ca. 6 s of two‐way travel time, with an average strain of ca. 10%. The fold train grew at a mean uplift rate of ca. 0.21 mm year−1. Cross‐sectional balancing demonstrates that shortening balances the down‐slip motion of the Quetzalcoatl extensional system (QES), suggesting that horizontal compaction, volume loss and other penetrative deformation mechanisms are negligible. By assuming steady‐state denudation, we are able to distinguish sediments derived locally from sediments transported from distant sources. The constant of mass diffusivity, a parameter controlling the degradation rate, is ca. 0.42 m2 year −1, which is characteristic of rapid, episodic, superficial mass movements. The combined sedimentation rate from both, local and distal sources is ca. 0.23 mm year −1. Those values are not constant; structures proximal to the continental shelf are rising rapidly and are being degraded more intensely than those in the distal part of the MRFB, where sedimentation outweighs tectonic uplift. Our results indicate deformation initiated up to 3 Myr earlier than estimated from stacking patterns. Moreover, we find deformation started synchronously during the Late Miocene throughout the MRFB and not in two episodes as the stacking relations suggest. The discrepancy can be explained by a delay in the sedimentary response to folding. During early fold growth, nearly constant thickness strata are deposited before a progressive unconformity and other converging geometries develop. The development of growth strata is fast in the folds near the QES, which are being uplifted rapidly and degraded vigorously. Under these conditions, the stratigraphic relations give only a broad estimate of the pretectonic/syntectonic limit when compared to the excess‐area method. On the other hand, the development of growth strata took twice as much time for folds near the abyssal plain, which are being uplifted at a slower rate and where degradation is less intense. Consequently, the delay takes more time, and the use of stratigraphic relations introduces an even more pronounced bias towards younger ages in the identification of the onset of folding.
A Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling Approach for the Habitat Distribution of Smooth Dogfish by Sex and Season in Inshore Coastal Waters of the U.S. Northwest Atlantic

The Smooth DogfishMustelus canis is an abundant, small coastal shark occurring along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Despite being targeted by a directed fishery and having recently undergone a stock assessment that found the population neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, little is known about the spatial and temporal distribution of this species. Here, we used catch data from the spring and fall Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program’s fishery-independent trawl surveys conducted between 2007 and 2016 and various environmental factors to perform hierarchical Bayesian modeling as a first attempt to spatially predict adult Smooth Dogfish CPUE in U.S. northwest Atlantic Ocean waters by sex and season. Relevant environmental variables differed between both sexes and seasons. Male and female CPUEs were similarly associated with lower salinity and shallower depth in the spring. During fall, male CPUE was associated with sea surface temperature and bottom rugosity, and female CPUE was associated with chlorophyll-a concentration, bottom rugosity, and year. Habitat modeling results predicted that areas of high male and female CPUEs would overlap during spring but strongly diverge during fall, when greater predicted CPUEs for males were distributed considerably farther north. These results suggest sexual segregation among Smooth Dogfish during fall, with the springtime overlap in distribution coinciding with the pupping and mating season in this population. This difference in distribution during fall may allow for a male-only directed fishery for Smooth Dogfish in the northern extent of the species’ range in waters near southern New England and Georges Bank. Subject editor: Kenneth Rose, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Cambridge *Corresponding author: dellapa.andrea@gmail.com Received May 30, 2018; accepted October 9, 2018 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science 10:590–605, 2018 © 2018 The Authors. Marine and Coastal Fisheries published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Fisheries Society. ISSN: 1942-5120 online DOI: 10.1002/mcf2.10051
Integration of Microbial Ecology and Statistics: a Test To Compare Gene Libraries

ABSTRACT Libraries of 16S rRNA genes provide insight into the membership of microbial communities. Statistical methods help to determine whether differences in library composition are artifacts of sampling or are due to underlying differences in the communities from which they are derived. To contribute to a growing statistical framework for comparing 16S rRNA libraries, we present a computer program, ∫-LIBSHUFF, which calculates the integral form of the Cramér-von Mises statistic. This implementation builds upon the LIBSHUFF program, which uses an approximation of the statistic and makes a number of modifications that improve precision and accuracy. Once ∫-LIBSHUFF calculates the P values, when pairwise comparisons are tested at the 0.05 level, the probability of falsely identifying a significant P value is 0.098 for a study with two libraries, 0.265 for three libraries, and 0.460 for four libraries. The potential negative effects of making the multiple pairwise comparisons necessitate correcting for the increased likelihood that differences between treatments are due to chance and do not reflect biological differences. Using ∫-LIBSHUFF, we found that previously published 16S rRNA gene libraries constructed from Scottish and Wisconsin soils contained different bacterial lineages. We also analyzed the published libraries constructed for the zebrafish gut microflora and found statistically significant changes in the community during development of the host. These analyses illustrate the power of ∫-LIBSHUFF to detect differences between communities, providing the basis for ecological inference about the association of soil productivity or host gene expression and microbial community composition.
The Role of Conservation Programs in Drought Risk Adaptation

