Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
User Experiments on the Effect of the Diversity of Consumption on News Services

On many online platforms, more items are being added every day, requiring users to select efficiently the desired item from among these candidates. In similar environments, recommender systems have been introduced, allowing users to select from among recommended items. While the immediate advantages of recommender systems, such as presenting users with pertinent information efficiently and boosting page views, are well recognized, concerns have been raised that these systems might constrict users’ choices and amplify echo chambers. Despite these concerns, the detrimental impacts of recommender systems on user behavior have not been thoroughly investigated. To address the societal challenges stemming from the limitation in the breadth of information to which users are exposed, a novel recommender system offering a wider array of choices is essential. In this study, we examine the user experience of the Nikkei Electronic Version, a major news delivery service in Japan, from the perspective of diversity. Using the language of article titles, we evaluate the diversity of recommended results and click logs presented to users. In addition to an analysis of the actual service, we conduct user experiments with participants recruited from among users of the service to investigate the effect of recommendation algorithms specialized in increasing diversity, separate from the actual service. We propose a recommender system based on the concept of extracting articles as far apart as possible within the language space. Through static experiments and user experiments, we show that the proposed recommender system is effective in diversifying the recommendation list. Furthermore, we show that when candidate articles that are likely to be clicked can be properly extracted, the proposed recommender system is effective in diversifying the articles that users click. Our research is aimed at improving long-term satisfaction by recommending content that users can enjoy in the short term while simultaneously ensuring diversity.
Integrated Water Resource Assessment of Irrigation System of Haryana

Agriculture is the major activity in the state of Haryana and large volume of water is required to meet the irrigation demands of the crops grown. But, there is limited water availability in the state. Haryana receives water from Yamuna River and Bhakra system. Sowmelt, rainfall and groundwater are main sources of water in the catchment. It is essential to integrate the manmade canal system with hydrological system. This paper focuses on integrated hydrological modeling framework to conceptualize the system and to assess the Water Resources of the state. Snowmelt and Rainfall runoff modeling using GR4JSG model were combined to model the inflows to the irrigation system of Haryana. Irrigator canal model of eWater Source has been used to generate water demands from crops grown. The water balance and water use efficiency have been worked out for each district of Haryana. The hydro climate input data, stream flows, crop data and soil data have been used in the study. The flows modeled at Tuini (P), Yashwant Nagar, Bausan, Haripur, Poanta and HKB sites were compared with the observed flows. The objective function of NSE Daily and log Flow duration was used for model calibration and validation at various locations up to Mathura, the outlet of the study area. The value of the objective function at Mathura was 0.54, a fairly good value. The results of the Irrigator canal model have shown that all the Inflows, Outflows and the Utilizations of water have been properly balanced for each district. The water use efficiency of districts varies from 27% to 59%. The overall water use efficiency for Haryana canal system has been calculated as 39%. This is low value indicating excess water is being extracted to meet the water demands.
A Comprehensive Review of Integrated Three-Port DC–DC Converters With Key Performance Indices

Integrated three-port dc–dc converters (TPCs) exhibit obvious advantages in achieving flexible power flow regulation among photovoltaic (PV) module port, battery port, and load/grid port in distributed PV power generating systems. In the past three to five years, many new TPC schemes have been proposed, exhibiting unique characteristics, including isolation performance, number of components, and efficiency, which cannot be accurately described using traditional TPC classification methods. Moreover, there has been a lack of comparison of key performance indicators for a large number of TPC schemes in previous studies. Therefore, a comprehensive review on circuit topologies and control techniques of TPCs by properly defining key performance indicators becomes essential for converting high fluctuation solar energy into reliable and stable power while maintaining high efficiency and small footprint. This article is just to fill this gap by a comparative analysis and overview of classical and recently reported TPC schemes with key performance indexes. After introducing main operation modes of TPCs during one day, four topological structures of TPCs composed of two or three two-port dc–dc converters are classified and comparatively analyzed. Four important indexes of TPCs, namely voltage gain, control coupling, soft switching, and high-stress working, are used for a fair and comprehensive performance comparison. The advantages and disadvantages of various TPC schemes are featured, leading to a guidance for the selection of TPCs under different scenarios and valuable suggestions for the future development of TPCs.
In limbo no longer: a new genus for a rare Amazonian skipper, Telles pyrex

The male of the rare Amazonian skipper Telles pyrex Evans, 1955 is described and illustrated for the first time. This species has been without a generic affiliation, incertae sedis , since 2009. The generic placement of this species is investigated, considering characters from the male genitalia, wings, and DNA barcodes. Pseudorphe A. Warren & Dolibaina gen. nov. is proposed to accommodate this species, placed in the tribe Calpodini.
Investigating the Development and Psychometric Testing of the Information and Communication Technology Use Scale in Iranian Patients With Chronic Conditions

