Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Observations by the Lidar In‐Space Technology Experiment (LITE) of high‐altitude cirrus clouds over the equator in regions exhibiting extremely cold temperatures

Data from the Lidar In-Space Technology Experiment (LITE) were used to locate clouds near the equatorial tropopause and retrieve temperatures in cloud layers. The experiment was conducted aboard the space shuttle Discovery on September 9–20, 1994. LITE observations over the equator frequently exhibit cloud layers near the tropopause with scattering ratios as high as 2.5 at 532 nm. These clouds have been characterized as cirrus and subvisible cirrus. The clouds were observed near the tropopause with cloud top temperatures ranging from 185 to 200 K. Statistical averages of two optical properties observed by LITE in the 5°N to 15°S latitude band, the wavelength dependence of the extinction due to aerosols (Angstrom coefficient) and scattering ratios, were computed. The Angstrom coefficients show that a significant number (31%) of these high-altitude cirrus clouds observed by LITE in the 5°N to 15°S latitude band have optical similarities to type 1a polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) particles. Sixty-six percent of the clouds observed are thin, with scattering ratios ranging from 1.1 to 1.5. Since these clouds are most likely to form at temperatures of 185±2.5 K (a 90% chance), particles of a size and composition similar to type 1a PSCs must be considered a possibility. Since these high-altitude tropical cirrus clouds may have significant implications for both ozone chemistry and radiative transfer, a closer examination of their composition and phase (using, for example, both in situ methods and depolarization lidar) together with simultaneous meteorological measurements are needed.
Tgv: Theory, Principles and Algorithms

This paper presents the TGV tool allowing the automatic synthesis of conformance test cases from a formal specification of a reactive system. TGV has been developped by Irisa Rennes and Verimag Grenoble, with the support of the Vasy team of Inria Rhônes-Alpes. The paper describes the main elements of the underlying testing theory, based on a model of transitions system which distinguishes inputs, outputs and internal actions, and based on the concept of conformance relation. The principles of the test synthesis process are explained as well as the main algorithms. We then describe the main characteristics of the TGV tool. As a conclusion, we describe some on going works in test synthesis. I. CONFORMANCE TESTING Testing, in all its variations, is one of the most used validation techniques. In this paper, we focus on conformance testing applied to reactive systems. By reac-tive system, we mean a software component which reacts to stimuli of its environment. Conformance testing consists in checking that the behavior of a real implementation of a reactive system (IUT for Implementation Under Test) is correct with respect to a specification. The code of the IUT is unknown, and its behavior is only visible by interaction with a tester which controls and observes the IUT through dedicated interfaces (called PCO for Points of Control and Observation). Conformance testing is a type of functional testing of a black box nature. In the context of telecommunication protocols, the main concepts of this activity are described in the standard ISO 9646 [1]. Some of them are introduced here. A test case is an elementary test targeted to testing a particular functionality, called test purpose. A test suite is a set of test cases. The basic elements of a test case are interactions through PCO: outputs are stimuli sent in order to control the IUT's input events, inputs are observations of the IUT's output events. Inputs may lead to different verdicts. A Fail verdict denotes a divergence with the expected behaviour and the IUT is rejected. A Pass verdict is returned if the observation is correct and the test purpose is reached. An Inconclusive verdict is returned if a correct behavior is observed, but it is impossible to reach the test purpose. This is due to the fact that, in general, reactive systems cannot be completely controlled by a tester: it may have several outputs to the same input. The tester, specialized …
Congestion aware data dissemination in social opportunistic networks

Recent developments in social-based opportunistic forwarding [1], [2], [10] have identified that load is unfairly distributed towards nodes which are better connected. Unfair load distribution and high unrestricted volumes of traffic produce congestion. Congestion in opportunistic and delay tolerant networks takes the form of persistent storage exhaustion [1][4]. Several solutions exist including slowing sources, using alternative routes, discarding traffic, or migrating messages to alternative storage locations. We focus on congestion aware forwarding algorithms that adaptively choose the next hop based on contact history, predictive storage and delay analysis in order to distribute the load away from the storage hotspots and spread the traffic around. We describe new forwarding heuristics that uses nearby nodes with available storage and low delays to store data that would otherwise be lost during opportunistic bulk data transfers. More specifically we describe the two metrics Receptiveness and Retentiveness, each is a measurement of how utilised a node is, regarding node delays and buffer capacity respectively. Our heuristics factors in a cost metric associated with storage and delays so that the traffic is spread away from ego-network-centric paths and only paths with more storage and lower delays are chosen at times of congestion. Our heuristics makes use of the diversity of forwarding paths in human contact networks [7] by forwarding packets along multiple paths similarly to the resource pooling principal [6]. For our evaluation, we perform an extensive set of trace driven simulations for an opportunistic peer to peer file casting application. We build a realistic interest-driven P2P content dissemination overlay on the top of our congestion aware forwarding protocol. Our results show that our availability heuristics dramatically increases robustness of content distribution in terms of shorter download times and higher ratio of queries being successfully solved in the face of increasing congestion levels while still maintaining high availability among nodes when compared to SimBetTs[11] and Fairroute[4]. We induce congestion levels by increasing the topics popularity (number of randomly chosen subscribers) and the number of randomly chosen file publishers from 3% to almost 100%.
Industrial location and air pollution controls: a review of evidence from the USA

