Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forecasts of Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures by Neural Networks and Support Vector Regression

Two nonlinear regression methods, Bayesian neural network (BNN) and support vector regression (SVR), and linear regression (LR), were used to forecast the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies at lead times ranging from 3 to 15 months, using sea level pressure (SLP) and SST as predictors. Datasets for 1950–2005 and 1980–2005 were studied, with the latter period having the warm water volume (WWV) above the isotherm integrated across the equatorial Pacific available as an extra predictor. The forecasts indicated that the nonlinear structure is mainly present in the second PCA (principal component analysis) mode of the SST field. Overall, improvements in forecast skills by the nonlinear models over LR were modest. Although SVR has two structural advantages over neural network models, namely (a) no multiple minima in the optimization process and (b) an error norm robust to outliers in the data, it did not give better overall forecasts than BNN. Addition of WWV as an extra predictor generally increased the forecast skills slightly; however, the influence of WWV on SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific appears to be linear.
Polar lows and their effects on sea ice and the upper ocean in the Iceland, Greenland and Labrador Seas

Based on two case studies, we show for the first time that explicitly resolving polar lows in a global climate model (ICONSapphire) with a high resolution of 2.5 km in all components (atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and land) leads to strong heat loss from the ocean near the sea ice edge and from leads and polynyas in the ice cover. Heat losses during marine cold air outbreaks triggered by polar lows lead to the formation of dense water in the Iceland and Greenland Seas that replenishes the climatically important Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW). Further heat losses and the rejection of brine during ice formation in polynyas, such as the Sirius Water Polynya in northeast Greenland, contribute to the formation of dense water over the Greenland shelf. In the Labrador Sea, polar lows intensify cold air outbreaks from the sea ice and quickly deepen the ocean mixed layer by 100 m within two days. If mesoscale polar lows and kinematic features in the sea ice are not resolved in global climate models, heat loss and dense water formation in (sub-)polar regions will be underestimated.
Imagining the thinking machine: Technological myths and the rise of artificial intelligence

: This article discusses the role of technological myths in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies from 1950s to the early 1970s. It shows how the rise of AI was accompanied by the construction of a powerful cultural myth: the creation of a thinking machine, which would be able to perfectly simulate the cognitive faculties of the human mind. Based on a content analysis of articles on Artificial Intelligence published in two magazines, the Scientific American and the New Scientist, which were aimed at a broad readership of scientists, engineers, and technologists, three dominant patterns in the construction of the AI myth are identified: (1) the recurrence of analogies and discursive shifts, by which ideas and concepts from other fields were employed to describe the functioning of AI technologies; (2) a rhetorical use of the future, imagining that present shortcomings and limitations will shortly be overcome; (3) the relevance of controversies around the claims of AI, which we argue should be considered as an integral part of the discourse surrounding the AI myth.
Multi-model Projection of Tropical Cyclone Genesis Frequency over the Western North Pacific: CMIP5 Results

Analyzing outputs of seven climate models participating in the fifth phase of the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, this study performs multi-model projection of tropical cyclone (TC) genesis frequency over the Western North Pacific basin, with an emphasis on the spatial contrast. By evaluating reproducibility of the spatio-temporal distribution of the genesis frequency, we select five models to perform the multi-model projection. All five models and multi-model ensemble project eastward shift of the Main Development Region (MDR) of TCs located around the Philippines. This is probably caused by changes in dynamical environmental conditions such as lower-tropospheric relative vorticity and vertical shear of horizontal wind. Projected changes in the activity of tropical depression-type disturbances, which are candidates for seeds of TCs, may also contribute to the eastward shift. These projections are basically consistent with earlier results that Yokoi and Takayabu (2009) obtained from outputs of a previous generation of climate model experiments. In addition, this study projects increases in the genesis frequency over a region east of Taiwan and the South China Sea, which are inconsistent with Yokoi and Takayabu (2009).
Segmentation of medical ultrasonic image using fractal

