Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bidirectional Knowledge Reconfiguration for Lightweight Point Cloud Analysis

Point cloud analysis faces computational system overhead, limiting its application on mobile or edge devices. Directly employing small models may result in a significant drop in performance since it is difficult for a small model to adequately capture local structure and global shape information simultaneously, which are essential clues for point cloud analysis. This paper explores feature distillation for lightweight point cloud models. To mitigate the semantic gap between the lightweight student and the cumbersome teacher, we propose bidirectional knowledge reconfiguration (BKR) to distill informative contextual knowledge from the teacher to the student. Specifically, a top-down knowledge reconfiguration and a bottom-up knowledge reconfiguration are developed to inherit diverse local structure information and consistent global shape knowledge from the teacher, respectively. However, due to the farthest point sampling in most point cloud models, the intermediate features between teacher and student are misaligned, deteriorating the feature distillation performance. To eliminate it, we propose a feature mover's distance (FMD) loss based on optimal transportation, which can measure the distance between unordered point cloud features effectively. Extensive experiments conducted on shape classification, part segmentation, and semantic segmentation benchmarks demonstrate the universality and superiority of our method.
Using Neck Muscle Afferentation to Control an Ongoing Limb Movement? Individual Differences in the Influence of Brief Neck Vibration

When preparing and executing goal-directed actions, neck proprioceptive information is critical to determining the relative positions of the body and target in space. While the contribution of neck proprioception for upper-limb movements has been previously investigated, we could not find evidence discerning its impact on the planning vs. online control of upper-limb trajectories. To investigate these distinct sensorimotor processes, participants performed discrete reaches towards a virtual target. On some trials, neck vibration was randomly applied before and/or during the movement, or not at all. The main dependent variable was the medio-lateral/directional bias of the reaching finger. The neck vibration conditions induced early leftward trajectory biases in some participants and late rightward trajectory biases in others. These different patterns of trajectory biases were explained by individual differences in the use of body-centered and head-centered frames of reference. Importantly, the current study provides direct evidence that sensory cues from the neck muscles contribute to the online control of goal-directed arm movements, likely accompanied by significant individual differences.
Nature of Ancestral Orogenic Zone in Nuclear Central America

The pre-late Paleozoic basement complex of nuclear Central America is exposed in an arcuate zone that extends from the Caribbean Sea to Chiapas, Mexico. The trend of this arc parallels fold trends in younger sedimentary rocks on both sides of the arc, which has led to the widespread, previously unsubstantiated assumption that structural trends in the ancestral orogenic zone also form an arcuate regional pattern. Analysis of structural and lithologic trends in five areas of this arc indicates that the pre-late Paleozoic ancestral orogenic zone has undergone two phases of penetrative deformation. Folds of the first phase, which was most intense, are oriented parallel with the arc, as suspected, whereas folds of the second phase have north-trending vertical axial planes. The distribution of lithologies in the orogenic zone suggests that the premetamorphic provenance was the widespread Precambrian terrane of southern Mexico. The angular relationship of basement complex structural trends on opposite sides of the Cuilco-Chixoy-Polochic fault zone, which appears to be the most likely boundary between the Americas and Caribbean plates during Cenozoic time, limits left-lateral offset along this zone to less than 150 km.
Can ChatGPT Guide Parents on Tympanostomy Tube Insertion?

Background: The emergence of ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI, has introduced a novel avenue for patients to seek medically related information. This technology holds significant promise in terms of accessibility and convenience. However, the use of ChatGPT as a source of accurate information enhancing patient education and engagement requires careful consideration. The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy and reliability of ChatGPT in providing information on the indications and management of complications post-tympanostomy, the most common pediatric procedure in otolaryngology. Methods: We prompted ChatGPT-3.5 with questions and compared its generated responses with the recommendations provided by the latest American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) “Clinical Practice Guideline: Tympanostomy Tubes in Children (Update)”. Results: A total of 23 responses were generated by ChatGPT against the AAO-HNSF guidelines. Following a thorough review, it was determined that 22/23 (95.7%) responses exhibited a high level of reliability and accuracy, closely aligning with the gold standard. Conclusion: Our research study indicates that ChatGPT may be of assistance to parents in search of information regarding tympanostomy tube insertion and its clinical implications.
The design and testing of a relaxed eddy accumulation system

