Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MONET: a MOnitoring NEtwork of Telescopes

In an age of Sm-class telescopes, we should rethink the way we use small telescopes. While 2-4m telescopes are still needed and will continue to be operated largely in the traditional fashion, new lm-class telescopes operated robotically in global networks will enable a wide range of new and exciting scientific and educational projects, both by themselves and in conjunction with much larger telescopes. I describe our plans for such a global network of two lm-class robotic telescopes.
Accuracy of tretyakov precipitation gauge: Result of wmo intercomparison

The Tretyakov non-recording precipitation gauge has been used historically as the official precipitation measurement instrument in the Russian (formerly the USSR) climatic and hydrological station network and in a number of other European countries. From 1986 to 1993, the accuracy and performance of this gauge were evaluated during the WMO Solid Precipitation Measurement Intercomparison at 11 stations in Canada, the USA, Russia, Germany, Finland, Romania and Croatia. The double fence intercomparison reference (DFIR) was the reference standard used at all the Intercomparison stations in the Intercomparison. The Intercomparison data collected at the different sites are compatible with respect to the catch ratio (measured/DFIR) for the same gauge, when compared using mean wind speed at the height of the gauge orifice during the observation period. The Intercomparison data for the Tretyakov gauge were compiled from measurements made at these WMO intercomparison sites. These data represent a variety of climates, terrains and exposures. The effects of environmental factors, such as wind speed, wind direction, type of precipitation and temperature, on gauge catch ratios were investigated. Wind speed was found to be the most important factor determining the gauge catch and air temperature had a secondary effect when precipitation was classified into snow, mixed and rain. The results of the analysis of gauge catch ratio versus wind speed and temperature on a daily time step are presented for various types of precipitation. Independent checks of the correction equations against the DFIR have been conducted at those Intercomparison stations and a good agreement (difference less than 10%) has been obtained. The use of such adjustment procedures should significantly improve the accuracy and homogeneity of gauge-measured precipitation data over large regions of the former USSR and central Europe.
Transcatheter or Surgical Aortic Valve Replacement in Patients with Severe Aortic Stenosis and Small Aortic Annuli: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

BACKGROUND. The optimal treatment in patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) and small aortic annulus (SAA) remains to be determined. The objectives of this study were to compare the hemodynamic and clinical outcomes between transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in patients with a SAA. METHODS. Prospective multicenter international randomized trial performed in 15 university hospitals. Participants were 151 patients with severe AS and SAA (mean diameter <23 mm) were randomized (1:1) to TAVR (n=77) vs SAVR (n=74), The primary outcome was impaired valve hemodynamics (i.e. severe prosthesis patient mismatch [PPM] or moderate-severe aortic regurgitation [AR]) at 60 days as evaluated by Doppler-echocardiography and analyzed in a central echocardiography core laboratory. Clinical events were secondary outcomes. RESULTS. The mean age of the participants was 75{+/-}5 years, with 93% of women, a median STS of 2.5 (1.7-3.3)%, and a mean annulus diameter of 21.1{+/-}1.2 mm. There were no differences between groups regarding mortality (TAVR:1.3%, SAVR:1.4%, p=1.0) and stroke (TAVR:0%, SAVR:2.7%, p=0.239) at 30 days. The rate of severe PPM or moderate-severe AR was similar in both groups (TAVR:5.6%, SAVR:10.3%, p=0.298), with no differences between groups in the incidence of severe PPM (5.6% vs. 10.3%, p=0.298) and moderate-severe AR (0% in both groups). After a median follow-up of 2 (1-4) years, there were no differences between groups regarding mortality (TAVR:9.1%, SAVR:8.1%, p=1.0), stroke (TAVR:3.9%, SAVR:4.1%, p=1.0), and cardiac hospitalization (TAVR:19.5%, SAVR:20.3%, p=1.0). CONCLUSIONS. In patients with severe AS and SAA (women in the vast majority), TAVR and SAVR provided similar valve hemodynamic results. After a median follow-up of 2 years, there were no differences in clinical outcomes between groups. The results of this trial suggest that these 2 therapies represent a valid alternative for treating patients with SA and SAA, and treatment selection should likely be individualized according to baseline characteristics, additional anatomical risk factors, and patient preference.
Nearshore Bar Development in Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence

