Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A trans-national comparison of stock market movements and related social media chatter during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic first identified in 2019 has had long-term ramifications across global financial markets. We have seen stock markets across countries falling to historical lows and then recovering back during the pandemic. Prior research has established that human emotions can significantly influence financial markets. In particular, social media discussions or online Word-of-mouth (OWoM) minutely reflect public emotions and opinions associated with global market volatility. In this study, we use a quantitative approach to explore the relationship between discussions in twitter, a popular micro-blogging online platform and stock market performance across different countries, in order to understand the disaster-triggered behavioural responses of common investors across the globe. We analyse the association of national stock-indices, sentiment polarity and discussion subjectivity in Covid-19-related tweets originating in India, US, Italy, UK, Australia, Nigeria and South Africa during February 2020– January 2021 period. Using a combination of multiple analytics methods, our study examines: (i) linear and lagged association between OWoM and market performance; and (ii) heterogeneity in the OWoM-market relationship across the seven countries. Our results show weak but statistically significant correlation between OWoM subjectivity and polarity and stock market returns across countries. Our findings also show differential temporal association of OWoM and market returns across countries. Our study shows stock market connectedness between pairs of countries, some simultaneously varying while others varying with a time lag, and the strength of such connectedness increases during global disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Removal of the Solar Component in AVHRR 3.7-µm Radiances for the Retrieval of Cirrus Cloud Parameters

Abstract A numerical scheme has been developed to remove the solar component in the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) 3.7-µm channel for the retrieval of cirrus parameters during daytime. This method uses a number of prescribed threshold values for AVHRR channels 1 (0.63 µm), 2 (0.8 µm), 3 (3.7 µm), 4 (10.9 µm), and 5 (12 µm) to separate clear and cloudy pixels. A look-up table relating channels 1 and 3 solar reflectances is subsequently constructed based on the prescribed mean effective ice crystal sizes and satellite geometric parameters. An addingdoubling radiative transfer program has been used to generate numerical values in the construction of the look-up table. Removal of the channel 3 solar component is accomplished by using the look-up table and the measured channel 1 reflectance. The cloud retrieval scheme described in Ou et al. has been modified in connection with the removal program. The authors have applied the removalretrieval scheme to the AVHRR global area coverage daytime.
Ordinal Analysis of Variation of Sensory Responses in Combination with Multinomial Ordered Logistic Regression vs. Chemical Composition: A Case Study of the Quality of a Sausage from Different Producers

The newly developed statistical technique of two-way ordinal analysis of variation (ORDANOVA) was applied for the first time to sensory responses in combination with multinomial ordered logistic regression of a response category vs. chemical composition. A corresponding tutorial is provided. As a case study, samples of a sausage from different producers, purchased at the same time from a market, were compared based on sensory responses of experienced experts. A decomposition of total variation of the ordinal data and simulation of the multinomial distribution of the relative frequencies of the responses in different categories showed a statistically significant difference between the producers’ samples, and an insignificant difference between the experts’ responses related to the same sample. The capabilities of experts were also evaluated. The influence of chemical composition of a sausage sample on the probability of a response category was modeled using multinomial ordered logistic regression of the response on mass fractions of the main sausage components. This statistical technique can be helpful for understanding sources of variation of sensory responses on food quality properties. It is also promising for a revision of specification limits for chemical composition, as well as for the prediction of sensory properties when the chemical composition of the product is subject to quality control.
Thermal conduction and heating by nonthermal electrons in the x-ray halo of M87

A hydrostatic model for the X-ray halo around the giant elliptical galaxy M87 is presented. We show that by taking into account the processes of thermal conduction, and nonthermal heating by relativistic electrons in the radio lobes, a self-consistent hydrostatic model can be constructed. There is no need to invoke radiative accretion or the suppression of thermal conductivity.
Estimating the Relative Contribution of Environmental and Genetic Risk Factors to Different Aging Traits by Combining Correlated Variables into Weighted Risk Scores

