Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Field verification of the Nelson dead fuel moisture model and comparisons with National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) predictions

The role of dead fuel moisture in prescribed fire and wildfire is especially critical, since dead fuels are typically involved in the start of a wildland fire and are the fuels which carry the fire. In the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS), dead fuels are separated into four time-lag classes: 1-hour, 10-hour, 100-hour, and 1000-hour. Originally developed in the 1970s, these algorithms use once-a-day weather information and are designed to estimate dead fuel moisture for midafternoon conditions. During the 1990s Ralph Nelson of the USDA Forest Service developed a theoretical model for dead fuel moisture to take advantage of frequent weather observations from automated weather monitoring stations. The model accounts for the physics of moisture and heat transfer and includes processes of rainfall and dewfall. The model as originally published was only for 10-hour dead fuels. Since 2000, however, Nelson developed fuel stick parameters to allow the model to be run for the three other size fuel classes using hourly weather data. Inputs to the “Nelson model” are air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, and rainfall. This presentation will compare the performance of the Nelson model for all four dead fuel classes against measured dead fuel moisture over a 21-month period at Slapout, Oklahoma, in the Oklahoma panhandle. Twice-daily weighings of ponderosa pine fuel sticks representing all four fuel classes were made during this period, from which fuel moisture was later calculated. Comparisons will also be made to dead fuel moisture calculations from the older NFDRS algorithms. During this 21-month period, the Nelson model showed improvement over NFDRS for each size fuel class, and r values against the measured data ranged from 0.51 (1000-hour fuels) to 0.79 (10-hour fuels). A calibrated version of the Nelson model is currently being used operationally in the Oklahoma Fire Danger Model on the OK-FIRE Web site (http://okfire.mesonet.org). Oklahoma Mesonet data are used to calculate current dead fuel moisture for all four dead fuel classes, while 84-hour forecast output from the NAM model is used to calculate future values. These dead fuel moisture products have relevance to both prescribed fire and wildfire.
On the identification of hidden pointwise Hölder exponents

Un court résumé en français Mots clés: Processus, Statistique mathématique. L’exposant de Hölder ponctuel (EHP) d’un processus stochastique X permet de mesurer la régularité locale de X. Nombre d’auteurs se sont déjà intéressés au problème de l’estimation de cet exposant à partir de l’observation d’une trajectoire discrétisée de X (voir par exemple [1, 4, 5, 9]). Cependant, il ne semble pas toujours réaliste de supposer qu’une telle observation est directement accessible mais seulement une version corrompue de celle-ci. Est-il alors possible d’effectuer l’estimation ? A notre connaissance, cette question a été assez peu étudiée dans la littérature et les articles qui l’abordent se placent dans un cadre qui est essentiellement celui de processus Gaussiens à accoissements stationnaires [8, 11]; l’EHP a alors une structure relativement simple puisqu’il reste contant au cours du temps. L’objectif de notre exposé est d’etudier cette question dans un cadre nouveau, celui du mouvement Brownien multifractionnaire; l’EHP de ce processus a généralement une structure assez complexe parce qu’il varie d’un instant à l’autre (voir par [3, 10, 2]).
Improving the Egomotion Estimation by Correcting the Calibration Bias

We present a novel approach for improving the accuracy of the egomotion recovered from rectified stereoscopic video. The main idea of the proposed approach is to correct the camera calibration by exploiting the known groundtruth motion. The correction is described by a discrete deformation field over a rectangular superpixel lattice covering the whole image. The deformation field is recovered by optimizing the reprojection error of point feature correspondences in neighboring stereo frames under the groundtruth motion. We evaluate the proposed approach by performing leave one out evaluation experiments on a collection of KITTI sequences with common calibration parameters, by comparing the accuracy of stereoscopic visual odometry with original and corrected calibration parameters. The results suggest a clear and significant advantage of the proposed approach. Our best algorithm outperforms all other approaches based on two-frame correspondences on the KITTI odometry benchmark.
Secure Data Provenance and Inference Control with Semantic Web

