Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Climatic Characteristics of High Temperatures in Jiangsu Province in Recent 50 Years

Based on data of high temperature days during the period 1961-2007 in Jiangsu Province, climatic variation trends, periodicity features, and temporal-spatial distribution of high temperature days in the recent 50 years were analyzed by means of climatic trend and analysis of wavelets. Results show that the spatial distribution of high temperature days exhibited an increasing trend along the northeast to southwest, and the high temperature days in the southern region exceeded those in the northeastern coastal region. Among interannual changes, obvious positive departure periods occurred mainly from the 1960s to the early 1970s, and from 2001 to 2007. The number of high temperature days from the 1960s to the early 1970s was relatively higher. Especially in the region south of the Yangtze River, Nanjing, for instance, the departure was 25 to 30 days. Negative departure periods were in the middle 1970s, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, and the middle and late 1990s. Obvious and strong negative departure periods were in the middle 1970s, 1981, 1986, and 2006, and the departure was minus 6 days. Considering general climate change trends, the annual number of high temperature days decreased in the north of the Yangtze River. The southern region of the Yangtze River showed an increasing trend. The value of decreasing or increasing days was about 0.3 per decade. It was found that in the periodicity distribution, variation periods of above 10a demonstrated the striking features of stability and integrity. High temperature days in the region south of Jiangsu and along the Yangtze River lied in the rising period according to long time period in late years, but for regions north of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province the high temperature days lied in a gradually decreasing period according to long time accumulated data analysis. Abrupt climate changes in annual high temperature days can be found in different temporal scales in all regions of the province. In northwestern Jiangsu, changes occurred in 1968. In the northeastern region, these changes were recorded in years 1970, 1983, and 1988. More changes can also be observed in the Jianghuai region happening in years 1972, 1975, and 1982, whereas along the Yangtze River and in southern Jiangsu, such abrupt climate changes were documented in years 1971, 1977, 1983, and 2002.
Integrating research and management to conserve wildfowl (Anatidae) and wetlands in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, U.S.A

Les efforts actuels de conservation des zones d'hivernage pour les anatides, Anatidae, dans la plaine alluviale du Mississippi inferieur (Lower Mississippi Valley - LMV), aux Etats-Unis, sont diriges par Joint Venture, un programme elabore dans le cadre du Plan de Gestion des Oiseaux d'Eau Nord-Americain (North American Waterfowl Management Plan - NAWMP). Le programme Joint Venture est base sur un concept biologique, elabore en commun par les chercheurs et gestionnaires des oiseaux d'eau. Les elements importants de ce plan comprennent: (1) des objectifs quantitatifs pour les populations, (2) une evaluation des facteurs limitants potentiels, (3) la mise en evidence des relations entre l'abondance des populations d'anatides et les caracteristiques de l'habitat, (4) des objectifs quantitatifs pour les habitats de gagnage et (5) des criteres d'evaluation de la reussite du programme. L'objectif quantitatif pour les populations de la plaine alluviale du Mississippi (MAV), defini par le programme Joint Venture, est de permettre a 4,3 millions de canards de survivre a l'hiver pour pouvoir rejoindre les populations reproductrices continentales au printemps. Selon les donnees dont nous disposons actuellement, l'habitat de gagnage est probablement le facteur primaire limitant les populations de canards hivernant dans la plaine alluviale du Mississippi. Pour definir la quantite d'habitat necessaire, nous nous sommes bases sur une periode d'hivernage de 110 jours et nous avons calcule qu'une population de 4,3 millions de canards reproducteurs (plus 15% pour tenir compte de la mortalite hivernale) aurait eu besoin, l'hiver precedent, de 546 millions de jours de gagnage. Ensuite, nous avons estime les besoins energetiques journaliers, les potentialites trophiques des milieux et les valeurs energetiques des aliments pour calculer la capacite d'accueil, ou le nombre de jours de gagnage-canards disponibles par rapport a la capacite alimentaire des trois principaux habitats de gagnage de la plaine alluviale du Mississippi (zones agricoles inondees, zones humides boisees et zones legerement humides). La disponibilite des habitats de gagnage pourrait ainsi etre utilisee comme critere d'evaluation de la reussite du programme « Joint Venture ». Ce critere, toutefois, ne peut pas etre applique sans un inventaire exact des zones de gagnage. Le developpement d'un concept biologique pour le programme « Joint Venture » a permis aux gestionnaires et chercheurs d'etablir des objectifs appropries pour la gestion des habitats de gagnage et d'identifier les problemes importants qui devraient etre etudies en profondeur.
Finite element analysis of ultimate bearing capacity of strip footing above Karst cave

