Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The application of cubic spline in rainfall modelling in Bogor and its impact on paddy production

: Rice is a crop that serves as a primary food source to fulfill the carbohydrate needs of the population, especially in Indonesia. In the agricultural production process, several factors can influence the eventual yield. One of these factors is rainfall. Rainfall is the amount of precipitation in a specific area within a certain period. Rainfall can be classified based on its intensity, and the more extreme the rainfall is, the more it affects various activities, including agriculture. This research explores rainfall interpolation using the Cubic Spline and examines the correlation between rainfall and paddy productivity. Cubic Spline is one of interpolation methods used to approximate and calculate a function that is smooth and continuous but retains the shape of the data. This study demonstrates that Cubic Spline interpolation is suitable for modeling rainfall and illustrating the relationship between rainfall intensity and paddy production. This can provide insight into rainfall criteria, especially helping farmers in determining production periods, as well as providing important information for decision making in the agricultural sector.
Becker Digital

Type 2 diabetes is associated with insulin resistance, impaired pancreatic β -cell insulin secretion, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Tissue-speci ﬁ c SWELL1 ablation impairs insulin signaling in adipose, skeletal muscle, and endothelium, and impairs β -cell insulin secretion and glycemic control. Here, we show that I Cl,SWELL and SWELL1 protein are reduced in adipose and β -cells in murine and human diabetes. Combining cryo-electron microscopy, molecular docking, medicinal chemistry, and functional studies, we de ﬁ ne a structure activity relationship to rationally-design active derivatives of a SWELL1 channel inhibitor (DCPIB/SN-401), that bind the SWELL1 hexameric complex, restore SWELL1 protein, plasma membrane traf ﬁ cking, signaling, glycemic control and islet insulin secretion via SWELL1-dependent mechanisms. In vivo, SN-401 restores glycemic control, reduces hepatic steatosis/injury, improves insulin-sensitivity and insulin secretion in murine diabetes. These ﬁ ndings demonstrate that SWELL1 channel modulators improve SWELL1-dependent
Margin Propagation based Analog Soft-Gates for Probabilistic Computing

—Soft computing gates offer a promising approach for efficient and parallel processing of probabilistic signals. These gates are widely used in Bayesian networks and various machine learning models. However, unlike digital logic gates, the design and scaling of analog Soft-Gates is challenging due to analog artifacts, i.e., sensitivity to biasing, mismatch, and temperature variations. In this paper, we present a systematic framework for designing analog Soft-Gates that leverage the bias and temperature scalability of the Margin Propagation principle. Specifically, the paper proposes an adaptive design strategy to alleviate mismatch artifacts and to trade-off probabilistic computational accuracy, area efficiency, and power consumption. We demonstrate the design synthesis of a Soft-Gate and apply it to error correction decoding and filtering tasks. The reported Mean Square Error of the Soft-Gate is less than 10 − 2 , indicating its accuracy in probabilistic computations. For edge filtering applications, the proposed Soft-Gates can achieve an average Structural Similarity Index of 0 . 95 . The estimated energy consumption in 180nm CMOS technology is in the order of pico-Joules, validating the gate’s energy efficiency.
Ef ﬁ cacy of Neratinib Plus Capecitabine in the Subgroup of Patients with Central Nervous System Involvement from the NALA Trial

Background. Neratinib has efficacy in central nervous system (CNS) metastases from HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC). We report outcomes among patients with CNS metastases at baseline from the phase III NALA trial of neratinib plus capecitabine (N + C) versus lapatinib plus capecitabine (L+ C). Materials and Methods. NALA was a randomized, activecontrolled trial in patients who received two or more previous HER2-directed regimens for HER2-positive MBC. Patients with asymptomatic/stable brain metastases (treated or untreated) were eligible. Patients were assigned to N + C (neratinib 240 mg per day, capecitabine 750 mg/m twice daily) or L+ C (lapatinib 1,250 mg per day, capecitabine 1,000 mg/m twice daily) orally. Independently adjudicated progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and CNS endpoints were considered. Results. Of 621 patients enrolled, 101 (16.3%) had known CNS metastases at baseline (N + C, n = 51; L + C, n = 50); 81 had received prior CNS-directed radiotherapy and/or surgery. In the CNS subgroup, mean PFS through 24 months was 7.8 months with N + C versus 5.5 months with L + C (hazard ratio [HR], 0.66; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.41– 1.05), and mean OS through 48 months was 16.4 versus 15.4 months (HR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.59–1.38). At 12 months, cumulative incidence of interventions for CNS disease was 25.5% for N + C versus 36.0% for L + C, and cumulative incidence of progressive CNS disease was 26.2% versus 41.6%, respectively. In patients with target CNS lesions at baseline (n = 32), confirmed intracranial objective response rates were 26.3% and 15.4%, respectively. No new safety signals were observed. Conclusion. These analyses suggest improved PFS and CNS outcomes with N+ C versus L+ C in patients with CNS metastases fromHER2-positiveMBC. The Oncologist 2021;26:e1327–e1338 Implications for Practice: In a subgroup of patients with central nervous system (CNS) metastases from HER2-positive breast cancer after two or more previous HER2-directed regimens, the combination of neratinib plus capecitabine was associated with improved progression-free survival and CNS outcomes compared with lapatinib plus capecitabine. These findings Correspondence: Sara A. Hurvitz, M.D., University of California Los Angeles/Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, 2336 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 304, Santa Monica, California 90404, USA. Telephone: 1-310-998-4747; e-mail: shurvitz@mednet.ucla. edu Received December 1, 2020; accepted for publication May 3, 2021; published Online First on June 7, 2021. http://dx.doi. org/10.1002/onco.13830 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Pixel+ and Pixel++ : Compact and Efficient Forward-Secure Multi-Signatures for PoS Blockchain Consensus

