Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GIS based Identification of Risk to Nutrient Exposure in the Large Agricultural Lands of India - Towards Better Decision-making

Application of excess nutrients such as fertilizers is a significant and sometimes even major component of ground water pollution. Diffuse inputs of nutrients and contaminants to the ground water are related to runoff generated from precipitation in a catchment. Catchment's response depends on site conditions and its physical properties. This implies that the analysis of diffuse fluxes from the land surface to the ground water requires an area-differentiated analysis of water fluxes for a catchment. This requires a GIS application that is capable of assembling, storing, analyzing and displaying the regional interactions and inter-relationships of land, soil and water. Simulation and modeling of total runoff, groundwater recharge, and plant available water as a function of the regional interaction of the climate, soil, hydro-geology, topography and land use conditions in the river basin using GIS is achieved here. A GIS -based model has been developed for large river basins in India, and has been applied to the Upper Yamuna basin, to quantify the exchange probability of plant available soil water, which can be taken as a measure to determine the nutrient and contaminant leaching risk of a site. It was found that with the available large-scale databases and methods regional patterns of the total runoff could be simulated successfully. In this way, about 7,500 km 2 of the total 12,000 km 2 of the Upper Yamuna basin were classified as areas sensitive to nutrient and contaminant leaching.
Urban traffic network modeling and short-term traffic flow forecasting based on GSTARIMA model

This paper introduces a novel model—Generalized Space-Time Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (GSTARIMA) methodology—into the field of short-term traffic flow forecasting in urban network. Compared to traditional STARIMA, GSTARIMA is a more flexible model class where parameters are designed to vary per location. Having proposed the model, a forecasting experiment based on actual traffic flow data in urban network in Beijing, China is constructed to verify the practicability of GSTARIMA model. After analysis and comparison with the traditional STARIMA model, the prediction results prove meritorious and the application of GSTARIMA improves the performance of urban network modeling.
When CoMP is beneficial — And when it is not. Selective coordination from a spectral efficiency and a users' throughput perspective

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission schemes can provide large spectral efficiency gains in cellular networks. Because of the coordination among neighbor basestations, the planning interval for resource allocation with CoMP is longer than for uncoordinated local transmission modes. Especially for bursty data traffic, this planning interval might be too long to keep up with changes in offered load at small timescales. In this case, coordination gains might turn into losses when the coordinated resource allocation doesn't fit the system state anymore. To avoid these problems and to leverage the CoMP schemes' potential at higher layers, previous work has investigated traffic aware transmit mode selection schemes with the objective to maximize spectral efficiency. In this work, we do not focus on spectral efficiency, but on per-user throughput. We derive a suitable coordination threshold to improve throughput and evaluate it's impact on system performance.
High level coordination of agents based on multiagent Markov decision processes with roles

We present an approach for coordinating the actions of a team of real world autonomous agents on a high level. The method extends the framework of multiagent Markov decision processes with the notion of roles, a flexible and natural way to give each member of the team a clear description of its task. A role in our framework defines the set of actions and the policy of an agent. Roles are a natural way of introducing domain prior knowledge to a multiagent problem and reduce the complexity of the problem. We have applied this method in the robotic soccer domain of the RoboCup middle-size league, and present empirical results obtained at an actual tournament.
Understanding Users' Touch Behavior on Large Mobile Touch-Screens and Assisted Targeting by Tilting Gesture

As large-screen smartphones are trending, they bring a new set of challenges such as acquiring unreachable screen targets using one hand. To understand users' touch behavior on large mobile touchscreens, we conducted an empirical experiment to discover their usage patterns of tilting devices toward their thumbs to touch screen regions. Exploiting this natural tilting behavior, we designed three novel mobile interaction techniques: TiltSlide, TiltReduction, and TiltCursor. We conducted a controlled experiment to compare our methods with other existing methods, and then evaluated them in real mobile phone scenarios such as sending an e-mail and web surfing. We constructed a design space for one-hand targeting interactions and proposed design considerations for one-hand targeting in real mobile phone circumstances.
Neural Endorsement Based Contextual Suggestion