The ultimate bearing capacity of surface strip footings located above a cylindrical rock void whose axis parallels with the footing axis was investigated. The performance of strip surface footings with and without an underground void was studied using the finite element method. For each footing, there exists a critical depth below which the presence of the void has negligible influence on footing performance. The ultimate bearing capacity values were obtained from the results of analysis and were related graphically to the influencing factors. The results show that the ultimate bearing capacity of foundation drops 1/3 when the width of rock plate upper cave increases from B to 4B within the limits of depth. As the width of rock plate upper cave is certain, the ultimate bearing capacity of foundation increases with the depth, and the caves have little effect on the ultimate bearing capacity of foundation when rock plate upper cave reaches a critical depth.
Fertility in Finland in the 1980s an d 1990s: Analysis of Fertility Trend by Age and Parity

The purpose of this article is to describe the fertility trend in Finland from 1982 to 1999 by age and parity, using age- and parity-specific birth intensities and synthetic cohort measures of period fertility. The findings are discussed in the light of the concurrent changes in family policy and macroeconomic environment, and in the context of fertility developments in other Nordic countries. From 1982 to 1987, first-birth rates decreased while second and higher order birth rates changed little. From 1987, there was a rise in women’s fertility at all parities throughout the reproductive age span. In first births, this increase reverted to a decrease in 1991. Second and higher order birth rates continued to increase until 1994. Third and higher order births have somewhat decreased thereafter. First-birth rates of women over 35 have risen throughout the study period, and the mean age at first birth has increased.
ON THE ZOOGEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS OF CHINA

With a view of revising "The Zoogeographical Regions of China" (1959) written by Cheng Tso-hsin and Zhang Yongzu,the present paper suggests to make the following modifications:1.The southern slopes below the subalpine coniferous forest zone of Himalayas,with such typical species as Presbyiis entellus,Tragopan satyra,Lophophons impe-janus,Bufo himalayna,etc.,may be considered a new subregion of the Southwest Region to be called the Himalayan Subregion.2. The Northeast plain of China (flood plain of Sungari River and Liao River),with its western boundary adjacent to the Mongolian Plateau,characterized by a predominance of species of humid area,such as,Capreolus capreolus,Microtus maxi-mowiczii,Garrulus glandarius,Cyanopica cyana,RSana amurensis,etc.,seems reasonable to be considered a new subregion of the Northeast Region.3. The islands of South China Sea,with Dongsha,Xisha,Zongsha and Nansha Is.included,inhabited by sea turtles and sea birds,may be considered as a whole a new subregion of South China Region.The boundaries of the zoogeograplucal realms and regions are revised in certain sections.The problem about the position of the Great Xhingan Mountains in the Zoogeographical divisional system is discussed.
Sieves and Fossils: Effects of Mesh Size on Paleontological Patterns

