Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping vegetation and land cover in a large urban area using a multiple classifier system

ABSTRACT Vegetation and land-cover information is critical for sustainable environmental management in urban areas. Remote sensing has increasingly been used to derive such information, yet it has been challenged by the spectral and spatial complexity in the urban environment. In this study, we developed a multiple classifier system (MCS) to help improve remote-sensing-based vegetation and land-cover mapping in a large metropolitan area. MCSs, although considered as an emerging hot topic and a promising trend in pattern recognition, have not received the attention it deserves in the remote-sensing community. Our work consisted of several components. First, we identified a group of commonly used pattern recognizers from different families of statistical learning algorithms as base classifiers. Then, we implemented them to derive land-cover information from a satellite image covering the study site. Last, we adopted a weighting and combination method to generate the final map. Results indicate that there is statistically significant difference in the classification accuracy between the MCS developed and each base classifier considered. Comparing with the base classifiers, the MCS produced not only about 5–8% higher overall classification accuracy but also the most stable categorical accuracies. Moreover, the MCS generated a larger accuracy improvement for spectrally complex classes than for relatively homogenous ones, suggesting its comparative advantage in reducing classification errors caused by class ambiguity. The novelties of our work are with the demonstration of how MCSs can be operationally used to improve image classification from large remote sensor data sets with complex patterns and with the insight into the behaviour of MCSs in relation to the complexity of individual classes. These findings can help promote the use of MCSs as an emerging premier approach for image classification by the remote-sensing community.
Efficacy of vestibular rehabilitation and its facilitating and hindering factors from real-world clinical data

Background and purpose Customized vestibular rehabilitation improved dizziness and imbalance in several randomized controlled trials. In the present study, we determined the efficacy of customized vestibular rehabilitation using real-world observational data. Methods In this retrospective observational study, we recruited 64 patients (median age = 60, interquartile range = 48–66.3) who completed the customized vestibular rehabilitation from January to December 2022. The outcomes of rehabilitation were evaluated using the dizziness handicap inventory (DHI) or vestibular disorders activities of daily living scale (VADL). The factors associated with outcomes were assessed with a generalized linear model, of which covariates included patients’ age, sex, duration of illness, type of vestibular disorders, initial DHI and VADL scores, exercise compliance, and initial hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS) scores. Results After the median of 6 (4–6) weeks of rehabilitation, DHI and VADL scores significantly improved in patients with either peripheral or central vestibular disorders (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.05). The initial DHI and VADL scores showed a positive while the sum of HADS scores showed a negative correlation with the outcome. In contrast, the age, sex, duration of illness, types of vestibular disorders, and exercise compliance did not affect the outcome. Discussion and conclusion Customized vestibular rehabilitation is effective for central as well as peripheral disorders, especially when the symptoms are severe and the psychological distress is mild.
The 3‐D Structural Model of an Out‐of‐Sequence Earthquake in China: Implication for the Reactivation of Positive Inversion Structures Along the Northern Tianshan Fold‐and‐Thrust Belt

The intracontinental earthquake behavior is not well understood due to its complexity in the interior of the continent. The Tianshan Mountain is located in the interior of the Eurasian plate, which was rejuvenated in the Cenozoic due to the India‐Asia collision and sourced several large earthquakes. The 2016 Hutubi earthquake occurred within the northern Tianshan, China, during rupture of a high‐angle back‐thrust toward the hinterland, which broke the long‐time quiescence in the mountain front. The geometry, dynamics, and hazard implications of this earthquake on an out‐of‐sequence thrust fault remains unclear. The 3‐D structural model shows that the coseismic fault is connected to the large‐scale blind Southern Junggar thrust, which sourced the 1906 Mw ~8 Manas earthquake. The geometry of the coseismic fault and the occurrence of extensional tectonics in the Jurassic suggest that the Hutubi earthquake occurred on a reactivated rift‐related structure. To test this hypothesis and study the kinematics, we performed sandbox modeling, with results suggesting that coseismic fault can form during positive inversion of a preexisting Jurassic rift, and that the Southern Junggar thrust and related structures may be recently active. Coal beds facilitated the transfer of fault slip and strain from mountain to basin and from basal to roof detachment. We propose that the preexisting rift and related sedimentation controlled the subsequent structure and geomorphology of the mountain belt through thrust wedge formation. This study provides a typical example for the study of intracontinental inversion structure and its earthquake behavior.
Mas-mas village tour guides: perception on the profession, roles and learning needs

