Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inﬂuence of Ground Clutter Contamination on Polarimetric Radar Parameters

The inﬂuence of ground clutter contamination on the estimation of polarimetric radar parameters, horizontal reﬂectivity ( Z h ), differential reﬂectivity ( Z dr ), correlation coefﬁcient ( r h y ), and differential propagation phase ( f dp ) was examined. This study aims to derive the critical level of ground clutter contamination for Z h , Z dr , r h y , and f dp at which ground clutter inﬂuence exceeds predeﬁned precision thresholds. Reference data with minimal ground clutter contamination consist of eight precipitation ﬁelds measured during three rain events characterized by stratiform and convective precipitation. Data were collected at an elevation angle of 0.8 8 by the Me´te´o-France operational, polarimetric Doppler C-band weather radar located in Trappes, France, ; 30 km southwest of Paris. Nine different ground clutter signatures, ranging from point targets to more complex signatures typical for mountain ranges or urban obstacles, were added to the precipitation ﬁelds. This is done at the level of raw in-phase and quadrature component data in the two polarimetric channels. For each ground clutter signature, 30 simulations were conducted in which the mean reﬂectivity of ground clutter within the resolution volume varied between being 30 dB higher to 30 dB lower than the mean reﬂectivity of precipitation. Differences in Z h , Z dr , r y , and f dp between simulation and reference were shown as a function of ratio between ground clutter and precipitation intensities. As a result of this study, horizontal reﬂectivity showed the lowest sensitivity to ground clutter contamination. Furthermore, a precision of 1.7 dB Z in Z h is achieved on average when the precipitation and ground clutter intensities are equal. Requiring a precision of 0.2 dB in Z dr and 3 8 in f dp , the reﬂectivity of precipitation needs to be on average ; 5.5 and ; 6 dB, respectively, higher compared to the reﬂectivity of ground clutter. The analysis also indicates that the highest sensitivity to the nine clutter signatures was derived for r h y . To meet a predeﬁned precision threshold of 0.02, reﬂectivity of precipitation needs to be ; 13.5 dB higher than the reﬂectivity of ground clutter.
Complementary Densities of L´evy Walks: Typical and Rare Fluctuations

Strong anomalous diﬀusion is a recurring phenomenon in many ﬁelds, ranging from the spreading of cold atoms in optical lattices to transport processes in living cells. For such processes the scaling of the moments follows h| x ( t ) | q i ∼ t qν ( q ) and is characterized by a bi-linear spectrum of the scaling exponents, qν ( q ). Here we analyze L´evy walks, with power law distributed times of ﬂight ψ ( τ ) ∼ τ − (1+ α ) , demonstrating sharp bi-linear scaling. Previously we showed that for α > 1 the asymptotic behavior is characterized by two complementary densities corresponding to the bi-scaling of the moments of x ( t ). The ﬁrst density is the expected generalized central limit theorem which is responsible for the low-order moments 0 < q < α . The second one, a non-normalizable density (also called inﬁnite density) is formed by rare ﬂuctuations and determines the time evolution of higher-order moments. Here we use the Fa`a di Bruno formalism to derive the moments of sub-ballistic super-diﬀusive L´evy walks and then apply the Mellin transform technique to derive exact expressions for their inﬁnite densities. We ﬁnd a uniform approximation for the density of particles using L´evy distribution for typical ﬂuctuations and the inﬁnite density for the rare ones. For ballistic L´evy walks 0 < α < 1 we obtain mono-scaling behavior which is quantiﬁed.
Professional learning and Audit success: An empirical research of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) in Thailand

