Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MULTIPLICITY OF NOVA ENVELOPE SOLUTIONS AND OCCURRENCE OF OPTICALLY THICK WINDS

We revisit the occurrence condition of optically thick winds reported by Kato in 1985 and Kato and Hachisu in 1989 who mathematically examined nova envelope solutions with an old opacity and found that optically thick winds are accelerated only in massive white dwarfs (WDs) of ≳0.9 M☉. With the OPAL opacity we find that the optically thick wind occurs for ≳0.6 M☉ WDs and that the occurrence of winds depends not only on the WD mass but also on the ignition mass. When the ignition mass is larger than a critical value, winds are suppressed by a density-inversion layer. Such a static solution can be realized in WDs of mass ∼0.6–0.7 M☉. We propose that sequences consisting only of static solutions correspond to slow evolutions in symbiotic novae like PU Vul because PU Vul shows no indication of strong winds in a long-lasted flat peak followed by a very slow decline in its light curve.
HABITAT USE AND MOVEMENTS OF THE OPOSSUM ( TRICHOSURUS VULPECULA ) IN A PASTORAL HABITAT ON BANKS PENINSULA

The habitat use and movements of a population of Australian, brush-tailed opossums. Trichosurus vulpecula (Kerr), were studied by live-trapping, spotlighting and radiotelemetry in a mixed pasture, bush and scrub habitat on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand. Resident opossums had distinct ranges that for some animals varied in position and size and, for all. varied in intensity of use of habitat types during the year. Seasonal foods and breeding behaviour were reasons for shifts in ranges and changes in their sizes. Range sizes seemed to be dependent mainly on the location of the animals' requirements rather than behaviour intrinsic to the opossums themselves. Apples and walnuts were highly favoured foods in autumn and attracted resident animals from up to 1600 m away. Pasture was little used by the population. Habitat use results are compared with previous food analysis studies and discussed in relation to the design of opossum control programmes.
DROWTION: Driver drowsiness detection software using MINDWAVE

A Significant numbers of road accidents are caused by drowsy driver. This factor can be reduced if the drowsy condition of the driver can be identified and alarmed. This research is conducted by using Electroencephalography approach to detect drowsy state of the driver using Mindwave. Mindwave will sense the value changes of the driver's awareness caused by changes in concentration value. The changes between conscious and drowsiness state are mapped and used as threshold values for triggering the alarm. Result shows that the drowsy state is detected when the average value of low-alpha is below 0.7, the high-alpha value fall below 0.6 and the theta values is below 0.7 from the normal condition. The low-alpha values are sufficient enough to show the condition of drowsiness, but the high-alpha and theta value can be used to minimize the false alarm event. DrowTion application is developed based on this result. DrowTion is implemented with Mindwave headset with the capability of minimizing false alarm and having the capability of giving multiple alarms. Accuracy of DrowTion application in normal condition is about 68,11%.
Practical human authentication method based on piecewise corrected Electrocardiogram

In this paper, we present a practical Electrocardiogram-based (ECG) human authentication method which is very suitable for deployment in mobile devices like smart phones. A user only needs 20 seconds to register his ECG template at the first time and about 4 seconds to authenticate afterwards. We firstly extracted heartbeats of every cardiac cycle and then separately corrected PQ segments, QRS segments and JT segments divided by fiducials detected earlier of every heartbeats. At last, we reduced the feature dimension to 80 by discrete cosine transformation. 85 healthy subjects' ECG records were selected from 3 widely used public ECG databases. We adopted template matching method as classifier in authentication experiment and the equal error rate was 1.57%. We also tested the classification performance of the ECG features by using neural network and SVM classifier separately. The accuracy rate was 96.6% and 97.6% which fully demonstrated the prospect of using the features in identification applications too.
The Syntax and Semantics of Punctuation and itsUse in

