Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spectrogram Based Bee Sound Analysis with DNNs: a step toward Federated Learning approach

The decline in global bee populations significantly threatens biodiversity and food production. Monitoring beehives are crucial for understanding colony health and behavior. In this paper, we propose an analysis of different beekeeping approaches by leveraging deep neural network techniques to analyze the buzzing activity within beehives across multiple greenhouse environments. Our focus is identifying the bee’s presence or absence through audio analysis. This is crucial for early detection of hive issues, optimizing hive management, and public awareness efforts to protect bees and ecosystem sustainability. The first step involves spectrogram analysis of the buzzing sounds recorded within the hives. This study employed three distinct deep learning models: DenseNet121, ResNet50, and InceptionV3. Experimental evaluation using the Open Source Beehive and NU-Hive datasets demonstrates the superiority of InceptionV3 with an accuracy of approximately 72%, outperforming the other models. We evaluated a distributed approach with the VGG16 model, achieving an accuracy of 65%. Our findings emphasize the importance of selecting appropriate deep learning architectures for bee species classification tasks. Moreover, the practical implications of our approach extend beyond identifying bees’ species, as it can be applied to monitor hive health, disease detection, and stress levels within colonies. Our work is in the direction of knowing the transition requirements between a centralized approach and federated learning with the support of the arrival of RedCap devices and 5G networks capable of offering ad-hoc slices for each service.
THE BI-DIRECTIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTERFIRM COLLABORATION AND BUSINESS SALES IN ENTRANT AND INCUMBENT ALLIANCES

This paper demonstrates the existence of bi-directional relationships between interfirm collaboration and business sales. Entry and post-entry collaboration often contribute to superior performance, which in turn attracts more partners. At the same time, though, collaboration may impose constraints on growth opportunities. The relationships vary across types of collaborators and collaborations – with differences among entrant and incumbent partners, between marketing and R&D partnerships, by partner size, and across time. Thus, successful firms may become entrenched in the industry, and will often enjoy preferred access to new partners with capabilities needed for continued growth and survival. The empirical analysis examines businesses that operated in the U.S. hospital software systems industry between 1961 and 1991. The results contribute to dynamic views of strategy.
DETERMINATION OF THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF CEMENTITIOUS MIXTURES WITH SEDIMENTS: EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL APPROACHES

Sediment management is increasingly oriented towards valorization processes in several fields. Many researches have been conducted on the characterization of sediments and the possibility to be used as raw materials in the ﬁeld of civil engineering. The overall objective of this contribution is to set-up a numerical modeling strategy with a validation on the basis of experimental results. The mechanical strengths (flexural and compressive) and the elastic modulus were investigated. Five mortars were formulated with different substitution of sand by sediments (from 0% to 40%). A numerical model was built using the finite element method (FEM) based on homogenization technique. This model allows the prediction of the global mechanical behavior of the mortars based on the knowledge of the mechanical behavior of each phase constituting these samples. The model was validated through an example of a microstructure of a BOF (Basic Oxygen Furnace) slag from literature work. The microstructure has been observed using Scanning Electron Microscope SEM in order to identify the major phases in presence. Besides, the elastic properties of these phases have been determined using an instrumented indentation technique coupled with SEM. The obtained results show a good agreement between numerical and experimental. The model is validated and can then be applied on the mortars. The mechanical properties of the formulated mortars decrease with the increase of sediment substitution similarly to the obtained results in literature.
CH_4 and N_2O Emissions and Their GWPs Assessment in Intermittent Irrigation Rice Paddy Field

【Objective】CH4 and N2O emissions from intermittent and flooding irrigation rice paddy fields and their GWPs were studied to provide a theoretical basis for comprehensively assessing the effect of water management on the environment and controlling greenhouse effect. 【Method】CH4 and N2O emissions from rice paddy fields were measured in situ by using static chambers technique,and the greenhouse effect of CH4 and N2O were assessed using global warming potentials(GWPs). 【Result】The peak of CH4 emission appeared at initial and middle tillering stages,and the peak of N2O emission was observed at initial tillering and ripening stages.Compared with flooding irrigation,intermittent irrigation model significantly decreased CH4 emission,the accumulated emission was 20.04 g.m-2,which was about 46.23% lower than that of 37.27 g.m-2;but the N2O accumulated emission was 127.42 mg.m-2,which was about 51.36 mg.m-2 higher than that of flooding irrigation.The GWPs of CH4 and N2O was 4651.7 kgCO2.ha-1,which was about 3418.35 kgCO2.ha-1 lower than that in intermittent irrigation rice field. 【Conclusion】Intermittent irrigation model can effectively decrease and control CH4 and N2O emissions,and it is one of the effective strategies to reduce greenhouse effect from rice paddies field and will contribute to alleviating global warming.
Simulation Analysis of Main Insulation Field of Power Transformer Considering Typical Bubble Defect and Temperature