A flux measuring system has been developed based on relaxed eddy accumulation (REA, or conditional sampling) methodology. The system uses sampling tubes packed with solid substrates to collect air samples for determining the average concentration of compounds of interest. It has been designed for measuring fluxes of various trace gas species by using appropriate solid substrates in the tubes. The chief advantages to this design are the following : (1) the placement of pump and flow control apparatus are located downstream of the sampling tubes to eliminate sample heating and reduce contamination of the sample stream ; (2) the addition of a zero gas channel available to the sampling tubes improves the flow stability without diluting the sample ; (3) the design permits the use of multiple sample tube magazines to allow sequential runs without interruption ; and (4) the use of compact, easily transportable sampling tubes permits analyses to be conducted at an off-site laboratory where analytical conditions are better controlled. The REA system was tested by measuring water vapor flux under field conditions and the resulting measurements are compared with those made using a Bowen ratio system. The two methods gave similar results with fluxes values that agreed within 12%, although the measurements from the REA system were generally higher than those from the Bowen ratio method.
Toward an SGX-Friendly Java Runtime

Hardware enclaves assist in constructing a trusted execution environment (TEE) to store private code and data and thus become an appealing solution to enhance applications’ security. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art enclave implementations like Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) have severe performance issues and hinder the deployment of more complicated applications, especially those written in high-level languages like Java. To reduce the performance overhead, prior work has partitioned applications or rebuilt lightweight language runtimes, but they either require manual labor from developers or fail to provide full-fledged support for existing applications. This work instead provides <italic>SAJ</italic>, a runtime built upon a full-fledged Java virtual machine (JVM) and thus requires no modifications to applications. <italic>SAJ</italic> first analyzes the performance of vanilla JVMs running in enclaves and finds that the memory management overhead and boot phase are culprits for performance slowdown. For memory management, <italic>SAJ</italic> introduces SGX-aware heap layout and garbage collector, which reduces both GC and application execution time. As for the boot phase, <italic>SAJ</italic> introduces an address-conscious launching mechanism to improve the boot performance. The evaluation under representative Java applications shows that <italic>SAJ</italic> can reduce the overall GC pause time, application time, and boot time by 2.93<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{\times}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mo mathvariant="bold">×</mml:mo></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wu-ieq1-3318400.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, 2.58<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{\times}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mo mathvariant="bold">×</mml:mo></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wu-ieq2-3318400.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, and 2.73<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol{\times}$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mo mathvariant="bold">×</mml:mo></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wu-ieq3-3318400.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> on average, respectively.
Breaking the seal at Grímsvötn, Iceland

Abstract Of several problems associated with theoretical explanations of the jökulhlaups which emerge from the outlet glacier Skeiðarárjökull of the ice cap Vatnajökull in southeast Iceland, the mechanism of flood initiation is one that has hitherto defied explanation. We provide such an explanation based on a careful analysis of the classical Nye-Röthlisberger model; near the subglacial lake Grímsvötn, the hydraulic potential gradient is towards the lake, and there is therefore a catchment boundary under the ice, whose location depends on the subglacial meltwater drainage characteristics. As the conditions for a flood approach, we show that the water divide migrates towards the lake, while at the same time the lake pressure increases. When the hydraulic potential gradient towards the lake is low and the refilling rate is slow, the seal will "break" when the catchment boundary reaches the lake, while the lake level is still below flotation pressure, whereas if refilling is rapid, flotation can be achieved before a flood is initiated. This theory can thus explain why the seal is normally broken when the lake level at Grímsvötn is still some 60 m below flotation level. In addition, we are able to explain why the jökulhlaup following the 1996 eruption did not occur until flotation level was achieved, and we show how the cyclicity and magnitude of jökulhlaups can be explained within this theory.
Occlusions in camera networks and vision: the bridge between topological recovery and metric reconstruction

Camera networks are widely used for security and tracking. Knowledge of camera locations and geometric constraints in the environment are usually assumed in order to accomplish these tasks. However, many of these tasks do not require actual localization. Topological information about the network coverage is many times sufficient. In this work, a simplicial representation called the CN-Complex is presented which captures accurate topological information about the coverage of the network. The construction process of this representation relies on the detection of occlusion events. Occlusions are shown to occur when certain generalized topological invariants are violated. The use of these sparse events leads to algorithms which require the extraction of information from continuous observations. The CN -Complex is shown to be useful for navigation and path identification purposes. Augmenting this representation leads to the discovery of relations between camera pairs providing relative positions at different degrees of accuracy. These relations create a bridge between a purely topological model and a fully localized network. Several theoretical results are shown for occlusion detection and topology recovery, which are then validated by simulations and experiments.
Trends in Precipitation Extremes in the Zhujiang River Basin, South China

