Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting global average thermospheric temperature changes resulting from auroral heating

[1] The total Poynting flux flowing into both polar hemispheres as a function of time, computed with an empirical model, is compared with measurements of neutral densities in the thermosphere at two altitudes obtained from accelerometers on the CHAMP and GRACE satellites. The Jacchia-Bowman 2008 empirical thermospheric density model (JB2008) is used to facilitate the comparison. This model calculates a background level for the “global nighttime minimum exospheric temperature,” Tc, from solar indices. Corrections to this background level due to auroral heating, ΔTc, are presently computed from the Dst index. A proxy measurement of this temperature difference, ΔTc, is obtained by matching the CHAMP and GRACE density measurements with the JB2008 model. Through the use of a differential equation, the ΔTc correction can be predicted from IMF values. The resulting calculations correlate very well with the orbit-averaged measurements of ΔTc, and correlate better than the values derived from Dst. Results indicate that the thermosphere cools faster following time periods with greater ionospheric heating. The enhanced cooling is likely due to nitric oxide (NO) that is produced at a higher rate in proportion to the ionospheric heating, and this effect is simulated in the differential equations. As the ΔTc temperature correction from this model can be used as a direct substitute for the Dst-derived correction that is now used in JB200, it could be possible to predict ΔTc with greater accuracy and lead time.
Global source attribution of tropospheric ozone: Long-range transport from various source regions

[1] We examine contributions from various source regions to global distributions and budgets of tropospheric ozone (O3) in the context of intercontinental transport, using tagged tracer simulation with a global chemical transport model. For tagging O3, we consider regional separation of the model domain on the basis of the distributions of O3 chemical production. We define 14 polluted source regions (14 tracers) in the boundary layer (North America, Europe, China, etc.) and 8 regions (8 tracers) in the free troposphere; O3 production in the remaining (remote) tropospheric region and O3 transport from the stratosphere are also tagged as separate tracers. O3 transport from the polluted source regions like North America, Europe, and Asia generally accounts for more than 40% of ozone abundances even in remote locations. O3 exports from boundary layer in China and Asian free troposphere are discerned through much of the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting significant and extensive impacts of eastern Asian pollution. In particular, O3 from Asian free troposphere plays the most important roles in distribution and seasonal variation of O3 in the middle-upper troposphere almost globally. In June–September, the model calculates a large O3 contribution (5–10 ppbv) from Asian free troposphere in the upper troposphere over the South Pacific associated with long-range interhemispheric transport from Asia to the southern midlatitudes (via the western Indian Ocean, Africa, and Atlantic) in the upper troposphere. O3 transported from biomass burning regions such as South America, Africa, and Australia widely distributes in the Southern Hemisphere. Our simulation demonstrates that there is a significant interhemispheric O3 transport from South America to the northern midlatitudes in the upper troposphere which reaches Japan, North Pacific, and the United States in conjunction with O3 export from North Africa. Our tagged O3 simulation estimates that the annual mean global tropospheric O3 burden, as calculated to be 344 Tg in this study, comes from chemical production in the source regions (48%) and in the remote regions (29%) and from stratosphere-troposphere exchange (23%).
Rocketsonde observations of the mesospheric semiannual oscillation at Kwajalein

Abstract Rocketsonde observations from Kwajalein in the tropical Pacific were used to determine the amplitude and phase of the semiannual variation of the zonal wind throughout the upper stratosphere and mesosphere (up to heights of 78 km). The results appear to confirm Hirota's (1978) earlier observations of a strong semiannual oscillation in the tropical upper mesosphere, which is nearly 180° out of phase with the more familiar stratopause semiannual oscillation.
Suomi NPP CrIS measurements, sensor data record algorithm, calibration and validation activities, and record data quality