With the increase in the total number of installed transformers and the continuous increase in voltage levels, insulation performance has become a top priority for the safe and reliable operation of power transformers. The transformers are highly susceptible to bubble defects in the factory and during operation, and the trans-former material properties are easily affected by temperature. This paper reviews and summarizes a large amount of experimental data to analyze the effect of temperature on the dielectric properties of transformer materials. The simulation model is established by COMSOL finite element software to analyze the distortion effect of the presence and size of bubbles on the transformer's internal field strength, the effect of temperature on electric field distribution and maximum field strength of the main insulation of the transformer are studied.
A Score-aware Generative Approach for Music Signals Inpainting

Several issues can seriously degrade the quality of digital audio, such as packet loss on IP-based networks or damaged storage media, impacting intelligibility and user experience. This paper presents a generative approach, aiming to repair lost fragments in audio streams. Inspired by the well-established image-to-image translation ability of generative adversarial networks (GANs) and based on the bin2bin framework, previously introduced for speech inpainting, we propose an enhanced framework which performs the translation task from CQT magnitude spectrograms of music signal frames with lost regions, to reliable spectrograms. The goal is to effectively reconstruct missing audio segments, enabling a seamless listening experience for the audience. The proposed pipeline combines the traditional GAN discriminative loss function with two additional objectives: a loss function related to perceptual audio quality, and a second one based on the L2 norm between the true and predicted piano-roll, estimated by the CQT reconstruction. Through comprehensive evaluations on gaps of 375ms and 750ms, which are considered in the literature to be respectively of "small" and "medium" duration, we demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of our framework in producing coherent reconstructions with reduced artifacts. The proposed approach outperforms a baseline cGAN-based method, GACELA. In terms of ODG score, a metric inspired by a human-based scoring system, we achieve a gain in performance up to 13.3%, while the improvement in Structural Similarity (SSIM) between the clean and restored spectrograms reaches 13.6%.
Late glacial river-bed changes on the Little Hungarian Plain,based on preliminary chronological, geological andpaleontological data

Abstract Comprehensive chronological, geological andpaleontological investigations were conducted as part ofarchaeological excavations in 2011 and 2012, prior to theconstruction of the M85 motorway between Gyor andCsorna, Hungary. These studies clearly show that the alluvialfan that underlies much of the Little Hungarian Plainwas built up by streams flowing in a southeasterly to northwesterlydirection from the nearby Bakony Hills, and continuedto form until the end of the last glacial period. Thenorthern part of the fan, now named the Csorna Plain,became inactive (i.e. became a fossil river-bed system) atabout 25–15 ka, when the Rába and Marcal rivers changedtheirflowdirection fromsouth–north towest–east.As a resultof this change in flow direction, the Rába and Marcalrivers became incised, capturing the Bakony stream beds,stopping sediment deposition on the northern side of thealluvial fan (essentially the left bank of the Rába-Marcalriver system), although the southern part of the fan continueto form as before. On the northern side of the fan, thesediment surface dried out due to falling groundwater levels,and aeolian sand-drifts began to form. Eventually, accumulationof the sand-drift sediments ceased due to thedeposition of loess-type sediments, which fixed the surface,conserved the sand-drift shapes, and contributed tothe straightening and eventual canalization of the fluvialchannels. Geoarchaeological examinations indicate thatthe development of present fluvial features were stronglyaffected by the settlement and tillage activity of humancommunities on the Csorna Plain.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Locality in Generic Instance Search from One Example

This paper aims for generic instance search from a single example. Where the state-of-the-art relies on global image representation for the search, we proceed by including locality at all steps of the method. As the first novelty, we consider many boxes per database image as candidate targets to search locally in the picture using an efficient pointindexed representation. The same representation allows, as the second novelty, the application of very large vocabularies in the powerful Fisher vector and VLAD to search locally in the feature space. As the third novelty we propose an exponential similarity function to further emphasize locality in the feature space. Locality is advantageous in instance search as it will rest on the matching unique details. We demonstrate a substantial increase in generic instance search performance from one example on three standard datasets with buildings, logos, and scenes from 0.443 to 0.620 in mAP.
Tittel: Carbon sequestration in sinks: An overview of potential and costs Title: Carbon sequestration in sinks : An overview of potential and costs