The evolution of nearshore bars at three sites is examined using a mathematical model to simulate wave-bed interactions induced by progressive wind-generated surface waves. The wave dynamics are described by nonlinear, dispersive, shallow-water theory; the wave-induced flux of sediment is calculated using an associated mass-transport velocity; and the bed topography is described using a continuity equation. The resulting coupled system of nonlinear partial differential equations is simplified using a modal decomposition of the surface wave and is approximated numerically. The model is used to simulate bar development from an initial plane shoreface slope (equivalent to the mean slope at each site) using peak wave periods for moderate and severe storms observed in the region. Predictions of bar number and spacing show good correlation with measured bathymetric profiles. The model provides a physical explanation for the observed correlation of bar number and spacing to basin dimensions and nearshore slope i.
Experimental study of the response of a gravel streambed to increased sediment supply

If increased sediment supply to a river channel exceeds its transport capacity, deposition necessarily occurs as the bed adjusts to accommodate the increased supply. Both the mean and spatial patterns in bed elevation and grain size may change and an ability to understand their relative importance is needed to predict bed response. We report on an experiment in a field‐scale flume in which sediment supply is increased to a gravel bed with alternate bars. Sediment was recirculated in the experiments, but augmented in two steps, after which the bed was allowed to reach a new steady state. The transport rate at the end of the experiment was three times larger than at the start. High‐resolution sediment flux and topographic measurements, grain size derived from photographs, and hydrodynamic modeling allow us to document the topographic and textural response of the bed to increased sediment supply. The spatial patterns of bed topography and texture were forced by the flume setup and the initial and final steady states included long stationary alternate bars with associated grain size sorting. The transient bed contained several scales of shorter wavelength migrating bedforms superimposed on, and temporarily replacing the stationary alternate bars. Bed topography and textural patterns adjusted to increased sediment supply over different timescales. Bed slope and mean stress increased directly with sediment supply rate to produce a new transport steady state in a time about 2.5 times the minimum needed to deposit the required sediment wedge, indicating a trap efficiency of about 40% for the aggrading wedge. Adjustments in local topography and sorting, primarily in the form of smaller, migrating bars, continued for a period approximately equal to that required to initially reach transport steady state. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Breakup and sea floor spreading between the Kerguelen Plateau-Labuan Basin and Broken Ridge-Diamantina Zone

Using all available geophysical data and an interactive graphic software, we determined the structural scheme of the Australian-Antarctic and South Australian basins between the Kerguelen Plateau and Broken Ridge. Four JOIDES Resolution transit lines between Australia and the Kerguelen Plateau were used to study the detailed pattern of seafloor spreading at the Southeast Indian Ridge and the breakup history between the Kerguelen Plateau and Broken Ridge. The development of rifting between the Kerguelen Plateau-Labuan Basin and the Broken Ridge-Diamantina Zone, and the evolution of the Southeast Indian Ridge can be summarized as follows: 1. From 96 to 46 Ma, slow spreading occurred between Antarctica and Australia; the Kerguelen Plateau, Labuan Basin, and Diamantina Zone stretched at 88-87 Ma and 69-66 Ma. 2. From 46 to 43 Ma, the breakup between the Southern Kerguelen Plateau and the Diamantina Zone propagated westward at a velocity of about 300 km/m.y. The breakup between the Northern Kerguelen Plateau and Broken Ridge occurred between 43.8 and 42.9 Ma. 3. After 43 Ma, volcanic activity developed on the Northern Kerguelen Plateau and at the southern end of the Ninetyeast Ridge. Lava flows obscured the boundaries of the Northern Kerguelen Plateau north of 48°S and of the Ninetyeast Ridge south of 32°S, covering part of the newly created oceanic crust. Since 43 Ma, the Southeast Indian Ridge has manifested a typical intermediate spreading rate (25-45 km/m.y.).
A comparison of NDVI and MTVI2 for estimating LAI using CHRIS imagery: a case study in wheat