This report evaluates the extent to which farms facing higher levels of drought risk are more likely to participate in conservation programs, and finds a strong link between drought risk and program participation. Prior research has shown that climate-related risk exposure influences production decisions such as crop choice; our research shows that adaptation also includes program participation decisions. Programs like the Conservation Reserve Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program play a role in drought preparedness and climate adaptation even if they do not directly target such behavior. Conservation program outcomes are influenced by regional differences in production risk, so participation choices due to drought risk can be an important consideration in designing such programs.
All Learning Is Local: Multi-agent Learning in Global Reward Games

In large multiagent games, partial observability, coordination, and credit assignment persistently plague attempts to design good learning algorithms. We provide a simple and efficient algorithm that in part uses a linear system to model the world from a single agent's limited perspective , and takes advantage of Kalman filtering to allow an agent to construct a good training signal and learn an effective policy.
Land degradation in Lesotho : a synoptic perspective

Land degradation in Lesotho is undermining the finite resource on which people depend for survival. Use of satellite imagery has been recommended for monitoring land degradation because remotely sensed data enable monitoring of large areas at more frequent intervals than intensive ground based research. Various techniques have been developed for land cover change detection. In the present study, vegetation changes were identified by image differencing, which involved finding the difference between the earlier date NDVI image and the later date image. NDVI images are among products that are generated from the NOAA AVHRR sensor to provide information about the quantity of biomass on the earth’s surface. The resulting NDVI change data showed land areas that had experienced vegetation loss, which were identified as potentially degraded. The change data were combined with other data sets to determine how potentially degraded areas were influenced by different environmental variables and population pressure. These data sets included land cover, ecological zones, elevation, soil and human and livestock populations. By integrating NDVI data with ancillary data, land degradation was attributed to both demographic pressure and biophysical factors. Widespread degradation was detected on the arable parts of the Lowlands where cultivation was intensive and human settlements were extensive. Signs of grassland depletion and forest decline were also evident and were attributed to population expansion, overgrazing and indiscriminate cutting of trees and shrubs for firewood. Extensive biomass decline was also associated more with soils in the lowlands derived from sedimentary rocks than soils of basalt origin that occur mostly in the highlands. Significant degradation was evident on gentle slopes where land uses such as cultivation and expansion of settlements were identified as the main causes of the degradation. There was evidence of greater vegetation depletion on north and east-facing slopes than on other slopes. The depletion was attributed to the fragility of ecosystems resulting from intense solar radiation. The study demonstrated that NOAA AVHRR NDVI images could be used effectively for detecting land cover changes in Lesotho. However, future research could focus on obtaining and using high resolution data for detailed analysis of factors driving land degradation.
Thermal Ads 3 , Bt Z and Competing Winding Modes Condensation

We study the thermal physics of AdS 3 and the BT Z black hole when embedded in String theory. The exact calculation of the Hagedorn temperature in T AdS 3 is reinterpreted as the appearance of a winding tachyon. We construct a dual framework for analyzing the phases of the system. In this dual framework, tachyon condensation and geometric capping appear on the same footing, bridging the usual gap of connecting tachyon condensation to modifications of geometry. This allows us to construct in a natural way a candidate for the unstable phase, analogous to a small black hole in higher dimensions. Additional peculiar effects associated with the Hagedorn temperature and the Hawking-Page transition, some to do with the asymptotic structure of AdS 3 and some with strong curvature effects, are analyzed and explained. Contents 1. Introduction and summary of results 1 2. Review 4 2.1 Solutions of Euclidean gravity 4 2.2 The partition function 6 2.3 Singular conformal field theory 7 3. Hagedorn temperature 9 3.1 More on k = 3 12 4. The competing winding modes picture 12 4.1 A review of the FZZ duality 15 4.2 T AdS 3 and EBT Z using FZZ duality 18 4.2.1 Step 1: The background as cigar × S 1 18 4.2.2 Step 2: FZZ duality on the cigar 21 4.3 The regulated model 24 5. The middle point CFT 26 5.1 Summary of the flows 30 6. Discussion and Open questions 32 7. Acknowledgments 32 A. Mini-Superspace analysis of the winding string 33 A.1 Calculation of the zero point constant 34
Single-layer metal halides MX2 (X = Cl, Br, I): stability and tunable magnetism from first principles and Monte Carlo simulations

Based on first-principles calculations, we investigate a novel class of 2D materials – MX2 metal dihalides (X = Cl, Br, I). Our results show that single-layer dihalides are energetically and dynamically stable and can be potentially exfoliated from their bulk layered forms. We found that 2D FeX2, NiX2, CoCl2 and CoBr2 monolayers are ferromagnetic (FM), while VX2, CrX2, MnX2 and CoI2 are antiferromagnetic (AFM). The magnetic properties of 2D dihalides originate from the competition between AFM direct nearest-neighbor d–d exchange and FM superexchange via halogen p states, which leads to a variety of magnetic states. The thermal dependence of magnetic properties and the Curie temperature of magnetic transition are evaluated using statistical Monte Carlo simulations based on the Ising model with classical Heisenberg Hamiltonian. The magnetic properties of single-layer dihalides can be further tuned by strain and carrier doping. Our study broadens the family of existing 2D materials with promising applications in nanospintronics.
Neural Correlates of Metamemory: A Comparison of Feeling-of-Knowing and Retrospective Confidence Judgments

