Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Innovative Neural-Net Method to Detect Temporal Changes in High-Resolution Optical Satellite Imagery

The advent of new high spatial resolution optical satellite imagery has greatly increased our ability to monitor land cover changes from space. Satellite observations are carried out regularly and continuously, and provide a great deal of insight into the temporal changes of land cover use. High spatial resolution imagery better resolves the details of these changes and makes it possible to overcome the "mixed-pixel" problem that is inherent with more moderate resolution satellite sensors. At the same time, high-resolution imagery presents a new challenge over other satellite systems, in that a relatively large amount of data must be analyzed and corrected for registration and classification errors to identify the land cover changes. To obtain the accuracies that are required by many applications to large areas, very extensive manual work is commonly required to remove the classification errors that are introduced by most methods. To improve on this situation, we have developed a new method for land surface change detection that greatly reduces the human effort that is needed to remove the errors that occur with many classification methods that are applied to high-resolution imagery. This change detection algorithm is based on neural networks, and it is able to exploit in parallel both the multiband and the multitemporal data to discriminate between real changes and false alarms. In general, the classification errors are reduced by a factor of 2-3 using our new method over a simple postclassification comparison based on a neural-network classification of the same images.
Location tracking for media appliances in wireless home networks

We present a location detection system for tracking multimedia appliances and users within a wireless local area network (WLAN) enabled home environment. Multimedia appliances communicate with a central gateway via low cost network interface devices called buddies. The gateway can locate the users and appliances within the accuracy of a room and use the location information to automatically redirect media streams to user's presence. We call this paradigm as a media cloud. This paper presents the scheme for collecting proximity information from the buddies and effective techniques to determine their location. We have implemented the location detection system and present an experimental performance evaluation.
Compensator, Amplifier, or Distractor? The Moderating Role of Informal Political Talk on the Effect of News Media Use on Current-Affairs Learning Among First-Time Voters

With an increasing number of young people turning away from traditional news sources, an important question for democracy is whether alternative sources can help learning about politics and current affairs. In this study, we examine to what extent informal political talk with friends, family, and peers narrows or widens knowledge gaps amongst young people by compensating those with low news media use (“helping the poor”), amplifying news media effects amongst those with high news media use (“the rich get richer”), or distracting those with high news media use (“taxing the rich”). To test these different potentials, we take advantage of a four-wave panel study fielded ahead of the Danish National Election in 2015 among a sample of Danish first-time voters (ages 17 to 21). Our results show that informal political talk functions mostly as a compensator by informing those with low news media use about current political affairs and thereby helps decrease knowledge gaps caused by different levels of news media use.
Quasi-Static Compact Model for Coupling Between Aligned Contacts on Finite Substrates With Insulating or Conducting Backplanes

We derive a closed-form quasi-static model for the coupling impedance between aligned coplanar rectangular contacts on bulk and epitaxial semiconductor substrates by resolving the 3-D field lines into simpler components (vertical, lateral, fringing, 2-D, etc.). Both insulating and conducting (grounded or floating) backplane conditions are considered. Our model reflects all the geometry and process parameters, and its constants are process independent and universal. The model also gives the capacitive coupling via ambient, i.e., via the region outside the substrate, and specifies conditions under which a given thickness or lateral extension of the substrate can be regarded as infinite. Comparisons with technology computer-aided design simulations and measurements validate the model over a wide range of width/length and width/separation ratios of the contacts.
China's New Kingdom of Bikes: Bicycling and the quest for modernity

The purpose of this article is to investigate the shifting semiotic meanings of bicycles within the cultural context of contemporary China. I seek to interrogate the ways in which the symbolic capital of bicycles becomes established, reformulated, and reconstituted through different social structures. By looking at the shifting social meaning of riding bicycles, I illuminate the ways that social forces define and shape commodities. Informed by discourse analysis of online forums and ethnographic research, this article sheds light on the ways in which ordinary people and national initiatives use material objects and physical culture to remake themselves in an increasingly globalized and capitalistic world.
PoPS: a computational tool for modeling and predicting protease specificity

Proteases play a fundamental role in the control of intra- and extracellular processes by binding and cleaving specific amino acid sequences. Identifying these targets is extremely challenging. Current computational attempts to predict cleavage sites are limited, representing these amino acid sequences as patterns or frequency matrices. Here we present PoPS, a publicly accessible bioinformatics tool (http://pops.csse.monash.edu.au/) which provides a novel method for building computational models of protease specificity that, while still being based on these amino acid sequences, can be built from any experimental data or expert knowledge available to the user. PoPS specificity models can be used to predict and rank likely cleavages within a single substrate, and within entire proteomes. Other factors, such as the secondary or tertiary structure of the substrate, can be used to screen unlikely sites. Furthermore, the tool also provides facilities to infer, compare and test models, and to store them in a publicly accessible database.
Review: the effect of polymethylmethacrylate dialysis membranes on uraemic pruritus