Image segmentation is one of the most difficult problems in multidimensional reconstruction of medical ultrasonic images. A new method for segmentation of medical ultrasonic images based on fractal dimension Lacunarity is presented in this paper. As fractal features have drawbacks of less number and great redundancy, we developed a method to extend the features combining with micromasks. Experimental results show that our method can enhance the description ability of fractal features and segment the images efficiently.
Reducing Southern Ocean biases in the FOCI climate model

We explore the sensitivity of Southern Ocean surface and deep ocean temperature and salinity biases in the FOCI coupled climate model to atmosphere-ocean coupling time step and to lateral diffusion in the ocean with the goal to reduce biases common to climate models. The reference simulation suffers from a warm bias at the sea surface which also extends down to the seafloor in the Southern Ocean and is accompanied by a too fresh surface, in particular along the Antarctic coast. Reducing the atmosphere-ocean coupling time step from 3 hours to 1 hour results in increased sea-ice production on the shelf and enhanced melting to the north which reduces the fresh bias of the shelf water while also strengthening the meridional density gradient favouring a stronger Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). With the shorter coupling step we also find a stronger meridional overturning circulation with more upwelling and downwelling south and north of the ACC respectively, as well as a reduced warm bias at almost all depths. Tuning the lateral ocean mixing has only a small effect on the model biases, which contradicts previous studies using a similar model configuration. We note that the latitude of the surface westerly wind maximum has a northward bias in the reference simulation and that this bias is unchanged as the surface temperature and sea-ice biases are reduced in the coupled simulations. Hence, the surface wind biases over the Southern Hemisphere midlatitudes appear to be unrelated to biases in sea-surface conditions.
Skinned Motion Retargeting with Residual Perception of Motion

To evaluate the body-shape sensitivity of our proposed shape-aware module, we test two different shape parameters input to check the output visualization. The source shape parameters φsrc and the target shape parameters φtgt are fed into the shape-aware module respectively. As shown in Figure 1, there is a large head-shape difference between the source and target characters. When the shape parameters φsrc are fed into the shape-aware module, the result has an obvious interpenetration artifact. When the shape parameter input of the shape-aware module is φtgt, our RET can accurately perceive the shape of the target character’s head and effectively avoid interpenetration.
Provenance of amenity-tree species in Hong Kong.

Summary A total of 175 species of amenity trees, ranging from rare to common, have been identified in urban Hong Kong. Information on the geographical origin of these species is gleaned from a wide spectrum of botanical literature. About three quarters of the diverse tree population are exotics introduced from a selection of geographical regions. Tropical Asia is the most important contributor, followed by Australia, Tropical America and Far East, and the remainder from disparate and remote lands. The domination of aliens is especially pronounced in the palms and palm-likes and conifers, but less so for the broadleaved. The conditions conducive to tree introductions, both past and present, are explored. The need for active research and free exchange of relevant information in the tropics is advocated.
B-polarization induction in two generalized thin sheets at the surface of a conducting half-space

Summary. A new closed-form solution is obtained analytically for a B-polarization induction problem of geophysical interest, in which a local region of the Earth is represented by a generalized thin sheet at the surface of and in electrical contact with a uniformly conducting half-space. The generalized sheet, first introduced by Ranganayaki & Madden, is a mathematical idealization of a double layer which consists, in this problem, of two adjacent half-planes with distinct conductances representing a surface conductivity discontinuity such as an ocean—coast boundary, underlain by a uniform sheet of finite integrated resistivity representing the lower crust. The resistive sheet exerts a considerable mathematical influence on the solution causing, under certain conditions, an additional pole to appear in one of the forms of contour integral by which the solution can be expressed; it also weakens or eliminates field singularities that would otherwise occur at the conductance discontinuity. A numerical calculation is made for model parameters typifying an ocean—coast boundary underlain by a highly resistive crust. It is found that the residue of the pole associated with the resistive sheet dominates the solution for this example, the main consequence of which is a huge increase in the horizontal range over which the induced currents adjust themselves between the different ‘skin-effect’ distributions at infinity on either side of the model. Moreover the solution shows that this ‘adjustment distance’ has a more complicated dependence on the conductance and integrated resistivity of the sheet than that given simply by the square root of their product which was the length parameter proposed by Ranganayaki & Madden.
Trench parallel anisotropy and large delay times: Elasticity and anisotropy of antigorite at high pressures