This paper presents the University of Amsterdam's participation in the TREC 2016 Contextual Suggestion Track. In this research, we have studied a personallized neural document language modeling and a neural category preference modeling for contextual suggestion using available endorsementsin TREC 2016 contextual suggestion track phase 2 requests. Specically, our main aim is to answer the questions: How to model users' proles by using the suggestions' endorsements as an additional data? How eective is using word embeddings to boost terms' weights relevant to the given endorsements? How to model users' attractioncategory preferences? How eective is using deep neural networks to learn users' category preferences in contextual suggestion task? Our main ndings are the following: First, the neural personalized document based user proling using word embeddings improves the baseline content-based ltering approach based on all the common IR measures including TREC 2016 Contextual Suggestion ocial metric (NDCG@5). Second, neural users' category preference modeling beats both baseline content-based ltering and the user proling model using word-embeddings in terms of all the common IR measures.
Performance measurement and institutional processes: a study of managerial responses to public sector reform

Institutional aspects of performance measurement (PM) in public sector organizations are attracting increasing research interest. Only recently, however, has the literature on this topic recognized the pertinent critique of neo-institutional sociology (NIS) pivoting around its view of managers and organizations as primarily passive adaptors to change. This paper explores how the properties of institutional processes associated with recent reforms in the Norwegian health care sector impinge on the extent of pro-active choice exercised by senior management in the development of multidimensional PM reflecting the interests of a wider range of institutional constituencies. Addressing this issue, we draw on Oliver's (1991) conceptual framework, based on a continuum of responses characterized by a varying degree of pro-active choice. The study thus provides a more detailed analysis of the managerial tactics in developing organizational PM than most prior research informed by NIS. We find support for several of Oliver's hypotheses regarding the influence of institutional aspects, particularly those pertaining to the causes of the adoption of PM practices, the pattern in which these are diffused and the influence of constituency multiplicity and dependence, but also identify some areas requiring conceptual refinement in this respect.
Modeling, Simulation and Control of 3-DOF Redundant Fault Tolerant Robots by Means of Adaptive Inertia

Control systems that have the ability, in the one hand, to detect incipient failures in sensors and/ or actuators and, in the other hand, to adapt quickly the control laws in order to preserve the specified performance in terms of production quality, safety, etc., are called fault-tolerant control systems (Blanke et al., 2001), (Blanke et al., 2006). This kind of systems have become increasingly important for manipulator robots, especially those performing in remote or dangerous zones, like outer space, underwater or nuclear environments. In this context, there is a growing need and interest in developing control systems that can operate in acceptable manners, even after the occurrence of failures, also being able to stop the process before irreparable damages arise (Bonivento et al., 2004). In this work, modeling, simulation and control of industrial fault tolerant robots by means of adaptive inertia is presented. This study, initially developed for robots with n Degrees Of Freedom (DOF), includes the calculation of adaptive inertia parameters; which is particularized for planar systems with two and three rotational joints. The modeling of these systems considers kinematic and dynamic aspects of robots, including the dynamics of actuators and position sensors that, by employing MatLab/ Simulink software, permits the simulation and results displaying of dynamic behavior of such systems in front of actuator failures.
Elastic stability of DNA configurations. II. Supercoiled plasmids with self-contact.