Genetic and exposomal factors contribute to the development of human aging. For example, genetic polymorphisms and exposure to environmental factors (air pollution, tobacco smoke, etc.) influence lung and skin aging traits. For prevention purposes it is highly desirable to know the extent to which each category of the exposome and genetic factors contribute to their development. Estimating such extents, however, is methodologically challenging, mainly because the predictors are often highly correlated. Tackling this challenge, this article proposes to use weighted risk scores to assess combined effects of categories of such predictors, and a measure of relative importance to quantify their relative contribution. The risk score weights are determined via regularized regression and the relative contributions are estimated by the proportion of explained variance in linear regression. This approach is applied to data from a cohort of elderly Caucasian women investigated in 2007–2010 by estimating the relative contribution of genetic and exposomal factors to skin and lung aging. Overall, the models explain 17% (95% CI: [9%, 28%]) of the outcome’s variance for skin aging and 23% ([11%, 34%]) for lung function parameters. For both aging traits, genetic factors make up the largest contribution. The proposed approach enables us to quantify and rank contributions of categories of exposomal and genetic factors to human aging traits and facilitates risk assessment related to common human diseases in general. Obtained rankings can aid political decision making, for example, by prioritizing protective measures such as limit values for certain exposures.
Assessing the Quality of Student-Generated Content at Scale: A Comparative Analysis of Peer-Review Models

Engaging students in creating learning resources has demonstrated pedagogical benefits. However, to effectively utilize a repository of student-generated content (SGC), a selection process is needed to separate high- from low-quality resources as some of the resources created by students can be ineffective, inappropriate, or incorrect. A common and scalable approach is to use a peer-review process where students are asked to assess the quality of resources authored by their peers. Given that judgments of students, as experts-in-training, cannot wholly be relied upon, a redundancy-based method is widely employed where the same assessment task is given to multiple students. However, this approach introduces a new challenge, referred to as the consensus problem: How can we assign a final quality to a resource given ratings by multiple students? To address this challenge, we investigate the predictive performance of 18 inference models across five well-established categories of consensus approaches for inferring the quality of SGC at scale. The analysis is based on the engagement of 2141 undergraduate students across five courses in creating 12 803 resources and 77 297 peer reviews. Results indicate that the quality of reviews is quite diverse, and students tend to overrate. Consequently, simple statistics such as mean and median fail to identify poor-quality resources. Findings further suggest that incorporating advanced probabilistic and text analysis methods to infer the reviewers' reliability and reviews' quality improves performance; however, there is still an evident need for instructor oversight and training of students to write compelling and reliable reviews.
The Association between Occupational Stress and Mental Health among Chinese Soccer Referees in the Early Stage of Reopening Soccer Matches during the COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak: A Moderated Mediation Model

Background: The sudden and unpredictable changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are a serious threat to the occupational stress and mental health of referees worldwide, which has not attracted widespread attention. The mental health of football referees has a certain influence on their job satisfaction or the accuracy of judgments. Methods: This study constructed a moderated mediation model to explore the buffer factors between occupational stress and mental health in Chinese soccer referees in the early stage of reopening soccer matches during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Data from 317 Chinese soccer referees (aged 19–45) were collected through an online questionnaire in September–October 2022. Occupational stress, mental health, job burnout and perceived social support were measured, and moderated mediation model was analyzed. Results: The results of this study showed that occupational stress was negatively correlated with mental health through the mediating effect of job burnout and the moderated effect of perceived social support after controlling for demographic variables. Specifically, the association between occupational stress and mental health was weaker when perceived social support was higher and stronger. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that job burnout and perceived social support played important roles in buffering the negative effects of occupational stress on the mental health of Chinese soccer referees in the early stage of reopening soccer matches during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The findings provide implications for mental health interventions in soccer referees during the public health crises.
Experimental Characterization of Shil'nikov Chaos by Statistics of Return Times

We report experimental evidence of a new type of chaos characterized by pulses equal in shape, but irregularly separated in time. The times of return to a Poincare section are statistically spread, however their iteration map is one-dimensional and in close agreement with that arising from Shil'nikov theory. Thus, the iteration map of the time intervals becomes the most appropriate indicator of this chaos. The residual width of the experimentally measured maps is due to a transient fluctuation enhancement peculiar to macroscopic systems, which is absent in low-dimensional chaotic dynamics.
Development and Skin Penetration Pathway Evaluation Using Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy of Microemulsions for Dermal Delivery Enhancement of Finasteride

This study aimed to develop microemulsions using poloxamer 124 as a surfactant to improve the skin penetration of finasteride and to investigate the skin penetration pathways of these microemulsions by colocalization techniques using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). The prepared finasteride-loaded microemulsions had average particle sizes ranging from 80.09 to 136.97 nm with particle size distributions within acceptable ranges and exhibited negative surface charges. The obtained microemulsions could significantly increase the skin penetration of finasteride compared to a finasteride solution. According to the skin penetration pathway evaluation conducted with CLSM, the microemulsions were hair follicle-targeted formulations due to penetration via the transfollicular pathway as a major skin penetration pathway. Additionally, this study found that the microemulsions also penetrated via the intercluster pathway more than via the intercellular pathway and transcellular pathway. The intercluster pathway, intercellular pathway, and transcellular pathway were considered only minor pathways.
On the evolution of turbulent scales in the wake of a wind turbine model