Prior to the resumed climate negotiations in Bonn in July this year, it was thought that an agreement on the unresolved crunch issues of the Kyoto Protocol was unrealistic. This was primarily due to the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, and the failure of the previous climate negotiations that stranded mainly because of disagreement on the inclusion of land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) activities. The LULUCF issue is controversial in the climate negotiations, but an agreement has now been reached. This paper explores the possible contribution of LULUCF activities in promoting greenhouse gas emissions reductions. A survey on the literature of the potential and cost of LULUCF activities is therefore central. Analysis of the recent climate negotiations is also important. It is clear that the potential for carbon sequestration is large, but there are large variations in the estimates as factors such as land availability and the rate of carbon uptake complicate the calculations. There are also variations in the costs estimates, and economic analysis of LULUCF projects are not easily compared as no standard method of analysis has emerged and come into wide use. Despite the difficulties in comparing the costs of carbon sequestration, it is clear that it is a relatively inexpensive measure. Even though the potential for carbon sequestration is large, its role in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) is limited by the Kyoto Protocol. The recent climate negotiations in Bonn and Marrakesh have specified the modalities, rules and guidelines relating to LULUCF activities. One of the main outcomes is that Japan, Canada and Russia are allowed large inclusions of sinks in their GHG emission accounts.
The Economic Impacts of Climate Change : Evidence from Agricultural Profits and Random Fluctuations in Weather

This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on agricultural land in the United States by estimating the effect of the presumably random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on agricultural profits. Using long-run climate change predictions from the Hadley 2 Model, the preferred estimates indicate that climate change will lead to a $1.1 billion (2002$) or 3.4% increase in annual profits. The 95% confidence interval ranges from –$1.8 billion to $4.0 billion and the impact is robust to a wide variety of specification checks, so large negative or positive effects are unlikely. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect across the country with California’s predicted impact equal to –$2.4 billion (or nearly 50% of state agricultural profits). Further, the analysis indicates that the predicted increases in temperature and precipitation will have virtually no effect on yields among the most important crops. These crop yield findings suggest that the small effect on profits is not due to short-run price increases. The paper also implements the hedonic approach that is predominant in the previous literature. We conclude that this approach may be unreliable, because it produces estimates of the effect of climate change that are very sensitive to seemingly minor decisions about the appropriate control variables, sample and weighting. Overall, the findings contradict the popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the US agricultural sector.
The MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) Model: Version 4

The Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model is the part of the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) that represents the human systems. EPPA is a recursive-dynamic multi-regional general equilibrium model of the world economy, which is built on the GTAP dataset and additional data for the greenhouse gas and urban gas emissions. It is designed to develop projections of economic growth and anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse related gases and aerosols. The main purpose of this report is to provide documentation of a new version of EPPA, EPPA version 4. In comparison with EPPA3, it includes greater regional and sectoral detail, a wider range of advanced energy supply technologies, improved capability to represent a variety of different and more realistic climate policies, and enhanced treatment of physical stocks and flows of energy, emissions, and land use to facilitate linkage with the earth system components of the IGSM. Reconsideration of important parameters and assumptions led to some revisions in reference projections of GDP and greenhouse gas emissions. In EPPA4 the global economy grows by 12.5 times from 2000 to 2100 (2.5%/yr) compared with an increase of 10.7 times (2.4%/yr) in EPPA3. This is one of the important revisions that led to an increase in CO2 emissions to 25.7 GtC in 2100, up from 23 GtC in 2100 projected by EPPA3. There is considerable uncertainty in such projections because of uncertainty in various driving forces. To illustrate this uncertainty we consider scenarios where the global GDP grows 0.5% faster (slower) than the reference rate, and these scenarios result in CO2 emissions in 2100 of 34 (17) GtC. A sample greenhouse gas policy scenario that puts the world economy on a path toward stabilization of atmospheric CO2 at 550 ppmv is also simulated to illustrate the response of EPPA4 to a policy constraint.
Centrifuge modelling of jacked piles

