Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
USE OF ANNAGNPS FOR WATERSHED MODELING IN SIWALIK HILLS OF NEPAL

A study was conducted to evaluate the predictive capability of Annualized Agricultural Non Point Source (AnnAGNPS) model with respect to surface runoff, peak flow and sediment yield on a 130.8 ha watershed in Siwalik Hills of Nepal. Rainfall, stream discharge, surface runoff, sediment yield, topography, soil type, and land use were taken from database of MSEC project. The model was calibrated and validated by using the data of year 2001 and 2002 respectively. The model underestimated the runoff volume by 15% during calibration and 22% during validation . The average peak flows were overestimated by 2.5 to 4 times more than the observed values. Similarly, the model over predicted the average sediment yield by 120% and 153% of the measured values for the year 2001 and 2002 respectively. These results showed that the model performs well in simulating runoff volumes compared to the peak flows and sediment yield.
A clinical measure of maximal and rapid stepping in older women.

BACKGROUND In older adults, clinical measures have been used to assess fall risk based on the ability to maintain stance or to complete a functional task. However, in an impending fall situation, a stepping response is often used when strategies to maintain stance are inadequate. We examined how maximal and rapid stepping performance might differ among healthy young, healthy older, and balance-impaired older adults, and how this stepping performance related to other measures of balance and fall risk. METHODS Young (Y; n = 12; mean age, 21 years), unimpaired older (UO; n = 12; mean age, 69 years), and balance-impaired older women IO; n = 10; mean age, 77 years) were tested in their ability to take a maximal step (Maximum Step Length or MSL) and in their ability to take rapid steps in three directions (front, side, and back), termed the Rapid Step Test (RST). Time to complete the RST and stepping errors occurring during the RST were noted. RESULTS The IO group, compared with the Y and UO groups, demonstrated significantly poorer balance and higher fall risk, based on performance on tasks such as unipedal stance. Mean MSL was significantly higher (by 16%) in the Y than in the UO group and in the UO (by 30%) than in the IO group. Mean RST time was significantly faster in the Y group versus the UO group (by 24%) and in the UO group versus the IO group (by 15%). Mean RST errors tended to be higher in the UO than in the Y group, but were significantly higher only in the UO versus the IO group. Both MSL and RST time correlated strongly (0.5 to 0.8) with other measures of balance and fall risk including unipedal stance, tandem walk, leg strength, and the Activities-Specific Balance Confidence (ABC) scale. CONCLUSION We found substantial declines in the ability of both unimpaired and balance-impaired older adults to step maximally and to step rapidly. Stepping performance is closely related to other measures of balance and fall risk and might be considered in future studies as a predictor of falls and fall-related injuries.
Estimation of sell-up potential in airline revenue management systems

The growth of Low Fare Carriers (LFCs) has encouraged many airlines to remove fare restrictions (such as advance purchase requirements and Saturday-night stays) on many of their fare class products, leading to the simplification of fare structures in competitive markets. In the most extreme case, these markets have fare structures that are unrestricted; the fare class products differ only by price since they all lack restrictions. In these unrestricted markets, passengers buy the lowest possible fare product since there are no longer any restrictions that prevent them from doing so. A forecasting method known as "Q-forecasting" takes into account the sell-up potential of passengers in forecasting the demand in each of the fare products in such markets. Sell-up occurs when passengers upon being denied their original fare class choice, decide to pay more for the next available fare class so long as the price remains below their maximum willingness to pay. Quantifying this sell-up potential either using estimated or input values is thus crucial in helping airlines increase revenues when competing in unrestricted fare markets. A simulation model known as the Passenger Origin-Destination Simulator (PODS) contains the following 3 sell-up estimation methods: (i) Direct Observation (DO), (ii) Forecast Prediction (FP), and (iii) Inverse Cumulative (IC). The goal of this thesis is thus to investigate and compare the revenue performance of the 3 sell-up estimation methods. These methods are tested in a 2-airline (consisting of ALl and AL2) unrestricted network under different RM fare class optimization scenarios. Both estimated and input sell-up values are tested on ALl whereas only input sell-up values are tested on AL2. The findings of the simulations indicate that using FP typically results in the highest revenues for ALl among all 3 sell-up estimation methods. When compared against simple RM fare class threshold methods that do not consider sell-up, using FP results in up to a 3% revenue gain for ALl. Under some fare class optimization scenarios, using FP instead of input sell-up values even results in a revenue increase of close to 1%. These findings suggest that FP is robust enough under a range of fare class optimizers to be used by airlines as a sell-up estimator in unrestricted fare environments so as to raise revenues. Thesis Supervisor: Peter P. Belobaba Title: Principal Research Scientist, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Thesis Reader: Cynthia Barnhart Title: Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Engineering Systems and Co-Director, Operations Research Center
Extraction of Phase Information Buried in Fluctuation of a Pulse-type Hardware Neuron Model Using STDP

