Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Magnitude of Arsenic Pollution in the Mekong and Red River Deltas — Cambodia and Vietnam

Large alluvial deltas of the Mekong River in southern Vietnam and Cambodia and the Red River in northern Vietnam have groundwaters that are exploited for drinking water by private tube-wells, which are of increasing demand since the mid-1990s. This paper presents an overview of groundwater arsenic pollution in the Mekong delta: arsenic concentrations ranged from 1–1610 μg/L in Cambodia (average 217 μg/L) and 1–845 μg/L in southern Vietnam (average 39 μg/L), respectively. It also evaluates the situation in Red River delta where groundwater arsenic concentrations vary from 1–3050 μg/L (average 159 μg/L). In addition to rural areas, the drinking water supply of the city of Hanoi has elevated arsenic concentrations. The sediments of 12–40 m deep cores from the Red River delta contain arsenic levels of 2–33 μg/g (average 7 μg/g, dry weight) and show a remarkable correlation with sediment-bound iron. In all three areas, the groundwater arsenic pollution seem to be of natural origin and caused by reductive dissolution of arsenic-bearing iron phases buried in aquifers. The population at risk of chronic arsenic poisoning is estimated to be 10 million in the Red River delta and 0.5–1 million in the Mekong delta. A subset of hair samples collected in Vietnam and Cambodia from residents drinking groundwater with arsenic levels N50 μg/L have a significantly higher arsenic content than control groups (b 50 μg/L). Few cases of arsenic related health problems are recognized in the study areas compared to Bangladesh and West Bengal. This difference probably relates to arsenic contaminated tube-well water only being used substantially over the past 7 to 10 years in Vietnam and Cambodia. Because symptoms of chronic arsenic poisoning usually take more than 10 years to develop, the number of future arsenic related ailments in Cambodia and Vietnam is likely to increase. Early mitigation measures should be a high priority.
Too Many Minor Order Obstructions ( For Parameterized Lower Ideals )

We study the growth rate on the number obstructions (forbidden minors) for families of graphs that are based on parameterized graph problems. Our main result shows that if the de ning graph problem is NP-complete then the growth rate on the number of obstructions must be super-polynomial or else the polynomial-time hierarchy must collapse to P 3 . We illustrate the rapid growth rate of parameterized lower ideals by computing (and counting) the obstructions for the graph families with independence plus size at most k, k 12.
The short-period supersoft source in M31

We show that the recently discovered short period supersoft source in M31 is probably a progenitor of a magnetic cataclysmic variable (CV). The white dwarf spins asynchronously because of the current high accretion rate. However its fieldstrength is typical of an AM Herculis system, which is what it will ultimately become. We discuss the relevance of this system to CV evolution, and its relation to some particular CVs with special characteristics.
Clustered encouragement designs with individual noncompliance: bayesian inference with randomization, and application to advance directive forms.

In many studies comparing a new 'target treatment' with a control target treatment, the received treatment does not always agree with assigned treatment-that is, the compliance is imperfect. An obvious example arises when ethical or practical constraints prevent even the randomized assignment of receipt of the new target treatment but allow the randomized assignment of the encouragement to receive this treatment. In fact, many randomized experiments where compliance is not enforced by the experimenter (e.g. with non-blinded assignment) may be more accurately thought of as randomized encouragement designs. Moreover, often the assignment of encouragement is at the level of clusters (e.g. doctors) where the compliance with the assignment varies across the units (e.g. patients) within clusters. We refer to such studies as 'clustered encouragement designs' (CEDs) and they arise relatively frequently (e.g. Sommer and Zeger, 1991; McDonald et al., 1992; Dexter et al., 1998) Here, we propose Bayesian methodology for causal inference for the effect of the new target treatment versus the control target treatment in the randomized CED with all-or-none compliance at the unit level, which generalizes the approach of Hirano et al. (2000) in important and surprisingly subtle ways, to account for the clustering, which is necessary for statistical validity. We illustrate our methods using data from a recent study exploring the role of physician consulting in increasing patients' completion of Advance Directive forms.
Caenorhabditis elegans Integrates the Signals of Butanone and Food to Enhance Chemotaxis to Butanone