Displacement piles are usually installed by hammering or vibration, but large pile jacking machines offer a quieter alternative. Pile jacking uses static hydraulic force to install displacement piles, avoiding the noise and ground vibration associated with dynamic pile installation methods. The ‘press-in’ piling machine shown in Figure 1 installs tubular piles of diameter 1000-1200 mm with a jacking force of up to 4 MN. The ‘press-in’ technique uses the negative shaft resistance of previously-installed piles to provide reaction force. Rockhill, et al. (2003) demonstrate that pile jacking reduces ground-borne vibrations by an order of magnitude compared to traditional percussive and vibro-hammer installation techniques. Pile jacking is therefore well suited to the urban environment. This paper describes the modelling of jacked piles in the centrifuge environment. Twelve installations and companion tests are reported and the implementation of load and displacement control is described. The aim of this research is to quantify the behaviour of displacement piles jacked into sand. A control system has been developed to allow the jacking process to be faithfully replicated, and instrumented piles have been used to measure the load-settlement response of the pile base and shaft. Previous research (De Beer 1988, Ghionna, et al. 1993, Lee, et al. 2003 & Deeks, et al. 2005) has identified that dynamically-installed displacement piles are stiffer than non-displacement (bored) piles. Even higher stiffness has been reported for jacked piles (Yetginer, et al. 2003, Deeks, et al. 2005). This relative performance can be attributed to the differing stress histories applied to the soil surrounding the pile by each installation procedure. Pile jacking pre-loads the soil beneath the pile tip, and can trap residual base load. These effects stiffen the base response, and reduce the settlement required to mobilise the full base resistance. There is scope for improved design efficiency if this high axial stiffness can be better predicted and utilised in design. Higher efficiency leads to economies of cost and reduced environmental impact through reduced material use and installation time.
Fast Training of Multi-Class Support Vector Machines

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to using binary support vector machines for multi-class object recognition. The proposed method is a hierarchical classifier utilizing hypercubes and informed search to coarsely partition the input space. Results are shown using a dataset of 100 objects. The method is compared with the one-against-one approach. Training times are shown to be significantly reduced, while test performance is comparable.
A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Aims There is no cure for pulmonary arterial hypertension, but current approved treatment options include prostanoids, endothelin-receptor antagonists, and phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitors. The effect on survival of these compounds has not been appropriately assessed in individual trials because of small sample size and short duration. We performed a meta-analysis of all randomized controlled trials with drugs published in this condition. Methods and results Trials were searched in the Medline database from January 1990 to October 2008. The primary analysis included only studies with a placebo comparator arm, the sensitivity analysis also included studies comparing two active treatment arms. The main outcome measure was all-cause mortality. Twenty-one trials were included in the primary analysis (3140 patients) and two additional studies (59 patients) were included in the sensitivity analysis. Average duration of the trials was 14.3 weeks. All-cause mortality rate in the control group was 3.8%. Active treatments were associated with a reduction in mortality of 43% (RR 0.57; 95% CI 0.35–0.92; P = 0.023); the sensitivity analysis confirmed a reduction in mortality of 38% (RR 0.62; 95% CI 0.39–1.00; P = 0.048). Conclusion The results of this meta-analysis suggest an improvement of survival in the patients treated with the targeted therapies approved for pulmonary arterial hypertension.
A meta-analysis of randomized controlled interventions aimed at improving psychological well-being

Dutch In deze meta-analyse wordt onderzocht wat het gemiddelde effect is van interventies die zich richten op het verbeteren van psychologisch welbevinden, zoals bedacht door Ryff en gemeten met haar ‘Ryffs psychological well-being scale’ (Ryff’s PWBS). De vier databases Pubmed, Psycinfo, The Cochrane Library en Embase werden doorzocht voor geschikte studies. Deze werden geïncludeerd wanneer het effect van een interventie werd gemeten met Ryffs PWBS of ‘mental health continuüm – short form’ (MHC-SF) en het onderzoeksdesign een gerandomiseerde en gecontroleerde test was. Een data-analyse liet een gemiddeld effectmaat Cohens d zien van 0.47, wat duidt op een medium effect van de interventies op psychologisch welbevinden. Psychologisch welbevinden is deel van de complete meetschaal van positieve geestelijke gezondheid, welke wordt gemeten met de MHC-SF. In dit artikel wordt besproken dat het belangrijk is om uitkomstmaten van interventieonderzoek te richten op zowel mentale klachten en positieve geestelijke gezondheid. Dan kan er, zoals het tweecontinua model van geestelijke gezondheid impliceert, een completer beeld van de geestelijke gezondheid worden gevormd. Introduction The concept of mental health has changed. Nowadays, mental health is often perceived as more than the absence of mental illness (Keyes, 1998, 2002, 2007). This is in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO, 2005) definition of health as “. a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (p. XVIII) and mental health, which is defined as: