Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smooth 2‐D ocean sound speed from Laplace and Laplace‐Fourier domain inversion of seismic oceanography data

In seismic oceanography, processed images highlight small temperature changes, but inversion is needed to obtain absolute temperatures. Local search‐based full waveform inversion has a lower computational cost than global search but requires accurate starting models. Unfortunately, most marine seismic data have little associated hydrographic data and the band‐limited nature of seismic data makes extracting the long wavelength sound speed trend directly from seismic data inherently challenging. Laplace and Laplace‐Fourier domain inversion (LDI) can use rudimentary starting models without prior information about the medium. Data are transformed to the Laplace domain, and a smooth sound speed model is extracted by examining the zero and low frequency components of the damped wavefield. We applied LDI to five synthetic data sets based on oceanographic features and recovered smoothed versions of our synthetic models, showing the viability of LDI for creating starting models suitable for more detailed inversions.
Closed loop GPR data inversion for soil hydraulic and electric property determination

We propose an integrated electromagnetic‐hydrodynamic inverse modeling approach for identifying field‐scale unsaturated soil hydraulic properties and electric profiles from off‐ground time‐lapse ground‐penetrating radar data. Hydrodynamic modeling based on the one‐dimensional Richards' equation with homogeneous soil hydraulic parameters is used to physically constrain the full‐wave radar electromagnetic inverse problem in a closed loop. Significant effects can be observed of water dynamics on the time‐lapse radar data and numerical studies demonstrate the uniqueness of the inverse solution. The results suggest that the method is promising for non‐invasive characterization of the shallow subsurface and monitoring of its dynamics.
Intercomparison of Integrated Water Vapor Estimative from Multi-sensor in Amazonian Regions

Water vapor is an atmospheric component of major interest in atmospheric science, because it affects the energy budget and plays a key role in the several atmospheric processes. The Amazonian region is one of the most humid on the planet and land use change is able to affect the hydrologic cycle in several areas and consequently to generate severe modifications in the global climate. Within this context, accessing the error associated with atmospheric humidity measurement and the validation of IWV quantification from different techniques is very important in these regions. Using data collected during RACCI/DRY-TO-WET (Radiation, Cloud, and Climate Interactions in Amazonia during the DRY-TO-WET Transition Season) an experiment carried out in Southwestern Amazonia in 2002, this paper presents quality analysis of IWV (Integrated Water Vapor) measurements from RS80 radiosondes, a suite of GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers, an AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) solar radiometer, and humidity sounding from HSB (Humidity Sounder for Brazil) aboard the AQUA satellite. When compared to RS80 IWV values, the RMS (Root Mean Square) from the AERONET and HSB sensor and GPS are to the order of 2.7, 7.7 and 4.3 kg m, respectively. The difference generated between IWV from the GPS receiver and RS80 during daytime was larger than the nighttime period due to the combination of the influence of high ionospheric activity during the RACCI experiment and a daytime drier bias from the RS80.
Certificateless Secure Anonymous Key Distribution Scheme for Smart Grid

Smart Grid is a modern digital metering system that has been introduced to replace the traditional electricity infrastructure by collecting and utilizing information generated from different consumers automatically. Many researches have been conducted on the secure communication sessions to address the key issue of security in smart grid communication. Existing secure anonymous key distribution scheme for smart grid brings challenge such as key escrow problem in identity based encryption and identity based signature. In this paper we incorporate the first concept of certificateless in order to solve the key escrow problem that is found in identity based signature scheme and an identity based encryption scheme. Our proposed scheme achieves key escrow resilience which has not been achieved by previous work in this field.
Quantification of echo Chambers: a Methodological Framework considering Multi-Party Systems

The possibility of distributing user-generated content through online social networks (OSNs) has had liberating effects on society, with prominent examples such as the Arab Spring. Yet, since then, many dark sides of OSNs have been brought up. An example is the echo chambers phenomenon. Theory suggests that cognitive dissonance causes individuals to associate themselves with groups of like-minded individuals that are only exposed to content that confirms their previously held beliefs. In turn, deliberation amongst segregated groups increases social extremism and causes polarization, rather than moderation. Previous research endeavors to identify echo chambers in OSNs have scarcely investigated the community structures of a network on a fine granular level, specifically in the context of multi-party systems. To contribute to the scientific body of knowledge, we propose a framework that summarizes existing work and outlines a way for future research to fill this void. We further propose a new way to measure homophily in multi-party systems based on the cosine similarity between users. We evaluate our framework through real world data and find that members of the political right experience the least amount of crosscutting communication and the highest degrees of homophily.
Fostering Career Development Through Mentoring: A Narrative Study Exploring The Mentoring Experiences Of Mid-level Managers Helping To Foster Career Development Within The Metro Region Of The Department Of Developmental Services Of The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts..