Using theoretical methods, we calculate the full elastic constant tensor and equation of state of antigorite up to 10 GPa, a pressure range that encompasses its experimentally observed stability field. At ambient conditions, the elastic constant tensor reveals significantly large acoustic anisotropy (38% in VP; 35% in VS) compared to the dominant mantle phase olivine. The shear anisotropy is enhanced upon compression. Upon compression, the full elastic constant tensor reveals anomaly at ρ ∼ 2.69 gm cm−3. At ρ < 2.69 gm cm−3, we find that the pressure‐volume results for antigorite are well represented by a third order Birch‐Murnaghan formulation, with K0 = 52 GPa, K0′ = 8.5 and V0 = 3037 Å3 (ρ0 ∼ 2.48 gm cm−3). Our results on elasticity and anisotropy at conditions relevant to the mantle wedge indicates that a 10–20 km layer of antigorite might account for the observed shear polarization anisotropy with fast polarization parallel to the trench and associated large delay times of 1–2 sec observed in some subduction zone settings.
Locally Diverse Constellations From the Special Orthogonal Group

To optimize rotated multidimensional constellations over a single-input single-output Rayleigh fading channel, a family of rotation matrices is constructed for all dimensions which are a power of 2. This family is a one-parameter subgroup of the group of rotation matrices, and is located using a gradient descent scheme on this Lie group. The parameter defining the family is chosen to optimize the cutoff rate of the constellation. The optimal rotation parameter is computed explicitly for low signal-to-noise ratios. These rotations outperform full-diversity algebraic rotations in terms of cutoff rate at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate at high SNR in dimension n = 4. However, a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation rotated by such a matrix lacks full diversity, in contrast with the conventional wisdom that good signal sets exhibit full diversity. A new notion of diversity, referred to as local diversity, is introduced to attempt to account for this behavior. Roughly, a locally fully diverse constellation is fully diverse only in small neighborhoods. A local variant of the minimum product distance is also introduced and is shown experimentally to be a superior predictor of constellation performance than the minimum product distance in dimension n = 4.
Danaparoid Sodium: A Review of Its Use in Hepatic Thrombotic Disorders

Danaparoid sodium is an antithrombotic isolated from porcine mucosa. Its main constituent is a mixture of heparan sulphates that inhibits thrombin generation and also possesses anti-inflammatory and immune-modulatory activity. It has shown safety and efficacy in its main indications of deep venous thrombosis prophylaxis, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia treatment and disseminated intravascular thrombosis treatment. In addition, there are reports of its off-label use for the treatment of portal vein thrombosis in adults and for prevention of the hepatic thrombotic microangiopathies haematogenous that complicate recovery after stem cell transplantation in adults and children. The results of these studies provide further support for its safety and efficacy even in subjects with cirrhosis and/or severe hepatic dysfunction. In this chapter the rationale for danaparoid use is presented and the collated results of comparative studies and case reports are compared with those of other pharmaceutical options for managing these hepatic thrombotic disorders.
NOx Control Options and Integration for US Coal Fired Boilers Quarterly Progress Report Reporting Period Start Date January 1 , 2005 Reporting Period End Date : March 31 , 2005

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS.iii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . 1 EXPERIMENTAL METHODS. 2 Task 1 Program Management . 2 Task 3 Minimization of Impacts . 3 Task 4 SCR Catalyst Testing . 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION . 5 Discussion of Laboratory Study of Catalyst Activity . 5 Discussion of Slipstream Reactor Activity . 16 CONCLUSIONS.19 Plans for Next Quarter . 19 REFERENCES . 20
Modi ﬁ ed and unmodi ﬁ ed technical lignins as ﬂ ame retardants for polypropylene

: Polyolefins used in building materials and furniture require the use of flame-retardant (FR) additives to improve their fire safety. Such additives should be safe to humans and the environment, and preferably bio-based. In the present work, the FR performance of unmodified and chemically modified technical lignins was compared to that of the ammonium polyphosphate/pentaerythritol (APP/ PER) intumescent system in a polypropylene (PP) matrix. Micro-scale combustion calorimetry (MCC) was used to study the peak heat release rate (PHR), temperature at PHR (T PHR ), total heat release (THR) and char yield upon thermal decomposition of milligram-scale specimens. The PP/lignin composites showed up to 41% lower PHR and up to 36% lower THR compared to pure PP as well as large char residues. Based on the same parameters, especially the PP/lignin composites made with modi ﬁ ed lignins out-performed the reference PP/APP/PER system and the PP/APP/lignin composites where unmodi ﬁ ed lignin was used with APP. The most promising PP/lignin composites were prepared with partially demethylated/demethoxylated and depolymerised kraft lignin ( ‘ CatLignin ’ ), modi ﬁ ed by the Mannich reaction to a nitrogen content of 13.5%.
Remote Monitoring of Aerosol Layers over Sofia in the Frame of EARLINET‐ASOS Project

In this work we present some results of lidar remote sensing of aerosol layers in the atmosphere in Sofia region. The investigations were made using a lidar system equipped with a CuBr‐vapor laser with high pulse repetition of 13 kHz and receiver in photon counting mode. These measurements were performed in frame of the project European Aerosol Research Lidar Network—Advanced Sustainable Observation System (EARLINET—ASOS). For some of presented results a conclusion about atmospheric aerosol’s origins was made upon analyses of the information about the weather condition during the lidar measurements. Such information was obtained by the weather‐forecast maps provided by the Atmospheric Modeling and Weather Forecasting Group of NTUA and the Forecast system of Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and accessible via Internet. Additional information is provided by calculations of the backward air mass trajectories, using online software of NOAA about HYSPLIT model (HYbrid Single‐Particle Lagrangian Integrated Traje.
Impact of El Niño on the delineation of tropospheric cooling due to volcanic eruptions

It is well known that there has been a close relation between sea surface temperature (SST) variations in the eastern equatorial Pacific (El Nino region) and tropospheric temperature variations in the tropics, with the amplitude of the SST variations averaging about twice that of the tropospheric temperature variations. In particular, it is shown in this paper that during 1960–1986 there was a correlation of 0.66 (significant at the 1% level) between SST in the region 0°–10°S, 180°–80°W and zonally averaged 850- to 300-mbar temperature in the equatorial zone one season later. In the north and south subtropics the maximum correlations between this SST and 850- to 300-mbar temperature were 0.48 and 0.52 (significant at the 5% level) at a lag of two seasons. In temperate and polar latitudes the correlations were a maximum (though nonsignificant except in the south polar zone) at lags of two to three seasons. There is the implication of a tropospheric thermal pulse originating at the equator and spreading poleward, decaying as it does so. On the basis of the magnitude of these lagged correlations in the tropics it appears that the reason tropospheric temperatures cooled following the Agung eruption in 1963 but warmed following the El Chichon eruption in 1982 is the occurrence of a very strong El Nino after El Chichon but only a relatively weak El Nino after Agung. When tropical tropospheric temperatures are adjusted by “subtracting out” the usual relation with equatorial SST (by displacing the tropospheric temperatures two seasons earlier with respect to SST and dividing the SST deviations from the mean by 2 before subtraction from the tropospheric temperature deviations), the magnitude of the tropical tropospheric cooling following El Chichon becomes similar to that following Agung (about 0.5°C) but is of shorter duration. When a similar adjustment procedure is applied to the five major volcanic episodes since 1880, the eruptions of the tropical volcanoes of El Chichon, Agung, Santa Maria-Pelee-Soufriere, and Krakatau are all indicated to have brought about a decrease in northern hemisphere continental surface temperatures of about 0.3°C, whereas the eruption of Katmai in Alaska is indicated to have decreased this temperature by only about 0.1°C. It is proposed that the reason the evidence for volcanically induced cooling of the Earth's surface has been so uncertain and controversial in the past is that such cooling may or may not be observed depending on the extent of sea surface warming in the eastern equatorial Pacific after the volcanic eruption.
Data fusion and feature extraction in the wavelet domain