Background: The high prevalence and associated costs of chronic diseases have challenged global community health. The use of information and communication technology offers patients and healthcare providers the ability to respond to healthcare needs. This study develops an information and communication technology use scale for patients with chronic diseases and evaluates its psychometric properties. Methods: This exploratory sequential mixed-method study was conducted in Kashan City, Iran from September 2020 to July 2021. In the qualitative phase, 18 patients with chronic conditions were recruited via the purposeful sampling method. The initial pool of 33 items was extracted in this phase. Psychometric evaluation of the scale was examined through face, content, and construct validity. The internal consistency of the scale was assessed with the Cronbach α and its stability was examined by the test re-test. To evaluate the scale’s construct validity, a cross-sectional study was performed with 300 patients referring to hospital wards and private centers that provide services to patients with chronic diseases. A sequential sampling method was used to select the subjects. The exploratory factor analysis was performed using principal component analysis and the varimax rotation method in the SPSS software, version 16. Results: The initial version of the scale consisted of 33 items. A total of 6 items were removed in the face and content validity evaluation phase. Factor analysis with the removal of 4 items resulted in the extraction of 4 factors that explained 67.45% of the variance in the total scale score. The Cronbach α coefficient and intra-class correlation coefficient were estimated at 0.93 and 0.88, respectively. Conclusion: The scale developed in this study is a valid and reliable tool for measuring formation and communication technology use (including its dimensions) in patients with chronic diseases.
Bioremediation for mitigation and recovery from oil spill incidents

Oil spills from anthropogenic sources pose a serious threat to marine ecosystems, requiring prompt mitigation measures. There is thus a need for the development of cleaner and more efficient remediation techniques. Bioremediation has proven to be an eco-friendly and promising remediation technique, especially when using autochthonous microorganisms. In this line, we aimed to develop consortia of autochthonous hydrocarbon-degrading bacterial strains, optimize their enrichment process with 4 different carbon sources, and test the efficiency of the consortia to degrade petroleum hydrocarbons in a microcosm experiment under different bioremediation treatments, which could be used for the bioremediation of oil spills. Thus, two different consortia were prepared, each constituted by a mixture of 5 bacterial strains previously isolated from a sandy beach (Cabo do Mundo) intertidal sediment in the NW Portuguese coast, cultivated in Bushnell – Haas broth (BH) and exposed to petroleum. These consortia were enriched in the presence of two different sources of carbon (petroleum and sodium acetate). These carbon source were selected from previous enrichment tests with sodium acetate, petroleum, a mixture of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and a mixture of sodium acetate and the PAHs. Then, microcosm experiments were performed in flasks containing BH medium and petroleum, for 15 days, under four different treatments: natural attenuation, biostimulation (with addition of N and P nutrients), and combination of biostimulation and autochthonous bioaugmentation with consortia either enriched with sodium acetate or with petroleum. Samples were taken at the beginning and end of the experiment to assess hydrocarbon degrading microorganisms through an adapted most probable number method and for analysis of total hydrocarbons (TPHs) concentrations (by FT/IR spectrometry), to evaluate hydrocarbons degradation at the end of the experiment. Isolation and identification of hydrocarbon-degrading bacterial stains was also carried out at the end of the experiment. The treatment with the consortium enriched with sodium acetate performed better for hydrocarbons degradation, with high hydrocarbon-degraders abundance, high TPHs removal percentage and the presence of the introduced bacterial strains consortium in the medium at the end of the experiments. This study provides an insight into the natural community capacity to degrade hydrocarbons and its potential application in bioremediation techniques that can be adopted in the future in national contingency plans. In this way, it is possible to act locally and ecologically facing an eventual oil spill incident.
Fusion of Personalized Implicit Relations for Social Recommendation

In recent years, research in social recommendation has shown that modeling implicit relations effectively alleviates data sparsity and cold-start problems. However, related research often overlooks the influence of user and item rating biases when constructing implicit relations. The divergence in user rating systems and item evaluation standards often results in ratings displaying starkly contrasting extremes, making it difficult to identify implicit relations among users (or items) to fulfill the requirements of personalized recommendations. To this end, we propose a fusion of personalized implicit relations for social recommendation (FIR-REC) based on graph neural networks. First, we regard the average ratings of users and items as benchmarks to eliminate the bias of user-item ratings. Based on this benchmark, user-user (item-item) pairs with the same preferences are regarded as implicit candidate pairs. Considering the heterogeneity of social relationships, we propose a preference hedging formula to calculate preference correlation coefficients for each implicit candidate pair and select the top-k ranked implicit friends for each node to construct a personalized implicit network. Specifically, this formula can utilize different scoring strategies to calculate the preference scores for consistency and inconsistency in implicit pairs. To enhance robustness, it introduces a balancing factor to mitigate the influence of less interacted implicit pairs. Next, we utilize a Graph Attention Network to aggregate neighbor node information in explicit and implicit social relations. Finally, we utilize a user-specific gating mechanism to integrate user representations from explicit and implicit social relations. This helps assess the importance of the two types of relations for different users, enabling precise and stable predictions. Extensive experiments on three open datasets demonstrate the superiority of our model compared with state-of-the-art social recommendation models.
Mapping for change: practice, technologies and communication