Because client’s business model such as strategy or activities are not likely to stay constant over time, the professional continuing learning is an important for the certified public accountants (hereafter; auditor) to understand of the new accounting standards, auditing standards, and practices, that relate to the audit process and auditor’s judgment, which can help auditors to enhance effective and efficiency in performing the audit task. The objective of this study is to examine the association between professional learning and audit success of auditors in Thailand via the mediating influences which include audit planning quality, audit best practice, and audit goal achieve. The data was gathered from 88 auditors in Thailand by questionnaire survey, and then analyzed using inferential statistics which was multiple regression analysis. The results conclude thatall dimensions of professional learning have a significant positive influence on audit planning quality and only concrete experience item positively associated with audit best practice and two dimensions of professional learning are active experimental and reflective observation significant positive influence on audit goal achieve. Regarding the association between the audit planning quality, audit best practice, and audit goal achieve and audit success, the study finds that all of items are positively associated with the audit success.
The Presence of a Large Number of Inhibitory Contacts at the Soma and Axon Initial Segment of Cortical Pyramidal Cells Has Inspired

a large and influential class of neural network model that use post-integration lateral inhibition as a mechanism for competition between nodes. However, inhibitory synapses also target the dendrites of pyramidal cells. The role of this dendritic inhibition in competition between neurons has not previously been addressed. We demonstrate, using a simple computational model, that such pre-integration lateral inhibition provides networks of neurons with useful representational and computational properties that are not provided by post-integration inhibition.
Neuroinflammatory Gene Expression Alterations in Anterior Cingulate Cortical White and Gray Matter of Males With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Evidence for putative pathophysiological mechanisms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including peripheral inflammation, blood–brain barrier disruption, white matter alterations, and abnormal synaptic overgrowth, indicate a possible involvement of neuroinflammation in the disorder. Neuroinflammation plays a role in the development and maintenance of the dendritic spines involved in glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission, and also influences blood–brain permeability. Cytokines released from microglia can impact the length, location or organization of dendritic spines on excitatory and inhibitory cells as well as recruit and impact glial cell function around the neurons. In this study, gene expression levels of anti‐ and pro‐inflammatory signaling molecules, as well as oligodendrocyte and astrocyte marker proteins, were measured in both gray and white matter tissue in the anterior cingulate cortex from ASD and age‐matched typically developing (TD) control brain donors, ranging from ages 4 to 37 years. Expression levels of the pro‐inflammatory gene, HLA‐DR, were significantly reduced in gray matter and expression levels of the anti‐inflammatory gene MRC1 were significantly elevated in white matter from ASD donors as compared to TD donors, but neither retained statistical significance after correction for multiple comparisons. Modest trends toward differences in expression levels were also observed for the pro‐inflammatory (CD68, IL1β) and anti‐inflammatory genes (IGF1, IGF1R) comparing ASD donors to TD donors. The direction of gene expression changes comparing ASD to TD donors did not reveal consistent findings implicating an elevated pro‐ or anti‐inflammatory state in ASD. However, altered expression of pro‐ and anti‐inflammatory gene expression indicates some involvement of neuroinflammation in ASD. Autism Res 2020, 13: 870‐884. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Does cognitive impairment in ﬂ uence outcomes from cataract surgery? Results from a 1-year follow-up cohort study

Background/aims To assess the impact of impaired cognition on visual outcomes 1 year following cataract surgery in a cohort of older people. Methods Participants aged 75 years or more with bilateral cataract and scheduled for cataract surgery were recruited consecutively. Cognition was assessed using the revised Addenbrooke ’ s cognitive examination (ACE-R). Participants were divided into two groups: normal (ACE-R ≥ 88) and impaired cognition (ACE-R <88). Visual quality of life (VQOL) and logarithm of minimum angle of resolution visual acuity (VA) were assessed at baseline and 1 year following cataract surgery. Results Of 112 participants, 48 (43%) had normal cognition and 64 (57%) had impaired cognition. One year following cataract surgery participants in both groups had signi ﬁ cant improvements in VQOL and VA. Visual outcomes at 1 year were signi ﬁ cantly better in participants with normal cognition than in those with impaired cognition (95% CIs for difference 0.4 – 7.0 and 0.02 – 0.1, for VQOL and VA, respectively). Regression analyses correcting for potential confounders showed a relationship between baseline cognition and VA at 1 year (R 2 =0.30, p=0.001) and a possible relationship between baseline cognition and VQOL at 1 year (R 2 =0.41, p=0.01, this became insigni ﬁ cant after removal of outliers). Conclusions Patients with impaired cognition bene ﬁ t from cataract surgery, but not to the same extent as patients with normal cognition.
Et tu, Brute? Side-Channel Assisted Chosen Ciphertext Attacks using Valid Ciphertexts A Case Study on HQC KEM