With an ever-increasing amount of information on the web, it is critical to understand the pedigree, quality, and accuracy of your data. Using provenance, you can ascertain the quality of data based on its ancestral data and derivations, track back to sources of errors, allow automatic re-enactment of derivations to update data, and provide attribution of the data source. Secure Data Provenance and Inference Control with Semantic Web supplies step-by-step instructions on how to secure the provenance of your data to make sure it is safe from inference attacks. It details the design and implementation of a policy engine for provenance of data and presents case studies that illustrate solutions in a typical distributed health care system for hospitals. Although the case studies describe solutions in the health care domain, you can easily apply the methods presented in the book to a range of other domains.The book describes the design and implementation of a policy engine for provenance and demonstrates the use of Semantic Web technologies and cloud computing technologies to enhancethe scalability of solutions. It covers Semantic Web technologies for the representation and reasoning of the provenance of the data and provides a unifying framework for securing provenance that can help to address the various criteria of your information systems. Illustrating key concepts and practical techniques, the book considers cloud computing technologies that can enhance the scalability of solutions. After reading this book you will be better prepared to keep up with the on-going development of the prototypes, products, tools, and standards for secure data management, secure Semantic Web, secure web services, and secure cloud computing.
Nudging intrinsic motivation in environmental risk and social policy

Abstract Public and private institutions implement behavioral insights into policies to manage risks associated with environmental and social challenges. However, many such policies rely on providing external incentives, which inhibits sustained behavior change. We propose that message framing can be used to leverage intrinsic motivation toward pro-environmental and pro-social behaviors. Designing messages to raise feelings of autonomous choice has been shown to catalyze intrinsic engagement in promoted activities. We carried out a six-week randomized controlled trial (N = 128) to compare effects between autonomy-supportive messages and messages that contained social norms. Outcomes focused on engagement in sustainable behaviors, such as limiting electricity consumption and opting for locally produced goods. There were no significant differences in intrinsic motivation, participation in sustainable behaviors, or well-being for those frames, yet we observed moderate-to-strong relationships between these variables. While this indicates the specific intervention was not effective at inducing change, it is clear that effective risk policies should leverage intrinsic motivation to act sustainably. Harnessing the power of intrinsic motives will have a great chance at inducing lasting social change as well as improving well-being.
Lesions of the hippocampal formation but not lesions of the fornix or the mammillary nuclei produce long-lasting memory impairment in monkeys

A group of tasks sensitive to human amnesia were used to characterize the severity and duration of memory impairment in monkeys following bilateral damage to the hippocampal formation, fornix, or mammillary nuclei. Monkeys with hippocampal formation lesions (which included the hippocampus proper, dentate gyrus, subiculum, posterior entorhinal cortex, and much of the parahippocampal gyrus) exhibited a substantial and lasting memory impairment. Monkeys with fornix transection or bilateral damage to the mammillary nuclei were impaired on the first task administered after surgery (delayed nonmatching to sample). However, they performed all the other tasks normally and were unimpaired when the delayed nonmatching to sample task was re- administered 18 months after surgery. The findings are consistent with reports that damage limited to the human hippocampus can produce a clinically significant and permanent amnesia. Because fornix transection or mammillary lesions produced only transient memory impairment, it seems unlikely that similar damage in humans can cause a severe or permanent amnesia.
Exploring generative growth and evolutionary computation in architectural design

1 Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London martin.hemberg@imperial.ac. uk 2 Emergent Design and Technologies, Architectural Association achimmenges@aaschool.ac. uk, mdcg@aaschool.ac. uk 3 Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT unamay@csail.mit. edu 4 Adaptive Architecture and Computation, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London katrin.jonas@ucl.ac. uk 5 Southern California Institute of Architecture steve@virtual-architect.com
Referrals to a mental health criminal justice Liaison and diversion team in the North East of England