Wind-tunnel experimental data from the wake of a model wind turbine were used to provide a scale-by-scale energetic description of the flow at various locations downwind of the turbine. Pre-multiplied spectra of the streamwise and vertical velocity components were considered for the analysis and compared with those obtained in the base flow (smooth wall condition). Results showed that in the relatively high-frequency range, the turbine induces strong turbulent energy into the wake, which is an indicator of its active character. However, large scales and very large scales were observed to be dampened in the wake close to the wall, implying that the turbine also acts as a high-pass filter. These two distinct processes occurring in the wake suggest to conceptualize and model the turbine as an ‘active filter’. Various terms in the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) equation were also estimated at different locations to study the physical processes modulating the enhanced levels of turbulence intensity observed in.
Differential privacy: Review of improving utility through cryptography‐based technologies

Due to successful applications of data analysis technologies in many fields, various institutions have accumulated a large amount of data to improve their services. As the speed of data collection has increased dramatically over the last few years, an increasing number of users are growing concerned about their personal information. Therefore, privacy preservation has become an urgent problem to be solved. Differential privacy as a strong privacy preservation tool has attracted significant attention. In this review, we focus on improving data utility of differentially private mechanisms through technologies related to cryptography. In particular, we first focus on how to improve data utility through anonymous communication. Then, we summarize how to improve data utility by combining differentially private mechanisms with homomorphic encryption schemes. Next, we summarize hardness results of what is impossible to achieve for differentially private mechanisms' data utility from the view of cryptography. Differential privacy borrowed intuitions from cryptography and still benefits from the progress of cryptography. To summarize the state‐of‐the‐art and to benefit future researches, we are motivated to provide this review.
Motion estimation involving discontinuities in a multiresolution scheme

In this paper, the problem of motion estimation is formulated mathematically and two classical methods are reviewed. Focus is then placed on a slightly different method which offers the advantage of stable convergence while providing a good approximation of the solution. Traditionally, the solution has been stabilized by regularization, as proposed by Tikhonov, i.e., by assuming a priori the smoothness of the solution. This hypothesis cannot be made globally over a field of motion vectors. Hence we propose a regularization process involving MOTION DISCONTINUITIES based on a Markov (MRF) model of motion. A new regularization function involving discontinuities is defined. Since the criterion is no longer quadratic, a deterministic relaxation method can be applied to estimate the global minimum. This relaxation scheme is based on the minimization of a sequence of quadratic functionals which tend toward the criterion. The algorithms presented were tested on two sequences: SPHERE, a synthetic sequence, and INTERVIEW, a real sequence.
Unified Roughness Scattering Model Incorporating Scattering Component Induced by Thickness Fluctuations in Silicon-on-Insulator Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors

A unified model of roughness scattering in single-gate silicon-on-insulator metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors is proposed based on a formulation suitable for perturbation theory. This unified model includes the roughness scattering model both in bulk MOSFETs and in thin SOI MOSFETs. The SOI-thickness-fluctuation-induced scattering component is naturally derived from the proposed roughness scattering model. The experimentally observed dependence of inversion layer mobility on SOI thickness in thin SOI MOSFETs is explained well by the proposed roughness scattering model.
The complexity of environmental sound as a function of seasonal variation

Residential land is performed for a surrounding area of a suburban local city. As a result of urbanization, an area of rich natural environments became narrow. For the animals and plants for whom a river and a forest are necessary, it becomes difficult to live. Environmental sound produced by the tiny insects in this area is changing from year to year. Catching the conditions for the developmental observations and environmental preservation in natural environments, we continue to measure the environmental sound as the time‐series data. We estimate the complexity for these waveforms of the measured environmental sound in the season when insects chirp and do not chirp. For estimation of the complexity, we evaluate by the fractal dimension of the environmental sound. Environmental sound in early autumn is mainly generated by insects in the grass and on the trees. And, the fractal dimension for the sound waveforms of chirping of insects is up to 1.8.
Vibrational spectroscopy and energy relaxation of nanocubes, nanoboxes, and nanocages