Multi-signature schemes have attracted considerable attention in recent years due to their popular applications in PoS blockchains. However, the use of general multi-signature schemes poses a critical threat to the security of PoS blockchains once signing keys get corrupted. That is, after an adversary obtains enough signing keys, it can break the immutable nature of PoS blockchains by forking the chain and modifying the history from some point in the past. Forward-secure multi-signature (FS-MS) schemes can overcome this issue by periodically updating signing keys. The only FS-MS construction currently available is Drijvers et al’s Pixel , which builds on pairing groups and only achieves forward security at the time period level. In this work, we present new FS-MS constructions that either are free from pairing or capture forward security at the individual message level (i.e., fine-grained forward security). Our first construction Pixel+ works for a maximum number of time periods T . Pixel+ signatures consist of only one group element, and can be verified using two exponentiations. It is the first FS-MS from RSA assumption, and has 3.5x and 22.8x faster signing and verification than Pixel , respectively. Our second FS-MS construction Pixel++ is a pairing-based one. It immediately revokes the signing key’s capacity of re-signing the message after creating a signature on this message, rather than at the end of the current time period. Thus, it provides more practical forward security than Pixel . On the other hand, Pixel++ is almost as efficient as Pixel in terms of signing and verification. Both Pixel+ and Pixel++ allow for non-interactive aggregation of signatures from independent signers and are proven to be secure in the random oracle model. In addition, they also support the aggregation of public keys, significantly reducing the storage overhead on PoS blockchains. We demonstrate how to integrate Pixel+ and Pixel++ into PoS blockchains. As a proof-of-concept, we provide implementations of Pixel+ and Pixel++ , and conduct several representative experiments to show that Pixel+ and Pixel++ have good concrete efficiency and are practical.
Discovery, Controls, and Hazards of Widespread Deep‐Seated Gravitational Slope Deformation in the Etsumi Mountains, Central Japan

Deep‐seated gravitational slope deformation (DSGSD) is a largely unnoticed but important long‐term mass wasting process that may result in catastrophic failure of mountain slopes. Manifested by small topographic irregularities such as ridge‐parallel scarps and linear depressions, it has been predominantly reported in alpine landscapes above timber lines. On the basis of area‐wide high‐resolution topographic data acquired by light detection and ranging (lidar) surveys, we here show that ~96% of existing gravitational scarps have been hidden under forest canopies in the Etsumi Mountains, central Japan. The scarps are surprisingly widespread over the mountains with a mean line density of as large as 0.87 km/km2. Our analyses of the scarp distribution suggest that uphill‐facing scarps are primary geomorphic signals of DSGSD with a destabilized rock mass larger than ~105 m2, whereas downhill‐facing scarps principally occur in response to more localized slope deformation. In terms of controls, topography is by far the most influential factor in triggering and promoting DSGSD. Despite the M 7.5 earthquake in 1891, impact of large local earthquakes proves to be not very strong. Comparison with preexisting landslide maps further suggests that DSGSD and large‐scale landslides are not different slope processes but represent different stages of the same process. Our results highlight limitations of aerial‐photograph interpretation in forest‐covered mountains and the need for lidar‐assisted mapping for deeper understanding of this long‐term process and interactions between surface and tectonic processes.
WalkFormer: Point Cloud Completion via Guided Walks