ABSTRACT There is growing interest in the health correlates of people detained in police custody, and a number of innovations have been introduced to try to meet the complex needs of detainees. The implementation of Criminal Justice Liaison and Diversion (CJL&D) Services commissioned by the Department of Health in England is a substantial part of this investment. In this paper, we describe data from 858 detainees who were referred to the CJL&D service of a busy metropolitan police station in the North East of England. The detainees referred to the service had complex mental health needs, substance misuse and a range of vulnerabilities requiring specific intervention. The effective operation of these teams and how they interface with health and criminal justice systems also depend upon a number of systematic issues that emanate both from within the teams, and from external policy drivers.
Anisotropic strains and magnetoresistance of La0.7Ca0.3MnO3

Thin films of perovskite manganite La0.7Ca0. 3MnO3 were grown epitaxially on SrTiO3(100), MgO(100) and LaAlO3(100) substrates by the pulsed laser deposition method. Microscopic structures of these thin film samples as well as a bulk sample were fully determined by x-ray diffraction measurements. The unit cells of the three films have different shapes, i.e., contracted tetragonal, cubic, and elongated tetragonal for SrTiO3, MgO, and LaAlO3, respectively, while the unit cell of the bulk is cubic. It is found that the samples with a cubic unit cell show smaller peak magnetoresistance at low fields (≲1 T) than the noncubic ones do. The present result demonstrates that the magnetoresistance of La0.7Ca0. 3MnO3 at low fields can be controlled by lattice distortion via externally imposed strains.
MAC enhancements for wireless LANs

In current WiFi networks, to transmit a 1500 byte packet, as the physical data rate increases to about 1Gbps, the throughput just increases up to 55 Mbps. The reason for this throughput inefficiency stems from the fundamental limitations existed in the current WLANs. In this paper, we review two recent MAC enhancements that improve the throughput efficiency: the idle sense scheme and the aggregation with fragment retransmission (AFR) scheme, and discuss their respective advantages and disadvantages.
Recent advances in Japanese encephalitis

Japanese encephalitis (JE), the most important cause of epidemic encephalitis worldwide, is confined to Asia, but its geographical area is spreading. West Nile virus, and other closely related flaviviruses, cause similar disease elsewhere. Recent cryoelectron microscopic studies have characterized the flavivirus envelope protein as a new class of viral fusion protein (class II), and examined its arrangement on the virion surface. Changes in the envelope protein’s hinge region, or its putative receptor-binding domain, are associated with changes in neurovirulence in animal models of JE. Clinically, JE causes a wide range of presentations, including a poliolike flaccid paralysis. Seizures and raised intracranial pressure are associated with a poor outcome, and may be potentially treatable. A safe efficacious formalin-inactivated vaccine against JE has been available for many years, but is too expensive for use in most Asian countries. A newer live attenuated vaccine has been used in China, but its use elsewhere has been restricted by regulatory concerns. A chimeric vaccine in which JE structural proteins are inserted into the 17D yellow fever vaccine backbone is one of several vaccines in development. There are no established antiviral treatments against JE. Interferon alpha was the most promising drug in small open trials, but a recent double-blind placebo controlled trial showed that it did not affect the outcome in children with JE.
Energy efficiency optimization in millimeter wave backhaul heterogeneous networks

