Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
UST Research Online UST Research Online

Attrition is a common problem in outpatient mental health care settings, and can be understood as situations in which clients end treatment before achieving a clinically significant response. This archival study used a longitudinal method to look at the nature of attrition in an outpatient clinic, utilizing data for 3,728 clients, using the OQ 45.2 . A Cox regression proportional hazards model was used in order to better understand who is likely to attrit when considering: (1) demographic groups, (2) diagnostic categories, and (3) process variables (e.g. overall and recent symptom change), using hazard ratios. A pattern emerged, with younger clients and those reporting less education and lower incomes tending to be more likely to end treatment. Consistent with the large scale STAR*D treatment of depression study, clients with more social and economic challenges demonstrated more risk. Adults diagnosed with a substance or OCD-related disorder showed the most elevated risk. Clients who demonstrated overall improvement and, in particular, a recent status change were more likely to remain. Engagement strategies are discussed, with the goal of better supporting recovery. Findings suggest that attrition is something that can be anticipated, identified, and reduced.
Hydrometeorological Analysis and Remote Sensing of Extremes: Was the July 2012 Beijing Flood Event Detectable and Predictable by Global Satellite Observing and Global Weather Modeling Systems?

AbstractPrediction, and thus preparedness, in advance of flood events is crucial for proactively reducing their impacts. In the summer of 2012, Beijing, China, experienced extreme rainfall and flooding that caused 79 fatalities and economic losses of $1.6 billion. Using rain gauge networks as a benchmark, this study investigated the detectability and predictability of the 2012 Beijing event via the Global Hydrological Prediction System (GHPS), forced by the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis at near–real time and by the deterministic and ensemble precipitation forecast products from the NOAA Global Forecast System (GFS) at several lead times. The results indicate that the disastrous flooding event was detectable by the satellite-based global precipitation observing system and predictable by the GHPS forced by the GFS 4 days in advance. However, the GFS demonstrated inconsistencies from run to run, limiting the confidence in predicting the extreme event. T.
Introduction to a special issue on cumulative effects assessment and management

This issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal focuses on recent developments in cumulative effects assessment and management (CEAM). It brings together selected papers on this approach from the special topic meeting of the International Association for Impact Assessment (Calgary, 8-11 November 2008) held to take stock of the effectiveness of current approaches. At the meeting, over 400 members and other interested practitioners reviewed North American and international experience in addressing cumulative effects. More than 130 papers were presented in some 20 sessions, covering many aspects and issues of CEAM practice and with particular attention to the procedures, methods and tools that are used in environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA). This issue contains six papers that were developed out of the discussions held during the Calgary conference.
Combining Theoretical Imaging and Computer Vision Canting Heliostats

Solar Power Tower technology requires accurate techniques to ensure the optical performance of the heliostats both in commissioning and operation phases. This paper presents a technique based on target reflection to detect and correct canting errors in heliostat facets. A camera mounted on the back of a target heliostat sees an object heliostat and the target facets in reflection. The pixels difference between detected and theoretical borders determines the canting errors. Experiments in a lab scale testbed show that canting errors can be corrected up to an average value of around as low as 0.15 mrad. Experiments were also performed on a real heliostat at Plataforma Solar de Almería. As a result, canting errors (up to 5 mrad) have been reduced below 0.75 mrad. Mirror slope errors, which can be noticeable in large facets, becomes the largest source of inaccuracy in the presented method.
Function-based Object Classification without Explicit Action Labeling

Function-based object classification is another way of classification that additionally utilizes human action-related information. Our network models, visuo-motor map (VMM) and visuo-motor classifier (VMC) learn the relationship between images, action, and object labels. By implementing VMM and VMC in 3 ways, Conv3D, S3D+attention, and detection network using Faster-RCNN, the utility of action information in object classification and detection are thoroughly investigated. All three models showed greater-than-or-equal-to performances compared to baseline algorithms, and the quality of output is shown in images and attention mappings.
See Me Roar: an AR Game to Improve Children’s Perception of Relatedness and Learning Motivation in Elementary Math Education