In this paper, I argue for a declarative description of the syntax and semantics of punctuation marks (in English) couched in a feature/uniication-based phrase structure formalism, describe how Nunberg's (1990) syntactic analysis of punctuation can be combined with Dale's (1991) suggested semantic analysis within this framework, and present experimental evidence that 1) the resulting text grammar should be interleaved with the lexical grammar to eeciently resolve ambiguity and 2) that the role of punctuation is not only to resolve syntactic and semantic ambiguity in the lexical grammar but also to encode and facilitate purely discourse relational links between text units in text sentences. 1 The Syntax of Punctuation Nunberg (1990) argues that the punctuation system is, rstly, systematic and linguistic, in the sense that it obeys principles and constraints of a type familiar from work on other linguistic subsystems such as phonology or syntax, and secondly, it is a separate linguistic subsystem not reducible to principles of (prosodic) phonology or syntax. Nunberg develops a partial grammar of English text sentences which incorporates many constraints that (ultimately) restrict the syntactic and semantic/pragmatic interpretation of the text. For example, one such constraint is that textual adjunct clauses introduced by colons scope over following punctuation, as (1a) illustrates; another is that textual adjuncts introduced by dashes cannot intervene between a bracketed adjunct and the textual unit to which it attaches, as in (1b). (1) a *He told them his reason: he would not renegotiate his contract, but he did not explain to the team owners. (vs. but would stay) b *She left { who could blame her { (during the chainsaw scene) and went home. Nunberg's analysis, therefore, incorporates constraints on grammatical sequences of punctuation marks and on the manner in which such punctuation serves to hierarchically structure text. Nunberg outlines a procedural, deriva-tional account of`text grammar'. I have developed a succinct, declarative grammar in a feature/uniication-based phrase structure formalism (Briscoe, 1994). This grammar captures the bulk of the text-sentential constraints described by Nunberg with a grammar which compiles into 26 rules in a formalism 1
Molecular Detection of 10 of the Most Unwanted Alien Forest Pathogens in Canada Using Real-Time PCR

Invasive alien tree pathogens can cause significant economic losses as well as large-scale damage to natural ecosystems. Early detection to prevent their establishment and spread is an important approach used by several national plant protection organizations (NPPOs). Molecular detection tools targeting 10 of the most unwanted alien forest pathogens in Canada were developed as part of the TAIGA project (http://taigaforesthealth.com/). Forest pathogens were selected following an independent prioritization. Specific TaqMan real-time PCR detection assays were designed to function under homogeneous conditions so that they may be used in 96- or 384-well plate format arrays for high-throughput testing of large numbers of samples against multiple targets. Assays were validated for 1) specificity, 2) sensitivity, 3) precision, and 4) robustness on environmental samples. All assays were highly specific when evaluated against a panel of pure cultures of target and phylogenetically closely-related species. Sensitivity, evaluated by assessing the limit of detection (with a threshold of 95% of positive samples), was found to be between one and ten target gene region copies. Precision or repeatability of each assay revealed a mean coefficient of variation of 3.4%. All assays successfully allowed detection of target pathogen on positive environmental samples, without any non-specific amplification. These molecular detection tools will allow for rapid and reliable detection of 10 of the most unwanted alien forest pathogens in Canada.
A novel RRT extend function for efficient and smooth mobile robot motion planning

In this paper we introduce a novel RRT extend function for wheeled mobile robots. The approach computes closed-loop forward simulations based on the kinematic model of the robot and enables the planner to efficiently generate smooth and feasible paths that connect any pairs of states. We extend the control law of an existing discontinuous state feedback controller to make it usable as an RRT extend function and prove that all relevant stability properties are retained. We study the properties of the new approach as extender for RRT and RRT* and compare it systematically to a spline-based approach and a large and small set of motion primitives. The results show that our approach generally produces smoother paths to the goal in less time with smaller trees. For RRT*, the approach produces also the shortest paths and achieves the lowest cost solutions when given more planning time.
Estudo sobre as diferentes técnicas de sexagem de espermatozoides

O interesse na seleção de indivíduos de determinado sexo vem dos antigos gregos, mas o estudo sobre métodos eficazes desta seleção é relativamente novo. Saber qual será o sexo da futura progenie traz ao mercado um grande potencial para o melhoramento genético, A seleção do sexo contribui na bovinocultura para a otimização de animais do sexo desejado, em humanos evitando doenças ligadas ao sexo, ou mesmo na seleção de sexo em animais selvagens de cativeiro. Com o advento das biotecnologias, como a inseminação artificial e transferência de embriões, a sexagem começa a ter relevância no cenário atual e o custo benefício passa a ser significativo. Várias técnicas foram desenvolvidas visando a melhor préseleção de sexo, tal como a imuno separação, gradiente de densidade, e a citometria de fluxo que, no atual cenário mundial, é a técnica com os melhores resultados e a única que permite a comercialização do sêmen sexado. Os processos de sexagem ainda demandam muitos estudos, devido aos danos causados aos espermatozoides durante o processo de separação, comprometendo os resultados de fertilidade. Essa revisão de literatura vem como uma ferramenta para o entendimento do processo de sexagem e as técnicas utilizadas.
Direct Acceleration of Pickup Ions at the Solar Wind Termination Shock: The Production of Anomalous Cosmic Rays