The Cross‐Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) is a Fourier Transform Michelson interferometer instrument launched on board the Suomi National Polar‐Orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite on 28 October 2011. CrIS provides measurements of Earth view interferograms in three infrared spectral bands at 30 cross‐track positions, each with a 3 × 3 array of field of views. The CrIS ground processing software transforms the measured interferograms into calibrated and geolocated spectra in the form of Sensor Data Records (SDRs) that cover spectral bands from 650 to 1095 cm−1, 1210 to 1750 cm−1, and 2155 to 2550 cm−1 with spectral resolutions of 0.625 cm−1, 1.25 cm−1, and 2.5 cm−1, respectively. During the time since launch a team of subject matter experts from government, academia, and industry has been engaged in postlaunch CrIS calibration and validation activities. The CrIS SDR product is defined by three validation stages: Beta, Provisional, and Validated. The product reached Beta and Provisional validation stages on 19 April 2012 and 31 January 2013, respectively. For Beta and Provisional SDR data, the estimated absolute spectral calibration uncertainty is less than 3 ppm in the long‐wave and midwave bands, and the estimated 3 sigma radiometric uncertainty for all Earth scenes is less than 0.3 K in the long‐wave band and less than 0.2 K in the midwave and short‐wave bands. The geolocation uncertainty for near nadir pixels is less than 0.4 km in the cross‐track and in‐track directions.
Generation and Propagation of Tsunami Accompanying Edge Waves on a Uniform Sloping Shelf

Based on the linear long wave theory, a theoretical solution was obtained for the tsunami, which propagated from a tsunami source generated on the shelf with a straight coastline and a uniform slope. The solution shows that the behavior of a tsunami generated on the shelf is affected by the conditions of the tsunami source. The tsunami propagation is classified into three types by examining the generated edge waves. The limit of conditions providing each propagation type is determined mainly by the source distance to the coastline. The empirical relations are derived which evaluate the characteristics of induced tsunami by using the tsunami source parameters such as the lengths of the long-axis and short-axis, the location and the direction of the tsunami source and so on. The effect of the Coriolis force is also discussed.
Iris recognition at a distance with expanded imaging volume

The human iris is an attractive biometric due to its high discrimination capability. However, capturing good quality images of human irises is challenging and requires considerable user cooperation. Iris capture systems with large depth of field, large field of view and excellent capacity for light capture can help considerably in such scenarios. In this paper we apply Wavefront Coding to increase the depth of field without increasing the optical F/# of an iris recognition system when the subject is at least 2 meters away. This computational imaging system is designed and optimized using the spectral-SNR as the fundamental metric. We present simulation and experimental results that show the benefits of this technology for biometric identification.
Productivity evaluation of hydraulically fractured gas-condensate reservoirs

This study describes an application of a compositional single well simulator to analyse well tests in gas-condensate reservoirs. An important aspect of this application for gas-condensate well tests is accurate fluid property prediction during the multi-phase flow regime, which occurs in the near-well region. The simulator can also be used to understand the impact of liquid drop-out and fracture flow on well productivity. Hydraulic fracturing improves the economics of wells drilled in tight reservoirs. However, the operation involves a significant amount of expenditure. In recent years this technique has also been used to stimulate gas-condensate reservoirs by creating a flow conduit through the condensate banking near the well. Thus, it is crucial to keep a fracture as small as possible. In practice it has been proved that a short, wide fracture can provide much higher production than the traditionally pursued narrow, long fracture. The workflow in this study contains compositional simulation of a single well in a tight gas-condensate reservoir, which is used to generate transient pressure data for well test analysis and interpretation to predict multi-phase flow behaviour, and to analyse productivity impairment due to condensation. Simulation models were then further modified to study the impact of various hydraulic fractures on the well productivity index (PI), which is defined as the ratio of production rate (constant) divided by the pressure drop across the reservoir. PIs for fractured cases are compared with respect to the non-fractured base case. Streamline simulation of the fractured gas-condensate reservoir was also included in the study to allow visualization of the flow profile in and around the hydraulic fracture.
Learning Emergent Behavior in Robot Swarms with NEAT

