Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond The Cloud, How Should Next Generation Utility Computing Infrastructures Be Designed?

: To accommodate the ever-increasing demand for Utility Computing (UC) resources, while taking into account both energy and economical issues, the current trend consists in building larger and larger data centers in a few strategic locations. Although such an approach enables to cope with the actual demand while continuing to operate UC resources through centralized software system, it is far from delivering sustainable and eﬃcient UC infrastructures. We claim that a disruptive change in UC infrastructures is required: UC resources should be managed diﬀerently, considering locality as a primary concern. We propose to leverage any facilities available through the Internet in order to deliver widely distributed UC platforms that can better match the geographical dispersal of users as well as the unending demand. Critical to the emergence of such locality-based UC (LUC) platforms is the availability of appropriate operating mechanisms. In this paper, we advocate the implementation of a uniﬁed system driving the use of resources at an unprecedented scale by turning a complex and diverse infrastructure into a collection of abstracted computing facilities that is both easy to operate and reliable. By deploying and using such a LUC Operating System on backbones, our ultimate vision is to make possible to host/operate a large part of the Internet by its internal structure itself: A scalable and nearly inﬁnite set of resources delivered by any computing facilities forming the Internet, starting from the larger hubs operated by ISPs, government and academic institutions to any idle resources that may be provided by end-users. Unlike previous researches on distributed operating systems, we propose to consider virtual machines (VMs) instead of processes as the basic element. System virtualization oﬀers several capabilities that increase the ﬂexibility of resources management, allowing to investigate novel decentralized schemes.
Removing atmosphric noise using channel selective processing for visual correction

In this paper, we propose an effective image fog removal technique from a single input image. The approach uses extraction of minimized values of statistics of the fog-free outdoor images. It is based on a key observation–most images in fog-free outdoor images contain some pixels which have low values of luminescence in at least one color channel. Using this model, we can directly estimate the effective density of fog and recover a high quality fogfree image. The parameter of calculating the effective light intensity also gives the scattering estimates of the atmospheric light, the combined Laplace of the air-light is and minimum values gives us the basic map of light spread which is further used in the restoration of intensity. The transmission of intensity between the calculated fog values in the image give the estimate for the local transition between the intensity values, this factor helps in the color restoration of the affected image and estimates the proper restoration of image after removal of dense fog particles. The visibility is highly dependent on the saturation of color values and not over saturation, which accounts for image quality improvement. Results on various images demonstrate the power of the proposed algorithm.
Water Toxicity Assessment of the Ceará River Estuary (Brazil)

The Ceara River Basin is one of the three major water sources of the Metropolitan Region of Fortaleza, Ceara State, Brazil. As an urban river, it receives domestic and industrial effluents, but the impacts of such discharges were not properly investigated. This research focused on the evaluation of the quality of the Ceara river estuary using the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus embryo-larval toxicity test. Four sampling stations were distributed along the estuary, and the water samples were collected monthly from March 2004 through February 2005. The physical-chemical analyses showed a gradient of salinity and pH from the inner part of the estuary towards the river mouth, while dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature values were very similar among the stations. Toxicity occurred in three of four surveyed stations, especially at S1 and S2, where the effects were more evident. The higher toxicity at these stations may be related to the proximity to the confluence between Ceara River and Maranguapinho River, which carries effluents from Maracanau’s Industrial District.
'It's Just Nice to See the Light on Again' Exploring the Social Implications of Establishing Research Facilities in Rural Newfoundland and

In the years since the Atlantic Cod Moratorium was implemented, many rural communities across Newfoundland and Labrador have struggled to find long-term economic solutions to sustain themselves. Most effects of these changes are easily seen through a combination of outmigration, seasonal employment, and reliance on government funding; however, the impact on individuals and families must also be taken into consideration. This community-based qualitative research study has used in-depth individual interviews with twelve citizens of Lord’s Cove, which is located on the islands’ Burin Peninsula, to explore how residents have responded to the establishment of the Wave Energy Resource Centre (WERC) by College of the North Atlantic in their community, and what they anticipate the outcome of the research might be. As a viable option for long-term economic sustainability, the WERC aims to provide the community of Lord’s Cove with economic and technical benefits from both a wave-powered piston pump and a shore-based multi-species aquaculture facility located in the towns’ former fish processing plant. The purpose of the study was to gain intimate knowledge from community members in order to advance stakeholder knowledge on how to successfully conduct research, and establish research facilities in rural areas. Analysis of the findings is presented in terms of social factors that have contributed to resident attitudes. The report will provide recommendations to College of the North Atlantic on how to implement research projects that affect rural communities in Newfoundland and Labrador. Additionally, it will explain social lessons that have been learned as a result of establishing the WERC which will be a useful resource to stakeholders. The report concludes by outlining possibilities for future research in the community.
Children, Migration and Mortuary Representation in the Late Prehistoric Central Illinois River Valley

