Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design, Construction, and Application of an Inexpensive, High-Resolution Water Sampler

The cost of high-resolution water sampling devices for ecological studies and water quality analyses can be prohibitive. Moreover, the potential for operator error in the use of complicated sampling equipment can lead to inaccuracies. Here we describe the construction and operation of an inexpensive and easy-to-use water sampler that achieves a water column sampling resolution of approximately 1 cm. The device is driven by a peristaltic pump and is constructed entirely of non-corrosive and non-reactive materials. The sampler has no moving parts and was completely reliable in fieldwork on temperate and Antarctic lakes. The device is especially suited for the collection of water samples from calm or stagnant surface waters, such as lakes, ponds, reservoirs, and deep swamps or other wetlands. In addition, because its components are unaffected by corrosive salts and sulfides, the device is suitable for sampling calm inlet waters, including shallow bays and estuaries. Because of its low cost, simple construction, compact design, and precision performance, this water sampler is an excellent option for studying and monitoring shallow to moderately deep (<50 m) natural waters.
Video streaming with multi-TFRC and uplink queue management

This paper considers multi-connection video streaming across a tandem network with a WiMAX wireless link. The paper shows that Active Queue Management has a role and that a small number of connections results in reasonable video quality with increased throughput. The results will be of interest to those dimensioning a mobile network for an interactive multimedia service.
A TWO-YEAR FIELD STUDY OF PHYTO REMEDIATION USING SOLANUM NIGRUM L. IN DONGNAI, VIETNAM

A two- year in-situ phytoremediation trial was conducted in Dongnai province. The phytoremediation efficiency of Solanum nigurm L. was detected, by monitoring the change of soil Cadmium level in the 0 - 20 cm soil depth. The results indicate that soil Cd decreased significantly by planting S. nigrum . The Cd concentrations decreased averagely from 2.75 mg kg -1 to 2.45 mg kg -1 in the first year and 2.33 mg kg -1 to 1.53 mg kg -1 in the second year, separately. Decrease by a factor of 10.6 % in first year and 12 % second year. After two years phytoremediation by S. nigrum , Cd concentrations of the seven experimental plots with S. nigrum growth decreased from 2.75 mg kg -1 to 1.53 mg kg -1 , and decrease by a factor of 24.9%. Therefore, using S. nigrum for phytoremediation of Cd contaminated farmland soils seems very promising, and we can conclude that S. nigrum will get a better performance in the warmer area, as the temperature of the experimental area is relatively lower.
The Impacts of Client IT Characteristics on Audit hours

This paper documents how information technology (IT) impacts audit efforts. Using cross-sectional data on audit engagements for the 100 largest clients of an office of a leading international public accounting firm, it empirically evaluates the impact of the clients’ IT choices on their auditor’s audit effort. The results indicate that other things being equal, the higher level of automation or complexity a client’s IT exhibits, the more effort audit professionals exert for the engagement. On the other hand, the better control or support a client’s IT furnishes, the lower hours the audit team inputs into the engagement.
Polymodal Logics of Commuting Functions

Polymodal logics with functional modalities are natural generalisations of the well-known Segerberg’s Tomorrow (or Successor) Logic SL [8] and Tomorrow-Yesterday Logic SL.t [7]. Extensions of these two logics were later studied by A.A. Muchnik [3]. But systematic investigation of logics with functional modalities was started in Segerberg’s paper [9] and continued by F. Bellissima [1] and M. Kracht [6]. Logics of this kind can be interpreted as fragments of propositional dynamic logics of deterministic computations. They are also applied in mathematical linguistics [5]. This family is very large; one can easily construct undecidable modal logics of this type, moreover, there is no hope to obtain a reasonable classification here [6, Section 9.4]. Nevertheless, we can try to describe explicitly some of its subfamilies. A natural class are the logics, in which all modalities commute. The minimal logics with commuting modalities are the products SL described in [4, Section 14]. The semantics of SL is given by the set Nn with the relations represented by n correspondent coordinate shift functions. We consider arbitrary extensions of SL and especially of SL.t. We show that all extensions of SL.t have the finite model property and thus finitely axiomatisable of them are decidable. Moreover, we give a complete description of finitely axiomatisable extensions of SL.t: they can be presented as finite intersections of logics of n-generated Abelian groups. By the same method we also give new proofs of Muchnik’s theorems on pretabularity of the logics SL and SL.t [3]. 1
Bridging High and Low Temperature Thermal Histories Across the Kaapvaal Craton, Southern Africa from Advances in Titanite and Zircon (U-Th)/He Thermochronology