Despite improvements in dialysis technology, including the development of novel biocompatible membranes and ultrapure dialysate, uraemia-associated pruritus (UP) remains a common and significant public health issue [1]. Not only does this distressing symptom profoundly impact on the quality of life and sleep, but recent evidence shows that pruritus is also associated with poor patient outcome. In the international Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study (DOPPS) [2], which evaluated more than 18 000 patients on haemodialysis (HD) therapy, pruritus was associated with a 17% greater mortality risk, an effect that was no longer significant after adjustment for measures of sleep quality. Nonetheless, nephrologists and other health care professionals often fail to recognize and adequately address the pruritus associated with chronic uraemia. The prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD)-associated pruritus varies substantially, ranging from 22 to 90% [2– 6]. In the largest and most recent epidemiological study to date, the prevalence of CKD-associated pruritus was 42% [2]. Although this is a lower prevalence than initially reported, pruritus in patients with CKD remains frequent and continues to be a significant public health concern.
Accelerating Restore and Garbage Collection in Deduplication-based Backup Systems via Exploiting Historical Information

In deduplication-based backup systems, the chunks of each backup are physically scattered after deduplication, which causes a challenging fragmentation problem. The fragmentation decreases restore performance, and results in invalid chunks becoming physically scattered in different containers after users delete backups. Existing solutions attempt to rewrite duplicate but fragmented chunks to improve the restore performance, and reclaim invalid chunks by identifying and merging valid but fragmented chunks into new containers. However, they cannot accurately identify fragmented chunks due to their limited rewrite buffer. Moreover, the identification of valid chunks is cumbersome and the merging operation is the most time-consuming phase in garbage collection. Our key observation that fragmented chunks remain fragmented in subsequent backups motivates us to propose a History-Aware Rewriting algorithm (HAR). HAR exploits historical information of backup systems to more accurately identify and rewrite fragmented chunks. Since the valid chunks are aggregated in compact containers by HAR, the merging operation is no longer required. To reduce the metadata overhead of the garbage collection, we further propose a Container-Marker Algorithm (CMA) to identify valid containers instead of valid chunks. Our extensive experimental results from real-world datasets show HAR significantly improves the restore performance by 2.6X-17X at a cost of only rewriting 0.45-1.99% data. CMA reduces the metadata overhead for the garbage collection by about 90X.
Simulation research and experimental verification of a variable stiffness actuator with automatic rigidity/compliance switching

Flexible driving with variable stiffness is very significant in improving the safety of robot. This paper makes simulation analysis and experimental verification for variable stiffness actuator. The closed-loop servo control system based on Trio motion controller on the basis of analyzing the structure and motion of variable stiffness actuator with automatic rigidity/compliance switching was designed, the experiments on the control platform which has been set up were performed. The simulation model of variable stiffness actuator with automatic rigidity/compliance switching was established. The simulation for the key parameters was analyzed and an optimization solution for spring compression was proposed. The experimental platform was set up to make the test of rigidity/compliance switching, stiffness characteristic and collision. Results showed that the rigidity/compliance switching function of the variable stiffness actuator is reliable, the stiffness characteristics are consistent with the theoretical data, the actuator can effectively weaken the impact force in the collision.
Several approaches to non-archimedean geometry

and it rests upon versions of the inverse and implicit function theorems that can be proved for convergent power series over k by adapting the traditional proofs over R and C. Serre's Harvard lectures (S) on Lie groups and Lie algebras develop this point of view, for example. However, these kinds of spaces have limited geomet- ric interest because they are totally disconnected. For global geometric applications (such as uniformization questions, as rst arose in Tate's study of elliptic curves with split multiplicative reduction over a non-archimedean eld), it is desirable to have a much richer theory, one in which there is a meaningful way to say that the closed unit ball is \connected". More generally, we want a satisfactory theory of coherent sheaves (and hence a theory of \analytic continuation"). Such a theory was rst introduced by Tate in the early 1960's, and then systematically developed (building on Tate's remarkable results) by a number of mathematicians. Though it was initially a subject of specialized interest, in recent years the importance and power of Tate's theory of rigid-analytic spaces (and its variants, due especially to the work of Raynaud, Berkovich, and Huber) has become ever more apparent. To name but a few striking applications, the proof of the local Langlands conjec- ture for GLn by Harris{Taylor uses etale cohomology on non-archimedean analytic spaces (in the sense of Berkovich) to construct the required Galois representations over local elds, the solution by Raynaud and Harbater of Abyhankar's conjecture concerning fundamental groups of curves in positive characteristic uses the rigid- analytic GAGA theorems (whose proofs are very similar to Serre's proofs in the complex-analytic case), and recent work of Kisin on modularity of Galois represen- tations makes creative use of rigid-analytic spaces associated to Galois deformation rings. The aim of these lectures is to explain some basic ideas, results, and examples in Tate's theory and its renements. In view of time and space constraints, we have omitted most proofs in favor of examples to illustrate the main ideas. To become a serious user of the theory it is best to closely study a more systematic development. In particular, we recommend (BGR) for the \classical" theory due
Reducing risks from poorly chosen keys