Behavioral plasticity induced by the integration of two sensory signals, such as associative learning, is an important issue in neuroscience, but its evolutionary origin and diversity have not been explored sufficiently. We report here a new type of such behavioral plasticity, which we call butanone enhancement, in Caenorhabditis elegans adult hermaphrodites: C. elegans specifically enhances chemotaxis to butanone by preexposure to butanone and food. Mutant analysis revealed that this plasticity requires the AWCON olfactory neuron, whose fate is known to be determined by the NSY-1/ASK1 MAPKKK (mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase) cascade as well as the DAF-11 and ODR-1 guanylyl cyclases. These proteins also control many aspects of olfactory sensation/plasticity in AWC neurons and seem to provide appropriate cellular conditions for butanone enhancement in the AWCON neuron. Butanone enhancement also required the functions of Bardet-Biedl syndrome genes in the AWCON neuron but not other genes that control ciliary transport. Furthermore, preexposure to butanone and the odor of food was enough for the enhancement of butanone chemotaxis. These results suggest that the AWCON olfactory neuron may conduct a behavioral plasticity resembling associative learning and that the functions of Bardet-Biedl syndrome genes in sensory cilia may play an important role in this plasticity.
Asymmetric Conditional Volatility on the Romanian Stock Market

Recent studies show that a negative shock in stock prices will generate more volatility than a positive shock of similar magnitude. The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis under which the the conditional variance of stock returns is an asymmetric function of past information. This paper investigates the volatility of the Romanian Stock Market using daily observations from BETC Index for the period from 1998 to 2008. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis of asymmetric volatility; hence, good and bad news of the same magnitude have different impacts on the volatility level. In order to assess asymmetric volatility we use autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity specifications known as TARCH and EGARCH. Our results show that the conditional variance is an asymmetric function of past innovations raising proportionately more during market declines, a phenomenon known as the leverage effect.
Multi-Robot Exploration with Communication Restrictions

After a disaster, instability in the environment may delay search and rescue efforts until it is safe enough for human rescuers to enter the environment. Such delays can be significant, but it is still possible to gather information about the environment in the interim, by sending in a team of robots to scout the area and locate points of interest. We present several algorithms to accomplish this exploration, and provide both theoretical proofs and simulation results that show the algorithms will achieve full exploration of an unknown environment even under communication restrictions.
Population Pharmacokinetics of Isavuconazole from Phase 1 and Phase 3 (SECURE) Trials in Adults and Target Attainment in Patients with Invasive Infections Due to Aspergillus and Other Filamentous Fungi

ABSTRACT Isavuconazole, the active moiety of the water-soluble prodrug isavuconazonium sulfate, is a triazole antifungal agent used for the treatment of invasive fungal infections. The objective of this analysis was to develop a population pharmacokinetic (PPK) model to identify covariates that affect isavuconazole pharmacokinetics and to determine the probability of target attainment (PTA) for invasive aspergillosis patients. Data from nine phase 1 studies and one phase 3 clinical trial (SECURE) were pooled to develop the PPK model (NONMEM, version 7.2). Stepwise covariate modeling was performed in Perl-speaks-NONMEM, version 3.7. 6. The area under the curve (AUC) at steady state was calculated for 5,000 patients by using Monte Carlo simulations. The PTA using the estimated pharmacodynamic (PD) target value (total AUC/MIC ratio) estimated from in vivo PD studies of invasive aspergillosis over a range of MIC values was calculated using simulated patient AUC values. A two-compartment model with a Weibull absorption function and a first-order elimination process adequately described plasma isavuconazole concentrations. The mean estimate for isavuconazole clearance was 2.360 liters/h (percent coefficient of variation [%CV], 34%), and the mean AUC from 0 to 24 h (AUC0–24) was ∼100 mg·h/liter. Clearance was approximately 36% lower in Asians than in Caucasians. The PTA calculated over a range of MIC values by use of the nonneutropenic murine efficacy index corresponding to 90% survival indicated that adequate isavuconazole exposures were achieved in >90% of simulated patients to treat infections with MICs up to and including 1 mg/liter according to European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing methodology and in >90% of simulated patients for infections with MICs up to and including 0.5 mg/liter according to Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute methodology. The highest MIC result for PTA was the same for Caucasian and Asian patients.
Removing Preglottalization from Unit-Selection Synthesis: Towards the Linguistic Naturalness of Synthetic Czech Speech