Research on tourism suggests that tourist guides are key representatives in the tourism industry in that they have contributed significantly to the satisfaction of visitors and are believed to determine whether or not the tourist will revisit destinations. The present study sought to investigate the perception of local tour guides Mas Mas village pertaining to their future carrier as tour guides and the roles they played in the profession. It also assessed the perceived learning needs as tour guides. There were five local tour guides and two potential employers taking part in this study. Data were collected through Focus Group Discussion and semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by employing the five-phased cycle of qualitative data analysis. The findings of this study suggested that being a professional tour guide is a promising career and a prestigious career despite encountering negative perception from the local community. It also revealed the tour guides played as key factor to develop village based tourism. However, they believed to be in need of further training
Hotspot Analysis Reveals Large Landscape Controls Over Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) Persistence Across Arid Landscapes

The invasion of exotic annual grasses during the last century has transformed plant habitats and communities worldwide. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is a winter annual grass that has invaded over 100 million acres of the western United States (Pellant and Hall, 1994. Pellant, 1996). Cheatgrass has relatively rapid growth rate and has been shown to invade particularly in post-disturbance landscapes (Germino 2016). A major impact of invasion is the increased frequency in fires (D’Antonio and Vitousek, 1992). Cheatgrass’ prolific seed production and flammability allows it to competitively exclude native plant species (Seabloom et al., 2003). The successful life strategy of cheatgrass gives a unique spectral image reflectance that can allow the use of remote sensing platforms to track and locate invasions.
Tundra is a consistent source of CO2 at a site with progressive permafrost thaw during 6 years of chamber and eddy covariance measurements

Current and future warming of high‐latitude ecosystems will play an important role in climate change through feedbacks to the global carbon cycle. This study compares 6 years of CO2 flux measurements in moist acidic tundra using autochambers and eddy covariance (Tower) approaches. We found that the tundra was an annual source of CO2 to the atmosphere as indicated by net ecosystem exchange using both methods with a combined mean of 105 ± 17 g CO2 C m−2 y−1 across methods and years (Tower 87 ± 17 and Autochamber 123 ± 14). The difference between methods was largest early in the observation period, with Autochambers indicated a greater CO2 source to the atmosphere. This discrepancy diminished through time, and in the final year the Autochambers measured a greater sink strength than tower. Active layer thickness was a significant driver of net ecosystem carbon exchange, gross ecosystem primary productivity, and Reco and could account for differences between Autochamber and Tower. The stronger source initially attributed lower summer season gross primary production (GPP) during the first 3 years, coupled with lower ecosystem respiration (Reco) during the first year. The combined suppression of GPP and Reco in the first year of Autochamber measurements could be the result of the experimental setup. Root damage associated with Autochamber soil collar installation may have lowered the plant community's capacity to fix C, but recovered within 3 years. While this ecosystem was a consistent CO2 sink during the summer, CO2 emissions during the nonsummer months offset summer CO2 uptake each year.
Relationship of consumer behaviour in social media influences between perceived quality and brand awareness respectively towards brand image

This study aims to investigate how consumer behaviour in Malaysia is influenced by the characteristics of social media influencers who shape consumers' perceptions of drone quality and brand awareness. The research framework on brand recognition, brand loyalty and brand image were adopted from the previous literature. The Malaysian Gen-Z population with disposable income and who use social media are the target of this study. They were users of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and email. Convenience sampling was used to deliver online surveys. A total of 230 samples were successfully collected. The findings indicate that brand awareness and perceived quality are positively and significantly impacted by social media influencers while brand image is positively and significantly impacted by perceived quality but not brand awareness. Perceived quality acts as a mediator between social media influencers and brand image. An analysis of prior research frameworks and studies was conducted to assess the relationship between drone brand image and influencers. Drone research has not been thoroughly investigated. Therefore, this will address some knowledge gaps. A thorough comprehension of the principles of perceived quality and brand awareness is necessary in order to better comprehend the role that social media influencers can play in marketing consumer drone brands.
Ultrasound-based assessment of the expression of inflammatory markers in the rectus femoris muscle of rats