Abstract Spatial and temporal characteristics of precipitation trends in the Zhujiang River basin, South China, are analyzed. Nonparametric trend tests are applied to daily precipitation data from 192 weather stations between 1961 and 2007 for the following indices: annual, monthly, and daily precipitation; annual and monthly number of rain days and precipitation intensity; annual and monthly maximum precipitation; 5-day maximum precipitation, number of rainstorms with >50 mm day−1, and peaks over thresholds (90th, 95th, and 99th percentile). The results show that few stations experienced trends in the precipitation indices on an annual basis. On a monthly basis, significant positive and negative trends above the 90% confidence level appear in all months except December. Trends in the indices of monthly precipitation, rain intensity, rain days, and monthly maximum precipitation show very similar characteristics. They experience the most distinct negative (positive) trends in October (January). A change of.
S-Wave Velocity Tomography: Small-Scale Laboratory Application

Arrays of bender elements are combined with simple, yet robust inversion algorithms to develop a device for S-wave tomography. A fixed frame configuration complemented with a new versatile bender element installation permits reducing measurement errors. System design involves optimal selection of transducer separation, a frame design that prevents wave transmission, and an adequate calibration procedure. Reliable tomographic images are obtained by combining data preprocessing and the regularized least squares solution. Given the small size of the data sets, inversion techniques based on a parametric representation of the medium are implemented as well. The tomographic system is tested at low confinement and within a true triaxial cell. Results show the potential of tomographic imaging in the characterization of geotechnical systems and in the monitoring of subsurface processes. In particular, shear wave velocity tomography permits monitoring changes in the velocity field, which is related to the average effective stress in freshly-remolded uncemented soils. A minimum anomaly size and velocity contrast are required for detection. Diffraction healing hinders the detection of low velocity anomalies.
Seismic anisotropy within the Tibetan crust

Tibet is one of the most actively deforming areas in the World, as demonstrated by its surface topography, faulting, and seismicity. This deformation results in the development of finite strain within the Tibetan crust that produces seismic anisotropy. We infer the distribution of seismic anisotropy within the Tibetan crust by using shortand the intermediateperiod surface waves and crustal reverberations of teleseismic body waves. SEISMIC ANISOTROPY WITHIN THE TIBETAN CRUST
Perception of the Vulnerability of Quilombola Farmers in Alcântara, Eastern Amazonia, Brazil

Abstract This study addresses the contextual vulnerability of farmers using participatory risk mapping with different stakeholders. Additionally, through logistic regression, it identifies factors that influence the perception of climate risk. The results indicate that the perception and relevance of stressors vary among different stakeholders, as well as among farmers of different genders and ages. Non-climatic stressors are more relevant to farmers’ livelihoods than climatic ones, although their interaction can exacerbate the impacts. Non-climate stressors identified in the past in the region continue to exacerbate communities’ vulnerability. The lack of technical assistance is the most serious stressor. The lack of land and the delayed rains are the most severe stressors. Farmers’ knowledge of climate change did not influence their perception of climate risks. Public climate adaptation policies should consider the local context, as well as the gender and age distributions of the public involved.
The boarding school legacy : ten contemporary Lakota women tell their stories

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of boarding schools on the lives of Lakota women through their lived experiences as children, adolescents, and adults. The participants related their experiences through a series of open ended questions. The first interview established information about and initial impressions of the boarding school, including everyday activities and how the women felt about being away from home. The second interview allowed the women to describe the impact the boarding school had on their emotional growth and maturation. The final interview discussed how they presently function in their daily lives and the relationship it has to their experiences at boarding school. The study found that the boarding school experience produced intergenerational effects, particularly on their ability to love themselves and to nurture their children and families. The second finding was that the psychological punishment of loneliness and alienation from the family had a far greater impact on the individuals than the physical punishment. The third finding was that although the women who attended boarding schools were prepared with the skills to lead productive lives, they could not do so effectively until they had begun healing from their experiences. The final conclusion of this study was that by speaking and telling their stories, the participants believed that they could bring healing to themselves and to other women who have had similar experiences at boarding schools.
Liquefied Petroleum Gas Stations Disaster Risk Preparedness Assessment of Port Harcourt City, Nigeria