Abstract Bulk samples are among the foremost sources of quantitative data retrieved from the fossil record. However, such samples are not sieved in a uniform way, even among research projects with a very similar research focus. Several studies recently have demonstrated the sensitivity of paleontological patterns to changes in sieve size and underscored the importance of controlling for mesh size in paleontological analyses. Building on previous work, this study exploits a large dataset of Miocene mollusks that is fortuitously suitable for exploring the effect of mesh size: dimensions of each fossil were measured, all samples were acquired with fine screens (≤1 mm mesh), and data for numerous paleoecological and taphonomic variables were obtained for each specimen. This large dataset was sieved artificially (i.e., subsampled in computer simulations) to explore the effects of mesh size. The results show that paleontological variables, from taphonomic and paleoecological parameters to diversity indices, can fluctuate, to various degrees, as a function of mesh size. Some parameters (e.g., evenness indices) appear remarkably invariant to mesh size, while others (e.g., encrustation rate) can vary dramatically with a small change in mesh size. Most importantly, even when the compared datasets are sieved uniformly with the same standard mesh size, outcomes of comparative analyses can lead to disparate conclusions when that standard size is changed. The mesh-size sensitivity observed here for a wide assortment of paleontological patterns points to ubiquitous influence of body size on taphonomic, ecological, and evolutionary patterns and underscores the importance of developing sampling strategies and/or corrective analytical measures for making data more comparable in terms of mesh size across and within studies. Future research also should concentrate on evaluating secular trends in size-filtering aspects of extraction methods used to acquire quantitative samples throughout the Phanerozoic fossil record.
Tris(ethylenediamine)cobalt(II) sulfate

The structure of the title compound, [CoII(C2H8N2)3]SO4, the cobalt example of [M(C2H8N2)3]SO4, is reported. The Co and S atoms are located at the 2d and 2c Wyckoff sites (point symmetry 32), respectively. The Co atom is coordinated by six N atoms of three chelating ethylenediamine molecules generated from half of the ethylenediamine molecule in the asymmetric unit. The O atoms of the sulfate anion are disordered mostly over two crystallographic sites. The third disorder site of O (site symmetry 3) has a site occupancy approaching zero. The H atoms of the ethylenediamine molecules interact with the sulfate anions via intermolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding interactions.
Prognostic value of histopathology and trends in cervical cancer : a SEER population study

Background: Histopathology is a cornerstone in the diagnosis of cervical cancer but the prognostic value is controversial. Methods: Women under active follow-up for histologically confirmed primary invasive cervical cancer were selected from the United States Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) 9registries public use data 1973–2002. Only histologies with at least 100 cases were retained. Registry area, age, marital status, race, year of diagnosis, tumor histology, grade, stage, tumor size, number of positive nodes, number of examined nodes, odds of nodal involvement, extent of surgery, and radiotherapy were evaluated in Cox models by stepwise selection using the Akaike Information Criteria. Results: There were 30,989 records evaluable. From 1973 to 2002, number of cases dropped from 1,100 new cases/year to 900/year, but adenocarcinomas and adenosquamous carcinoma increased from 100/year to 235/year. Median age was 48 years. Statistically significant variables for both overall and cause-specific mortality were: age, year of diagnosis, race, stage, histology, grade, hysterectomy, radiotherapy, tumor size and nodal ratio. The histological types were jointly significant, P < 0.001. Cause-specific mortality hazard ratios by histological type relatively to nonmicroinvasive squamous cell carcinoma were: microinvasive squamous cell carcinoma 0.28 (95% confidence interval: 0.20–0.39), carcinoma not otherwise specified 0.91 (0.79–1.04), non-mucinous adenocarcinoma 1.06 (0.98–1.15), adenosquamous carcinoma 1.35 (1.20–1.51), mucinous adenocarcinoma 1.52 (1.23–1.88), small cell carcinoma 1.94 (1.58–2.39). Conclusion: Small cell carcinoma and adenocarcinomas were associated with poorer survival. The incidental observation of increasing numbers of adenocarcinomas despite a general decline suggests the inefficiency of conventional screening for these tumors. Increased incidence of adenocarcinomas, their adverse prognosis, and the young age at diagnosis indicate the need to identify women who are at risk. Published: 23 August 2007 BMC Cancer 2007, 7:164 doi:10.1186/1471-2407-7-164 Received: 17 April 2007 Accepted: 23 August 2007 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral. com/1471-2407/7/164 © 2007 Vinh-Hung et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Assessment of Vascular Age in Asymptomatic Persons in Indian Population