It is well-known that, left to themselves, people will choose passwords that can be rather readily guessed. If this is done, they are usually vulnerable to an attack based on copying the content of messages forming part of an authentication protocol and experimenting, e.g. with a dictionary, offline. The most usual counter to this threat is to require people to use passwords which are obscure, or even to insist on the system choosing their passwords for them. In this paper we show alternatively how to construct an authentication protocol in which offline experimentation is impracticable; any attack based on experiment must involve the real authentication server and is thus open to detection by the server noticing multiple attempts.
Ecofeminist Teaching and Mentoring: Vicky Davion's Legacy

Abstract:This essay contemplates the life and work of Victoria Davion and the meaning of legacy in the field of philosophy. As her former student and graduate assistant, I examine Davion's legacy through her ecological feminist teaching philosophy. Ideally, an ecological feminist pedagogy serves as a critical praxis that brings together students and teachers to empower themselves in the scope of knowledge construction about oppression of human and nonhumans and to develop ways to resist against dualistic thinking. I begin with examining best practices in an ecofeminist pedagogy for sustaining relationships between students and their teachers and ways of encouraging this relationship to translate beyond the classroom. I focus on four features of Davion's pedagogy and mentorship including 1) accessibility 2) dialogue 3) praxis and 4) interconnectedness. I address how these four features in her teaching are well suited to nurturing a flourishing relationship between students and their teachers and larger community. I draw attention to these aspects of her ecofeminist teaching practices, and I hope this reflection expands the meaning of legacy in ecofeminist philosophy.
Harmonic distortion of multicarrier PWM strategies in cascaded multilevel converters with unequal DC sources

Calculating in an analytical way the influence of modulation strategies for multilevel converters is a challenging topic, especially if the theoretical and ideal assumptions are not valid. In this paper, a modular multilevel converter, consisting of three H-Bridges is analysed. Based on analytical formulas, a numerical approach is shown to handle the risen complexity due to the risen number of output levels. The influence on the harmonic content of the output voltage is investigated assuming non-ideal DC sources.
LOV4IoT: A Second Life for Ontology-Based Domain Knowledge to Build Semantic Web of Things Applications

Semantic Web of Things is a new field combining Semantic Web and Internet of Things technologies to be surrounded by smart objects and applications connected to the Web. On one hand, one of the Linked Open Data applications, called DataHub aims at referencing datasets, on the other hand, the Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) references more than 400 ontologies. However, we discovered that more than 200 ontology-based projects relevant for IoT are not referenced on such tools since domain experts are not aware of them nor of the semantic web best practices. We propose the Machine-to-Machine Measurement (M3) framework, available online, to rapidly design and develop semantic-based cross-domain IoT applications by reusing as much as possible the domain knowledge (ontologies, datasets and rules). To achieve this goal, there are challenging steps: (1) referencing and classifying semantic-based projects relevant for IoT, (2) re-engineering a dataset of interoperable domain rules to deduce high-level abstractions from sensor data, (3) re-engineering an interoperable cross-domain knowledge to combine domains, and (4) assisting developers in designing IoT applications by designing pre-defined templates. In this article, we are focused on referencing and classifying semantic-based projects relevant for IoT by designing the Linked Open Vocabularies for Internet of Things (LOV4IoT) dataset. We also design a dataset of interoperable domain rules to deduce high-level abstractions from sensor data by designing the Sensor-based Linked Open Rules (S-LOR). This work has been applied to two uses cases: (1) redesigning a security and cross-domain knowledge base to assist users in suggesting security mechanisms to secure their applications, and (2) designing semantic-based IoT applications embedded in Android-powered devices.
O impacto do trabalho The Forms of Capital de Pierre Bourdieu na literatura científica internacional