HQC is a code-based key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) that was selected to move to the fourth round of the NIST post-quantum standardization process. While this scheme was previously targeted by side-channel assisted chosen-ciphertext attacks for key recovery, we notice that all of these attacks use malformed ciphertexts, which can be easily detected since they cause a decapsulation failure. In this case, designers may chose as a countermeasure to refresh the key whenever a failure occurs, making these previous attacks ineffective. In this work, we present the first side-channel assisted chosen-ciphertext attacks using valid ciphertexts which can be carried out in a stealthy manner for key recovery. Our attacks target side-channel leakage from two different operations within the Reed-Muller decoder used for decryption, and can recover the secret key with 100% success rate, even in the presence of errors in side-channel information. All our experiments are performed on the open-source implementation of HQC KEM taken from the pqm4 library, with our attacks validated using both the power and EM side-channel. We also demonstrate novel key recovery attacks which also work on shuffled implementations, and discuss applicability of our attack to masking countermeasures. To the best of our knowledge, we are not aware of a side-channel protected design for HQC KEM, and thus we believe our work stresses the need towards more research on secure and efficient masking and hiding countermeasures for HQC KEM.
Parameter estimation for ocean background vertical diffusivity coefficients in the Community Earth System Model (v1.2.1) and its impact on El Niño–Southern Oscillation forecasts

Abstract. This study investigates parameter estimation (PE) to enhance climate forecasts of a coupled general circulation model by adjusting the background vertical diffusivity coefficients in its ocean component. These parameters were initially identified through sensitivity experiments and subsequently estimated by assimilating the sea surface temperature and temperature–salinity profiles. This study expands the coupled data assimilation system of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and the ensemble adjustment Kalman filter (EAKF) to enable parameter estimation. PE experiments were performed to establish balanced initial states and adjusted parameters for forecasting the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Comparing the model states between the PE experiment and a state estimation (SE) experiment revealed that PE can significantly reduce the uncertainty of these parameters and improve the quality of analysis. The forecasts obtained from PE and SE experiments further validate that PE has the potential to improve the forecast skill for ENSO.
An automated size and time-resolved aerosol collector platform integrated with environmental sensors to study the vertical pro ﬁ le of aerosols †

Atmospheric particles a ﬀ ect human health, climate, and ecosystems but assessing their impacts is still challenging. Part of that is because of the limited understanding of the size dependence of particle properties and variation of these properties along with the vertical pro ﬁ le under di ﬀ erent environmental conditions. Thus, we present a vertical gradient of size-resolved aerosol composition by deploying an automated size and time-resolved aerosol collector (STAC) platform integrated with sensors on the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement's (ARM) tethered balloon system (TBS) at the Southern Great Plains (SGP, Oklahoma) site. Our results highlight variations in atmospheric processing and aerosol sources along the vertical column by showing similar compositions with di ﬀ erent size distributions of particles at various altitudes. The platform has been deployed in several other ARM campaigns in Oliktok Point (Alaska), Houston (Texas), and Crested Butte (Colorado). The STAC platform is loaded with an array of 4-stage cascade impactors to collect aerosol particles within di ﬀ erent aerodynamic size ranges up to 20 sampling points per ﬂ ight for various atmospheric research studies, such as the vertical pro ﬁ le of size-resolved aerosol chemical composition and multi-phase chemistry. Time-resolved sampling facilitates the study of the evolution of particles in the atmosphere. The battery-powered, lightweight automated size-and time-resolved sampling system is ideal for unmanned aerial systems ( e.g. , TBS) and aircraft sampling. The STAC platform is integrated with a temperature and relative humidity sensor and a pressure sensor to monitor ambient conditions, an optical particle counter to measure aerosol size distribution, and a micro-aethalometer to measure the black carbon mass concentration. Experimentally derived 50% cut-o ﬀ sizes of each stage (stages A to D) for a standard impactor are about 2.3, 0.62, 0.42, and 0.12 m m. The impactor is adaptable to collect smaller particles with an additional replaceable stage E with a 50% cut-o ﬀ size of 0.07 m m. The STAC platform facilitates simultaneous sampling of aerosols on three di ﬀ erent types of substrates for multi-modal o ﬄ ine analysis to probe their physical ( e.g. , phase state and morphology), chemical ( e.g. , the elemental composition of individual particles and size-resolved chemical composition), optical (light absorption and scattering), hygroscopic and ice nucleation properties.
A drag partition theory for determining the large-scale roughness parameter and wind stress on the Arctic pack ice