Point clouds are often sparse and incomplete in real-world scenarios. The prevailing methods for point cloud completion typically rely on encoding the partial points and then decoding complete points from a global feature vector, which might lose the existing patterns and elaborate structures. To address these issues, we propose WalkFormer, a novel approach to predict complete point clouds through a partial deformation process. Concretely, our method samples locally dominant points based on feature similarity and moves the points to form the missing part. Since these points maintain representative information of the surrounding structures, they are appropriately selected as the starting points for multiple guided walks. Furthermore, we design a Route Transformer module to exploit and aggregate the walk information with topological relations. These guided walks facilitate the learning of long-range dependencies for predicting shape deformation. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations demonstrate that our proposed approach achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods in the 3D point cloud completion task.
Synthesis and Characterization of Ni-C Nanoparticles by Plasma-enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Nickel-carbon thin films have been deposited on silicon substrate in the CH 4 / Air/H 2 atmosphere by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy were employed to investigate the morphology and microstructure of the samples. The results showed that graphitic carbon encapsulated nickel, nickel nanoparticles embedded in few-layer graphene, and entangled few-layer graphene nanoribbons were synthesized, respectively, corresponding to different diameter of nickel particles. The growth mechanism of the different microstructures has been discussed.
Poisson-Tweedie Models for Count Data with Excessive Zeros. Comparison with the Negative Binomial Model

The presence of a large number of zero counts is quite common in studies involving count data. This causes overdispersion. Therefore, di(cid:27)erent types of models have been proposed as alternatives and a very frequent practice is to use the negative binomial model. In 2018, Bonat (2018) considered a new type of model, based on the Poisson-Tweedie dispersion models, which can automatically adapt to di(cid:27)erent degrees of overdispersion in count data. This article presents a simulation study in order to compare the estimates derived from the Poisson-Tweedie model for a wide range of overdispersed data with estimates derived from the negative binomial model. In both models, the relative percent bias of the estimated coe(cid:30)cients was very small. Nevertheless, the Poisson-Tweedie model showed a better performance with smaller values for the mean squared errors, particularly in scenarios with more dispersion. Hence, it would be possible to suggest the data analyst in which situations it would be enough to work with the popular negative binomial model or when it would be best to use the Poisson-Tweedie family. Additionally, the comparison between the (cid:28)t of the negative binomial model and that of the Poisson-Tweedie family is illustrated by analysing the number of pediatric consultations of a group of children who receive health care in a public health center in Rosario, Argentina. Although the results obtained in both models were similar, the estimates in the Poisson-Tweedie model were more accurate
Quantization Consistency for Fully Unsupervised Image Retrieval

We provide details of the datasets and evaluation protocol used in this work in Sec.1. Implementations details such as hyperparameters (e.g. learning rate and temperature parameters) and weighting parameters are given in Sec.2. Given the trained model, the details of inference step is described in Sec.2. 2. In Sec.2. 3, the pseudo code of the propose method is given. Additionally, we show the PR curves and P@1000 curves on NUS-WIDE and FLICKR25K for the completeness of evaluations. Lastly, we report the full results and ablations.
Towards Reproducible Language-Based HRI Experiments: Open-Sourcing a Generalized Experiment Project

We are witnessing increasing calls for reproducibility and replicability in HRI studies to improve reliability and confidence in empirical findings. One solution to facilitate this is using a robot platform that researchers frequently use, making it easier to replicate studies to verify results. In this work, we focus on a popular, affordable, and rich-in-functionality robot platform, NAO/Pepper, and contribute a generalized experiment project specifically for conducting language-based HRI experiments where a robot instructs a human for a task, including objective data collection. Specifically, we first describe a concrete workflow from an existing experiment and how it is generalized. We then evaluate the generalized project with a case study to show how adopters can quickly adapt to their specific experiment needs. This work provides inspiration for HRI researchers to not only provide their experiment code as supplementary material but also generalize them to benefit other researchers to advance empirical research in HRI. The generalized Choregraphe project with documentation, demo, and usage notes is available under MIT license on GitHub at https://github.com/TheRARELab/langex. We welcome questions by posting GitHub issues and pull requests to share adapted packages.
MODERN TRENDS IN APPLYING PHYTOSANITARY TREATMENTS IN ORCHARDS