Morton Village and the associated Norris Farms #36 cemetery site in Fulton County, Illinois, provide an opportunity to synthesise community and mortuary perspectives on life among Mississippian and Oneota inhabitants of the late prehistoric Central Illinois River Valley. Among research directions to develop from new Michigan State University-Dickson Mounds Museum excavations are questions regarding the role that the 143 subadults interred in the cemetery can play in the analysis of community social relations. In this article, we focus on the lives and deaths of Morton's youngest residents, particularly as they relate to broader patterns of migration and identity (trans)formation. We specifically seek to understand whether some of these children were born into families with blended Oneota and Mississippian identities, potentially signalling multiethnic identity in their mortuary signatures. To this end, a particular subset of juveniles is compared to other burials in the cemetery, and is discussed within a larger context of migration and multiethnic social interactions. We argue that the mortuary disposition of certain children might be viewed as an avenue for the symbolic expression of novel identity processes borne of unique Oneota and Mississippian interactions in the region, particularly when interpreted with reference to children's roles in that process and through a lens of liminality, hybridity and communitas.
Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth: Evidence from Selected West African Countries (Cameroon, Cape Verde, Nigeria and Senegal)

Remittances from abroad play a key role in the development of many West African countries. Remittances tend to increase the income of recipients, reduce shortage of foreign exchange and help alleviate poverty. This research examines the impact of remittances on economic growth in four selected West African countries: Cameroon, Cape Verde, Nigeria and Senegal. Using developmentalist, structuralist and pluralist views on remittances, a linear regression was run on time series data from the World Bank database for the period 2000–2010. After a critical analysis of the impact of remittances on economic growth in these four countries, it was found that inflow of remittances to Senegal and Nigeria has a positive effect on these countries’ gross domestic product whereas for Cape Verde and Cameroon it had a negative effect. Cameroon benefitted the least from remittances and Nigeria benefitted the most within the period. One contribution of this study is the finding that remittance inflows need to be invested in productive sectors. Even if remittances continue to increase, without investment in productive sectors they cannot have any meaningful impact on economic growth in these countries.
Preoperative radiotherapy does not improve and may even be detrimental to the long-term prognosis of patients diagnosed with stage III colon adenocarcinoma: a propensity score-matched SEER database analysis

Background Currently, for patients with colon adenocarcinoma who are diagnosed with local lymph node metastasis, it is typically recommended to undergo neoadjuvant treatment before undergoing curative surgical intervention. Nowadays, the focus of preoperative adjuvant therapy for colon adenocarcinoma patients mainly revolves around chemotherapy, and the impact of preoperative radiotherapy on long-term prognosis remains uncertain. Methods We extracted data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database for patients with stage III colon adenocarcinoma between 2004 and 2019. Using propensity score matching (PSM), the patients were divided into a preoperative radiotherapy group and a non-preoperative radiotherapy group, and the differences in Kaplan-Meier (KM) survival curves between the two groups were compared. Cox regression analysis was employed to identify clinical factors that influence survival in stage III colon adenocarcinoma, and the prognostic differences between the two groups were compared within specific subgroups of these clinical factors. Results After PSM, a total of 242 patients were included in the study, divided into the preoperative radiotherapy group and the non-preoperative radiotherapy group. There were no statistically significant differences in important clinical characteristics between the two groups. KM analysis revealed no statistically significant difference in overall survival (OS) between the two groups. Furthermore, age, chemotherapy, T staging, N staging, race, tumor grade, gender, tumor location, and tumor diameter were identified as important factors influencing the prognosis of patients. Within each level of the aforementioned subgroups, there were no differences in OS between the two groups. In fact, in specific subgroups, the non-preoperative radiotherapy group exhibited better OS than the preoperative radiotherapy group. Conclusion Preoperative radiotherapy does not improve the long-term prognosis of patients with stage III colon adenocarcinoma. In certain patient populations with specific clinical characteristics, preoperative radiotherapy may even lead to a decrease in OS.
Black Rail Occupancy and Detectability in the Texas Mid-Coast National Wildlife Refuge