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key variable in crop growth models. The derivation of reliable LAI maps from satellite imagery would provide a means of spatially extrapolating these models. During the 2004 and 2005 growing seasons, hyperspectral data from the Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) sensor were acquired over a wheat crop in southern Alberta. The ability to obtain reliable LAI estimates from CHRIS data was investigated using a preexisting relationship between LAI and the modified transformed vegetation index (MTVI2). The performance of the recently develop MTVI2 in estimating LAI was compared to that of the more commonly used normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Both narrow and broad bands simulated from the CHRIS data were used in calculating the NDVI. All vegetation indices provided good relationships with LAI (R2 = 0.70–0.90). The errors in the estimated LAI values varied with vegetation index and were dependent on growth stage. The MTVI2 performed better than the NDVI at full canopy closure. Confirming previous reports in the literature, the NDVI tended to saturate at LAI values of 37–4, which resulted in an underestimation of LAI at full canopy closure. There was no benefit to using narrow spectral bands in the NDVI. Estimation of LAI using the MTVI2 was underestimated late in the season during the seed-filling period.
Geomorphology from space: A global overview of regional landforms

In what case do you like reading so much? What about the type of the geomorphology from space a global overview of regional landforms book? The needs to read? Well, everybody has their own reason why should read some books. Mostly, it will relate to their necessity to get knowledge from the book and want to read just to get entertainment. Novels, story book, and other entertaining books become so popular this day. Besides, the scientific books will also be the best reason to choose, especially for the students, teachers, doctors, businessman, and other professions who are fond of reading.
Evidence-based Spatial Intervention for Regeneration of Informal Settlements: the case of Jeddah Central Unplanned Areas

This paper presents a new approach to the improvement of informal settlements through limited physical interventions. The main argument in this research is that the benefits of the transformation of urban fabric should be evaluated by a deeper level of interaction between spatial configuration and socio-economic dynamics. The theoretical foundation of this claim is driven from previous research that indicate the significant role of spatial configuration in the gradual self-improvement of informal settlements. A direct implication of such findings is that limited physical interventions as a design method can be used to facilitate the self-improvement of informal settlements by increasing their spatial integration to the whole of the city. Furthermore, the transformation of strategically located unplanned areas can also create a positive impact on the urban areas that surround them. The case of Jeddah Central Unplanned Areas poses the challenge where a highly selfgrown urban fabric is struggling with overcrowding, degrading built environment, social malaise and poverty. This research demonstrates that the major problem of these areas rises from the fragmentation of their internal spatial structure, on the one hand, and lack of city-wide or district-wide connectivity, on the other hand. The spatial analysis reveals two very different spatial systems, the planned and unplanned areas, in a conflicting situation. The upgrading strategy suggested by this research is to redesign the urban fabric of the unplanned settlements through their realignment and connecting their fragmented spatial core to the city-wide spatial grid. What makes this solution different from the conventional approaches in that it sees the benefit of spatial improvement in a mutual relation with the whole of the city. In order to base the design on more layers of evidence, a multi-criterion GIS method has been developed which takes into account different spatial factors and a set of socio-economic data. A product of applying such a method is the development of a ‘transformability index’; a composite baseline guide for decision making and assisting the process of design. The overall process includes consequent stages of design and analysis to fulfil the objectives set at the beginning. The study concludes with a clear strategy for limited spatial intervention, which will enhance the Central Unplanned Areas significantly and will contribute to the development of Central Jeddah.
Molecular flow quantified beyond the diffraction limit by spatiotemporal image correlation of structured illumination microscopy data