Irradiating metal particles by an ultrafast laser pulse produces rapid heating of the lattice. This can lead to coherent excitation of the vibrational modes of the particle that correlate with the expansion co-ordinates. By comparing the measured periods to continuum mechanics calculations, these experiments can provide information about the elastic constants of the particle if the size and shape are known. In this paper recent results are presented for particles with cubic symmetry, specifically, nanocubes, nanoboxes (hollow cubes) and nanocages (nanoboxes with holes on the corners and/or facets of the box). The way the vibrational modes are assigned, and the information content of the experiments will be discussed, as well as the energy relaxation dynamics of the particles. Energy relaxation is important for the proposed use of the nanocages in phothermal therapy, where heat dissipation following laser excitation is used to selectively kill cells.
Potential Role of JAK Inhibitors in the Treatment of Systemic Sclerosis-Associated Interstitial Lung Disease: A Narrative Review from Pathogenesis to Real-Life Data

Background: Systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD) is one of the most relevant complications of SSc and the major cause of death. The pathogenesis of SSc-ILD involves a complex interplay of multiple cell types and different molecular pathways, with both inflammation and fibrosis as pathological hallmarks. To date, there are no treatments able to target both components of the disease. Janus kinase inhibitors (JAKinibs) represent an interesting therapeutic option because they exert both anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic properties. Methods: Here, we performed a narrative review concerning the potential role of JAKinibs in SSc-ILD to define the state of art and to evaluate the pathogenetic rationale behind this type of treatment. Results: Currently, few studies investigated SSc-ILD response to JAKinibs treatment. Data were analyzed from three clinical studies and four case reports and progression of SSc-ILD was not evident in 93.5% of patients treated with JAKinibs. Conclusions: Available evidence of efficacy of JAKinibs in SSc-ILD is sparse but promising. JAKinibs could be an interesting treatment in SSc-ILD because of their potential inhibition of the fibrotic processes combined with their anti-inflammatory action. Moreover, JAKinibs were also shown in some studies to have a potential effect on pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), another threatening complication in SSc. More data are necessary to define JAKinibs role in SSc-ILD treatment.
Numerical Methods for Multiple Inviscid Interfaces in Creeping Flows

We present new, highly accurate, and efficient methods for computing the motion of a large number of two-dimensional closed interfaces in a slow viscous flow. The interfacial velocity is found through the solution to an integral equation whose analytic formulation is based on complex-variable theory for the biharmonic equation. The numerical methods for solving the integral equations are spectrally accurate and employ a fast multipole-based iterative solution procedure, which requires only O(N) operations where N is the number of nodes in the discretization of the interface. The interface is described spectrally, and we use evolution equations that preserve equal arclength spacing of the marker points. We assume that the fluid on one side of the interface is inviscid and we discuss two different physical phenomena: bubble dynamics and interfacial motion driven by surface tension (viscous sintering). Applications from buoyancy-driven bubble interactions, the motion of polydispersed bubbles in an extensional flow, and the removal of void spaces through viscous sintering are considered and we present large-scale, fully resolved simulations involving O(100) closed interfaces.
VMF-SSD: A Novel V-Space Based Multi-Scale Feature Fusion SSD for Apple Leaf Disease Detection

Apple leaf diseases seriously affect the quality of apples and may lead to yield losses, detecting apple leaf diseases accurately can prevent diseases from spreading and promote the healthy growth of the industry. However, recent studies cannot achieve accurate detection of leaf diseases with high accuracy because the lesions are of different sizes. So, this paper proposed a novel apple leaf disease detection method called VMF-SSD (V-space-based Multi-scale Feature-fusion SSD), which is designed to extract more reliable multi-scale feature representations for varied sizes of diseased spots and improve the final detection performance. The multi-scale feature extraction is established with multi-scale feature representation to further improve the disease detection performance, especially for small spots. After that, a V-space-based location branch is presented to enhance the texture feature information and help further identify disease spot location. Finally, attention mechanisms are utilized to automatically learn the importance of feature channels at different scales for distinguishing diseased spots of different sizes. Experimental results showed that the VMF-SSD method achieves 83.19% mAP and obtains the detection speed of 27.53 FPS on the test set, which indicates that the proposed VMF-SSD method can achieve competitive performance on apple leaf diseases detection task and satisfy the requirements of agricultural production applications.
Adaptive Sliding Mode Observer‐Based Robust Fault Reconstruction for a Helicopter With Actuator Fault

This paper proposes a design method of robust fault reconstruction for a 3‐DOF helicopter with actuator faults and disturbance. The model of the 3‐DOF helicopter considered in this paper is an affine nonlinear system. An adaptive sliding mode observer is firstly proposed such that the actuator fault can be reconstructed through the adaptive law online. Then, based on linear matrix inequalities (LMI), a feasible algorithm is explored to solve the designed parameters. Finally, a simulation study of the 3‐DOF helicopter is presented to show the effectiveness of the scheme.