Bridging high and low temperature thermal histories across the Kaapvaal craton, southern Africa from advances in titanite and zircon (U-Th)/He thermochronology Jaclyn S. Baughman (Ph.D, Geological Sciences) Thesis directed by Associate Professor Rebecca M. Flowers Cratons are the oldest and most stable portions of continents, but the degree to which they are affected by post-cratonization tectonic and magmatic processes is unclear. Mid-temperature (300-110°C) thermal histories are important for addressing this problem, but these are difficult to resolve due to the paucity of well-developed chronometers sensitive to that temperature window. For example, in the Kaapvaal craton of southern Africa, high temperature (>300°C) geoand thermochronology constrains Archean craton stabilization, while low temperature (<110°C) thermochronology constrains the PaleozoicMesozoic history of craton burial and exhumation, leaving an almost 3 billion year gap in Kaapvaal’s thermal history. The goals of my dissertation are to 1) better resolve titanite He diffusion kinetics to assess its utility as a mid-temperature thermochronometer, and 2) apply titanite and zircon (U-Th)/He (THe, ZHe) thermochronology to decipher the deeptime thermal history of the Kaapvaal craton. Prior work showed that radiation damage influences the He retentivity and closure temperature (Tc) of apatite and zircon, but this effect was not documented in titanite. I
L'inventaire des ressources en eau pour l'aménagement intégré du bassin du Wabi Shebelle d'Ethiopie

After a four years period, a . french and ethiopian hydrological team has made the jîrst general survey of the loater resources in, the Wabi Shebelle catch.men,t, and has applied th.is survey to an integrated water management plan using an origina.1 strategy for the jield operations. The Wabi Shebelle catchment covers about 200 000 km” in Ethiopia. The physiograph;y of this catchment is quite interesting : perenn.ial streams appear in col, rainy, vo1can.i. c and pervious highlands; they go clown to 'very deep canyons to cross a. large 1imeston.e plateau without inhabitants; at last, the Wa.bi Shebelle river is coming into toarm, aria and impervious lorvlands where it spreads over its banks to big jlooded areas. Under an equatorial climate with two raiseasons, the formation a,nd the nature of water sesources a.re very variable. There are very few grouncl water resources in the aria sowth the Ogaden region lvhere they a.re or insuficient or too deep, under more th.a. n. 200 m,eters of gypsum, the Salt of nvhich contaminating a11 the limestone aquifers. Superjicial tvater ressources is producted by ‘volca.nic highlarzds zvhich only caver 20 to 25% of th.e basin catchment but which give more than 90% of the yearly yield of Wabi Shebelle river. A mean zoater balance shows that these volcanic highlamls are contri.buting for 150 to 500 mm to the anna.a. runoff, meanwhile the limestone plateau is only producing 10 n.m and the Ogaden gypsum 1 mm. The lozu water resources during the larger dry season i.s more differenciated : Cah. 0.R. S.T. O.M. , se’r. Hydrol. , vol. X, no 4, 1,973 307 (D.) Bauduin et (P.) Dubreuil on.ly the streams coming from volcanic highlands a.re peren.nial and they minimum discharge. give about 0,4 to 0,6 Ils. km2 as mean daily Along the Ogaden region 600 km of distance the Wabi Shebelle discharge is reduced by spreading in Jlooded areas : the mean anrzual disclaarge goes doum from 92 to 71 m3/s an& the mean minimum disclzarge from 11 to 6 ms/s. The losses due to overbanking are depen.ding of the yield, more precisely of the floods an.d also of the water level in the pla.in, uhich is correlated with the previous minimum discharge. Along the Ogaden region,, the Jlood peaks of . Wa.bi Shebelle are reduced of about 60 to 800/ : maxim.um discharges of 900 ms/s at the input are 710 more than 250 ms/s at the output. I>L this lowland, tue four& a lot of rich soils zvhich could be irrigated zvith regulated$otu produced by dams to be built upstream in the canyon, in spite of a heavy bed load transportation durin,g Jloods.
An intelligent control of mobile robot based on voice command