Many people have long suspected that environmental regulations impact economic performance negatively. This is particularly true in the USA, where business interests routinely argue that strong state and local environmental controls deter economic expansion and cause outmigration of existing businesses (Pasadena Research Institute, 1990a; 1990b; Kerwin and Grover, 1991). Yet until recently, there has been very little empirical evidence on the question of how spatial differences in environmental rules affect
Rupture process of the 1944 Tonankai earthquake (Ms 8.1) from the inversion of teleseismic and regional seismograms

[1] We digitized teleseismic and regional records of the 1944 Tonankai earthquake. We used the multiple time window method to invert these records for the spatial and temporal distribution of slip and rake. We assume a 220 × 140 km fault with a spacing of 20 × 20 km and a maximum rupture velocity of 2.5 km/s. The inversion resolved an asperity along the accretionary wedge and under the Shima and Atsumi Peninsulas. The rupture propagated from southwest to northeast, and there was little slip near the hypocenter, consistent with the absence of uplift in the overlying submarine forearc basin. The peak slip is 2.3 m, and the total seismic moment is 2.4 × 1028 dyn cm (Mw 8.2). We compared the predicted and observed vertical geodetic displacements and inferred that the limit of rupture is consistent with the change from subsidence to uplift west of the Atsumi Peninsula. This suggested that the earthquake did not rupture the plate interface in the Tokai gap. We modeled the tsunami using sea-bottom displacements generated from this slip model. The tide gauge amplitudes and frequency content are consistent with those predicted. Resolution tests from inverting synthetic seismograms computed using a simplified slip model indicated that the combination of teleseismic and regional data sets best recovers the asperity locations and peak slips given similar station geometry and degrees of freedom. An inversion of the synthetic regional data set indicates that slip artifacts can occur early in the rupture process due to many clipped records while the inversion of synthetic teleseismic data set had less resolution and recovered only 50% of the peak slip.
Site Distribution and Chronology at Soutpansklipheuwel, a Rocky Outcrop on the West Coast of South Africa

ABSTRACT Archaeological research along the West Coast of South Africa has unveiled a diversity of Holocene adaptive strategies as shown by the different type, size, composition, and distribution of sites and their faunal and artifactual contents. Some differences and similarities are apparent between the northerly semi-desert of Namaqualand and the more central Lamberts Bay and Elands Bay areas. On first impression, this archaeological variability seems related to environmental gradients, human demographics, related divergent economic developments, and perhaps to different contexts for cultural contact between indigenous populations. However, differences between Namaqualand and the central parts of the West Coast need to be assessed more closely in order to understand the influence of environmental and cultural/behavioral variables that could have shaped them and their geographic interaction. Sampling of locations near Lamberts Bay and the southern parts of Namaqualand has become vital. Here we present first observations on a survey and broad chronology at one such locality, namely Soutpansklipheuwel outcrop. First results reveal a millennia-long history of occupation. Possible shared attributes that respond to biogeographic and cultural variables are outlined.
Identifying Occluded Agents in Dynamic Games with Noise-Corrupted Observations

—To provide safe and efﬁcient services, robots must rely on observations from sensors (lidar, camera, etc.) to have a clear knowledge of the environment. In multi-agent scenarios, robots must further reason about the intrinsic motivation underlying the behavior of other agents in order to make inferences about their future behavior. Occlusions, which often occur in robot operating scenarios, make the decision-making of robots even more challenging. In scenarios without occlusions, dynamic game theory provides a solid theoretical framework for predicting the behavior of agents with different objectives interacting with each other over time. Prior work proposed an inverse dynamic game method to recover the game model that best explains observed behavior. However, an apparent shortcoming is that it does not account for agents that may be occluded. Neglecting these agents may result in risky navigation decisions. To address this problem, we propose a novel inverse dynamic game technique to infer the behavior of occluded, unobserved agents that best explains the observation of visible agents’ behavior, and simultaneously to predict the agents’ future behavior based on the recovered game model. We demonstrate our method in several simulated scenarios. Results reveal that our method robustly estimates agents’ objectives and predicts trajectories for both visible and occluded agents from a short sequence of noise corrupted trajectory observation of only the visible agents.
Background clutter and detection algorithm-based staring IR seeker preformance evaluation