This study assessed the risk management or preparedness measures in Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) stations in Port Harcourt metropolis. The sample size of this study comprised of 79 licensed Liquefied Petroleum Gas Stations located within the metropolis obtained from the regulatory agency. The data were collected, administered analyzed using Kobocollect App, Spearman Rank Correlation and percentages. The findings reveal that 96.2% of gas stations were stand-alone while 3.8% are with petrol stations, the storage tanks are cylindrical and were placed above-ground. Majority (88.61%) of the staff have been trained in safety and firefighting with 65.82% possessing automated Gas detector, 21.52% having mechanical gas detector, 8.68% having both mechanical and automated gas detectors while 5.06% have no leak detection devices. Also, 88.61% of gas stations have emergency plans, 3.8% have no emergency plans while on how often drills were conducted; 50.63% of respondents indicated that drills were conducted once, 22.78% twice and 3.8% thrice a year. Finally, it was found that 86.7% of the vulnerability to LPG station risk is determined by the type of station. There is therefore the need for regular assessment and monitoring of facilities by the regulatory agency to mitigate potential disasters due to LPG stations for sustainable development in the metropolis.
Neuroscience Data Formats, Models, Repositories and Analytics: A Review

As neurotechnologies have gotten better, a lot of neuroscientific research has been done using these new technologies. Even though labs all over the world produce a lot of neuro-data, most of this data has not been shared to help people from different fields understand neuroscience. The neuro-data sharing is essential because it accelerates the pace of discovery in neuroscience. Effective data sharing will depend on the standardized use of file or data formats, highly reusable data analytics tools, and data storage formats. In this review paper, we review the four domains (data format, data model, data repository, and data analytics) that are currently in use in the neuroscience community. In the end, we are discussing several challenges associated with data sharing.
Contextual dependencies during motor-preparation in the Go/No-Go DSP task

Context-dependant learning refers to the phenomenon that there is better performance on a task when the environmental context that is present during learning matches the context that is present during testing. The present study examined whether contextual dependencies, which have been found in motor movements, can also be found in the preparation phase of these movements. Furthermore a possible mediator role of task difficulty and practice was examined. Therefore two context manipulations (switched and novel), two sequence lengths (three-key and six-key) and two practice groups (limited and extended practice) were included. The results demonstrated contextual dependencies for the shorter threekey sequence in both context manipulations. However, these results were not confirmed for the six-key sequence because no effects of context manipulation have been found for this sequence length. A possible explanation for these findings is that context manipulation prevented full sequence preparation for the three-key sequence due to insufficient time for the cognitive processor to prepare the sequence – this was not the case for the longer sequence as time to prepare and identify the sequence was remarkably longer than for the shorter sequence. Furthermore no differences in the development of contextual dependencies between practice groups have been found indicating that the amount of practice does not mediate the development of contextual dependencies for three-key sequences in motor-preparation tasks.
Holocene Sedimentation and Sea Level Rise in the Sado Estuary, Portugal

The general geomorphologic developmental history of the Sado estuary is tied to the history of sea-level rise during the middle and late Holocene and to the history of sediment transport both downstream by the fluvial drainage system and alongshore by the northerly coastal drift. Several deep cores in the Sado estuary show an encroachment of Holocene sediments upward and inland across the Pleistocene surface. Although the trend line depicts a persistent sea-level-rise rate of about 1.7 mm/yr. , this is an average and there is stratigraphic evidence for variation as interpreted from the sediment facies in the cores. Similar to other areas, the sediment history is one of transgression and some vertical accumulation during the rising phase, whereas horizontal accretion was delayed until after a reduction in the rate of rise about 2600 BP, when the fringing marsh began to develop and expand into the estuary. Abundant quantities of sand were brought into the southern portion of the estuary by alongshore drifting and barrier spit development. It is likely that major spit elongation and dune development coincided with the initiation of a lower rate of sea level rise and that both the spit and the estuary had contemporaneous positive budgets. An increased rate of sea-level rise in the past several centuries plus many centuries of human interference with sediment transport is responsible for the re-initiation of wetland attenuation through modern-day erosion and destruction of the margins of the high marsh.