When researching robot swarms, many studies observe complex group behavior emerging from the individual agents' simple local actions. However, the task of learning an individual policy to produce a desired emergent behavior remains a challenging and largely unsolved problem. We present a method of training distributed robotic swarm algorithms to produce emergent behavior. Inspired by the biological evolution of emergent behavior in animals, we use an evolutionary algorithm to train a 'population' of individual behaviors to approximate a desired group behavior. We perform experiments using simulations of the Georgia Tech Miniature Autonomous Blimps (GT-MABs) aerial robotics platforms conducted in the CoppeliaSim simulator. Additionally, we test on simulations of Anki Vector robots to display our algorithm's effectiveness on various modes of actuation. We evaluate our algorithm on various tasks where a somewhat complex group behavior is required for success. These tasks include an Area Coverage task, a Surround Target task, and a Wall Climb task. We compare behaviors evolved using our algorithm against 'designed policies', which we create in order to exhibit the emergent behaviors we desire.
A new statistical downscaling model for autumn precipitation in China

Effective statistical downscaling schemes based on singular value decomposition (SVD) for boreal autumn (September‐October‐November) precipitation over China were developed. It was found that rainfall over China is closely tied to large‐scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation over specific regions. The general circulation models (GCMs), which are from DEMETER project (Development of a European Multi‐model Ensemble System for Seasonal to Interannual Prediction), perform reasonably well in simulating the mean states of geopotential height at 500 hPa (GH5) during autumns from 1960 to 2001. Consequently, the variable GH5 over East Asia from DEMETER GCMs was used as one predictor for downscaling. Meanwhile, another predictor is the preceding sea surface temperature (SST) signal from observed data over the tropical Pacific. The downscaling results involving only the GH5 predictor (GH5 scheme) or both the GH5 and SST predictors (GH5 + SST scheme) were discussed and compared in this study. Downscaling based on two kinds of schemes showed considerable improvement compared with original DEMETER GCMs in predicting regional autumn precipitation. In particular, downscaling predictions based on the GH5 + SST scheme showed lower root mean square errors than those based on the GH5 scheme, especially for the precipitation anomaly pattern of the El Niño event in 1997 and the La Niña event in 1998. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society
Development and application of an efficient method for the solution of stochastic activity networks with deterministic activities

Modeling and evaluation of communication and computing systems is an important undertaking. In many cases, large-scale systems are designed in an ad-hoc manner, with validation (or disappointment regarding) system performance coming only after an implementation is made. This does not need to be the case. Modern modeling tools and techniques can yield accurate performance predictions that can be used in the design process. Stochastic activity networks (SANs), stochastic Petri nets (SPNs) and analytic solution methods permit speci cation and fast solution of many complex system models. To enhance the modeling power of SANs (SPNs), new steady-state analysis methods have been proposed for SAN (SPN) models that include non-exponential activities (transitions). The underlying stochastic process is a Markov regenerative precess (MRP) when at most one non-exponential activity (transition) is enabled in each marking. Timee cient algorithms for constructing the Markov regenerative process have been developed. However, the space required to solve such models is often extremely large. This largeness is due to the large number of transitions in the MRP. Traditional analysis methods require all these transitions be stored in memory for e cient computation. If the size of available memory is smaller than that needed to store these transitions, a time-e cient computation is impossible using these methods. To use this class of SANs to model real systems, the space complexity of MRP analysis algorithms must be reduced. In this thesis, we propose a new steady-state analysis method that is time and space e cient. The new method takes advantage of the structure of the underlying process to reduce both
The Open Runtime Platform: a flexible high‐performance managed runtime environment