Giacomo Rambaldi, and his fellow guest editors together with the series editor, Holly Ashley have an achievement to be proud of in this latest PLA publication. Not only is the issue carefully constructed – from what must have been a mound of competing material from the September 2005 conference in Nairobi– but they have achieved this feat in a remarkably short turn-around time. Mapping for change: practice, technologies and communication provides, basically, an overview of the state of the art regarding the practice of PGIS. “What is PGIS? ” You may ask. It is, put simply, the merger between geographical information systems and participatory mapping. I say put simply, because we are told in the opening chapter that PGIS has not always been digital, and GIS is not the only technology that underpins PGIS. But that is something the reader needs to find out for him or herself. And he or she will find it an eye-opener.
Interpretation and use of future snow projections from the 11-member Met Office Regional Climate Model ensemble

This report describes how to interpret the 11-member Met Office Regional Climate model ensembles of future snow projections. Daily values of snowfall rate are available at 25 km resolution from the ensemble of 11 Met Office regional climate model (RCM) variants run for UKCP09. This ensemble was run for the period 1950–2099, driven by the UKCP09 Medium scenario of future emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Urban Lawn Microclimates Affect Reference Evapotranspiration

Grass reference evapotranspiration (ETo) obtained from weather stations in open locations is often used to estimate irrigation requirements of turfgrass in local or regional urban lawns. However, the environments of urban lawns are often altered by surrounding buildings, trees, etc., to form various microclimates that may alter evapotranspiration (ET). Our research, which placed weather stations in urban lawns and nearby open swards of turfgrass, revealed ETo was 41% lower in residential lawn microclimates than in nearby open turfgrass swards. Less ET within urban lawns than in nearby open swards suggests using standard historical weather data to estimate irrigation amounts in urban lawns (based on ETo) is problematic, because historical weather data is typically obtained from open areas such as local airports (Ley et al., 1996; Romero and Dukes, 2013). Consequently, the use of weather stations located onsite, or at least in an urban lawn within the same region, may improve estimates of lawn irrigation requirements.
Impact of Extensive Grazing on Supporting and Regulating Ecosystem Services of Mountain Soils

Livestock grazing impacts the ecosystems of high mountains and adjacent low-elevation regions as a result of the physical, chemical, and hydrological connectivity of soil. In particular, grazing may alter the ecosystem services provided by soil, such as carbon and organic matter accumulation, carbon storage, and water infiltration. The present study evaluated the relative contents of soil organic matter (SOM) and soil organic carbon (SOC) on soil in a human-induced grassland and an frequently grazed Abies religiosa (Kunth) Schltdl. & Cham. forest in Nevado de Toluca, Mexico. It assessed carbon stocks in 2 different soil layers (0–5 cm and 5–25 cm), as well as soil compaction and water infiltration in both land uses. Results showed slightly lower SOM (21.7%) and SOC (12.6%) in soils on which livestock were grazed than in forest soils (25.7% for SOM and 14.65%, for SOC) at both depths and a greater bulk density of livestock soils (0.86 g cm−3) than of forest soils (0.73 g cm−3), particularly in the 0–5-cm layer (0.88 g cm−3) of livestock soils. More than 40 years of livestock grazing has clearly impacted the capacity of soils to accumulate organic matter and organic carbon. However, carbon stocks and water infiltration were not significantly affected, as low carbon accumulation was compensated by changes in soil bulk density. These results indicate that extensive livestock ranching and resource conservation are not necessarily mutually exclusive in the study site. Direct and indirect mechanisms involved in the provision of the evaluated regulating services should be further studied, taking into account the highly variable social and environmental conditions of Nevado de Toluca. Management policies should also aim to maintain an equilibrium between livestock rancher needs and conservation of supporting and regulating ecosystem services that are highly relevant to the functioning of mountain ecosystems.
Ionic Liquids as Reconditioning Agents for Paper Artifacts