Configurations of protein-free DNA miniplasmids are calculated with the effects of impenetrability and self-contact forces taken into account by using exact solutions of Kirchhoff's equations of equilibrium for elastic rods of circular cross section. Bifurcation diagrams are presented as graphs of excess link, DeltaL, versus writhe, W, and the stability criteria derived in paper I of this series are employed in a search for regions of such diagrams that correspond to configurations that are stable, in the sense that they give local minima to elastic energy. Primary bifurcation branches that originate at circular configurations are composed of configurations with D(m) symmetry (m=2,3,.). Among the results obtained are the following. (i) There are configurations with C2 symmetry forming secondary bifurcation branches which emerge from the primary branch with m=3, and bifurcation of such secondary branches gives rise to tertiary branches of configurations without symmetry. (ii) Whether or not self-contact occurs, a noncircular configuration in the primary branch with m=2, called branch alpha, is stable when for it the derivative dDeltaL/dW, computed along that branch, is strictly positive. (iii) For configurations not in alpha, the condition dDeltaL/dW>0 is not sufficient for stability; in fact, each nonplanar contact-free configuration that is in a branch other than alpha is unstable. A rule relating the number of points of self-contact and the occurrence of intervals of such contact to the magnitude of DeltaL, which in paper I was found to hold for segments of DNA subject to strong anchoring end conditions, is here observed to hold for computed configurations of protein-free miniplasmids.
5-HT3 receptor ion size selectivity is a property of the transmembrane channel, not the cytoplasmic vestibule portals

5-HT3A receptors select among permeant ions based on size and charge. The membrane-associated (MA) helix lines the portals into the channel’s cytoplasmic vestibule in the 4-Å resolution structure of the homologous acetylcholine receptor. 5-HT3A MA helix residues are important determinants of single-channel conductance. It is unknown whether the portals into the cytoplasmic vestibule also determine the size selectivity of permeant ions. We sought to determine whether the portals form the size selectivity filter. Recently, we showed that channels functioned when the entire 5-HT3A M3–M4 loop was replaced by the heptapeptide M3–M4 loop sequence from GLIC, a bacterial Cys-loop neurotransmitter gated ion channel homologue from Gloebacter violaceus. We used homomeric 5-HT3A receptors with either a wild-type (WT) M3–M4 loop or the chimeric heptapeptide (5-HT3A–glvM3M4) loop, i.e., with or without portals. In Na+-containing buffer, the WT receptor current–voltage relationship was inwardly rectifying. In contrast, the 5-HT3A–glvM3M4 construct had a negative slope conductance region at voltages less than −80 mV. Glutamine substitution for the heptapeptide M3–M4 loop arginine eliminated the negative slope conductance region. We measured the relative permeabilities and conductances of a series of inorganic and organic cations ranging from 0.9 to 4.5 Å in radius (Li+, Na+, ammonium, methylammonium, ethanolammonium, 2-methylethanolammonium, dimethylammonium, diethanolammonium, tetramethylammonium, choline, tris [hydroxymethyl] aminomethane, and N-methyl-d-glucamine). Both constructs had measurable conductances with Li+, ammonium, and methylammonium (size range of 0.9–1.8-Å radius). Many of the organic cations >2.4 Å acted as competitive antagonists complicating measurement of conductance ratios. Analysis of the permeability ratios by excluded volume theory indicates that the minimal pore radius for 5-HT3A and 5-HT3–glvM3M4 receptors was similar, ∼5 Å. We infer that the 5-HT3A size selectivity filter is located in the transmembrane channel and not in the portals into the cytoplasmic vestibule. Thus, the determinants of size selectivity and conductance are located in physically distinct regions of the channel protein.
Enhancing Knowledge Graph Embedding with Probabilistic Negative Sampling