We have modeled the injection and acceleration of pickup ions at the solar wind termination shock and investigated the parameters needed to produce the observed anomalous cosmic-ray (ACR) fluxes. A nonlinear Monte Carlo technique was employed that in effect solves the Boltzmann equation and is not restricted to near-isotropic particle distribution functions. This technique models the injection of thermal and pickup ions, the acceleration of these ions, and the determination of the shock structure under the influence of the accelerated ions. The essential effects of injection are treated in a mostly self-consistent manner, including effects from shock obliquity, cross-field diffusion, and pitch-angle scattering. Using recent determinations of pickup ion densities, we are able to match the absolute flux of hydrogen in the ACRs by assuming that pickup ion scattering mean free paths, at the termination shock, are much less than an AU and that modestly strong cross-field diffusion occurs. Simultaneously, we match the flux ratios He+/H+ or O+/H+ to within a factor ~5. If the conditions of strong scattering apply, no pre-termination-shock injection phase is required and the injection and acceleration of pickup ions at the termination shock are totally analogous to the injection and acceleration of ions at highly oblique interplanetary shocks recently observed by the Ulysses spacecraft. The fact that ACR fluxes can be modeled with standard shock assumptions suggests that the much discussed "injection problem" for highly oblique shocks stems from incomplete (either mathematical or computer) modeling of these shocks rather than from any actual difficulty shocks may have in injecting and accelerating thermal or quasi-thermal particles.
Design of optimal matrices for compressive sensing: Application to environmental sounds

In a compressive sensing context, we propose a solution for a full learning of the dictionary composed of the sparsity basis and the measurement matrix. The sparsity basis learning process is achieved using Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and Hilbert transformation. EMD being a data-driven decomposition method, the resulting sparsity basis shows high sparsifying capacities. On the other hand, a gradient method is applied for the design of the measurement matrix. The method integrates the dictionary normalization into the target function. It is shown to support large scale problems and to have a good convergence and high performance. The evaluation of the whole approach is done on a set of environmental sounds, and is based on a couple of key criteria: sparsity degree and incoherence. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves well with regards to mutual coherence reduction and signal reconstruction at low sparsity degrees.
Biomass burning emissions estimated with a global fire assimilation system based on observed fire radiative power

Abstract. The Global Fire Assimilation System (GFASv1.0) calculates biomass burning emissions by assimilating Fire Radiative Power (FRP) observations from the MODIS instruments onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. It corrects for gaps in the observations, which are mostly due to cloud cover, and filters spurious FRP observations of volcanoes, gas flares and other industrial activity. The combustion rate is subsequently calculated with land cover-specific conversion factors. Emission factors for 40 gas-phase and aerosol trace species have been compiled from a literature survey. The corresponding daily emissions have been calculated on a global 0.5° × 0.5° grid from 2003 to the present. General consistency with the Global Fire Emission Database version 3.1 (GFED3.1) within its accuracy is achieved while maintaining the advantages of an FRP-based approach: GFASv1.0 makes use of the quantitative information on the combustion rate that is contained in the FRP observations, and it detects fires in real time at high spatial and temporal resolution. GFASv1.0 indicates omission errors in GFED3.1 due to undetected small fires. It also exhibits slightly longer fire seasons in South America and North Africa and a slightly shorter fire season in Southeast Asia. GFASv1.0 has already been used for atmospheric reactive gas simulations in an independent study, which found good agreement with atmospheric observations. We have performed simulations of the atmospheric aerosol distribution with and without the assimilation of MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD). They indicate that the emissions of particulate matter need to be boosted by a factor of 2–4 to reproduce the global distribution of organic matter and black carbon. This discrepancy is also evident in the comparison of previously published top-down and bottom-up estimates. For the time being, a global enhancement of the particulate matter emissions by 3.4 is recommended. Validation with independent AOD and PM10 observations recorded during the Russian fires in summer 2010 show that the global Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Change (MACC) aerosol model with GFASv1.0 aerosol emissions captures the smoke plume evolution well when organic matter and black carbon are enhanced by the recommended factor. In conjunction with the assimilation of MODIS AOD, the use of GFASv1.0 with enhanced emission factors quantitatively improves the forecast of the aerosol load near the surface sufficiently to allow air quality warnings with a lead time of up to four days.
A Robust Integrity Reporting Protocol for Remote Attestation

Trusted Computing Platforms provide the functionality of remote attestation, i.e. attesting the configuration and status of a system to a remote entity. Remote attestation hereby proves integrity and authenticity of system environments. This is crucial for policy enforcement, which in turn is needed in many usage scenarios, e.g., DRM. However, applying remote attestation solely allows masquerading attacks. These attacks are possible since the concept of remote attestation does not provide any means for establishing secured communication channels. In this paper we describe this kind of attacks against protocols for remote attestation and present a protocol for preventing masquerading attacks.
SAMAC: A Cross-Layer Communication Protocol for Sensor Networks with Sectored Antennas