In general, it is possible to estimate the noise by using information on the robot's own motions and postures, because a type of motion and gesture produces almost the same pattern of noise every time. In this paper, we describe an voice recognition control system for robot(VRCS) system which can robustly recognize voice by adults and children in noisy environments. We evaluate the VRCS system in a communication robot placed in a real noisy environment. Voice is captured using a wireless microphone. To suppress interference and noise and to attenuate reverberation, we implemented a multi-channel system consisting of an outlier-robust generalized side-lobe canceller technique and a feature-space noise suppression using MMSE criteria. Voice activity periods are detected using GMM-based end-point detection.
Resource constrained distributed constraint optimization using resource constraint free pseudo-tree

The Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP) is a fundamental formalism for multi-agent cooperation. A dedicated framework called Resource Constrained DCOP (RCDCOP) has recently been proposed. RCDCOP models objective functions and resource constraints separately. A resource constraint is an n-ary constraint that represents the limit on the number of resources of a given type available to agents. Previous research addressing RCDCOPs employs the Adopt algorithm, which is a basic solver for DCOPs. In this paper we propose another version of the Adopt algorithm for RCDCOP using a pseudo-tree that is generated ignoring resource constraints. The key ideas of our work are as follows: (i) The pseudo-tree is generated ignoring resource constraints. (ii) Virtual variables are introduced, representing the usage of resources. These virtual variables are used to share resources among subtrees. These ideas are used to extend Adopt. The proposed method reduces the previous limitations in the construction of RCDCOP pseudo-trees. The efficiency of our technique depends on the class of problems being considered, and we describe the obtained experimental results.
Virtual Auditory Displays

Abstract : Auditory processing is often given minimal attention when designing virtual environments or simulations. This lack of attention is unfortunate since auditory cues play a crucial role in everyday life. Auditory cues increase awareness of surroundings, cue visual attention, and convey a variety of complex information without taxing the visual system. The entertainment industry has long recognized the importance of sound to create ambience and emotion, aspects that are often lacking in virtual environments. In short, placing someone in a virtual world with an improperly designed auditory interface is equivalent to creating a "virtual" hearing impairment for the user. Auditory perception, especially localization, is a complex phenomenon affected by physiology, expectation, and even the visual interface. Different methods for creating auditory interfaces will be considered. As will be discussed later in this chapter, spatialized audio using headphones is the only audio technique that is truly "virtual" since it reproduces azimuth, elevation, and distance and offers the sound engineer the greatest amount of control over the auditory experience of the listener. For many applications, especially using projections screens, speaker systems may be simpler to implement and provide benefits not available to headphone systems. Properly designed speaker systems incorporating subwoofers may contribute to emotional context. The positives and negatives associated with each option will be discussed. It is impossible to include everything that needs to be known about designing auditory interfaces in a single chapter . Instead of trying to review all perceptual and technical issues relevant to creating virtual auditory displays, this chapter unapologetically focuses on issues of spatial auditory perception and the generation of spatial auditory cues, since this area has undergone rapid development with the advent of virtual environments.
The Expression and Role of MEKK3 in Renal Clear Cell Carcinoma