We combine total internal reﬂection ﬂuorescence structured illumination microscopy with spatiotemporal image correlation spectroscopy to quantify the ﬂow velocities and directionality of ﬁlamentous-actin at the T cell immunological synapse. These techniques demonstrate it is possible to image retrograde ﬂow of ﬁlamentous-actin at superresolution and provide ﬂow quantiﬁcation in the form of velocity histograms and ﬂow vector maps. The ﬂow was found to be retrograde and radially directed throughout the periphery of T-cells during synapse formation.
Design and bioprinting for tissue interfaces

Tissue interfaces include complex gradient structures formed by transitioning of biochemical and mechanical properties in micro-scale. This characteristic allows the communication and synchronistic functioning of two adjacent but distinct tissues. It is particularly challenging to restore the function of these complex structures by transplantation of scaffolds exclusively produced by conventional tissue engineering methods. Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology has opened an unprecedented approach for precise and graded patterning of chemical, biological and mechanical cues in a single construct mimicking natural tissue interfaces. This paper reviews and highlights biochemical and biomechanical design for 3D bioprinting of various tissue interfaces, including cartilage-bone, muscle-tendon, tendon/ligament-bone, skin, and neuro-vascular/muscular interfaces. Future directions and translational challenges are also provided at the end of the paper.
Targeted micro-heterogeneity in bioinks allows for 3D printing of complex constructs with improved resolution and cell viability

Three-dimensional bioprinting is an evolving versatile technique for biomedical applications. Ideal bioinks have complex micro-environment that mimic human tissue, allow for good printing quality and provide high cell viability after printing. Here we present two strategies for enhancing gelatin-based bioinks heterogeneity on a 1–100 µm length scale resulting in superior printing quality and high cell viability. A thorough spatial and micro-mechanical characterization of swollen hydrogel heterogeneity was done using multiple particle tracking microrheology. When poly(vinyl alcohol) is added to homogeneous gelatin gels, viscous inclusions are formed due to micro-phase separation. This phenomenon leads to pronounced slip and superior printing quality of complex 3D constructs as well as high human hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) and normal human dermal fibroblast (NHDF) cell viability due to reduced shear damage during extrusion. Similar printability and cell viability results are obtained with gelatin/nanoclay composites. The formation of polymer/nanoclay clusters reduces the critical stress of gel fracture, which facilitates extrusion, thus enhancing printing quality and cell viability. Targeted introduction of micro-heterogeneities in bioinks through micro-phase separation is an effective technique for high resolution 3D printing of complex constructs with high cell viability. The size of the heterogeneities, however, has to be substantially smaller than the desired feature size in order to achieve good printing quality.
In situ biosensing technologies for an organ-on-a-chip

The in vitro simulation of organs resolves the accuracy, ethical, and cost challenges accompanying in vivo experiments. Organoids and organs-on-chips have been developed to model the in vitro, real-time biological and physiological features of organs. Numerous studies have deployed these systems to assess the in vitro, real-time responses of an organ to external stimuli. Particularly, organs-on-chips can be most efficiently employed in pharmaceutical drug development to predict the responses of organs before approving such drugs. Furthermore, multi-organ-on-a-chip systems facilitate the close representations of the in vivo environment. In this review, we discuss the biosensing technology that facilitates the in situ, real-time measurements of organ responses as readouts on organ-on-a-chip systems, including multi-organ models. Notably, a human-on-a-chip system integrated with automated multi-sensing will be established by further advancing the development of chips, as well as their assessment techniques.
Self-moving Point Representations for Continuous Convolution - Appendix