Within the last few years, there has been a massive growth in the number of wireless devices and internet connections. This is expected to continue during the next few years. To satisfy the resulting high data traffic demands, dramatic expansion of network infrastructures as well as fast escalation of energy demands are expected. Meanwhile, there has been a growing concern about the energy consumption of wireless communication systems and their global carbon footprint. To that end, future wireless systems must satisfy three main requirements. Firstly, they must provide users with very high throughput. Secondly, they must be able to provide seamless connectivity as well as ubiquitous access to the expected enormous number of users. Finally, they must achieve the first two points with less energy consumption. The requirements can be summarized into the joint optimization of energy efficiency (EE), user association and backhaul (BH) flow assignment, which remains a fundamental objective in the design of next generation networks. This thesis consists of two studies on EE maximization in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). In the first study, it is assumed that each user has already been associated to a single base station (BS). Under this setting, We consider enforcing a strict throughput demand on all user equipment (UEs), called joint EE, power, and flow control (JEEPF), versus allowing an acceptable range of demands for each, called joint EE, power, flow control, and throughput (JEEPFT). This minor change causes a drastic difference in the formulation of both problems. JEEPF is convex while JEEPFT is quasiconvex, for which we propose a bisection method-based approach. In the second study, the problem of user association is added to the joint optimization of EE, power and BH flow control, and an energy efficient user association, power and flow control (EEUAPF) algorithm is proposed. The original EEUAPF optimization problem is a non-convex mixed integer programming problem, and therefore NP-hard. We show how this non-convex problem can be tailored into a form that can be approached using a classical mathematical programming technique called column generation and convex programming to derive the optimal solution with a low complexity. Simulation results are used to demonstrate the EE gains of the proposed approaches in both studies.
PENGARUH PEMBELAJARAN COOPERATIVE LEARNING TIPE PAIR CHECK UNTUK MENINGKATKAN KEMAMPUAN REPRESENTASI MATEMATIS SISWA PADA KONSEP BANGUN DATAR

Matematika menggambarkan “bidang ilmu” yang dikaji dalam aktivitas belajar & mengajar oleh setiap jenjang pendidikan. Pembelajaran matematika dianggap sulit “dipecahkan” bagi peserta-didik, khususnya peserta-didik di jenjang sekolah dasar (SD). Hal ini dikarenakan sedikitnya keinganan peserta-didik untuk “belajar matematika” terhadap bahan pelajaran yang diberikan oleh guru. Situasi tersebut disebabkan oleh beberapa hal-hal, diantaranya; (1) belajar matematika kurang menarik karena gaya belajar oleh pendidik membuat anak-anak bosan; (2) belajar matematika hanya sebatas anak-didik mendapatkan nilai, tetapi tidak sampai makna pembelajarannya; (3) matematika selalu dihapal, bukan belajar secara konsep. Selain itu kemampuan-representasi matematis kurang diaplikasikan di- sekolah-sekolah, padahal anak bisa mengutarakan pendapat-nya, hasil pemikiran, ataupun inspirasi pada penyelesaian sebuah problem yang diberikan dengan “kemampuan representasi”. Oleh, karena itu “pendidik” harusnya mampu merakit gaya yang membuat anak-didik terpacu motivasinya, penggunaan “Model Pair-Check” kiranya dapat menggugah selera belajar para-siswa dengan target anak-didik bisa menambah “kecakapan belajar”. Gaya pembelajaran pair check dapat diartikan juga dengan pasangan mengecek, peserta didikdisusun kedalam beberapa kelompok dan tiap-tiap kelompok terdiri dari (dua) pasangan, pada sandingan ada yang berperan sebagai partner dan adapula yang berperan sebagai pelatih. Penelitian yang diterapkan ialah “eksperimen”, dengan desain penelitian quasi-eksperimen dengan bentuk nonequivalent control group design.Instrumen yang digunakannya setiap ketercapaian hasil indikator kemampuan representasi matematis lebih baik dikelas eksperimen. Indikator pertama, kedua, dan ketiga ketercapaian kelas eksperimen 75%, 62,50% dan 83,46% dan pada kelas kontrol 58,33%, 44,23% dan 55,13%. Mengenai skala sikap, wawancara, dan lembar observasi aktivitas siswa memiliki sikap positif terhadap pembelajaran cooperative learning tipe pair check terhadap “kemampuan representasi matematis” siswa pada konsepsi bangun datar. Simpulannya bahwa kemampuan representasi matematis siswa kelas eksperimen dengan memakai pembelajaran cooperative learning tipe pair check lebih baik daripada memakai kelas kontrol yang memanfaatkan pembelajaran konvensional. Selama pembelajaran menggunakan pair check, siswa menunjukkan sikap yang positif.
Thinking critically about critical thinking