Detecting a target out of its surrounding background is a major problem in various infrared seekers. The cluttered scenarios present extreme challenges for the modern IR seekers and are the focus of technology efforts. So, a complete performance evaluation model should include all of the following elements: i) the background ii) the target, iii) the atmosphere, iv) the sensor, and v) the image processing algorithms. Since the staring IR seeker systems are emerging as the latest application of the thermal infrared technology, it suffers the most from the lack of complete performance evaluation models. We present a robust performance evaluation technique for staring IR seekers based on signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), with the quantitative description of the background clutter and detection algorithms emphasized. The power transfer functions of the optical system, detector and electronic are established to describe energy transmission of the signal and interference (noise and clutter) through the IR seeker, and the targets' radiant intensity statistics as well as the noise's statistical characteristics are also taken into account. In order to quantify the background clutter, we use a clutter measure based on its energy content - power spectral density (PSD). Based on this measure, a SIR is developed to analyze detection performance. Furthermore, the influence of several classical detection algorithms on the SIR is analyzed.
Transparent hearing

This paper describes what we call Transparent Hearing: the use of microphone equipped headphones for augmented audio. It provides a framework for experiments like real-time audio alteration, multi-modal sensory integration and collaborative listening experiences. We attach high-quality microphones to headphones and send the signal through a computer to these headphones. We have built headphones that stop the music if somebody wants to talk to you, a pseudophone, and collaborative I hear What You Hear headphones that are triggered by eye-contact.
Ineractive 3D presentations and buyer behavior

This paper shows preliminary results on how interactive 3D product presentations affect buyer behavior in e-commerce applications over the Internet. We conducted two experiments involving simulated online shopping trips, in which subjects saw some products with 3D presentations and made product choices. The results show that the availability of interactive 3D product presentations instead of still images may affect some important aspects of buyer behavior, including the amount of time spent examining products and purchase likelihood.
Utilizing Admissible Bounds for Heuristic Learning

While learning a heuristic function for forward search algorithms with modern machine learning techniques has been gaining interest in recent years, there has been little theoretical understanding of what they should learn, how to train them, and why we do so. This lack of understanding leads to various literature performing an ad-hoc selection of datasets (suboptimal vs optimal costs or admissible vs inadmissible heuristics) and optimization metrics (e.g., squared vs absolute errors). Moreover, due to the lack of admissibility of the resulting trained heuristics, little focus has been put on the role of admissibility during learning. This paper articulates the role of admissible heuristics in supervised heuristic learning using them as parameters of Truncated Gaussian distributions, which tightens the hypothesis space compared to ordinary Gaussian distributions. We argue that this mathematical model faithfully follows the principle of maximum entropy and empirically show that, as a result, it yields more accurate heuristics and converges faster during training.
Rethinking the longitudinal stream temperature paradigm: region‐wide comparison of thermal infrared imagery reveals unexpected complexity of river temperatures

Prevailing theory suggests that stream temperature warms asymptotically in a downstream direction, beginning at the temperature of the source in the headwaters and levelling off downstream as it converges to match meteorological conditions. However, there have been few empirical examples of longitudinal patterns of temperature in large rivers due to a paucity of data. We constructed longitudinal thermal profiles (temperature vs distance) for 53 rivers in the Pacific Northwest (USA) using an extensive data set of remotely sensed summertime river temperatures and classified each profile into one of five patterns of downstream warming: asymptotic (increasing then flattening), linear (increasing steadily), uniform (not changing), parabolic (increasing then decreasing), or complex (not fitting other classes). We evaluated (1) how frequently profiles warmed asymptotically downstream as expected, and (2) whether relationships between river temperature and common hydroclimatic variables differed by profile class. We found considerable diversity in profile shape, with 47% of rivers warming asymptotically and 53% having alternative profile shapes. Water temperature did not warm substantially over the course of the river for coastal parabolic and uniform profiles, and for some linear and complex profiles. Profile classes showed no clear geographical trends. The degree of correlation between river temperature and hydroclimatic variables differed among profile classes, but there was overlap among classes. Water temperature in rivers with asymptotic or parabolic profiles was positively correlated with August air temperature, tributary temperature and velocity, and negatively correlated with elevation, August precipitation, gradient and distance upstream. Conversely, associations were less apparent in rivers with linear, uniform or complex profiles. Factors contributing to the unique shape of parabolic profiles differed for coastal and inland rivers, where downstream cooling was influenced locally by climate or cool water inputs, respectively. Potential drivers of shape for complex profiles were specific to each river. These thermal patterns indicate diverse thermal habitats that may promote resilience of aquatic biota to climate change. Without this spatial context, climate change models may incorrectly estimate loss of thermally suitable habitat. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A travel time based hydraulic tomographic approach