A simple drag partition theory is developed for the classical problem of boundary layer flows over regular arrays of two- or three-dimensional roughness elements. The theoretical expression for the ratio of the form drag on these elements to the total drag is shown to be in good agreement with wind tunnel observations. It is used for determining the contribution of form drag on pressure ridges to the total wind stress on the arctic pack ice. The theory also leads to an expression for the large-scale roughness parameter as a function of mean ridge height, ridging intensity, small-scale or local roughness parameter, and an average form drag coefficient. It is required for determining the average wind stress over large areas of the Arctic on a routine basis, using the so-called geostrophic drag method, as envisaged in the Aidjex program.
University of Birmingham Information asymmetry and market power in the African banking industry

This study investigates the role of information sharing offices and its association with market power in the African banking industry based on a panel of 162 banks from 42 countries for the period 2001-2011. Five simultaneity-robust estimation techniques namely: Two Stage Least Squares; Instrumental Fixed effects to control for the unobserved heterogeneity; Instrumental Tobit regressions to control for the limited range in the dependent variable; Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) to control for persistence in market power and Instrumental Quantile Regressions (QR) to account for initial levels of market power are employed. The following findings have been established from non-interactive regressions. First, the effects of information sharing offices are significant in Two Stage Least Squares, with a positive effect from private credit bureaus. Second, the GMM results suggest that, public credit registries increase market power. Third, from Quintile Regressions, private credit bureaus consistently increase market power throughout the conditional distributions of market power. Given that the above findings are contrary to theoretical postulations, we extended the analytical framework with interactive regressions in order to assess whether the anticipated effects can be established if information sharing offices are increased. Our extended findings show that: (i) negative net effect from public credit registries on market power in GMM regressions and; (ii) negative net impacts from public credit registries on market power in the 0.25 th and 0.50 th quartiles of market power. JEL
How important are spillovers from major emerging markets?

The seven largest emerging market economies(cid:151) China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, In-donesia, and Turkey(cid:151) constituted more than one-quarter of global output and more than half of global output growth during 2010-15. These emerging markets, which we call EM7, are also closely integrated with other countries, especially with other emerging and frontier markets. Given their size and integration, growth in EM7 could have signi(cid:133)cant cross-border spillovers. We provide empirical estimates of these spillovers using a Bayesian vector autoregression model. We report three main results. First, spillovers from EM7 are sizeable: a 1 percentage point increase in EM7 growth is associated with a 0.9 percentage point increase in growth in other emerging and frontier markets and a 0.6 percentage point increase in world growth at the end of three years. Second, sizeable as they are, spillovers from EM7 are still smaller than those from G7 countries (Group of Seven of advanced economies). Speci(cid:133)cally, growth in other emerging and frontier markets, and the global economy would increase by one-half to three times more due to a similarly sized increase in G7 growth. Third, among the EM7, spillovers from China are the largest and permeate globally.
and flourishing.