Ultrasonographic characteristics of skeletal muscles are related to their health status and functional capacity, but they still provide limited information on muscle composition during the inflammatory process. It has been demonstrated that an alteration in muscle composition or structure can have disparate effects on different ranges of ultrasonogram pixel intensities. Therefore, monitoring specific clusters or bands of pixel intensity values could help detect echotextural changes in skeletal muscles associated with neurogenic inflammation. Here we compare two methods of ultrasonographic image analysis, namely, the echointensity (EI) segmentation approach (EI banding method) and detection of selective pixel intensity ranges correlated with the expression of inflammatory regulators using an in-house developed computer algorithm (r-Algo). This study utilized an experimental model of neurogenic inflammation in segmentally linked myotomes (i.e., rectus femoris (RF) muscle) of rats subjected to lumbar facet injury. Our results show that there were no significant differences in RF echotextural variables for different EI bands (with 50- or 25-pixel intervals) between surgery and sham-operated rats, and no significant correlations among individual EI band pixel characteristics and protein expression of inflammatory regulators studied. However, mean numerical pixel values for the pixel intensity ranges identified with the proprietary r-Algo computer program correlated with protein expression of ERK1/2 and substance P (both 86–101-pixel ranges) and CaMKII (86–103-pixel range) in RF, and were greater (p < 0.05) in surgery rats compared with their sham-operated counterparts. Our findings indicate that computer-aided identification of specific pixel intensity ranges was critical for ultrasonographic detection of changes in the expression of inflammatory mediators in neurosegmentally-linked skeletal muscles of rats after facet injury.
New insights into the South China Sea throughflow and water budget seasonal cycle: evaluation and analysis of a high-resolution configuration of the ocean model SYMPHONIE version 2.4

Abstract. The South China Sea throughflow (SCSTF) connects the South China Sea (SCS) with neighboring seas and oceans, transferring surface water of the global thermohaline circulation between the Pacific and Indian oceans. A configuration of the SYMPHONIE ocean model at high resolution (4 km) and including an explicit representation of tides is implemented over this region, and a simulation is analyzed over 2010–2018. Comparisons with in situ and satellite data and other available simulations at coarser resolution show the good performance of the model and the relevance of the high resolution for reproducing the spatial and temporal variability of the characteristics of surface dynamics and water masses over the SCS. The added value of an online computation of each term of the water, heat, and salt SCS budgets (surface, lateral oceanic and river fluxes, and internal variations) is also quantitatively demonstrated: important discards are obtained with offline computation, with relative biases of ∼40 % for lateral oceanic inflows and outflows. The SCS water volume budget, including the SCSTF, is analyzed at climatological and seasonal scales. The SCS receives on average a 4.5 Sv yearly water volume input, mainly from the Luzon Strait. It laterally releases this water to neighboring seas, mainly to the Sulu Sea through Mindoro Strait (49 %), to the East China Sea via Taiwan Strait (28 %), and to the Java Sea through Karimata Strait (22 %). The seasonal variability of this water volume budget is driven by lateral interocean exchanges. Surface interocean exchanges, especially at Luzon Strait, are all driven by monsoon winds that favor winter southwestward flows and summer northeastward surface flows. Exchanges through Luzon Strait deep layers show a stable sandwiched structure with vertically alternating inflows and outflows. Last, differences in flux estimates induced by the use of a high-resolution model vs. a low-resolution model are quantified.
DEVELOPED CRIME LOCATION PREDICTION USING LATENT MARKOV MODEL 1 REEM

Latent models, called hidden Markov models (HMMs), are types of algorithms that have been designed to detect crime activities by obtaining a sequence of observations from hidden values. The main contribution of these types of models is the fusion of coupled parameters with two types of HMM algorithms. The first algorithm is the Viterbi algorithm, which is commonly used to find the most probable path, and the accuracy of this algorithm is equal to 80%. The second algorithm is the Baum–Welch algorithm, which has been used to produce robust and accurate models. The modeling results normally focus on evaluating relative mean square errors in log likelihoods, transition matrices, and emission matrices for comparison of modeling performance based on different tolerance values. Previous reports have shown that the modified Baum–Welch algorithm can achieve good results for decreasing tolerance values. The goal of this Work is to generate a compact model that deals with ternary parameters rather than binary parameters by determining the sequential relation of past crime types and locations. Geographic locations can improve the HMM visualization in MATLAB. Moreover, crime levels and their most probable locations are predicted. The obtained results prove the goal of this work.
Physical and Chemical Controls on the Simultaneous Occurrence of Young and Old Groundwater Inferred From Multiple Age Tracers

Understanding groundwater ages within an aquifer system has the potential to better constrain estimates of groundwater recharge and flow rates and therefore increase the reliability of groundwater models. Groundwater ages are generally interpreted from field‐observed environmental tracer concentrations, but in many cases in which multiple groundwater age tracers have been analyzed simultaneously the results show significant disparities among tracer‐specific estimated ages. The disparities are generally attributed to physical mixing between waters of different ages. However, especially in the geochemical literature environmental tracer concentrations are often analyzed with simplistic models in which the degree of the simulated mixing might be considered unrealistic for natural heterogeneous geologic media. In this study we use numerical experiments to examine under which physical conditions measured concentrations of selected environmental tracers (CFC‐12, 39Ar, and 14C) may return discrepant ages. Our model simulations suggest that matrix diffusion has the greatest potential to cause mixing of different‐aged water and to generate age biases between tracers. The multitracer simulations also suggest that there is a limit to the magnitude of the discrepancies that can be attributed to physical processes. When comparing data collected from the Pilbara region of Western Australia with our numerical modeling studies, it was found that a dual‐domain mass transfer model was required to explain the field‐observed age discrepancies.
Understory vegetation in natural and plantation forest ecosystem of Sarguja (C.G.), India