This research explores the potential of ionic liquids (ILs) in restoring paper artifacts, particularly an aged book sample. Three distinct ILs—1-ethyl-3-propylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, 1-methyl-3-pentylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, and 1-methyl-3-heptylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide —both in their pure form and isopropanol mixtures, were examined for their specific consumption in conjunction with paper, with 1-ethyl-3-propylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide displaying the highest absorption. Notably, the methyl-3-heptylimidazolium ionic liquid displayed pronounced deacidification capabilities, elevating the paper pH close to a neutral 7. The treated paper exhibited significant color enhancements, particularly with 1-heptyl-3-methylimidazolium and 1-pentyl-3-methylimidazolium ILs, as evidenced by CIE-Lab* parameters. An exploration of ILs as potential UV stabilizers for paper unveiled promising outcomes, with 1-heptyl-3-methylimidazolium IL demonstrating minimal yellowing post-UV irradiation. FTIR spectra elucidated structural alterations, underscoring the efficacy of ILs in removing small-molecular additives and macromolecules. The study also addressed the preservation of inked artifacts during cleaning, showcasing ILs’ ability to solubilize iron gall ink, particularly the one with the 1-ethyl-3-propylimidazolium cation. While exercising caution for prolonged use on inked supports is still recommended, ILs are shown here to be valuable for cleaning ink-stained surfaces, establishing their effectiveness in paper restoration and cultural heritage preservation.
Could Commercially Available Aqueous Binders Allow for the Fabrication of Highly Loaded Sulfur Cathodes with a Stable Cycling Performance?

In this review, the application of five commercially available aqueous-based binders including sodium carboxyl methyl cellulose (CMC), polyacrylic acid (PAA), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyethylene oxide (PEO), and polyethyleneimine (PEI) as well as some representative custom (or purpose) synthesized functional binders used in lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries is summarized based on the main evaluation criteria of cycling capacity, battery lifetime, and areal sulfur loading (and, consequently, energy density of the battery). CMC with SBR (styrene butadiene rubber) has been reported with promising results in highly loaded sulfur cathodes (>5 mg cm−2 sulfur loading). PVA and PEI were confirmed to provide an enhanced adsorption of lithium polysulfides due to the interaction with hydroxyl and amine groups. No competitive advantage in electrochemical performance was demonstrated through the use of PAA and PEO. Water-based binders modified with polysulfide-trapping functional groups have complex fabrication processes, which hinders their commercial application. In general, achieving a high capacity and long cycling stability for highly loaded sulfur cathodes using commercial aqueous-based binders remains a significant challenge. Additionally, the scalability of these reported sulfur cathodes, in terms of complexity, cost, and stable electrochemical cycling, should be evaluated through further battery testing, particularly targeting pouch cell performance.
Integrating Thresholding With Level Set Method for Unsupervised Change Detection in Multitemporal SAR Images

ABSTRACT In this study, we present a new approach for unsupervised change detection in multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images based on integrating thresholding with level set method (LSM), which is free of any prior assumption about modeling the data distribution in the difference image. The proposed approach exploits a discrete wavelet transform fusion strategy aimed at achieving the optimal difference image from the mean-ratio and log-ratio difference images. The generated binary change map (CM), by applying a thresholding method on the fused difference image, is used as the initial contour to produce a final CM on fused difference image using the LSM. Several non-fuzzy and fuzzy thresholding methods are considered to assess the generation of the initial contour for the LS segmentation. To indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments are implemented on 2 sets of multitemporal SAR images from TerraSAR-X and ERS–2 satellites, respectively. Results of the proposed method were compared with results of some existing state-of-the-art unsupervised change detection methods. Experimental results prove the competence of the proposed method in terms of computational time and accuracy over the unsupervised change detection procedure.
Combining Earth Observation and predictive modelling for multi-scale and multi-level biodiversity assessment and monitoring

Comparative landscape genetics studies can provide key information to implement costeffective conservation measures favoring a broad set of taxa. These studies are scarce, particularly in Mediterranean areas, which include diverse but threatened biological communities. Here we focus on Mediterranean wetlands in central Iberia and perform a multi-level, comparative study of two endemic pond-breeding amphibians, a salamander (Pleurodeles waltl) and a toad (Pelobates cultripes). We genotyped 411 salamanders from 20 populations and 306 toads from 16 populations at 18 and 16 microsatellite loci, respectively, and identified major factors associated with population connectivity through the analysis of three sets of variables potentially affecting gene flow at increasingly finer levels of spatial resolution. Topographic, land use/cover, and remotely sensed vegetation/moisture indices were used to derive optimized resistance surfaces for the two species. We found contrasting patterns of genetic structure, with stronger, finer-scale genetic differentiation in Pleurodeles waltl, and notable differences in the role of finescale patterns of heterogeneity in vegetation cover and water content in shaping patterns of regional genetic structure in the two species. Overall, our results suggest a positive role of structural heterogeneity in population connectivity in pond-breeding amphibians, with habitat patches of Mediterranean scrubland and open oak woodlands (“dehesas”) facilitating gene flow. Our study highlights the usefulness of remotely sensed continuous variables of land cover, vegetation and water content (e.g., NDVI, NDMI) in conservationoriented studies aimed at identifying major drivers of population connectivity.