Flourishing describes an optimal state of mental health characterized by emotional, psychological, and social well-being. In a recent publication, Flett and Hewitt (2015) suggested that perfectionism prevents people from flourishing. Perfectionism, however, is a multidimensional personality characteristic, and its various dimensions show different relationships with indicators of subjective well-being. In the first empirical study of perfectionism and flourishing, we examined the relationships of multidimensional perfectionism (self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed perfectionism) and self-reported flourishing in the past two weeks. Results from the sample of 388 university students revealed that only socially prescribed perfectionism showed a negative relationship with flourishing, whereas self-oriented perfectionism showed a positive relationship. These results were unchanged when positive and negative affect were controlled statistically. Our findings indicate that not all dimensions of perfectionism undermine flourishing and that it is important to differentiate perfectionistic strivings and concerns when regarding the perfectionism–flourishing relationship.
Crustal anisotropy beneath Pacific Ocean‐Islands from harmonic decomposition of receiver functions

Crustal anisotropy beneath ocean islands can be attributed to preferentially aligned minerals, cracks, or dike structures. Stacked with harmonic weighting, receiver functions from permanent ocean‐island stations display evidence of strong and distinct anisotropy parameters in the underlying crust and underplated layer. We analyze data for 11 IRIS‐GSN stations in the Pacific Ocean. We observe the prevalence of two‐lobed receiver function (RF) amplitude variations with back‐azimuth, consistent with “slow” tilted‐axis anisotropy. In most cases the anisotropy is accommodated in the underplated crust. Synthetic modeling of a representative station indicates that the strength of anisotropy of Vp=10% and Vs=5% is possible. The strike direction of the inferred symmetry axis tends to align with plate motion, with some scatter. At stations in the northwest Pacific i.e., KWAJ, TARA, and WAKE, the strike direction of the symmetry axis aligns with plate motion at the time of volcano emplacement. Beneath station POHA and the closest stations to the present‐day Hawaiian hotspot, alignment of the symmetry axis is almost orthogonal to the plate motion. We attribute the crustal anisotropy to the preferred alignment of dike structures that transported asthenospheric magma toward the seafloor volcanic edifice. Our results suggest that the thermal‐plume origin for ocean islands must be supplemented by tectonic‐stress heterogeneities that allow magma to penetrate the lithosphere via fractures. Magma‐transport fractures should align normal to the least‐compressive direction, which are predicted by theoretical models to align approximately with plate motion at the time of emplacement.
Unbalanced Circuit-PSI from Oblivious Key-Value Retrieval

Circuit-based Private Set Intersection (circuit-PSI) enables two parties, a client and a server, with their input sets X and Y respectively, to securely compute a function f on the inter-section X ∩ Y , while keeping X ∩ Y secret from both parties. Although several computationally efficient circuit-PSI protocols have been proposed recently, they most focus on the balanced scenario where | X | is similar to | Y | . However, in many realistic scenarios, a circuit-PSI protocol may be performed in the unbalanced case where | X | is remarkably smaller than | Y | (e.g., the client is a constrained device holding a small set, while the server is a service provider holding a large set). Directly applying existing protocols to this scenario will lead to significant efficiency issues because the communication complexity of the protocols scales at least linearly with the size of the larger set, i.e., max ( | X | , | Y | ) . In this work, we put forth efficient constructions for unbalanced circuit-PSI with sublinear communication complexity in the size of the larger set. The main insight is that we formalize unbalanced circuit-PSI as obliviously retrieving values corresponding to keys from a set of key-value pairs. To this end, we present a new functionality called Oblivious Key-Value Retrieval (OKVR) and design the OKVR protocol from a new notion called sparse Oblivious Key-Value Stores (sparse OKVS). We conduct extensive experiments and the results show that our constructions remarkably outperform the state-of-the-art circuit-PSI schemes (EUROCRYPT’19, PETs’22, CCS’22), i.e., 1 . 84 ∼ 48 . 86 × communication improvement and 1 . 50 ∼ 39 . 81 × faster computation. Very recently, Son and Jeong (AsiaCCS’23) also present unbalanced circuit-PSI