Thinking is not a spectator sport. Research has shown that the skills of critical thinking must be practiced with a wide variety of problems in many different contexts in order to be learned and retained. The exercises, questions and reviews in this workbook are designed to provide the systematic practice needed to help readers become more critical thinkers. By reading and responding to the questions before reading the accompanying chapter in the text, readers will develop a framwork that will help them to comprehend, anticipate and organize the information in the accompanying chapter. Based on principles of active learning with authentic tasks, all of the exercises were written to be similar to problems and situations readers are likely to encounter in real life - and they provide numerous examples for both short and extended writing assignments. Problems include topics such as saving money; understanding a research report that appears in a newspaper; recognizing propaganda; reaching reasoned conclusions; avoiding common biases; and deciding when a risk is "too risky". These exercises also work well for cooperative learning projects and are designed to help adult learners develop the skills and the habits of mind essential for life-long learning.
Multicast scheduling for switches with multiple input-queues

We address the problem of serving multicast traffic in input-queued packet switches. Head-of-line blocking is a major problem in input-queued switches. It can be avoided in unicast switches by maintaining a queue per output port at each input port. This is not feasible in multicast switches, since the number of destination multicast addresses is exponential in the number of output ports. Our approach is to maintain a limited number of input queues for multicast traffic. We solve two key resulting problems: (1) how to assign incoming packets to queues, and (2) which packets should be selected to transfer to output queues. Through heuristic arguments and simulation we show that our architecture leads to significant improvements in switch throughput over the best existing scheduling algorithms. Since modern links operate at very high speeds, we take care to ensure that the scheduling algorithm can be implemented efficiently in hardware.
Topology aware - beaconless reactive wireless sensor network

A wireless network architecture is suggested to support the increasing demand of low-power, short range ubiquitous, ad-hoc (self-configuration) communication for fixed, embedded or portable devices. It is envisaged that the proposed communication network architecture supports applications like wireless sensor networks and smart environments. We describe a network architecture and topology capable of integrating different wireless transmission technologies - suitable to support dense network of communication devices (nodes). The network is heterogeneous as nodes can have different wireless communication means, tailored to their individual role in the network and other constraints (e.g. power consumption), and thereby allow different communication patterns (e.g. bi-directional, uni-directional). To optimize power consumption and network latency, a new addressing mechanism at the MAC level is combined with a novel "always on" receiver architecture.
Definition, epidemiology and natural history of COPD

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fifth cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world and represents a substantial economic and social burden. Patients experience a progressive deterioration up to end-stage COPD, characterised by very severe airflow limitation, severely limited and declining performance status with chronic respiratory failure, advanced age, multiple comorbidities and severe systemic manifestations/complications. COPD is frequently underdiagnosed and under-treated. Today, COPD develops earlier in life and is less gender specific. Tobacco smoking is the major risk factor for COPD, followed by occupation and air pollution. Severe deficiency for α1-antitrypsin is rare; several phenotypes are being associated with elevated risk for COPD in the presence of risk factor exposure. Any patient presenting with cough, sputum production or dyspnoea should be assessed by standardised spirometry. Continued exposure to noxious agents promotes a more rapid decline in lung function and increases the risk for repeated exacerbations, eventually leading to end-stage disease. Without major efforts in prevention, there will be an increasing proportion of end-stage patients who can live longer through long-term oxygen therapy and assisted ventilation, but with elevated suffering and huge costs. Smoking prevention and smoking cessation are the most important epidemiological measurements to counteract chronic obstructive pulmonary disease epidemics.