This paper concentrates on data fusion, feature extraction, feature selection and neural network classification for multi-source remote sensing and geographical data. The considered feature extraction method is based on the discrete wavelet transformation (DWT). The original data are transformed using DWT and then a feature selection mechanism is applied to select features from the full feature set in the wavelet domain. The feature selection mechanism is a binary genetic algorithm which selects the best features to be used in a neural network classification. In experiments on two datasets, the proposed data fusion and feature extraction method performed well in terms of overall accuracies as compared to results obtained with other well-known feature extraction methods.
Weather patterns of the coastal zone of Petuniabukta, central Spitsbergen in the period 2008–2010

This paper presents the first results of measurements of global solar radiation, albedo, ground surface and 2-m air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed and direction carried out in the central part of Spitsbergen Island in the period 2008-2010. The study site was located on the coastal ice-free zone of Petuniabukta (north-western branch of Billefjorden), which was strongly affected by local topography, character of the ground surface, and sea ice extent. Temporal analysis of the selected meteorological parameters shows both strong seasonal and interdiurnal variation affected by synoptic-scale weather systems, channelling and drainage effects of the fjords and surrounding glaciers. The prevailing pattern of atmospheric circulation primarily determined the variation in global solar radiation, wind speed, ground surface and 2-m air temperatures. Furthermore, it was found that thermal differences between Petuniabukta and the nearest meteorological station (Svalbard Lufthavn) differ significantly due to differences in sea ice concentrations and ice types in the fjords during the winter and spring months.
Scaling of mixing parameters in stationary, homogeneous, and stratified turbulence

[1] The dependency of mixing efficiency on length scales was investigated numerically for stationary, homogeneous, and stratified turbulence. Direct numerical simulations of homogeneous, sheared, and stratified turbulence were carried out under the condition of the energy equilibrium with various combinations of energy dissipation rates, stratifications, and energy-containing scales. The Reynolds number based on the Taylor microscale was between 28 and 39. It was found from the results of the numerical simulations that mixing parameters have significant dependency on the size of computational domain, which had not been discussed in the previous studies. By scaling the mixing parameters, the flux Richardson number was expressed by a function of the overturn Froude number, which is also expressed as a function of the ratio of the integral scale to the Ozmidov scale. The present model showed relevant agreements with those predicted by experimental results. From the proposed model, it is inferred that the flux Richardson number becomes its maximum of 0.2 when the thickness of the turbulence patch is sufficiently larger than the Ozmidov scale.
Iceberg detection using Cosmo-SkyMed satellite constellation images

The new constellation of COSMO -SkyMed (CSK) satellites, which carry on board a SAR-X instrument, offers a unique opportunity for the study of sea ice distribution in polar regions and for the detection of drifting icebergs. To exploit this new class of SAR images, a specific processing scheme, consisting of 4 sequential blocks, was developed. The 4 blocks perform: i) ingestion of the raw image into a commercial software for precise geo-location; ii) extraction from the full scene of image subsets containing iceberg infested areas; iii) speckle filtering; iv) segmentation by different algorithms taken from a "free and open source software" (FOSS) library. The results of the application of this processing scheme to a CSK image of Antarctica containing icebergs are presented and discussed.