Abstract. The federally Threatened Eastern Black Rail (Laterallus jamaicensis jamaicensis) is difficult to detect and may not be well monitored by existing survey methods. The goals of this project were to explore occupancy and detectability of Black Rails along the Texas Gulf Coast and to determine the best months and time of day to conduct surveys. We conducted surveys at 90 points in San Bernard NWR and Brazoria NWR from 5 March through 31 May 2014. We visited each point six times—twice each at dawn, dusk, and night and used playback surveys to elicit Black Rail vocalizations. We measured habitat characteristics for each point, including the vegetation height, litter depth, water depth, stem density, canopy height, species composition, and time since last prescribed burn. Occupancy rates averaged 0.75 ± 0.25 and was greatest where the average number of stems between 0 and 10 cm in height was six or greater. The average canopy ceiling height (i.e., height of canopy ceiling above layer of dead vegetation), canopy floor height (i.e., height of canopy ceiling above soil), and number of stems between 20 and 30 cm also affected occupancy. Detection probability averaged 0.11 ± 0.03 and was highest at night, increasing over the course of the spring. Due to the low probability of detection, repeated call-broadcast surveys will be required to detect this species. The results of this study are important for determining the timing of surveys in Texas, and we suggest that future surveys for this rare species will have the greatest success if they search for birds approximately 2.5 hours after sunset.
A Multi-System Approach to Investigate Different Forms of Delinquency in Female Adolescents at Risk: Family, School, and Peers

The delinquency of female adolescents at risk has increased conspicuously, much to the concern of human service and public health practitioners. Nevertheless, prior findings of pertinent research have commonly been based on samples of male or gender-mixed participants, especially general youths in the community. These cannot adequately explicate the impacts of different contextual systems on at-risk female adolescents, who are, in fact, more vulnerable to developing delinquency. Based on cross-sectional data collected from a sample of 236 at-risk female adolescents with the help of a large social work organization, the present study investigated and compared the effects of family, school, and peer systems on different forms of delinquency among at-risk female adolescents. The results show that positive family functioning, constructive school experiences, and deviant peer influence were predictive of both self-destructive and other-destructive delinquency in at-risk adolescent girls, respectively, but the effects were significantly different depending on which contextual systems influenced what forms of delinquency. Furthermore, the relationships between positive family functioning and both forms of delinquency were significantly mediated by the effects of constructive school experiences and deviant peer influence, giving support to the distal role of family and the proximal functions of school and peers in adolescence. Implications for policy prevention and interventions to strengthen the contextual supports in different social systems to help female adolescents at risk are discussed.
Multi-modal Physiological Signal Fusion for Emotion Classification: A Multi-Head Attention Approach

In this essay, a model-level fusion technique of multi-modal physiological signals using Multi-Head Attention is studied. A framework that utilizes multi-model physiological signals for the task of emotion classification is proposed. First, the GCRNN model, which combines the Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) and the Long and Short Term Memory (LSTM), captures the unique features of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. The spatial and temporal information that makes up impulses from the EEG can be captured precisely by such a technique. The CCRNN model, which combines the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) integrated with the Channel-wise Attention and the LSTM, is used for peripheral physiological signals. The model can extract useful features from peripheral physiological signals and automatically learn to weigh the importance of various channels. Finally, Multi-head Attention is employed to fuse the output of the GCRNN and CCRNN methods. The Multi-head Attention can automatically learn the relevance and importance of different modal signals and weigh them accordingly. Emotion classification is implemented by adding a component of Softmax to map what the model produced to discrete emotion categories. The DEAP dataset was utilized in this study for experimental verification, and the results indicate that the method using multi-modal physiological signal fusion is substantially greater in precision than the technique using simply EEG signals. Additionally, the Multi-head Attention fusion method performs better than previous fusion techniques.
Health risk assessment of chemical pollutants in drinking water