Wireless sensor networks have been used to gather data and information in many diverse application settings. The capacity of such networks remains a fundamental obstacle toward the adaptation of sensor network systems for advanced applications that require higher data rates and throughput. In this paper, we explore potential benefits of integrating directional antennas into wireless sensor networks. While the usage of directional antennas has been investigated in the past for ad hoc networks, their usage in sensor networks bring both opportunities as well as challenges. In this paper, Sectored-Antenna Medium Access Control (SAMAC), an integrated cross-layer protocol that provides the communication mechanisms for sensor network to fully utilize sectored antennas, is introduced. Simulation studies show that SAMAC delivers high energy efficiency and predictable delay performance with graceful degradation in performance with increased load.
Newer treatments for fi bromyalgia syndrome

Fibromyalgia syndrome is a common chronic pain disorder of unknown etiology. The lack of understanding of the pathophysiology of fi bromyalgia has made this condition frustrating for patients and clinicians alike. The most common symptoms of this disorder are chronic widespread pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances, diffi culty with memory, and morning stiffness. Emerging evidence points towards augmented pain processing within the central nervous system (CNS) as having a primary role in the pathophysiology of this disorder. Currently the two drugs that are approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the management of fi bromyalgia are pregabalin and duloxetine. Newer data suggests that milnacipran, a dual norepinephrine and serotonin reuptake inhibitor, may be promising for the treatment of fi bromyalgia. A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of milnacipran in 125 fi bromyalgia patients showed signifi cant improvements relative to placebo. Milnacipran given either once or twice daily at doses up to 200 mg/day was generally well tolerated and yielded signifi cant improvements relative to placebo on measures of pain, patient's global impression of change in their disease state, physical function, and fatigue. Future studies are needed to validate the effi cacy of milnacipran in fi bromyalgia.
Teachers' engagement in an Omani University Foundation Programme

This study is about teachers’ engagement in a University Foundation Programme in Oman. In particular, the study probes the learning-teaching beliefs that both teachers and students hold inside the classroom in an Omani context. These students are in their first university year and come from a range of settings in Oman, so these learning beliefs could result from learning styles in the school being different to those in a university. The students were not used to be taught English as a second language in schools and they are not used to be taught by native speakers of the language. These changes in students’ learning environment could influence teacher engagement inside the classroom. This study used both quantitative and qualitative methods to answer the research questions. The Engaged Teacher Scale (ETS) and the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) were both used in this study. The Engaged Teacher Scale was in teachers’ questionnaire, students’ questionnaire and in the form of a closed diary every two weeks. The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) had two versions, one for teachers and one for students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for both teachers and students to give reasons for their responses in the questionnaires and diaries. Analysis of variance showed a main effect of Students’ Level on their Social Engagement with their teachers. Teachers’ data also shows that Pre-Foundation (A) teachers were more socially engaged with their students which agree with the students’ data, but Social Engagement was not significant with Teachers’ data. Results from Teachers’ Diaries also indicated that participants did rate the three Emotional Engagement differently and that these differences were statically significant. This showed the importance of Teachers’ Emotional Engagement when the decreasing significance of Emotional Engagement can decrease all components of Teachers’ Engagement.
Trellis Shaping Techniques for Satellite Telecommunication Systems

In recent years, satellite overlay networks have shown their potential for delivering multimedia content both to rural and urban environments. In the latter case, the adoption of terrestrial intermediate module repeaters (IMRs) is in order to close the link in non-line-of-sight propagation conditions, causing a severe increase of multipath propagation and consequent linear distortion, adding to the intrinsic non linear distortion of satellite links. Whenever the propagation channel for the user receiving the data can be known with good approximation at the transmitter, the application of precoding techniques can be considered as a feasible solution to counter channel dispersion. In this paper, trellis shaping (the combination of Tomlinson-Harashima precoding and signal shaping) is used along with predistortion techniques to increase the resilience to channel dispersion and non-linear distortion. Numerical simulations allow us to assess the robustness to nonlinear distortion of trellis-shaped signals. Different optimization goals are pursued by means of different trellis shaping metrics, including several novel ones. Improvements in performance are achieved with respect to the unshaped case
A rare case of orthostatic headache due to spontaneous intracranial hypotension

Headache is one of the most common clinical entities, and has a long list of differential diagnoses; however, one of the more uncommon causes of postural headache is spontaneous intracranial hypotension. It is important that clinicians be aware of this condition, as it is often overlooked, leading to invasive and unnecessary diagnostic testing. A good history and physical exam, paired with an MRI of the brain is sufficient to make the diagnosis of SIH, relieve the symptomology of the patient in a quick and efficient manner, and avoid costly invasive procedures.