Abstract—This paper represents another step towards thelinguistic naturalness of synthetic Czech. Its main goal is toeliminate undesirable occurrences of the so-called parasiticspeechsounds, speciﬁcally preglottalization, from synthesizedspeech. After explaining the nature of parasitic speechsoundsin Czech, we present procedures for both automatic detec-tion and segmentation of these sounds in the source speechrecordings. The main contribution of this paper consists in theproposal and implementation of two ways of synthesizing speechwithout preglottalization—cutting the parasitic sound from thesignal and penalizing preglottalization during unit selection.Both these ways succeeded in suppressing the intrusivenessof preglottalization, with the latter method being evaluated assuperior.Index Terms—parasitic speech sound, preglottalization, lin-guistic naturalness, speech synthesis, unit selection. I. I NTRODUCTION C ONCATENATIVE speech synthesis based on a unit-selection framework still appears to be the most popularapproach to synthesize speech, at least as far as industrialapplications are concerned [1], despite the fact that statis-tical parametric synthesis, especially based on the HMMframework [2], [3], is becoming increasingly more popular inthe research domain. Contemporary unit-selection synthesistechniques employ very large speech corpora (for a com-prehensive overview see e.g. [1] or [4]). The principle ofunit-selection-based speech synthesis is to select the largestsuitable segment of natural speech of the source speaker ac-cording to various phonetic, prosodic and positional criteria[5], [6], [7], [8], in order to prevent potential discontinuitiesin the synthesized speech; this aspect is what we may call thetechnical naturalness of concatenative synthesis. The qualityof the synthesized outcome is therefore strongly dependent,apart from speech segmentation of the corpus, on the sourcespeaker: his or her speaking style, as well as idiosyncratichabits, including potential non-standard phenomena, will becopied into the synthetic speech, and thus impair what wemay call the linguistic naturalness of the outcome.
Squirrel-Cage Induction Motors: Understanding Starting Transients

In this article, the transients associated with line starting of squirrel cage induction motors and the potential difficulties they pose are examined. These difficulties include transient torques significantly in excess of the rated motor torque, large inrush currents, and corresponding large dips in voltage. Test results that illustrate these problems are presented. Various techniques to ameliorate the effects of the starting process, including reduced voltage and soft starting, are discussed, and the benefits of these techniques are illustrated through simulation. The oscillatory transient torques discussed in this article are not new, but have often been ignored.
An Ultra-Low Power , Radiation Tolerant , High Speed Correlator

A digital high-speed cross-correlator (HSCC) has been developed for use in a microwave polarimetry instrument. The HSCC incorporates radiation tolerant circuit design and an ultra-low power CMOS process. In order to meet the very high input data requirement of 500 megasamples per second the correlator architecture was partitioned into different sections, each with its own trade-off requirements for the maximum operating frequency and degree of radiation tolerance. An ultra-low power, radiation tolerant, standard cell library was created to allow commercial design tools and methods to be used for the integrated circuit design. These tools made it possible to synthesize the gate-level circuits from behavioral models and also to automatically generate layouts for circuit modules. Level-shifting interface circuits were developed to allow the correlator to communicate with conventional digital circuits using a 3.3 volt power supply while the correlator core operated with a supply voltage of 0.5 volts. Preliminary test results indicate that the correlator functions properly for clock frequencies of several hundred megahertz with milliwatts of power consumption.
Evasion-resistant malware signature based on profiling kernel data structure objects

Malware authors attempt in an endless effort to find new methods to evade the malware detection engines. A popular method is the use of obfuscation technologies that change the syntax of malicious code while preserving the execution semantics. This leads to the evasion of signatures that are built based on the code syntax. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to develop an evasion-resistant malware signature. This signature is based on the malware's execution profiles extracted from kernel data structure objects and neither uses malicious code syntax specific information code execution flow information. Thus, proposed signature is more resistant to obfuscation methods and resilient in detecting malicious code variants. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a prototype signature generation tool called SigGENE is developed. The effectiveness of signatures generated by SigGENE evaluated using an experimental root kit-simulation tool that employs techniques commonly found in rootkits. This simulationtool is obfuscated using several different methods. In further experiments, real-world malware samples that have different variants with the same behavior used to verify the real-world applicability of the approach. The experiments show that the proposed approach is effective, not only in generating a signature that detects the malware and its variants and defeats different obfuscation methods, but also, in producing an execution profiles that can be used to characterize different malicious attacks.
An automatic approach to blindly detect bandwidth edges based on the wavelet transform

Edges Detection is a significant task in many fields of application. Some signal features can be reflected by their discontinuous structure. In general, a mathematical signal transform carries more features than a raw signal. Thus, for analyzing an intercepted signal in a totally blind environment, one can benefit from the information the signal spectrum offers through the Fourier Transform. After sensing the spectrum, the characteristics extraction method must be applied. In this paper, the Wavelet Transform is used, as it exhibits excellent ability to analyze a signal. Also introduced in this paper is an improved algorithm that automatically identifies bandwidth signal boundaries in a determined frequency range. The proposed algorithm is based on the local maxima of the Wavelet Transform modulus. In blind conditions and in a noisy environment, this approach grants good performance.
Contrast-Based Image Fusion in Wavelet Domain