This narrative study, informed by Super's (1957) career development theory, explored mid-level managers’ experiences to developing aspiring mid-level managers in a state agency that has faced many challenges to include downsizing and budget cuts which have reduced opportunities for traditional career development. The purpose of the study was to understand mid-level managers’ mentoring experiences of entry-level-staff whom they were formally assigned to as part of a mentoring program at the Department of Developmental Services of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The study focused on nine middle managers who mentor others seeking to be in various developmental paths. Six study conclusions emerged from the study. First, formal mentors value being active and reliable in mentees’ professional lives. Second, formal mentors believe that mentoring programs should be designed to focus on becoming more effective, successful, and sustainable to engineer effective career development among aspiring middle managers in the region. Third, formal mentors value the importance of being professional and sensitive to the needs of mentees who also need to value mutual respect. Fourth, formal mentors believe honesty and level of familiarity are key components to good relationship. Fifth, formal mentors value sharing of experiences and encouragement of opportunities. Sixth, formal mentors believe there should be an establishment of a broader mentoring program to ensure growth and development of young managers. This research concluded with suggestions for further research and implications for theory and practice.
A Wireless Sensing Development Platform for Ubiquitous Condition Monitoring

Wireless condition monitoring is a natural applicat ion niche for wireless sensor networks and related technologies. Although much development effort has been devoted to the definition of related standards and to the development of appropriate operating sys tems and middleware for wireless sensor networks, much more research effort is needed in this area to reach a maturity level that will enable rapid application development and engineering of solution s for industrial condition monitoring. In this pape r we describe steps taken in this direction, by the d evelopment of a platform for wireless sensor networ ks, inclusive of a dedicated sensor operating system an d appropriate middleware for wireless condition monitoring. The developed prototype development platform is integrated into a complete wireless sensor system named PrismaSense. At the hardware level the platform is based on sensing boards with adequate I/O, CPU, memory, ADC, power subsystems and ZigBee-based RF support. At the software level it is equipped with a dedicated sensor operating system, called ISOS, which supports complete a mesh networking architecture, dynamic channel selection and energy management. In order to aid developers, the platform offers rich application development mi ddleware, based on . NET framework 3.0 with WCF for handling and processing data and storing them i n a database that can be parameterised according to specific application needs, while offering APIs for rapid application development. Specific condition monitoring application examples are offered in labo ratory test settings.
Numerical modeling of discrete spatial heterogeneity in seismic risk analysis: application to treated ground soil foundation

A finite element soil–structure interaction model is coupled with a discrete auto-regressive code, in order to analyze the effect of added spatial variability due to soil improvement in seismic risk analysis. The success of soil improvement techniques is related to the effectiveness of the method – that is, how much of the soil is being changed – but also to its efficiency in improving the soil behavior – that is, how much are the liquefaction and liquefaction-induced settlement reduced. As these techniques can add spatial variability to a deposit, it can affect the triggering of liquefaction on the soil and the behavior of the structures above it. In this study, this heterogeneity is modeled as a binary mixture, composed by the original liquefiable sand and the added treated sand. The soil behavior is represented by a fully nonlinear elastoplastic multi-mechanism model. The co-seismic settlements of the structure and the liquefaction of the soil deposit are estimated for different effectiveness levels – measured by mixture fractions – and for different spatial distributions. In general, both very small or very high mixture fractions presented low efficiency as the improvement in the relative settlement was small. Additionally, results show that the interaction between loose and dense deposits is highly dependent on the spatial distribution. Therefore, homogeneous equivalent models will rarely correspond to the average of the heterogeneous response.
The conservation biology and ecology of the African leopard Panthera pardus pardus