Since neural networks have superior information processing functions, many investigators attempt to model biological neurons and their networks. Furthermore, a number of studies of neural networks have recently been made with the purpose of applying engineering to the brain. In this study, we investigate the effect of STDP on the ability to extract phase information buried in fluctuation. We focus on spike timing dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP), and we construct neural networks from a pulse-type hardware neuron model using STDP. We show that phase information buried in fluctuation is revealed by the effect of STDP, making it possible to decode the synaptic weight. Moreover, we show that it is possible to extract the phase difference buried in fluctuation representing the reinforcement part of the synaptic weight, using neural networks with STDP.
Cultural Identity : Curbing the Effect of Modernity on the Nigerian Child through Theatre-in-Education

There is no doubt that the Nigerian culture is challenged by global competitiveness, while at the same time trying to be locally relevant. This study accesses the situation where by the youths get easily affected, infected, and therefore, attracted to current trends especially when it has to do with western lifestyle as expressed in fashion cuisine, language, relationship and religion. Since the youths are expected to assume the leadership of the society in the future, it becomes very needful that they be brought to the knowledge of what dangers await the future of the nation if they are not careful with the kind of lifestyle they embrace. In as much as we appreciate the benefits of modern ideologies, technology, (especially as brought to us via development in information technology), thought, and general ways of doing things, we should be cautious not to abandon the cultural values of the people in search of other people`s lifestyle. This paper presents theatre-in-education as a vital subject in exposing the youths and children to traditional culture while at the same time teaching them respect for other people`s culture and the values of invention and technology. Using the content analysis method of research, the study seeks to help restore and sustain the dignity of Nigeria’s cultural heritage by proposing the application of such techniques of theatre-ineducation as music, dance, improvisation, puppetry, story-telling and role play for children’s education in schools. The paper posits that using the techniques of theatre-in-education in the early learning years of the child shall serve as an interventive approach that will help to explore Nigeria`s cultural heritage with the intent of facilitating development. This, it is hoped, will help save the nation from losing her heritage and values.
Design considerations for an automotive integrated starter-generator with pole-phase modulation

Automotive manufacturers worldwide are investigating the introduction of new technology into their products to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. The new 42 V ISO draft standard for passenger automobiles makes an integrated starter-generator both a possibility and a necessity. This paper first examines the required properties of this new system and then goes on to define what we believe to be the most appropriate system configuration. In the process, methods for extending the speed range of an induction machine are analyzed and a new method for an efficient pole changing technique, called pole-phase modulation (PPM), is described. The control of such a novel drive is given, for both motoring and generating operation, including transition from one to the other mode. Experimental results, obtained on the actual machine are also given.
Atrazine-Induced Aromatase Expression Is SF-1 Dependent: Implications for Endocrine Disruption in Wildlife and Reproductive Cancers in Humans

Background Atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor that increases aromatase expression in some human cancer cell lines. The mechanism involves the inhibition of phosphodiesterase and subsequent elevation of cAMP. Methods We compared steroidogenic factor 1 (SF-1) expression in atrazine responsive and non-responsive cell lines and transfected SF-1 into nonresponsive cell lines to assess SF-1’s role in atrazine-induced aromatase. We used a luciferase reporter driven by the SF-1–dependent aromatase promoter (ArPII) to examine activation of this promoter by atrazine and the related simazine. We mutated the SF-1 binding site to confirm the role of SF-1. We also examined effects of 55 other chemicals. Finally, we examined the ability of atrazine and simazine to bind to SF-1 and enhance SF-1 binding to ArPII. Results Atrazine-responsive adrenal carcinoma cells (H295R) expressed 54 times more SF-1 than nonresponsive ovarian granulosa KGN cells. Exogenous SF-1 conveyed atrazine-responsiveness to otherwise nonresponsive KGN and NIH/3T3 cells. Atrazine induced binding of SF-1 to chromatin and mutation of the SF-1 binding site in ArPII eliminated SF-1 binding and atrazine-responsiveness in H295R cells. Out of 55 chemicals examined, only atrazine, simazine, and benzopyrene induced luciferase via ArPII. Atrazine bound directly to SF-1, showing that atrazine is a ligand for this “orphan” receptor. Conclusion The current findings are consistent with atrazine’s endocrine-disrupting effects in fish, amphibians, and reptiles; the induction of mammary and prostate cancer in laboratory rodents; and correlations between atrazine and similar reproductive cancers in humans. This study highlights the importance of atrazine as a risk factor in endocrine disruption in wildlife and reproductive cancers in laboratory rodents and humans.
Crystal Structure and Corrosion of Electrodeposited Ni-TiAlN Composite Coatings