In each convolution filter, SMPConv has 30 weight points for 1D and 16 weight points for 2D. For SMPConv1D, we sample the point locations from zero mean truncated gaussian distribution with σ = 0.1. Because of causal convolution, we sample in the range (−1, 0) rather than (−1, 1). For SMPConv2D, we sample the point locations from 2D zero mean truncated gaussian with Σ = [[σ1, 0], [0, σ2]], where σ1 = σ2 = 0.05. We initialize radius as r ≈ 2 kd, where k is kernel size and d is dimension of input (i.e., d = 1 for 1D, d = 2 for 2D). In 2D, the kernel size means the width of the kernel. The size of the additional small kernel is 5 for 1D and 3×3 for 2D, respectively. Following FlexConv [7], we use batch normalization [4] after convolution and skip connection. We train our networks using Adam [5] optimizer. We use a cosine annealing learning rate scheduling with warmup epochs. The learning rate for radius parameters is set to be 0.1× smaller than the regular learning rate. During the training, the radius range is clipped from 0.0001 to 0.1. More details for each data are shown in Tab. 1. For sequential data experiments, we train our model with a single NVIDIA A100 GPU. We use a single RTX3090 GPU for CIFAR10 experiments.
Improving KG Completeness Evaluation considering Information Need as First-Class Citizen

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are at the core of numerous tasks, such as developing applications or services, verifying of information, answering a federated query, etc. When choosing or using a KG, it is essential to easily characterize its specificities, strengths, and weaknesses. Especially, there is an increasing demand for transparency as well as accountability. Transparency may have many definitions [26] but it is mainly concerned with the accessibility of information as well as its presence. For its part, accountability has the main objective of verifying the presence of fairly accurate information about people’s responsibilities and actions [16]. Whatever their differences, information need is the main component of both concepts. It is important to notice that different people may have different expectations, therefore, the need of information is contextual. More generally, we want to cover all kinds of information needs, especially those which are fine-grained. This could be useful for anyone who is willing to evaluate a Knowledge Graph based on its information, whether it concerns transparency or any other context. Among the existing tools and methods to evaluate KGs, such as for measuring data quality [28] or FAIRness (FAIR: Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) [23], only a few measures focus specifically on information within the KGs. Those who do concern information widely consider as useful, looking for a creator or a license for instance. For information which is more contextual, the closest are measures of completeness. However, from our point of view, completeness in the literature suffers two weaknesses: firstly, the need of information is not sufficiently explicit. Secondly, existing completeness measures too often rely on query that are limited in there form (only a few triples) and thus in what they enable to obtain. In this paper, we seek to fill this gap by proposing a method to evaluate the completeness of a KG regarding an explicit list of information defined as necessary. Therefore, we focus on the notion of information need, enabling to formally describe and manipulate the required information. Hence, we aim at answering the research question: “How to evaluate the ability of a KG to answer an information need? ” with the underlying question “What is an information
Habitat Preferences of Port Jackson Sharks, Heterodontus portusjacksoni, in the Coastal Waters of Eastern Australia

The habitat preferences of juvenile and adult Heterodontus portusjacksoni and ovipositing females were determined from three locations on the central and southern coast of New South Wales. Adults use shallow coastal rocky reefs in July-November for mating and oviposition, whilst juveniles occupy a seagrass nursery in a large coastal embayment. The sand/reef interface on the lee side of reefs was preferred by both sexes, probably as a refuge against strong water movements. Adult females also preferred rocky gutters when available, possibly as a male avoidance strategy. Preferred oviposition sites were narrow, shallow crevices (single capsules) or deep, narrow crevices (multiple capsules) which afforded protection against mechanical dislocation and/or predation. Juveniles exhibited a strong preference for the seagrass bed edge within a shallow nursery area. The visual complexity of this habitat combined with the juvenile's disruptive colouration may provide a refuge from predation, whilst proximity to the seagrass may provide ease of access for foraging. At a large scale, juveniles preferred areas of moderate slope within the nursery that provided protection from strong water movement. This study highlights the need for quantitative studies addressing habitat preferences and a consideration of use-specific factors to fully understand the selection of habitat by elasmobranchs.