Today's primary school teachers may find it hard to motivate their students into traditional learning activities, especially with subjects which students may find difficult and are subsequently not willing to spend much time on, such as mathematics. Educational games with Augmented Reality (AR) technology could provide a great potential for learning and are increasingly available among primary school students. However, there is a lack of understanding on how to improve student’s learning motivation through the AR educational games. In the present study, the researcher first used the method of co-design with children to shape and develop the concept of an AR game for children to practice their math skills in the social learning environment. Then, the researcher conducted a user test with four 8-12-year-old students to explore which game elements (collaboration vs. competition) in the AR game could improve their perception of relatedness and motivation based on Self-determination Theory. The results show that the collaboration version could lead to a higher perception of relatedness and more learning motivation.
A roadmap to Estimating estimating agricultural ammonia 1 volatilization over Europe using satellite observations and simulation 2 data using IASI and GEOS-Chem 3

16 Ammonia (NH 3 ) is one of the most important gases emitted from agricultural practices. It affects air quality and the 17 overall climate, and in turn influenced by long term climate trends as well as by short term fluctuations in local and regional 18 meteorology. Previous studies have established the capability of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) 19 series of instruments aboard the Metop satellites to measure ammonia from space since 2007. In this study, we explore the 20 interactions between atmospheric ammonia, land and meteorological variability, and long-term climate trends in Europe. We 21 investigate the emission potential ( 𝛤 𝑠𝑜𝑖𝑙 ) of ammonia from the soil, which describes the soil – atmosphere ammonia exchange. 22 𝛤 𝑠𝑜𝑖𝑙 is generally calculated in-field or in laboratory experiments; here, and for the first time, we investigate a method which 23 assesses it remotely using satellite data, reanalysis data products, and model simulations. 24 We focus on ammonia emission potential during March 2011, which marks the start of growing season in Europe. 25 Our results show that 𝛤 𝑠𝑜𝑖𝑙 ranges from 2 × 10 3 to 9.5 × 10 4 (dimensionless) in a fertilized
Virtual water balance estimation in an irrigated area in North-eastern Tunisia

The virtual water concept, defined by Allan (1997), as the amount of water needed to generate a product of both natural and artificial origin, this concept establish a similarity between product marketing and water trade. Virtual Water trade can alleviate, in arid countries, the problem of water scarcity, increasing imports of products with high virtual water content and so, it can allocate scarce resources to higher priority uses. Given the influence of water in food production, virtual water studies focus generally on food products. At a global scale, the influence of these product’s markets with water management was not seen. Influence has appreciated only by analyzing water-scarce countries, but at the detail level, should be increased, as most studies consider a country as a single geographical point, leading to considerable inaccuracies. For this reason, we consider the value of exploring virtual water strategy at smaller scales such as an irrigated area. The main objective of this work is the estimation of virtual water balance of strategic irrigated crops (fruit trees and vegetables) in Semi-arid area in Tunisia to determine their influence on the water resources management and to establish patterns for improving it. The virtual water balance was performed basing on farmer’s surveys, crop and meteorological data, irrigation management and regional statistics.
Investigation of the high-frequency attenuation parameter, κ (kappa), from aftershocks of the 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule, Chile earthquake

Author(s): Neighbors, C; Liao, EJ; Cochran, ES; Funning, GJ; Chung, AI; Lawrence, JF; Christensen, C; Miller, M; Belmonte, A; Andres Sepulveda, HH | Abstract: © The Authors 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Bi{dotless}o Bi{dotless}o region of Chile experienced a vigorous aftershock sequence following the 2010 February 27 Mw 8.8 Maule earthquake. The immediate aftershock sequence was captured by two temporary seismic deployments: the Quake Catcher Network Rapid Aftershock Mobilization Program (QCN RAMP) and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology CHile Aftershock Mobilization Program (IRIS CHAMP). Here, we usemoderate to large aftershocks (ML ≥ 4.0) occurring between 2010 March 1 and June 30 recorded by QCN RAMP and IRIS CHAMP stations to determine the spectral decay parameter, kappa (κ). First, we compare waveforms and κ estimates from the lower-resolution QCN stations to the IRIS CHAMP stations to ensure the QCN data are of sufficient quality. We find that QCN stations provide reasonable estimates of κ in comparison to traditional seismic sensors and provide valuable additional observations of local ground motion variation. Using data from both deployments, we investigate the variation in κ for the region to determine if κ is influenced primarily by local geological structure, path attenuation, or source properties (e.g. magnitude, mechanism and depth). Estimates of κ for the Bi{dotless}o Bi{dotless}o region range from 0.0022 to 0.0704 s with a mean of 0.0295 s and are in good agreement with κ values previously reported for similar tectonic environments. κ correlates with epicentral distance and, to a lesser degree, with source magnitude. We find little to no correlation between the site kappa, κ0, and mapped geology, although we were only able to compare the data to a low-resolution map of surficial geology. These results support an increasing number of studies that suggest κ observations can be attributed to a combination of source, path and site properties; additionally, measured κ are often highly scattered making it difficult to separate the contribution from each of these factors. Thus, our results suggest that contributions from the site, path and source should be carefully considered when interpreting κ values.
Regional Climate Model Projections and Uncertainties of U.S. Summer Heat Waves