Abstract Metamemory refers to knowledge and monitoring of one's own memory. Metamemory monitoring can be done prospectively with respect to subsequent memory retrieval or retrospectively with respect to previous memory retrieval. In this study, we used fMRI to compare neural activity during prospective feeling-of-knowing and retrospective confidence tasks in order to examine common and distinct mechanisms supporting multiple forms of metamemory monitoring. Both metamemory tasks, compared to non-metamemory tasks, were associated with greater activity in medial prefrontal, medial parietal, and lateral parietal regions, which have previously been implicated in internally directed cognition. Furthermore, compared to non-metamemory tasks, metamemory tasks were associated with less activity in occipital regions, and in lateral inferior frontal and dorsal medial prefrontal regions, which have previously shown involvement in visual processing and stimulus-oriented attention, respectively. Thus, neural activity related to metamemory is characterized by both a shift toward internally directed cognition and away from externally directed cognition. Several regions demonstrated differences in neural activity between feeling-of-knowing and confidence tasks, including fusiform, medial temporal lobe, and medial parietal regions; furthermore, these regions also showed interaction effects between task and the subjective metamemory rating, suggesting that they are sensitive to the information monitored in each particular task. These findings demonstrate both common and distinct neural mechanisms supporting metamemory processes and also serve to elucidate the functional roles of previously characterized brain networks.
Promoting food security and respect for the land through indigenous ways of knowing : educating ourselves through Lesotho Qacha's Nek community project

This study explores the meaning and value of Basotho traditional farming practices and Indigenous knowing using Indigenous methodology. The study sought to 1) understand the core tenets of Basotho traditional farming practices that involve Indigenous knowledge and sustainable land care; 2) investigate the implications of these practices, and how they may inform school curriculum in ways that promote food security and reduce child hunger; and 3) examine the role of gender in food practices in Lesotho. I collaborated with women Elders who knew oral traditions or traditional farming practices by working with children on a school farm. I used Basotho ways of knowing and communication to gather data including storytelling and observation. I complemented my observation data by utilizing photographs and field notes. The Elders shared their farming experiences, oral traditions, and knowledge including the cultural and survival significance of selecting, preserving, and sharing seeds, how to grow diverse, healthy, and nutritious food and how to be food selfsufficient. They spoke of and demonstrated ways to gather people together as a community to plant, harvest, and share food while caring for the land through culturally respectful practices. The Elders further shared ways to think about and relate to the land as a gift, as 'a being' from Creator, to be respected and cared for in the same way humans care for themselves. The Elders underscored the need to promote food security and land care through a food curriculum that embraces traditional farming practices steeped in Indigenous
The Effects of Large-Scale Pumping and Diversion on the Water Resources of Dane County, Wisconsin

Throughout many parts of the U.S., there is growing concern over the effects of rapid urban growth and development on water resources. Groundwater and surface-water systems (which comprise the hydrologic system) are linked in much of Wisconsin, and ground water can be utilized both for drinking water and as a source of water for sustaining lakes, streams, springs, and wetlands. Ground water is important for surface-water systems because it commonly has greater dissolved solids and more acid-neutralizing capacity than surface water or precipitation. The supplies of ground water are finite, however, and, in many cases ground water used for one purpose cannot be used for another. Moreover, ground-water use and withdrawal patterns may not be easy to alter once established. Thus, urban and rural planners are faced with decisions that balance the need for groundwater withdrawals while maintaining the quantity and quality of ground water for sustaining surface-water resources. Science-based information on the ground-water system and the connections to surface-water systems provides valuable insight for such decisions.
Modelling Alternatives in Temporal Networks Abstract—Temporal Networks

Networks play an important role in solving planning problems and they are also used, though not as frequently, when solving scheduling problems. In this paper we propose an extension of temporal networks by parallel and alternative branching. This extension supports modelling of alternative paths in the network; in particular, it is motivated by modelling alternative process routes in manufacturing scheduling. We show that deciding which nodes can be consistently included in this extended temporal network is an NP-complete problem. To simplify solving this problem, we propose a pre-processing step whose goal is to identify classes of equivalent nodes. The ideas are presented using precedence networks, but we also show how they can be extended to simple temporal networks.
ProEp Protocol for Message Passing in Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic networks are one of the most interesting evolutions of MANETs. In opportunistic networks, route connecting to the mobile nodes never exits, mobile nodes communicate with each other when they got opportunity to communicate. Furthermore, nodes are not supposed to possess or acquire any knowledge about the network topology. Routes are built dynamically, while messages are route between the source and the destination, and any possible node can opportunistically be used as next hop, provided it is likely to bring the message closer to the final destination. These requirements make opportunistic networks a challenging and promising research field. In this report I describe hybrid approach for routing in opportunistic networks, rendering traditional routing protocols unable to deliver messages between hosts. Thus, there is a need for a way to route through such networks. We propose hybrid approach which combines Epidemic Routing and Probabilistic Routing approaches together, we named the protocol as ProEp. This protocol results in improved message delivery and low overhead on resources.