Link Prediction using Knowledge graph embedding projects symbolic entities and relations into low dimensional vector space, thereby learning the semantic relations between entities. Among various embedding models, there is a series of translation-based models such as TransE[1], TransH[2], and TransR[3]. This paper proposes modifications in the TransR model to address the issue of skewed data which is common in real-world knowledge graphs. The enhancements enable the model to smartly generate corrupted triplets during negative sampling, which significantly improves the training time and performance of TransR. The proposed approach can be applied to other translation-based models.
Association of echocardiographic abnormalities with mortality in men with non-dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND The interrelationship of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) with ejection fraction (EF) and their impact on mortality in non-dialysis-dependent chronic kidney disease (NDD-CKD) is unclear. METHODS We examined the associations of EF and LVH with all-cause mortality in a historic cohort of 650 male US veterans with moderate-to-advanced NDD-CKD. EF and LVH were examined both separately and after categorizing patients according to their concomitant EF and presence/absence of LVH. Associations with mortality were examined in Cox models with adjustments for demographics, blood pressure, comorbidities, smoking status, medication use and biochemical characteristics. RESULTS EF <30 and 30-50% were associated with higher all-cause mortality compared to EF >50% even after multivariable adjustments [multivariable adjusted hazard ratio, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.83 (1.86-4.30) and 1.38 (1.06-1.78), P < 0.001 for linear trend]. LVH in itself was not associated with mortality [multivariable adjusted hazard ratio, 95% CI: 0.83 (0.66-1.05), P = 0.12], but the presence of LVH combined with an EF <50% was associated with the highest mortality [multivariable adjusted hazard ratios, 95% CI in patients with EF >50% + LVH, EF ≤ 50%-LVH and EF ≤ 50% + LVH, compared to EF >50%-LVH: 0.84 (0.63-1.13), 1.36 (1.00-1.83) and 1.62 (1.07-2.46)]. CONCLUSIONS Low EF is associated with higher mortality in patients with NDD-CKD. In the presence of a low EF, LVH is also associated with higher mortality. Clinical trials are needed to determine if interventions targeting patients with low EF and LVH can lower mortality in NDD-CKD.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector

Aad, G. ; et al., [Unknown]; Aben, R. ; Beemster, L.J.; Bentvelsen, S. ; Berglund, E. ; Bobbink, G.J.; Bos, K. ; Boterenbrood, H. ; Colijn, A.P.; de Jong, P.; de Nooij, L. ; Deluca, C. ; Deviveiros, P.O. ; Doxiadis, A.D.; Ferrari, P.; Gadatsch, S. ; Garitaonandia, H. ; Geerts, D.A. A. ; Gosselink, M. ; Hartjes, F. ; Hessey, N.P.; Igonkina, O. ; Kayl, M.S.; Klous, S. ; Kluit, P.; Koffeman, E. ; Lee, H. ; Lenz, T. ; Linde, F. ; Luijckx, G. ; Mahlstedt, J.; Massaro, G. ; Mechnich, J.; Mussche, I. ; Ottersbach, J.P.; Pani, P.; Rijpstra, M. ; Ruckstuhl, N. ; Ta, D. ; Tsiakiris, M. ; Turlay, E. ; van der Deijl, P.C. ; van der Geer, R. ; van der Graaf, H. ; van der Leeuw, R. ; van der Poel, E. ; van Vulpen, I. ; Verkerke, W. ; Vermeulen, J.C. ; Vranjes Milosavljevic, M. ; Vreeswijk, M.
Virtual reality technology on health intervention for women: a literature review

Virtual Reality (VR) technology application has become more affordable, immersive and portable. This is also happening in the health intervention domain. While the usage of the VR applications is still dominated by man, we conduct a literature review study to see the state-of-the-art in the application for recent VR technologies for women’s health intervention. This study is done since women are more susceptible to some disease than men, feel pain more easily, more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, and experience anxiety and phobia more easily. It will help future studies to lookup the big impact of VR health intervention for women. The result of the literature review shows that there are three types of VR technology are used in the application (non-immersive, semi-immersive, and full-immersive), there are four category of health interventions done through VR (prevention, diagnosis, treatment, diagnosis-treatment), and the domain of the disorder are focused mostly to psychological and physical aspect.
Frailty effects in networks: comparison and identification of individual heterogeneity versus preferential attachment in evolving networks