Abstract Regional climate model (RCM) simulations, driven by low and high climate-sensitivity coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) under various future emissions scenarios, were compared to projected changes in heat wave characteristics. The RCM downscaling reduces the CGCM biases in heat wave threshold temperature by a factor of 2, suggesting a higher credibility in the future projections. All of the RCM simulations suggest that there is a high probability of heat waves of unprecedented severity by the end of the twenty-first century if a high emissions path is followed. In particular, the annual 3-day heat wave temperature increases generally by 3°–8°C; the number of heat wave days increases by 30–60 day yr−1 over much of the western and southern United States with slightly smaller increases elsewhere; the variance spectra for intermediate, 3–7 days (prolonged, 7–14 days), temperature extremes increase (decrease) in the central (western) United States. If a lower emissions path is followed, then t.
A butterfly pan-genome reveals a large amount of structural variation underlies the evolution of chromatin accessibility

Despite insertions and deletions being the most common structural variants (SVs) found across genomes, not much is known about how much these SVs vary within populations and between closely related species, nor their significance in evolution. To address these questions, we characterized the evolution of indel SVs using genome assemblies of three closely related Heliconius butterfly species. Over the relatively short evolutionary timescales investigated, up to 18.0% of the genome was composed of indels between two haplotypes of an individual H. charithonia butterfly and up to 62.7% included lineage-specific SVs between the genomes of the most distant species (11 Mya). Lineage-specific sequences were mostly characterized as transposable elements (TEs) inserted at random throughout the genome and their overall distribution was similarly affected by linked selection as single nucleotide substitutions. Using chromatin accessibility profiles (i.e., ATAC-seq) of head tissue in caterpillars to identify sequences with potential cis-regulatory function, we found that out of the 31,066 identified differences in chromatin accessibility between species, 30.4% were within lineage-specific SVs and 9.4% were characterized as TE insertions. These TE insertions were localized closer to gene transcription start sites than expected at random and were enriched for several transcription factor binding site candidates with known function in neuron development in Drosophila. We also identified 24 TE insertions with head-specific chromatin accessibility. Our results show high rates of structural genome evolution that were previously overlooked in comparative genomic studies and suggest a high potential for structural variation to serve as raw material for adaptive evolution.
The Effect of Stabilizing Piles on a Self-Supported Earth-Retaining Wall

The behavior of a self-supported earth-retaining wall with stabilizing piles was investigated using a numerical study and field tests in urban excavations. Special attention is given to the reduction of lateral earth pressures acting on a retaining wall with stabilizing piles. Field tests at two sites were performed to verify the performance of the instrumented retaining wall with stabilizing piles. A number of 3D numerical analyses were carried out on the self-supported earth-retaining wall with stabilizing piles to assess the results stemming from wide variations of influencing parameters such as the soil condition, the pile spacing, the distance between the front pile and the rear pile, and the embedded depth. Based on the results of the parametric study, the maximum horizontal displacement and the maximum bending moment are significantly decreased when the retaining wall with stabilizing piles is used. In engineering practice, reducing the pile spacing and increasing the distance between the front pile and the rear pile can effectively improve the stability of the self-supported earth-retaining wall with stabilizing piles.
Current Opinion in Microbiology Host-microbe interactions: bacteria issue 2017 edited

Understanding how bacteria cause disease requires knowledge of which genes are expressed and how they are regulated during infection. While RNA-seq is now a routine method for gene expression analysis in bacterial pathogens, the past years have also witnessed a surge of novel RNA-seq based approaches going beyond standard mRNA profiling. These include variations of the technique to capture post-transcriptional networks controlled by small RNAs and to discover associated RNA-binding proteins in the pathogen itself. Dual RNA-seq analyzing pathogen and host simultaneously has revealed roles of noncoding RNAs during infection and enabled the correlation of bacterial gene activity with specific host responses. Single-cell RNA-seq studies have addressed how heterogeneity among individual host cells may determine infection outcomes.
Scene Graph for Embodied Exploration in Cluttered Scenario