An investigation has been done to study the influence of various stirrer speed, electrodeposition current and substrate on the crystal structure and corrosion of electrodeposited Ni-TiAlN composite coating. To study the influence of stirrer speed, the composites were deposited on tungsten carbide substrate at various stirrer speed of low (1235 rpm), medium (1995 rpm) and high (2446 rpm) at fixed current while to study the effect of electrodeposition current, the composites were deposited on tungsten carbide at various current of 2, 3 and 4 mA at fixed stirrer speed. Other composites were deposited at various substrate of brass, steel (HSS) and galvanic metal substrates at fixed electrodeposition current and stirrer speed. The crystal structure of composites was characterized by using XRD spectrum analysis and the corrosion test was performed by using mass loss method. The results show that crystalization and the corrosion rate of the composites is better at high electrodeposition current and low stirrer speed. It shows that the crystalization and corrosion rate of the coating on brass substrate are better than others.
Real-time dense stereo for intelligent vehicles

Stereo vision is an attractive passive sensing technique for obtaining three-dimensional (3-D) measurements. Recent hardware advances have given rise to a new class of real-time dense disparity estimation algorithms. This paper examines their suitability for intelligent vehicle (IV) applications. In order to gain a better understanding of the performance and the computational-cost tradeoff, the authors created a framework of real-time implementations. This consists of different methodical components based on single instruction multiple data (SIMD) techniques. Furthermore, the resulting algorithmic variations are compared with other publicly available algorithms. The authors argue that existing publicly available stereo data sets are not very suitable for the IV domain. Therefore, the authors' evaluation of stereo algorithms is based on novel realistically looking simulated data as well as real data from complex urban traffic scenes. In order to facilitate future benchmarks, all data used in this paper is made publicly available. The results from this study reveal that there is a considerable influence of scene conditions on the performance of all tested algorithms. Approaches that aim for (global) search optimization are more affected by this than other approaches. The best overall performance is achieved by the proposed multiple-window algorithm, which uses local matching and a left-right check for a robust error rejection. Timing results show that the simplest of the proposed SIMD variants are more than twice as fast than the most complex one. Nevertheless, the latter still achieves real-time processing speeds, while their average accuracy is at least equal to that of publicly available non-SIMD algorithms
Genome-wide analysis of clustered Dorsal binding sites identifies putative target genes in the Drosophila embryo

Metazoan genomes contain vast tracts of cis-regulatory DNA that have been identified typically through tedious functional assays. As a result, it has not been possible to uncover a cis-regulatory code that links primary DNA sequences to gene expression patterns. In an initial effort to determine whether coordinately regulated genes share a common “grammar,” we have examined the distribution of Dorsal recognition sequences in the Drosophila genome. Dorsal is one of the best-characterized sequence-specific transcription factors in Drosophila. The homeobox gene zerknullt (zen) is repressed directly by Dorsal, and this repression is mediated by a 600-bp silencer, the ventral repression element (VRE), which contains four optimal Dorsal binding sites. The arrangement and sequence of the Dorsal recognition sequences in the VRE were used to develop a computational algorithm to search the Drosophila genome for clusters of optimal Dorsal binding sites. There are 15 regions in the genome that contain three or more optimal sites within a span of 400 bp or less. Three of these regions are associated with known Dorsal target genes: sog, zen, and Brinker. The Dorsal binding cluster in sog is shown to mediate lateral stripes of gene expression in response to low levels of the Dorsal gradient. Two of the remaining 12 clusters are shown to be associated with genes that exhibit asymmetric patterns of expression across the dorsoventral axis. These results suggest that bioinformatics can be used to identify novel target genes and associated regulatory DNAs in a gene network.
CONSTRUCTION OF PERCEPTION STIMULI WITH COPY SYNTHESIS

A number of experiments in perception requires the construction of speech-like stimuli whose acoustic content needs to be manipulated easily. Formant synthesis offers the possibility of editing all the parameters of speech. However, the construction of stimuli by hand is a very laborious task and therefore automatic tools are necessary. This paper describes two main extensions of a copy synthesis algorithm previously proposed. The first concerns formant tracking which relies on a concurrent curve strategy. The second is a pitch synchronous amplitude adjustment algorithm that enables the capture of fast varying amplitude transitions in consonants. In addition, the automatic determination of the source parameters through the computation of F0 and of the friction to voicing ratio enables the speech signals to be copied automatically. This copy synthesis is evaluated on sentences and V-Stop-V stimuli.
Collaborative Data Publishing : A Survey on Recent Developments