Hydraulic tomography is a method to identify the three‐dimensional spatial distribution of hydraulic properties in the subsurface. We propose a tomographic approach providing the inversion of travel times of hydraulic or pneumatic tests conducted in a tomographic array. The inversion is based on the relation between the peak time of a recorded transient pressure curve and the diffusivity of the investigated system. The development of a transformation factor enables the inversion of further travel times besides the peak time of a transient curve. As the early travel times of the curve are mainly related to preferential flow features while the inversion based on late travel times are reflecting an integral behavior, it can be assumed that the different inversion results reflect the properties of the overall system. By comparing the different reconstructions the system interpretation therefore becomes more comprehensive and reliable. Furthermore, the similarity of the proposed hydraulic tomographic approach to seismic travel time tomography allows us to apply the inversion algorithms which are used for seismic tomography. We therefore apply the method of staggered grids, which enables to refine the grid resulting in a higher nominal resolution, to data from a set of interference tests arranged in a tomographic array. The tests were conducted in an unsaturated fractured sandstone cylinder in the laboratory. The three‐dimensional reconstructions of the diffusivity distribution are found to be highly reliable and robust. In particular, the mapped fracture of the sandstone cylinder coincides with our reconstructed diffusivity distribution.
Land Use–Land Cover Changes and Sewage Loading in the Lower Eastern Shore Watersheds and Coastal Bays of Maryland: Implications for Surface Water Quality

ABSTRACT Aighewi, I.T. ; Nosakhare, O.K. , and Ishaque, A.B. , 2013. Land use–land cover changes and sewage loading in the lower Eastern Shore watersheds and coastal bays of Maryland: Implications for surface water quality. Changes in land use and cover influence surface water quality and thus are a potential threat to water systems and coastal ecosystem health. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the influence of historical land use–land cover (LULC) changes and point-source sewage discharge on surface water quality of some lower Eastern Shore watersheds of Maryland. LANDSAT data for 1986–2006 was acquired and classified using Anderson level-1 classification system in ENVI 4.5, whereas LULC changes were detected in Arc-GIS 9.2 environment. Historical water monitoring and climatic data were obtained from Maryland Department of Environment–Chesapeake Bay Program, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, respectively. Nutrient loading data from wastewater treatment plants were obtained from Maryland Department of Environment and data analyzed using regression analysis and principal component analysis (PCA). The result shows that total phosphorous levels in the surface waters decreased significantly (p < 0.05) during the 20-year study period. However, using PCA, we determined that the declining P trend was attributable to the decreasing agricultural land use rather than the sewage discharge from wastewater treatment plants. The increase in urban land use and the resultant runoff to the water bodies may explain the declining trends in dissolved oxygen levels observed during the period, with serious implications for eutrophication. An empirical model developed for P in surface waters (r2 = 0.90) showed that the combination of point and nonpoint sources and land use/cover change factors are good predictors. The incorporation of quantitative LULC data component as well as point-source nutrient loading into existing models is highly recommended for a more holistic assessment of land-use influence on water systems in general.
Grammar-Based Recognition of Documentary Forms and Extraction of Metadata

Metadata extraction is a critical aspect of ingestion of collections into digital archives and libraries. A method for automatically recognizing document types and extracting metadata from digital records has been developed. The method is based on a method for automatically annotating semantic categories such as person’s names, job titles, dates, and postal addresses that may occur in a record. It extends this method by using the semantic annotations to identify the intellectual elements of a document’s form, parsing these elements using context-free grammars that define documentary forms, and interpreting the elements of the form of the document to identify metadata such as the chronological date, author(s), addressee(s), and topic. Context-free grammars were developed for fourteen of the documentary forms occurring in Presidential records. In an experiment, the document type recognizer successfully recognized the documentary form and extracted the metadata of two-thirds of the records in a series of Presidential e-records containing twenty-one document types. 1