Summary. Preferential attachment is a proportionate growth process in networks, where nodes receive new links in proportion to their current degree. Preferential attachment is a popular generative mechanism to explain the widespread observation of power‐law‐distributed networks. An alternative explanation for the phenomenon is a randomly grown network with large individual variation in growth rates among the nodes (frailty). We derive analytically the distribution of individual rates, which will reproduce the connectivity distribution that is obtained from a general preferential attachment process (Yule process), and the structural differences between the two types of graphs are examined by simulations. We present a statistical test to distinguish the two generative mechanisms from each other and we apply the test to both simulated data and two real data sets of scientific citation and sexual partner networks. The findings from the latter analyses argue for frailty effects as an important mechanism underlying the dynamics of complex networks.
Document-oriented data warehouses: Models and extended cuboids, extended cuboids in oriented document

Within the Big Data trend, there is an increasing interest in Not-only-SQL systems (NoSQL). These systems are promising candidates for implementing data warehouses particularly due to the data structuration/storage possibilities they offer. In this paper, we investigate data warehouse instantiation using a document-oriented system (a special class of NoSQL systems). On the one hand, we analyze several issues including modeling, querying, loading data and OLAP cuboids. We compare document-oriented models (with and without normalization) to analogous relational database models. On the other hand, we suggest improvements in order to benefit from document-oriented features. We focus particularly on extended versions of OLAP cuboids that exploit nesting and arrays. They are shown to work better on workloads with drill-down queries. Research in this direction is new. As existing work focuses on feasibility issues, document-specific implementation features, modeling and cross-model comparison.
A combinatorial proof that Schubert vs. Schur coefficients are nonnegative

We give a combinatorial proof that the product of a Schubert polynomial by a Schur polynomial is a nonnegative sum of Schubert polynomials. Our proof uses Assaf's theory of dual equivalence to show that a quasisymmetric function of Bergeron and Sottile is Schur-positive. By a geometric comparison theorem of Buch and Mihalcea, this implies the nonnegativity of Gromov-Witten invariants of the Grassmannian.
Factors determining spectral width of HF echoes from high latitudes

Spectral width is one of the standard data types produced by the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN). A pronounced latitudinal gradient in spectral width has been reported in the literature and is used as an empirical proxy for the ionospheric footprint of the open-closed field-line boundary. In this work we investigated the daytime radar echo properties near the spectral width boundary using a multi-frequency sounding regime. We have found that the relatively large spectral width values ≥150 m/s observed poleward of the boundary are produced by ionospheric irregularities with lifetime τ l ≃10–25 ms, which is essentially independent of the scale size. These irregularities are statistically co-located with low-energy (~100 eV) electron precipitation, which may play a major role in producing F-region turbulence above 75 MLAT via restructuring the ionospheric plasma on time scales ~τ l .
Efficacy of phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors for the treatment of distal ureteral calculi: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose To determine the efficacy of phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5i) as medical expulsive therapy (MET) for the treatment of distal ureteral calculi. Materials and Methods A search strategy was conducted in the MEDLINE, CENTRAL, and Embase databases. Searches were also conducted in other databases and unpublished literature. Clinical trials were included without language restrictions. The risk of bias was evaluated with the Cochrane Collaboration's tool. An analysis of random effects due to statistical heterogeneity was conducted. The primary outcome was the expulsion rate of the distal ureteral calculus in 28 days. The secondary outcomes were the time to expulsion, side effects of treatment, and amount (mg) of nonopioid analgesia. The measure of the effect was the risk difference (RD) with a 95% confidence interval (CI). The planned interventions were PDE5i vs. placebo, tadalafil vs. placebo, and tadalafil vs. tamsulosin. Results Four articles were included in the qualitative and quantitative analysis. Records of 580 patients were found among the four studies. A low risk of bias was shown for the majority of the study items. The calculi expulsion rate had an RD of 0.26 (95% CI, 0.15–0.37) and a less prolonged expulsion as a secondary outcome with a mean difference of -4.39 days (95% CI, -6.69 to -2.09) in favor of PDE5i compared with the placebo. No significant difference was found for these outcomes when comparing tadalafil with tamsulosin. Conclusions Compared with a placebo, PDE5i could be effective as MET for the treatment of distal ureter calculi.