To explore the relationship between Mitogen‐activated protein kinase/extracellular signal‐regulated kinase kinase kinase 3(MEKK3) and cell apoptosis, clinicopathology, and prognosis, we characterize the expression of MEKK3, survivin and stat3 in renal clear cell carcinoma (RCCC). The expressions were measured by RT‐PCR and Western blot from 15 cases of RCCC and 15 cases of control group (CG). Protein expression was detected by tissue microarray and immunochemistry in 98 cases of RCCC, 28 cases of CG. Expression patterns were analyzed for their association with pathological factors, correlation and prognosis in RCCC. Expression of MEKK3, survivin and stat3 mRNA was significantly higher in RCCC than in CG (P < 0.01). MEKK3, survivin and stat3 expression differed significantly between pathological grade (P < 0.05) and clinical stage (P < 0.05). MEKK3 expression was positively correlated with survivin and stat3 (P < 0.01). Furthermore, we investigated the role of MEKK3 in RCCC using the technique of RNA silencing via small interfering (siRNA) in ACHN cells. The results indicated that the targeted depletion of MEKK3 caused a dramatic massive apoptotic cell death. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that MEKK3 and survivin expression, pathological grade, and clinical stage reduced cumulative survival. Cox multivariate regression analysis showed that MEKK3, survivin, and clinical staging were independent prognostic factors in renal cancer (P < 0.05). MEKK3 can be used as an important marker of prognostic evaluation in RCCC. The mechanism may be closely related to cell apoptosis. Targeted therapy of MEKK3 may provide a new strategy for treatment of chemotherapeutic‐resistant tumors. Anat Rec, 298:727–734, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Optimization by simulation metamodelling methods

We consider how simulation metamodels can be used to optimize the performance of a system that depends on a number of factors. We focus on the situation where the number of simulation runs that can be made is limited, and where a large number of factors must be included in the metamodel. Bayesian methods are particularly useful in this situation and can handle problems for which classical stochastic optimization can fail. We describe the basic Bayesian methodology, and then an extension to this that fits a quadratic response surface which, for function minimization, is guaranteed to be positive definite. An example is presented to illustrate the methods proposed in this paper.
Improved Datagram Transport Protocol over Wireless Sensor Networks-TCP Fairness

TCP connections have small bandwidth-delay product and frequent packet loss in wireless sensor networks due to route breakages and radio interference. Datagram transport protocol provides a reliable end-to-end transport protocol over wireless sensor networks. This paper deals with improvement of TCP Fairness as Fairness in wireless sensor networks plays a major role to have maximum fair share of available bandwidth among the nodes, thus energy is consumed. A distributed adaptive max-min algorithm has been proposed in order to improve the fairness in WSNs. The proposed scheme incorporates two techniques: a fixed-size window-based flow-control algorithm and a cumulative bit-vector-based selective ACK strategy. Security has got the major impact over WSNs and that has been overcome by logical Tunneling. The simulation results show the improvement in terms of fairness, throughput and delay and packet loss using Network Simulator NS-2
Discovery and analysis of p-mode and g-mode oscillations in the A-type primary of the eccentric binary HD 209295

We have discovered both intermediate-order gravity mode and low-order pressure mode pulsation in the same star, HD 209295. It is therefore both a γ Doradus and a δ Scuti star, which makes it the first pulsating star to be a member of two classes. The analysis of our 128 h of multisite spectroscopic observations carried out over two seasons reveals that the star is a single-lined spectroscopic binary with an orbital period of 3.10575±0.00010 d and an eccentricity of 0.352±0.011. Only weak pulsational signals are found in both the radial velocity and line-profile variations, but we have succeeded in showing that the two highest-amplitude γ Doradus pulsation modes are consistent with l=1 and |m|=1. These two modes dominated our 280 h of BVIC multisite photometry, also obtained over two seasons. We detected altogether ten frequencies in the light variations, one in the δ Scuti regime and nine in the γ Doradus domain. Five of the γ Doradus frequencies are exact integer multiples of the orbital frequency. This observation leads us to suspect they are tidally excited. Attempts to identify modes from the multicolour photometry failed. We performed model calculations and a stability analysis of the pulsations. The frequency range in which δ Scuti modes are excited agrees well with observations. However, our models do not show excitation of γ Doradus pulsations, although the damping is smaller in the observed range. We also investigated tidal excitation of γ Doradus modes. Some of the observed harmonics of the orbital period were found to be unstable. The observed orbital harmonics which are stable in the models can be understood as linear combinations of the unstable modes. We could not detect the secondary component of the system in infrared photometry, suggesting that it may not be a main-sequence star. Archival data of this star show that it has a strong ultraviolet (UV) excess, the origin of which is not known. The orbit of the primary is consistent with a secondary mass of M>1.04 M⊙, which is indicative of a neutron star, although a white dwarf companion is not ruled out.
Designing multi-user multi-device systems: an architecture for multi-browsing applications