DOI: 10.21276/sjams.2018. 6.12. 52 Abstract: The Concept of vascular age (Age of arteries) is a concept related to cardiovascular risk that might be more easily understood by all patients. This study aimed to evaluate whether vascular age is advanced as matched to their chronological age in apparently healthy, asymptomatic population and to assess the contributing risk factors for premature vascular ageing. Hospital based, observational study of 547 individuals conducted from May 2015 to December 2017. Persons enrolled were asymptomatic with normal ECG, chest X-RAY and ECHO and were drug free. Population enrolled were monitored by regular visit and telephonically for the events. The vascular age of the population was calculated using Framingham vascular age calculator. Statistical analyses were done using SPSS software V 20.0. The cut off value of P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: The mean chronological age of the study population was 53.92+/14.86 years whereas mean vascular age was 63.55+/-15.51 years, and the difference 9.87+/-11.05 between both was statistically significant (P < 0.001). Contributory risk factors for advanced vascular age apart from chronological age were smoking, diabetes, Low HDL, Total cholesterol/HDL ratio and systolic blood pressure. Results of regression analysis showed that vascular age progression was highly associated with, Age 1.059 (C.I 1.016 to 1.105) P=0.007, SBP 1.045 (C.I 1.018 to 1.072), P=0.001, Smoking 2.657(C.I 1.177to6.000) p=0.019, Diabetes mellitus.1. 84 (CI 0.876 to0.958) p= 0.05 and Triglyceride 1.010(1.004to1.016) p=. 001.CONCLUSIONS: Significant difference was observed between chronological and vascular age, so routine screening for vascular age and risk factors (specially lipid profile and blood pressure measurement) is strongly advocated for asymptomatic relatives of patients with IHD.
An efficient method for parametric uncertainty analysis of numerical geophysical models

A new method for parametric uncertainty analysis of numerical geophysical models is presented. It approximates model response surfaces, which are functions of model input parameters, using orthogonal polynomials, whose weighting functions are the probabilistic density functions (PDFs) of the input uncertain parameters. This approach has been applied to the uncertainty analysis of an analytical model of the direct radiative forcing by anthropogenic sulfate aerosols which has nine uncertain parameters. This method is shown to generate PDFs of the radiative forcing which are very similar to the exact analytical PDF. Compared with the Monte Carlo method for this problem, the new method is a factor of 25 to 60 times faster, depending on the error tolerance, and exhibits an exponential decrease of error with increasing order of the approximation.
Performance of a Yeast-mediated Biological Fuel Cell

Saccharomyces cerevisiae present in common Baker’s yeast was used in a microbial fuel cell in which glucose was the carbon source. Methylene blue was used as the electronophore in the anode compartment, while potassium ferricyanide and methylene blue were tested as electron acceptors in the cathode compartment. Microbes in a mediator-free environment were used as the control. The experiment was performed in both open and closed circuit configurations under different loads ranging from 100 kΩ to 400Ω. The eukaryotic S. cerevisiae-based fuel cell showed improved performance when methylene blue and ferricyanide were used as electron mediators, rendering a maximum power generation of 146.71±7.7 mW/m3. The fuel cell generated a maximum open circuit voltage of 383.6±1.5 mV and recorded a maximum efficiency of 28±1.8 % under 100 kΩ of external load.
Visual Speech Recognition: Lip Segmentation and Mapping Medical Information Science Reference Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data Lip Feature Extraction and Feature Evaluation in the Context of Speech and Speaker Recognition Lip Feature Extraction and Feature Evaluation in the Context

Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark.Visual speech recognition : lip segmentation and mapping / Alan Wee-Chung Liew and Shilin Wang, Editors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: "This book introduces the readers to the various aspects of visual speech recognitions, including lip segmentation from video sequence, lip feature extraction and modeling, feature fusion and classifier design for visual speech recognition and speaker verification"-All work contributed to this book set is original material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher. If a library purchased a print copy of this publication, please go to http://www.igi-global.com/agreement for information on activating the library's complimentary electronic access to this publication. ABSTRACT There has been significant work on investigating the relationship between articulatory movements and vocal tract shape and speech acoustics It has been shown that there exists a strong correlation between face motion, and vocal tract shape and speech acoustics dynamic lip information conveys not only correlated but also complimentary information to the acoustic speech information. Its integration into an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, resulting in an audiovisual (AV) system, can potentially increase the system's performance. Although visual speech information is usually used together with acoustic information, there are applications where visual-only (V-only) ASR systems can be employed achieving high recognition rates. Such include small vocabulary ASR (digits, small number of commands, etc.) and ASR in the presence of adverse acoustic conditions. The choice and accurate extraction of visual features strongly affect the performance of AV and V-only ASR systems. The establishment of lip features for speech recognition is a relatively new research topic. Although a number of approaches can be used for extracting and representing visual lip information, unfortunately, limited work exists in the literature in comparing the relative performance of different features. In this chapter, the authors describe various approaches for extracting and representing important visual features, review existing systems, evaluate their relative performance in terms of speech and speaker recognition rates, and discuss future research and development directions in this area.
The Impact of Climate Change on the Viticultural Suitability of Maipo Valley, Chile

This study uses the case of the Maipo Valley in Chile to examine how climate change will affect viticultural suitability. Using a geographic information system analysis of topographic, soil, land use, and climate data, a baseline assessment of viticultural suitability in the Maipo Valley was performed. The impact of climate change on viticultural suitability was modeled by overlaying downscaled global circulation model temperature data for two emission scenarios. The findings of this study suggest that the capacity of vineyard managers in the Maipo Valley to cultivate high-quality traditional grape varietals from cooler grape maturity classes might be limited in the future.
Towards operational near real-time flood detection using a split-based automatic thresholding procedure on high resolution TerraSAR-X data

Abstract. In this paper, an automatic near-real time (NRT) flood detection approach is presented, which combines histogram thresholding and segmentation based classification, specifically oriented to the analysis of single-polarized very high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data. The challenge of SAR-based flood detection is addressed in a completely unsupervised way, which assumes no training data and therefore no prior information about the class statistics to be available concerning the area of investigation. This is usually the case in NRT-disaster management, where the collection of ground truth information is not feasible due to time-constraints. A simple thresholding algorithm can be used in the most of the cases to distinguish between "flood" and "non-flood" pixels in a high resolution SAR image to detect the largest part of an inundation area. Due to the fact that local gray-level changes may not be distinguished by global thresholding techniques in large satellite scenes the thresholding algorithm is integrated into a split-based approach for the derivation of a global threshold by the analysis and combination of the split inherent information. The derived global threshold is then integrated into a multi-scale segmentation step combining the advantages of small-, medium- and large-scale per parcel segmentation. Experimental investigations performed on a TerraSAR-X Stripmap scene from southwest England during large scale flooding in the summer 2007 show high classification accuracies of the proposed split-based approach in combination with image segmentation and optional integration of digital elevation models.
Impact of the Business Environment on Output and Productivity in Africa ∗

We develop a general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative effects of the business environment, including regulation, crime, corruption, infrastructure and access to finance, on output and total factor productivity (TFP) for 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. The first four dimensions create inefficiencies at the firm level and are modeled as a tax on output. From the data, we find that on average firms in Africa lose a fifth of their sales due to those inefficiencies. On the other hand, poor access to credit affects the reallocation of resources across firms, capital formation and production scale. We find that the quantitative effects of these dimensions of the business environment are large, leading to decreases in output and TFP in the range of 40 to 77 percent and 18 to 44 percent respectively. Overall, they explain 67 percent of the variation in income per worker relative to the US.