The Open Runtime Platform (ORP) is a high‐performance managed runtime environment (MRTE) that features exact generational garbage collection, fast thread synchronization, and multiple coexisting just‐in‐time compilers (JITs). ORP was designed for flexibility in order to support experiments in dynamic compilation, garbage collection, synchronization, and other technologies. It can be built to run either Java or Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) applications, to run under the Windows or Linux operating systems, and to run on the IA‐32 or Itanium processor family (IPF) architectures. Achieving high performance in a MRTE presents many challenges, particularly when flexibility is a major goal. First, to enable the use of different garbage collectors and JITs, each component must be isolated from the rest of the environment through a well‐defined software interface. Without careful attention, this isolation could easily harm performance. Second, MRTEs have correctness and safety requirements that traditional languages such as C++ lack. These requirements, including null pointer checks, array bounds checks, and type checks, impose additional runtime overhead. Finally, the dynamic nature of MRTEs makes some traditional compiler optimizations, such as devirtualization of method calls, more difficult to implement or more limited in applicability. To get full performance, JITs and the core virtual machine (VM) must cooperate to reduce or eliminate (where possible) these MRTE‐specific overheads. In this paper, we describe the structure of ORP in detail, paying particular attention to how it supports flexibility while preserving high performance. We describe the interfaces between the garbage collector, the JIT, and the core VM; how these interfaces enable multiple garbage collectors and JITs without sacrificing performance; and how they allow the JIT and the core VM to reduce or eliminate MRTE‐specific performance issues. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Testing the performance of a dynamic global ecosystem model: Water balance, carbon balance, and vegetation structure

While a new class of Dynamic Global Ecosystem Models (DGEMs) has emerged in the past few years as an important tool for describing global biogeochemical cycles and atmosphere‐biosphere interactions, these models are still largely untested. Here we analyze the behavior of a new DGEM and compare the results to global‐scale observations of water balance, carbon balance, and vegetation structure. In this study, we use version 2 of the Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS), which includes several major improvements and additions to the prototype model developed by Foley et al. [1996]. IBIS is designed to be a comprehensive model of the terrestrial biosphere; the model represents a wide range of processes, including land surface physics, canopy physiology, plant phenology, vegetation dynamics and competition, and carbon and nutrient cycling. The model generates global simulations of the surface water balance (e.g., runoff), the terrestrial carbon balance (e.g., net primary production, net ecosystem exchange, soil carbon, aboveground and belowground litter, and soil CO2 fluxes), and vegetation structure (e.g., biomass, leaf area index, and vegetation composition). In order to test the performance of the model, we have assembled a wide range of continental and global‐scale data, including measurements of river discharge, net primary production, vegetation structure, root biomass, soil carbon, litter carbon, and soil CO2 flux. Using these field data and model results for the contemporary biosphere (1965–1994), our evaluation shows that simulated patterns of runoff, NPP, biomass, leaf area index, soil carbon, and total soil CO2 flux agree reasonably well with measurements that have been compiled from numerous ecosystems. These results also compare favorably to other global model results.
Effect of barotropic tidal rectification on low‐frequency circulation near the shelf break in the northern Bay of Biscay

Current meter data collected in the Bay of Biscay are used with a barotropic model to study the effect of the tidal rectification on the low-frequency circulation near the shelf break. Data collected at two different locations are analyzed and show that the tidal forcing terms and the low-frequency circulation are completely different at the two locations. In order to obtain a quantitative interpretation of these differences, a tidal forcing with both M2 and S2 waves is introduced in a barotropic tidal rectification model. We focus on the rectification process due to the “stretching of the water columns” alone, in the realistic case of large-amplitude topography. A first theoretical result is that the bichromatic forcing generates a nonlinear variation of the residual current which depends on only one nondimensional parameter. This parameter is a function of the barotropic flow and of the wave frequencies. A second result is that the low-frequency circulation generated by such a rectification process (including the two waves) is twice as large in spring tide than in neap tide. Finally, the model applied to both moorings confirms that the tidal rectification is much weaker at one mooring, the northwest one, than at the other, where the tidal rectification can explain 50% of the observed low-frequency circulation.
Joint Design of Source-Channel Codes With Linear Source Encoding Complexity and Good Channel Thresholds Based on Double-Protograph LDPC Codes