As users get accustomed to an increasing diverse range of mobile devices, personal computers, intelligent home and office appliances, as well as shared public devices, collaborative multi-device systems are emerging to benefit from using together devices of different users and different capabilities. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the systematic design of such systems in symbiotic environments. It distinguishes between information and interaction spaces. Focusing on using devices together, we introduce relationships between interaction spaces and annotatable mappings between the information space and the interaction spaces. Customizable annotations and the corresponding transformation of information support the development of collaborative systems for different scenarios. To demonstrate the validity of our framework, we introduce an architecture for multi-device web-browsing systems, and an annotation vocabulary which particularly focuses on symbiotic environments. The evaluation of our implemented prototype confirms the usefulness of multi-browsing, and the need for supporting both developers and end users to individually annotate web pages.
Elsevier Editorial System(tm) for Journal of Web Semantics Manuscript Draft Title: Discovering Shared Conceptualizations in Folksonomies Discovering Shared Conceptualizations in Folksonomies

Social bookmark tools are rapidly emerging on the Web. In such systems users are setting up lightweight conceptual structures called folksonomies. Unlike ontologies, shared conceptualisations are not formalised, but rather implicit. We present a new data mining task, the \emph{mining of all frequent tri-concepts}, together with an efficient algorithm, for discovering these implicit shared conceptualisations. Our approach extends the data mining task of discovering all closed itemsets to three-dimensional data structures to allow for mining folksonomies. We provide a formal definition of the problem, and present an efficient algorithm for its solution. Finally, we show the applicability of our approach on three large real-world examples. Abstract Social bookmark tools are rapidly emerging on the Web. In such systems users are setting up lightweight conceptual structures called folksonomies. Unlike ontologies, shared conceptualisations are not formalised, but rather implicit. We present a new data mining task, the mining of all frequent tri-concepts, together with an efficient algorithm, for discovering these implicit shared conceptualisations. Our approach extends the data mining task of discovering all closed itemsets to three-dimensional data structures to allow for mining folksonomies. We provide a formal definition of the problem, and present an efficient algorithm for its solution. Finally, we show the applicability of our approach on three large real-world examples.
A Revisit on Deep Hashings for Large-scale Content Based Image Retrieval

There is a growing trend in studying deep hashing methods for content-based image retrieval (CBIR), where hash functions and binary codes are learnt using deep convolutional neural networks and then the binary codes can be used to do approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search. All the existing deep hashing papers report their methods' superior performance over the traditional hashing methods according to their experimental results. However, there are serious flaws in the evaluations of existing deep hashing papers: (1) The datasets they used are too small and simple to simulate the real CBIR situation. (2) They did not correctly include the search time in their evaluation criteria, while the search time is crucial in real CBIR systems. (3) The performance of some unsupervised hashing algorithms (e.g., LSH) can easily be boosted if one uses multiple hash tables, which is an important factor should be considered in the evaluation while most of the deep hashing papers failed to do so. We re-evaluate several state-of-the-art deep hashing methods with a carefully designed experimental setting. Empirical results reveal that the performance of these deep hashing methods are inferior to multi-table IsoH, a very simple unsupervised hashing method. Thus, the conclusions in all the deep hashing papers should be carefully re-examined.