Wavelet direction contrast based on wavelet multi-resolution and HVS is applied into image fusion. A new fusion scheme is proposed, in which a correlated salience measure function and a normalized correlation measure function for source images are defined while a simple equation for weighed fusion coefficients selection is adopted. Experimental results demonstrate that this improved scheme not only has a better visual effect than former fusion schemes, but also simplifies the computation complexity
Hard X-Ray Luminosities of Multinuclei Infrared Luminous Galaxies Showing a Radio/Far-Infrared Excess

We report the results of hard X-ray observations of four multinuclei merging infrared luminous galaxies (IRLGs). We selected these four sources for their excess of radio-to-far-infrared luminosity ratio compared with starburst galaxies. This excess suggests that activity associated with a supermassive black hole (SMBH) contributes strongly to the IRLGs' bolometric luminosities. Although we expect strong hard X-ray emission from the SMBH-driven activity, the radio-excess multinuclei merging IRLGs show considerably smaller hard X-ray luminosities relative to far-infrared (40-500 μm) and infrared (8-1000 μm) luminosities than active galactic nuclei (AGNs) showing a similar radio excess. This result may demonstrate that emission in the hard X-ray region from SMBH-driven activity in the multinuclei merging IRLGs is severely suppressed compared to a typical spectral energy distribution of SMBH-driven activity in AGNs. If this is a common property of merging IRLGs, without taking this into account, hard X-ray observations underestimate the contribution of SMBH-driven activity to the bolometric luminosities of merging IRLGs.
Improving the IEEE std 1471-2000 for communication among stakeholders and early design decisions

There are, at least, three reasons why software architecture is important: a) communication among stakeholders, b) early design decisions, and c) transferable abstraction of a system. The IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems introduces and integrates stakeholders, concerns, viewpoints, views, and architectural models facilitating the expression, communication, evaluation, and comparison of architectures in a consistent manner. However, the standard does not specify a delivery format for architectural description. In addition, it is difficult to know if an architecture is within the principles of design imposed by a specific concern. A similar effort, to describe software architectures is the creation and improvement of special-purpose languages, known as architecture description languages (ADLs). However, ADLs have the disadvantage of not providing adequate support for separating several kinds of concerns across different viewpoints. In order to alleviate these issues, our paper proposes an enhancement to the conceptual model introduced in the standard. Our enhanced model, improves two of the reasons mentioned: a) communication among stakeholders and b) early design decisions.
Measuring beta diversity for presence–absence data

Summary 1. Little consensus has been reached as to general features of spatial variation in beta diversity, a fundamental component of species diversity. This could reflect a genuine lack of simple gradients in beta diversity, or a lack of agreement as to just what constitutes beta diversity. Unfortunately, a large number of approaches have been applied to the investigation of variation in beta diversity, which potentially makes comparisons of the findings difficult. 2. We review 24 measures of beta diversity for presence/absence data (the most frequent form of data to which such measures are applied) that have been employed in the literature, express many of them for the first time in common terms, and compare some of their basic properties. 3. Four groups of measures are distinguished, with a fundamental distinction arising between ‘broad sense’ measures incorporating differences in composition attributable to species richness gradients, and ‘narrow sense’ measures that focus on compositional differences independent of such gradients. On a number of occasions on which the former have been employed in the literature the latter may have been more appropriate, and there are many situations in which consideration of both kinds of measures would be valuable. 4. We particularly recommend (i) considering beta diversity measures in terms of matching/mismatching components (usually denoted a , b and c ) and thereby identifying the contribution of different sources of variation in species composition, and (ii) the use of ternary plots to express the relationship between the values of these measures and of the components, and as a way of understanding patterns in beta diversity.
A Preliminary Study on Nonverbal Emotion Interaction of Virtual Characters in Cartoon Games

Children like cartoon games, a cartoon game for children should support more knowledge. Leaning nonverbal emotion interaction is a very important social skill for a child, how to animate nonverbal emotion interaction in a cartoon game is an interesting subject. Emotion cognitive structure of a virtual character is presented, emotion expression method is also proposed, a virtual character can express nonverbal emotion by body pose or facial expression, a demo system of nonverbal emotion interaction among three virtual characters is realized on a PC, the result shows that the method can provide emotional virtual characters for a cartoon game.