This paper focuses on the Collaborative Data Publishing problem that occurs when the sensitive information has been shared between different data providers. The paper includes the different attacks and problems that exist when the private data is shared between the multiple data providers in anonymizing the horizontally partitioned data. The paper also discusses about the available techniques to preserve the private information from the attackers. Data publishing also relies on the policies and guidelines which are formed by the organisation, where there exists a situation for each data provider to violate the framed policies and guidelines during data publishing. This problem enhances the several researchers to introduce innovative techniques and tools to overcome the data distortion. This survey paper summarizes all the proposed methods and techniques, discusses about the requirements and differences between the approaches. Keywords— Collaborative Data Publishing, anonymization, horizontally Partitioned data, Data distortion.
M ar 2 00 2 Conformal Subnets and Intermediate Subfactors

Given an irreducible local conformal net A of von Neumann algebras on S1 and a finite-index conformal subnet B ⊂ A, we show that A is completely rational iff B is completely rational. In particular this extends a result of F. Xu for the orbifold construction. By applying previous results of Xu, many coset models turn out to be completely rational and the structure results in [27] hold. Our proofs are based on an analysis of the net inclusion B ⊂ A; among other things we show that, for a fixed interval I, every von Neumann algebra R intermediate between B(I) and A(I) comes from an intermediate conformal net L between B and A with L(I) = R. We make use of a theorem of Watatani (type II case) and Teruya and Watatani (type III case) on the finiteness of the set I(N ,M) of intermediate subfactors in an irreducible inclusion of factors N ⊂ M with finite Jones index [M : N ]. We provide a unified proof of this result that gives in particular an explicit bound for the cardinality of I(N ,M) which depends only on [M : N ]. ∗Supported in part by MURST and INDAM-GNAMPA.
ARRANGEMENT, DATAPROCESSING DEVICE COMPRISING SUCH CIRCUIT ARRANGEMENT AS WELL AS METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING AN ATTACK ON SUCH CIRCUIT ARRANGEMENT

(51) International Patent Classification: Not classified (81) Designated States (unless otherwise indicated, for every kind of national protection available): AE, AG, AL, AM, (21) International Application Number: AT,AU, AZ, BA, BB, BG, BR, BW, BY, BZ, CA, CH, CN, PCT/IB2007/050382 CO, CR, CU, CZ, DE, DK, DM, DZ, EC, EE, EG, ES, FI, GB, GD, GE, GH, GM, GT, HN, HR, HU, ID, IL, IN, IS, (22) International Filing Date: 5 February 2007 (05.02.2007) JP, KE, KG, KM, KN, KP, KR, KZ, LA, LC, LK, LR, LS,
Prior-Free Optimality and Satis fi cing-A Common Framework and its Experimental Implementation-Werner Güth

Similar to welfare economics where with(out) interpersonal comparisons one defines unique (set-valued) welfare (Pareto) optima, we present a framework for one-person decision making where with(out) a prior probability distribution individual optimality prescribes usually a unique (set of) choice(s). Satisfiable aspirations in the sense that there exists some choice guaranteeing them define a much larger choice set whose intersection with the set of prior-free optimal choices is never empty. We also review experimental procedures and results which incentivize aspiration formation and reject even prior-free optimality experimentally. JEL classification: B4, D81, D10
Study of axon-guidance interactions in controlled microfluidic environments

Developing axons are directed along specific pathways by the reiterative use of a relatively small number of environmental-chemical cues to create precise-wiring patterns. The increasing appreciation of the complexity of signaling interactions between these small number of cues emphasizes the need for tools that would allow guidance-factor-gradient delivery to growing axons in a controlled-combinatorial manner for deciphering their guidance code. We report the development of an open-chamber-microfluidic platform that permits mammalian-explant culture and provides an isolated environment for exposing axons, emerging from explants, to stable gradients. Our device substantially extends capabilities for chemical interactions with cultured axons enabling quantitative-neurobiological investigations.
A Reinforced Road Detection Method in Complicated Environment

Road detection is the most fundamental part of autonomous vehicles. Noises caused by shadows and vehicles on the road have a great negative impact on the road detection. Our method improves the performance under the noisy environment by taking advantage of color information to determine the road curvature. A novel geometrical method is proposed in this paper to select the most matched curvature. A graph-based image segmentation algorithm is introduced to extract the road area which is not affected by shadows and vehicles on the road. A bilateral filter is presented to smooth images while preserving edges and to help detect continuous and perceptually clear road borders.