Objective:To assess the health risk of the chemical pollutants in drinking water for humans to present the basis for interrelated department in making the related water quality standard.Methods:A USEPA health risk assessment model was used to assess health risk associated with concentrations of chemical pollutants in drinking water after investigating concentrations of As、Hg、Cr6+、Pb、Cd and Cu in drinking warter in 37 counties of M city based on 43 random samples,according to the practical data of drinking water resources.Results:(1)The health risk comparisons caused by gene toxic substances was Cr6+AsCd,and risk comparisons caused by body toxic substances was PbCuHg.The health risk of gene toxic substances was more distinct than that body toxic substances. (2)The total health risk of all pollutants in drinking water was 7.18×10-5a-1 in 2003,2.12×10-4a-1 in 2004 and 2.28×10-4a-1 in 2005,all of which exceeded 5.0×10-5a-1,the value recommended by ICRP,and greatly exceeded the standards recommended by the Sweden Bureau of 2 Environment Protection and the Holland Ministry of Building and Environment Protection.Conclusions:There is reference value in our research for risk management of drinking water resources and water enviroment poretcting measures.
Determination of Thermodynamic Cloud Phase and Reflective Field from Radiance Measurements

The thermodynamic cloud phase and composition have substantial impacts on vertical profiles of radiative heating. However, reliable retrievals of these quantities from remote sensing measurements are still difficult. Furthermore, retrieval techniques using satellite radiance measurements are limited to at most a few viewing angles. During the 2004 Mixed-Phase Arctic Clouds Experiment (M-PACE) at the North Slope of Alaska site, the Diffuse Field Camera (DFC) was mounted on the Proteus aircraft and measured cloud radiance fields in an effort to retrieve information about thermodynamic phase and dominant crystal habit. In this study, cloud radiance fields measured by Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Uninhabited Aerospace Vehicle’s (UAV’s) DFC are used to derive the complete directional dependence of cloud reflectance, which is related to cloud phase and composition, and then compared with calculated reflectance fields of water and ice clouds.
Multi-level Salient Feature Mining Network for Person Re-identification

Person re-identification (Re-ID) algorithms can retrieve the same pedestrian’s images from an image gallery captured by multiple cameras when given a pedestrian image. Due to changes in pedestrian postures, illuminations, and perspectives, it remains a significant challenge to improve the accuracy of person re-identification. Although the attention mechanism can alleviate some of these issues, it causes attention-based methods to pay excessive attention to features in the most salient areas of images while ignoring discriminant features outside the most salient areas, resulting in the insufficient discriminability of features extracted by attention-based methods. For this purpose, we propose a Multi-level Salient Feature Mining Network (MSFM-Net). First, by embedding attention modules in ResNet50, the model extract the most salient pedestrian feature maps. Second, the model uses two sub-salient feature mining branches to extract the second-level and third-level salient feature maps (collectively referred to as sub-salient feature maps). Third, the model uses the feature maps fusion module to combine the most salient feature maps with sub-salient feature maps to obtain the fused salient feature maps. Finally, the model pools the fused salient feature maps to produce more discriminant pedestrian representations. The results of two benchmark datasets demonstrate that MSFM-Nets performance reaches the current advanced level.
Community-based participatory planning contribution to social capital for enhanced disaster resilience in rural Matobo, Zimbabwe

The infusion of participatory methodologies in Zimbabwe gained momentum across rural and urban development planning platforms in the past decades. Participatory approaches are envisaged to deepen grassroots involvement in local planning and strengthen social networks for enhanced disaster resilience against complex weather-related hazards such as droughts. This article examines how community-based participatory planning (CBPP) contributes to the cohesiveness of the vulnerable groups and harnesses local capacities in building social capital. The article is underpinned by the community capital framework in understanding the nexus between participatory planning and social capital. Primary evidence is drawn from the cross-sectional study that targeted different socio-economic groups (N = 120) drawn from the selected three wards out of the 10 where CBPPs were conducted in Matobo district in 2016. The sample size was informed by the Rao Soft sample size calculator, hence a total of (n = 90) socioeconomic groups were targeted for a semi-structured questionnaire. The semi-structured tool was complemented by 12 in-depth interviews and three focus group discussions. Primary data were systematised, cleaned and analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) V23. This was meant to probe and capture the benefits of CBPP and how it has strengthened the social capital of drought-prone communities in rural Matobo. Study results indicate improved inter- and intra-community networks post the CBPP processes in drought-prone Matobo as evidenced by the formation of community clubs, gender inclusive interventions and improved financial and material contributions towards community-driven projects. Furthermore, while women involvement is evident, their influence is less in productive livelihoods activities such as livestock rearing. Contribution The CBPP process has shown that inclusive planning improves the identification of risks and strengthens collective actions towards design and implementation of resilience building strategies such as water harvesting and health centres.