Understory vegetation serves a special role in maintaining the structure and function of forest ecosystem as they strongly influence regeneration, seedling establishment, growth, nutrient cycling and thus the dynamics of the whole forest ecosystem. The present investigation is aimed to study the composition, structure and diversity of understory vegetation in natural forests and teak plantation of Sarguja forest division of Chhattisgarh. A total of 23 species comprising 5 shrubs and 18 herbs were recorded in natural forest while in teak plantation 3 shrub and 20 herb species were found. In natural forest a total of 4500 shrubs/ha and 8,32,000 herbs/ha were recorded while in plantation site it was 5500 shrubs/ha and 6,96,000 herbs/ha, respectively. In shrub layer the value of species diversity was 1.10 for teak plantation and 2.20 for natural forest. Simpson index was 0.23 for natural forest and 0.57 for teak plantation. The Margalefâ€™s index of richness varied from 0.23-0.48, least in plantation site and peak in natural forest, Equitability index varied from 1.00 to 1.37, lowest in plantation site and higher in plantation site and I² diversity was 1.20 in natural forest and 2.00 in plantation site. In case of herb layer the value of Shannon index, species richness and equitability values were higher in teak plantation while the Simpsons index and beta diversity were found more in natural forest.
Establishing a carcinoembryonic antigen-associated competitive endogenous RNA network and forecasting an important regulatory axis in colon adenocarcinoma patients

Background Colorectal cancer is one of the top five malignant tumors in the world in terms of morbidity and mortality. Numerous long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are specifically expressed in tumours and can affect various types of human cancer by participating in competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) regulatory networks. However, the specific mechanisms and complex networks of ceRNA regulatory patterns in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) remain unclear. Methods Using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, we identified the differentially expressed lncRNA, microRNA (miRNA), and messenger RNA (mRNA) between colon cancer and normal tissues, as well as between groups with high and low CEACAM5 expression. Then, we constructed CEACAM5-related ceRNA networks, established the key lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory axis, and explored the biological mechanisms of this axis and its clinical significance in colon cancer from multiomic aspects. Results We constructed a ceRNA network of 18 lncRNAs, 177 miRNAs, and 25 mRNAs associated with CEACAM5 and finally established the key LCMT1-AS2/miR-454-3p/ribosomal protein S6 kinase A5 (RPS6KA5) axis associated with overall survival. Subsequent investigations have indicated that this regulatory axis could potentially participate in the progression of COAD and exert influence on the therapeutic outcomes of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. It may be involved in the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and may modify the tumor immune microenvironment and influence the course of COAD. Additionally, it may be related to ferroptosis, N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation, and tumor stemness and interfere with the sensitivity of tumor cells to 5-fluorouracil and immunotherapy. Conclusions The LCMT1-AS2/RPS6KA5 axis may be instrumental in tumor progression, potentially acting as a prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target.
Development and Storage Behavior of Persimmon-based Flavored Functional Beverage

Persimmon is a rich reservoir of essential nutrients including protein, dietary fiber, minerals, carbohydrates, carotenes, phenolic compounds, and vitamins. This research study was designed with the aim to develop ready-to-serve beverages infused with persimmon and citrus juices and investigating the impact on their physical as well as chemical attributes over a storage period of two months. Various combinations of ingredients were employed, encompassing honey, galgal, ginger juice, mint extract, and spice extract, with total soluble solids (TSS) 10 °Brix and titratable acidity 0.30%. Among all the persimmon ready-to-serve (RTS) beverages prepared using different proportions of ingredients, the blend (T 8 ) incorporating persimmon pulp (10%), galgal juice (7%), ginger juice (3%), mint extract (3%) and spice extract (3%) was particularly preferred by the panelists with a higher overall acceptability score of 7.07 ± 0.44 respectively. Treatment T 8 (10% pulp + 3% ginger juice + 3% mint extract + 3% spice extract) recorded to have the higher ascorbic acid (21.60 ± 0.34), total phenols (10.16 ± 0.38), total flavonoids (10.98 ± 0.43) beside higher antioxidant activity 69.35 ± 0.27 percent among all the treatment. It was revealed that treatment T 8 using galgal and honey was found to be the best based on sensory evaluation and chemical parameters. Furthermore, the findings strongly indicate that persimmons with honey, galgal, ginger juice, mint extract, and spice extract hold the potential for the preparation of flavored persimmon beverages.