—The ability to handle objects in cluttered environment has been long anticipated by robotic community. However, most of works merely focus on manipulation instead of rendering hidden semantic information in cluttered objects. In this work, we introduce the scene graph for embodied exploration in cluttered scenarios to solve this problem. To validate our method in cluttered scenario, we adopt the Manipulation Question Answering (MQA) tasks as our test benchmark, which requires an embodied robot to have the active exploration ability and semantic understanding ability of vision and language. As a general solution framework to the task, we propose an imitation learning method to generate manipulations for exploration. Meanwhile, a VQA model based on dynamic scene graph is adopted to comprehend a series of RGB frames from wrist camera of manipulator along with every step of manipulation is conducted to answer questions in our framework. The experiments on of MQA dataset with different interaction requirements demonstrate that our proposed framework is effective for MQA task a representative of tasks in cluttered scenario.
Global radiant flux from active volcanoes: the 2000–2019 MIROVA database

Since 2000, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) has acquired infrared images of the Earth’s surface daily. These data have made it possible to measure the thermal energy radiated by the world’s most famous volcanoes and also to discover and track eruptions in remote and poorly monitored regions. In this work, we present the database of Volcanic Radiative Power (VRP, in W) time series, recorded by the MIROVA (Middle Infrared Observation of Volcanic Activity) system over 2 decades of MODIS observations (2000–2019) at 111 active volcanoes. The database reveals that globally, the number of thermally active volcanoes each year varies between 60 and 80, almost equally partitioned between volcanoes with a basic (50%) and intermediate (45%) composition, while only 5% is represented by volcanoes erupting acidic lavas. Within the investigated period, the global-scale heat flux was almost stationary, and occasionally punctuated by peaks associated with the largest effusive eruptions (e.g., Bardarbunga and Kilauea). The Volcanic Radiative Energy (VRE, in J) emitted by basic volcanoes (∼1.8 × 1018 J) in 20 years constitutes 91% of the total, while intermediates and acids contribute only 8% (∼1.8 × 1017 J) and 1% (∼1.7 × 1016 J), respectively. A comparison with the volume of lava erupted effusively by the same volcanoes reveals that this difference is attributed to the lower efficiency in radiating thermal energy of increasingly acidic (viscous) lava bodies. Each compositional group is associated with a specific relationship between VRE and erupted volume which characterises most of the effusive volcanoes. On the other hand, some open-vent volcanoes reveal that much more heat is released than that theoretically radiated by the erupted lava. This imbalance (hereby called excess radiation) is attributed to an additional heat source, likely associated with an underlying convective magma column and/or to outgassing through a permeable conduit. We are convinced that the database presented in this work will be useful to support new emerging studies on global-scale volcanism and will contribute to a better understanding of each volcanic system.
Acid rain : A New Zealand viewpoint

Abstract New Zealand has a low level of industrialisation, and is free from large scale air pollution. However, concern has been expressed that acid rain, derived from transport across the Tasman Sea of sulphur oxides from Australian industry, could become a problem here in the future. This study has compared the emissions and transport of sulphur oxides from the United Kingdom, which totals about 4.25 million tonnes per year, dispersed as sulphur dioxide mostly out to sea, with the Australian emissions of 1.75 million tonnes transported across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. United Kingdom emissions result in an annual deposition of about 180 kT as SO2 on Scandinavia. Australia deposits at most about 56 kT on New Zealand per year. Indigenous sources including New Zealand industry raise this total by 28 kT per year to 84 kT as SO2 This gives an average total acid deposition loading per square metre on terrestrial New Zealand of about 12.5% of that found for Sweden and less than 4 % of the average for the U.
Formalizing Geological Knowledge through Ontologies and Semantic Annotation

The paper addresses the problem of integrating various applications related to geological interpretation within an integrated workflow. This supposes the exchange of different types of objects related to several knowledge fields (seismic, stratigraphy, structural geology), represented in various formats. The solution that we propose consists in linking specialized ontologies describing the different fields knowledge to a pivot ontology related to basic geological knowledge. The linkage between these ontologies and the earth modelling applications can be operated thanks to the semantic annotation technology. The paper presents some key-elements of this pivot ontology and gives an outline of the semantic annotation methodology, studied as a possible solution for modelling workflow integration.