Aborda o impacto do trabalho The Forms of Capital de Pierre Bourdieu na literatura científica internacional por meio da análise das citações feitas a ele em publicações científicas. Através de um estudo bibliométrico, 5.631 documentos indexados na base Web of Science, que citaram o trabalho desde sua publicação até 2016, foram analisados e caracterizados quanto ao ano de publicação, idioma, tipologia documental, periódico de publicação, áreas do conhecimento, temas, instituições e países citantes. Os resultados sugerem (1) o crescimento exponencial do volume de citações recebidas, (2) o inglês como o idioma predominante nas publicações citantes, (3) a expressividade das citações de artigos científicos e artigos de revisão, (4) a grande dispersão dos artigos citantes em 1.637 títulos de periódicos, (5) a Sociologia, a Educação e Pesquisa Educacional e a Administração como as áreas que mais citaram o trabalho do autor, (6) a formação de clusters de termos teoricamente relacionados e a existência de linhas de investigação dentro do corpus, (7) a variedade de instituições citantes e (8) a concentração de publicações citantes nos países da América do Norte, Europa e Oceania. Conclui que o impacto do trabalho The Forms of Capital pode ser observado na produção científica de diversos países e áreas do conhecimento.
Convergent Differential Regulation of Parvalbumin in the Brains of Vocal Learners

Spoken language and learned song are complex communication behaviors found in only a few species, including humans and three groups of distantly related birds – songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds. Despite their large phylogenetic distances, these vocal learners show convergent behaviors and associated brain pathways for vocal communication. However, it is not clear whether this behavioral and anatomical convergence is associated with molecular convergence. Here we used oligo microarrays to screen for genes differentially regulated in brain nuclei necessary for producing learned vocalizations relative to adjacent brain areas that control other behaviors in avian vocal learners versus vocal non-learners. A top candidate gene in our screen was a calcium-binding protein, parvalbumin (PV). In situ hybridization verification revealed that PV was expressed significantly higher throughout the song motor pathway, including brainstem vocal motor neurons relative to the surrounding brain regions of all distantly related avian vocal learners. This differential expression was specific to PV and vocal learners, as it was not found in avian vocal non-learners nor for control genes in learners and non-learners. Similar to the vocal learning birds, higher PV up-regulation was found in the brainstem tongue motor neurons used for speech production in humans relative to a non-human primate, macaques. These results suggest repeated convergent evolution of differential PV up-regulation in the brains of vocal learners separated by more than 65–300 million years from a common ancestor and that the specialized behaviors of learned song and speech may require extra calcium buffering and signaling.
Psychological problems in children with bedwetting and combined (day and night) wetting: A UK population-based study.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the psychological problems associated with bedwetting and combined (day and night) wetting in children aged around 7(1/2) years. METHODS Participants were a cohort of over 8000 children enrolled in the population-based Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Parents completed postal questionnaires assessing common childhood psychological problems, and children were asked about behavior, friendships, bullying, and self-esteem in clinical interviews. The rates of psychological problems were compared in children with bedwetting, combined wetting, and in children with no wetting problems. RESULTS The study found a higher rate of parent-reported psychological problems in children with bedwetting and combined wetting compared with those with no wetting problems. Children with combined wetting were particularly at risk for externalizing problems. There was little difference with the child-reported measures. CONCLUSIONS Bedwetting and combined wetting are associated with parent-reported psychological problems and combined wetting confers an increased risk for externalizing problems.
Have sperm densities declined? A reanalysis of global trend data.

In 1992 a worldwide decline in sperm density was reported; this was quickly followed by numerous critiques and editorials. Because of the public health importance of this finding, a detailed reanalysis of data from 61 studies was warranted to resolve these issues. Multiple linear regression models (controlling for abstinence time, age, percent proven fertility, specimen collection method, study goal and location) were used to examine regional differences and the interaction between region (United States, Europe, and non-Western countries) and year. Nonlinear models and residual confounding were also examined in these data. Using a linear model (adjusted R2 = 0. 80), means and slopes differed significantly across regions (p = 0. 02). Mean sperm densities were highest in Europe and lowest in non-Western countries. A decline in sperm density was seen in the United States (studies from 1938-1988; slope = -1.50; 95% confidence interval (CI), -1.90--1.10) and Europe (1971-1990; slope = -3.13; CI, -4.96- -1.30), but not in non-Western countries (1978-1989; slope = 1.56; CI, -1.00-4.12). Results from nonlinear models (quadratic and spline) were similar. Thus, further analysis of these studies supports a significant decline in sperm density in the United States and Europe. Confounding and selection bias are unlikely to account for these results. However, some intraregional differences were as large as mean decline in sperm density between 1938 and 1990, and recent reports from Europe and the United States further support large interarea differences in sperm density. Identifying the cause(s) of these regional and temporal differences, whether environmental or other, is clearly warranted. ImagesFigure 1.