Fruit tree culture is of particular importance as food source, from socio-economic and environmental point of view. The fruits of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs are one of the healthiest foods that are indispensable in making an optimal food ration for the human body. Through the cultivation of trees, the best use is made of hilly areas, inclined terrains in the lowland area, as well as sandy soils in Oltenia, North-Western Transylvania and Southern Moldavia. Fruit growing is the livelihood of a significant part of Romania’s population. Orchards balance the composition of the atmosphere by CO2 consumption and oxygen release, attenuate thermal extremes, increase air relative humidity, reduce wind speed. Moreover, orchards have an important anti-erosion role. As a result, the fruit growing development programs in our Country include priority measures and actions, among which the promotion of organic tree cultivation technologies. Directive 2009/128/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union, establishes a framework to achieve a sustainable use of pesticides by reducing the effects of pesticide use on human health and the environment and promoting the use of integrated pest management (IPM Integrated Pest Management) and of alternative approaches or techniques such as non-chemical alternatives to pesticides, all of which are part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Currently, low and ultra-low consumption technologies are being promoted when applying phytosanitary treatments. A way to reduce the consumption of a plant protection products is the punctual application of spraying, a component of the “precision agriculture” system. In the case of the punctual spraying application system, the command of sprayers opening or stopping is controlled, depending on the plant mass within the range of the machine. The purpose of the paper is to study technological solutions for punctual application of spraying in fruit plantations. Cuvinte cheie: plantaţii pomicole, tratamente fitosanitare, agricultură de precizie, normă variabilă
Recent advances in chemical methods for remediation of heavy metals contaminated soils: A Review

Heavy metal remediation has been an important concern of agriculture sector since decades and development of new and sound remediation techniques has become the need of the hour. These potentially harmful and persistent metals (loids) are posing great threat to environment and human health. Chemical remediation techniques are long been used for the remediation of all hazardous metals and to bring them back to safe and acceptable level in soils, but these conventional methodologies have their own setbacks. These techniques ae not cost-effective, consume a lot of time and mostly generate by-products that are toxic in nature. Hence, to overcome these issues, recently scientists have come up with more refined chemical methods to ameliorate heavy metal contamination in soils. In this review, we have highlighted some of the costeffective and effective chemical methods, including precipitation, ion exchange, and chemical extraction and leaching, nanoremediation, encapsulation and soil washing. All these methods have shown effective results in the recent literature for the efficient removal of heavy metals from the contaminated soils along with economic feasibility.
Retinal Images Registration via Unsupervised Deep Learning

In ophthalmology and vision science applications, aligning a pair of retinal images is of paramount importance to support disease diagnosis and routine eye examinations. This paper introduces an end-to-end framework capable of learning the registration task in a fully unsupervised manner. The proposed approach combines Convolutional Neural Networks and Spatial Transformer Network into a unified pipeline that incorporates a similarity metric to gauge the difference between the images, enabling image alignment without requiring any ground-truth data. The validation study demonstrates that the model can successfully deal with several categories of fundus images, surpassing other recent techniques for retinal registration.
Geodynamics / Géodynamique Earth dynamics and climate changes La dynamique terrestre et les modifications climatiques

The evolution of the Earth’s climate over geological time is now relatively well known. Conversely, the causes and feedback mechanisms involved in these climatic changes are still not well determined. At geological timescales, two factors play a prevailing role: plate tectonics and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Their climatic effects will be examined using palaeoclimatic indicators as well as results of climate models. I focus primarily on the influence of continental drift on warm and cold climatic episodes. The consequences of peculiar land sea distributions (amalgamation/dispersal of continental blocks) are discussed. Plate tectonics also drive sea level changes as well as mountain uplift. Marine transgressions during the MidCretaceous favoured warmth within the interiors of continents, although their effect could be very different according to the season. Mountain uplift is also an important factor, which is able to alter climate at large spatial scales. Experiments relative to climatic sensitivity to the elevation of the Appalachians during the Late Permian are discussed. To affect the whole Earth, the chemical composition of the atmosphere appears to be a more efficient forcing factor. The carbon dioxide driven by the longterm carbon cycle has influenced the global climate. Geochemical modelling simulates more or less accurately the long-term evolution of pCO2, which corresponds roughly to the icehouse/greenhouse climatic oscillations. However, the uncertainties on pCO2 are still important because different parameters involved in the long-term carbon cycle (degassing rate, chemical weathering of silicates, burial of organic matter) are not well constrained throughout the past. The chemical composition of the atmosphere is also altered by the emissions of modern volcanic eruptions leading to weak global cooling. The influence of large flood basalt provinces on climate is not yet known well enough; this volcanism may have released huge amounts of SO 2 as well as CO2. At last, the chemical composition of the atmosphere may have been altered by the release of methane in response to the dissociation of gas hydrates. This scenario has been proposed to explain the abrupt warming during the Late Palaeocene.  2003 Academie des sciences/Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.