The African leopard Panthera pardus pardus is an apex predator, and a reliable indicator of a healthy ecosystem. Currently assessed as ‗near threatened‘ by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, leopards are exposed to a range of threats that include: habitat loss and/or degradation, depletion of natural prey, conflict with people, consumptive- and non-consumptive practices, and the illegal trade of leopard products. Leopards have disappeared from 37% of their historical range, and are continuing to decline. Leopards have been extirpated across many areas of Africa, especially where people are densely populated, which has left patchily distributed leopard populations throughout the continent—to date, an accurate census has never been achieved. A variety of management techniques and conservation schemes are used in an attempt to mitigate threats directed at leopards; for example: (1) improved livestock husbandry that reduces livestock depredation and thus reduces retaliatory killing of the supposed offender—often thought to be the leopard, (2) designing community-based conservation schemes that benefit local people (i.e., food, money, jobs, ownership), (3) financial compensation for livestock losses, (4) ecotourism and regulated sport hunting, and (5) ratification of conservation-orientated government policies. Detailed, long-term leopard research began in the 1970‘s, and continues to the present day with many peer-reviewed papers focusing primarily on their ecology within savannah ecosystems. Technological advances (e.g., GPS tracking collars and remote camera traps) are helping to further our knowledge of leopard demographics, intra- and inter-specific interactions, predation, habitat use, and effective monitoring techniques. Nevertheless, more research is desperately required if leopard populations are to persist within human-dominated landscapes, like continental Africa.
Dryland opportunities : a new paradigm for people, ecosystems and development

Drylands cover 41 percent of the earths terrestrial surface. The urgency of and international response to climate change have given a new place to drylands in terms both of their vulnerability to predicted climate change impacts and their potential contribution to climate change mitigation. This book aims to apply the new scientific insights on complex dryland systems to practical options for development. A new dryland paradigm is built on the resources and capacities of dryland peoples, on new and emergent economic opportunities, on inward investment, and on the best support that dryland science can offer.
Implementation in the NCEP GFS of a Hybrid Eddy-Diffusivity Mass-Flux (EDMF) Boundary Layer Parameterization with Dissipative Heating and Modified Stable Boundary Layer Mixing

AbstractThe current operational eddy-diffusivity countergradient (EDCG) planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme in the NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) tends to underestimate the PBL growth in the convective boundary layer (CBL). To improve CBL growth, an eddy-diffusivity mass-flux (EDMF) PBL scheme is developed, where the nonlocal transport by large turbulent eddies is represented by a mass-flux (MF) scheme and the local transport by small eddies is represented by an eddy-diffusivity (ED) scheme. For the vertical momentum mixing, the MF scheme is modified to include the effect of the updraft-induced pressure gradient force. While the EDMF scheme displays better CBL growth than the EDCG scheme, it tends to overproduce the amount of low clouds and degrades wind vector forecasts over the tropical ocean where strongly unstable PBLs are rarely found. In order not to degrade the forecast skill in the tropics, a hybrid scheme is developed, where the EDMF scheme is applied only for the strongly unstable PBL, whil.
Determining the aesthetic rating and weather of a location from Flickr photos and metadata

The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the popularity of content sharing networks such as Flickr and Twitter. Shared photos are usually accompanied by metadata such as geo-location, timestamp and tags. These photos contain a digital representation of locations and they convey human behavior patterns, photo trails and tour summaries. The availability of such geographic information in the form of multimedia contents has given rise to interesting applications such as recommendation system, point-of-interest mining and tour planning system, user gender and home location prediction system and event recommendation systems. In this work, we have proposed a method to determine the aesthetic rating of a location and weather condition of an image from social metadata of Flickr photos and content analysis of Flickr images respectively. The aesthetic rating of a location is the evaluation of aesthetic quality of that location. Tourists, artists and urban planners often seek to rate each location by their aesthetics. Popular recommendation websites such as TripAdvisor generate a relative rating of the locations to provide recommendations to its users about possible locations to visit. However, such rankings are highly dependent on user contributions. Therefore, in this work, we have proposed a method to generate aesthetic rating of a location using social metadata of user captured and shared Flickr photos. A number of empirical features have been defined and computed from the social metadata of the Flickr photos available at each location. Using these features numerous classifiers have been trained and our classifiers have been able to achieve notable accuracy. On a different note, weather condition detection and tracking are in practice for a long time. However, most weather detection technologies rely highly on powerful hardware technologies and expertise of weather specialists. With the development of computer vision technologies
Preparing historic wrought iron for protective coatings: quantitative assessment to produce evidence-based protocols

Painted historical wrought iron commonly occurs outdoors exposed to the prevailing climate. Maintaining protective paint layers is an interventive process that often involves removing existing paint layers and repainting. Whilst prior surface preparation greatly affects the longevity of any paint layer, its impact on the metal surface and paint performance has received limited research within heritage contexts, making their selection anecdotal or driven by manufacturers’ guidelines. Historic Scotland-funded research at Cardiff University is quantitatively investigating the effect of surface preparation methods on wrought iron corrosion rates prior to paint application. The feasibility of using historic sample material in this research has been investigated and is reported. Testing historic wrought iron samples in quantitative studies of corrosion offers more direct linkage to heritage scenarios thus facilitating interpretation of results and extrapolation to real time heritage contexts. The use of an oxygen consumption technique to quantitatively determine the corrosion rate of five samples of historic wrought iron in controlled conditions of 90% relative humidity and 20 oC is reported. Results returned corrosion rates indicating a level of reproducibility that, with an error calculation, will allow corroded historic wrought iron to be used for production of test samples to be employed in experiments designed to determine the impact of surface cleaning techniques on the corrosion rate of corroded heritage iron.
MORE THAN BUCKS AND ACRES: ASSESSING THE VALUE OF CONSERVED LANDS