We propose the use of a lower or upper triangular sub-base matrix to replace the identity matrix in the source-check-channel-variable linking protomatrix of a double-protograph low-density parity-check joint-source-channel code (DP-LDPC JSCC). The elements along the diagonal of the proposed lower or upper triangular sub-base matrix are assigned as “1” and the other non-zero elements can take any non-negative integral values. Compared with the traditional DP-LDPC JSCC designs, the new designs show a theoretical channel threshold improvement of up to 0.41 dB and a simulated source symbol error rate improvement of up to 0.5 dB at an error rate of 10−6.
The late Miocene to Pleistocene ice‐rafting history of southeast Greenland

Analysis of a Miocene‐Pleistocene ice‐rafted debris (IRD) record from the western Irminger Basin provides evidence for the initiation and long‐term behavior of the SE portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet. In the late Miocene (˜7.3 Ma), IRD supply to Ocean Drilling Program site 918 increased significantly indicating that glaciers large enough to reach sea level were present in SE Greenland long before the onset of widespread Northern Hemisphere glaciation. IRD accumulated at this site throughout the Pliocene and Pleistocene, supporting the hypothesis that SE Greenland was a key nucleation area for the formation of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Since glacial onset, the western Irminger Basin IRD record is characterized by a succession of episodes with high IRD mass accumulation rates (MARs). The site 918 IRD record indicates that greatest iceberg production in SE Greenland occurred during major climatic transitions (e.g. widespread Northern Hemisphere glacial expansion at 2.7 Ma and the mid‐Pleistocene climate shift at 0.9 Ma), and that SE Greenland sometimes also led the northern North Atlantic region in glacial response to climatic forcing (e.g. glacial intensification at ˜4.8 and, along with NE Greenland, at ˜3.5 Ma).
The Hydra Hand: A Mode-Switching Underactuated Gripper With Precision and Power Grasping Modes

Human hands are able to grasp a wide range of object sizes, shapes, and weights, achieved via reshaping and altering their apparent grasping stiffness between compliant power and rigid precision. Achieving similar versatility in robotic hands remains a challenge, which has often been addressed by adding extra controllable degrees of freedom, tactile sensors, or specialised extra grasping hardware, at the cost of control complexity and robustness. We introduce a novel reconfigurable four-fingered two-actuator underactuated gripper—the Hydra Hand—that switches between compliant power and rigid precision grasps using a single motor, while generating grasps via a single hydraulic actuator—exhibiting adaptive grasping between finger pairs, enabling the power grasping of two objects simultaneously. The mode switching mechanism and the hand's kinematics are presented and analysed, and performance is tested on two grasping benchmarks: one focused on rigid objects, and the other on items of clothing. The Hydra Hand is shown to excel at grasping large and irregular objects, and small objects with its respective compliant power and rigid precision configurations. The hand's versatility is then showcased by executing the challenging manipulation task of safely grasping and placing a bunch of grapes, and then plucking a single grape from the bunch.
ADESS: A Proof-of-Work Protocol to Deter Double-Spend Attacks

A principal vulnerability of a proof-of-work ("PoW") blockchain is that an attacker can re-write the history of transactions by forking a previously published block and build a new chain segment containing a different sequence of transactions. If the attacker's chain has the most cumulative mining puzzle difficulty, nodes will recognize it as canonical. We propose a modification to PoW protocols, called ADESS, that contains two novel features. The first modification enables a node to identify the attacker chain by comparing the temporal sequence of blocks on competing chains. The second modification penalizes the attacker by requiring it to apply exponentially increasing hashrate in order to make its chain canonical. We demonstrate two things; (i) the expected cost of carrying out a double-spend attack is weakly higher under ADESS compared to the current PoW protocols and (ii) for any value of transaction, there is a penalty setting in ADESS that renders the expected profit of a double-spend attack negative.