Many non-profit conservation organizations resort to measuring their success in term of acres protected and dollars raised, also known as 'bucks and acres', for lack of better indicators. However, it is unclear how well bucks and acres actually measure progress toward mission driven goals such as the conservation of biodiversity. Many land trusts are now in the process of creating new indicators to better measure their progress. This study assesses the conservation benefits of the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy lands at both a landscape and parcel level. My analysis focused on 1) parcel-specific and cumulative conservation benefits of biodiversity protection, 2) landscape connectivity, and 3) scenic viewsheds. The conservancy has protected high proportions of Significant Natural Heritage Areas when compared to other private lands in the study area. However, private lands tended to have higher modeled species biodiversity than lands protected by the conservancy. Other commonly observed spatial benefits provided by Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy projects were contiguity with other protected parcels, buffering of publically protected lands, and protection of scenic viewsheds from the Blue Ridge Parkway and Appalachian Trail. It is important for land trusts to be able to demonstrate that they are meeting their goals to private funders, their members, as well as to the general public. These findings will assist the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy in measuring their conservation success, demonstrating their progress to funding organizations and the public, and to serve as a baseline measure.
Space-time Code Selection for Transmit Antenna Diversity Systems

In this paper a space-time code selection approach for transmit antenna diversity systems is proposed. The receiver compares the equivalent SISO channel envelopes with a set of predetermined threshold levels, decides on the antennas to be used and sends this information to the transmitter, which adjusts the space-time code to the number of selected antennas using four bits for feedback information. Threshold levels are found off-line based on the Doppler frequency, in such a way that CSI outdate at the transmitter is taken into account. Simulation results show that the system performs well for a range of Doppler frequencies for correlated and uncorrelated channels, outperforming transmit antenna selection techniques and adaptive transmit antenna diversity systems.
Supplementary Materials for ViSER: Video-Speciﬁc Surface Embeddings for Articulated 3D Shape Reconstruction

We visualize keypoint transfer evaluation procedure in Fig. 1. Keypoints are annotated for meaningful body parts of human and elephants in the MSCOCO format. For human, we annotate fifteen points including “nose, neck, right shoulder, right elbow, right wrist, left shoulder, left elbow, left wrist, mid hip, right hip, right knee, right ankle, left hip, left knee, and left ankle”. For elephants, we annotate eleven keypoints including two keypoints for each leg, two keypoint for nose, and one keypoint for tail.
An XMM-Newton Observation of Nova LMC 1995: A Bright Supersoft X-Ray Source

Nova LMC 1995, previously detected during 1995-1998 with ROSAT, was observed again as a luminous supersoft X-ray source with XMM-Newton in 2000 December. This nova offers the possibility to observe the spectrum of a hot white dwarf, burning hydrogen in a shell and not obscured by a wind or nebular emission as in other supersoft X-ray sources. Notwithstanding uncertainties in the calibration of the European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) instruments at energy E < 0.5 keV, using atmospheric models in nonlocal thermonuclear equilibrium we derived an effective temperature in the range 400,000-450,000 K, a bolometric luminosity Lbol ≃ 2.3 × 1037 ergs s-1, and verified that the abundance of carbon is not significantly enhanced in the X-ray's emitting shell. The reflection grating spectrometer's grating spectra do not show emission lines (originated in a nebula or a wind) observed for some other supersoft X-ray sources. The crowded atmospheric absorption lines of the white dwarf cannot be resolved. There is no hard component (expected from a wind, a surrounding nebula, or an accretion disk), with no counts above the background at E > 0.6 keV and an upper limit FX,hard = 10-14 ergs s-1 cm-2 to the X-ray flux above this energy. The background-corrected count rate measured by the EPIC instruments was variable on timescales of minutes and hours but without the flares or sudden obscuration observed for other novae. The power spectrum shows a peak at 5.25 hr, possibly because of a modulation with the orbital period. We also briefly discuss the scenarios in which this nova may become a Type Ia supernova progenitor.