Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vegetation Monitoring and Post-Fire Recovery: A Case Study in the Centre Inland of Portugal

Wildfires are a major environmental issue that have an impact on land degradation. Remote sensing spectral indices provide valuable information for short-term mitigation and rehabilitation after wildfires. A study area in the Centre inland of Portugal occupied with Maritime pine and Eucalypts forests and affected by wildfires in 2003, 2017 and 2020 was used. The aims of the study were twofold: (1) to compute the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and with forest inventory data derivate a Maritime pine production model, differentiate evergreen coniferous forests (e.g., Maritime pine), evergreen broadleaved forests (e.g., Eucalypts), and shrubland, and monitor vegetation and its post-fire recovery; and (2) to compute the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) difference between pre-fire and post-fire dates for burn severity levels assessment. The plots of a previous forest inventory were used to follow the NDVI values in 2007 and from 2020 to 2022. An aerial coverage in 2007 and the Sentinel-2 imagery in 2020–2022 were used. Linear models fitted maritime pine production with the transformed NDVI by age, showing a fitting efficiency of 60%. The stratification of cover types by stand development stage and fire occurrence was possible using the NDVI time curve, which also showed the impact of fire and of low precipitation. Cover types were ranked by decreasing NDVI values as follows: mature Eucalypts plantations, young Maritime pine regeneration, mature Maritime pine, young Eucalypts plantations, Strawberry tree shrubland, Eucalypts plantations post-fire, Maritime pine post-fire, tall shrubland, and short shrubland. Vegetation post-fire recovery was lower in higher burn severity level areas. Maritime pine areas have lost their natural regeneration capability due to the wildfires’ short cycles. Spectral indices were effective tools to differentiate cover types and assist in the evaluation of forest and shrubland conditions.
Microbiome of Nodules and Roots of Soybean and Common Bean: Searching for Differences Associated with Contrasting Performances in Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is a key process for the N input in agriculture, with outstanding economic and environmental benefits from the replacement of chemical fertilizers. However, not all symbioses are equally effective in fixing N2, and a major example relies on the high contribution associated with the soybean (Glycine max), contrasting with the low rates reported with the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) crop worldwide. Understanding these differences represents a major challenge that can help to design strategies to increase the contribution of BNF, and next-generation sequencing (NGS) analyses of the nodule and root microbiomes may bring new insights to explain differential symbiotic performances. In this study, three treatments evaluated in non-sterile soil conditions were investigated in both legumes: (i) non-inoculated control; (ii) inoculated with host-compatible rhizobia; and (iii) co-inoculated with host-compatible rhizobia and Azospirillum brasilense. In the more efficient and specific symbiosis with soybean, Bradyrhizobium presented a high abundance in nodules, with further increases with inoculation. Contrarily, the abundance of the main Rhizobium symbiont was lower in common bean nodules and did not increase with inoculation, which may explain the often-reported lack of response of this legume to inoculation with elite strains. Co-inoculation with Azospirillum decreased the abundance of the host-compatible rhizobia in nodules, probably because of competitiveness among the species at the rhizosphere, but increased in root microbiomes. The results showed that several other bacteria compose the nodule microbiomes of both legumes, including nitrogen-fixing, growth-promoters, and biocontrol agents, whose contribution to plant growth deserves further investigation. Several genera of bacteria were detected in root microbiomes, and this microbial community might contribute to plant growth through a variety of microbial processes. However, massive inoculation with elite strains should be better investigated, as it may affect the root microbiome, verified by both relative abundance and diversity indices, that might impact the contribution of microbial processes to plant growth.
Speech Enhancement through Implementation of Adaptive Noise Canceller Using FHEDS Adaptive Algorithm

: Speech analysis is the modelling and estimating of the different speech characteristics that would provide the importance on each set of criteria established on the real time applications. One such analytic section in enhancement process on speeches would improve the need of speech enhancement. This paper compares the performance analysis of our proposed Fast Hybrid Euclidean Direction Search (FHEDS) algorithm with other adaptive algorithms such as NHP and FEDS algorithm. These algorithms have been tested for their adaptive noise cancellation of speech signal corrupted by different noises such as Babble, Factory, Destroy Engine, Car, Fire Engine and Train Noises. Ensuring the design criteria with current design limits of the database and its analysis have been encapsulated with each phase of design with Noise model, improving the better performance aspects. The relative factors for comparisons have been tabulated with each set of the noise and clear speech data with proposed filter operation. The proposed model effectively reduces the noise for achieving better speech enhancement. The proposed model achieves high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) when compared to traditional models.
Position-Aware Convolutional Networks for Traffic Prediction

Forecasting the future traffic flow distribution in an area is an important issue for traffic management in an intelligent transportation system. The key challenge of traffic prediction is to capture spatial and temporal relations between future traffic flows and historical traffic due to highly dynamical patterns of human activities. Most existing methods explore such relations by fusing spatial and temporal features extracted from multi-source data. However, they neglect position information which helps distinguish patterns on different positions. In this paper, we propose a position-aware neural network that integrates data features and position information. Our approach employs the inception backbone network to capture rich features of traffic distribution on the whole area. The novelty lies in that under the backbone network, we apply position embedding technique used in neural language processing to represent position information as embedding vectors which are learned during the training. With these embedding vectors, we design position-aware convolution which allows different kernels to process features of different positions. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets show that our approach outperforms previous methods even with fewer data sources.
Determinants of wind power curtailment in China: evidence from provincial panel data

ABSTRACT Identifying the determinants of wind curtailment is crucial to mitigating the overcapacity of wind power and achieving a low-carbon transition in China’s economy. Existing literature sorted out various factual causes of wind curtailment, but recognizing key factors and revealing their economic mechanisms are missing. Based on power market equilibrium theory, we address the issue by comparing the marginal effects of factors in a ‘supply-transmission-demand’ framework. Using the panel Tobit model with bootstrap standard errors, we find that variable wind resources and wind power supply capacity are the main determinants of curtailment. The wind power equipment utilization is significantly and negatively related to wind curtailment rate, suggesting that the variable wind resources inhibit wind power consumption from electricity security concerns and increasing costs of grid companies. The wind power supply capacity positively affects wind curtailment by directly spurring market structural disequilibrium and resource waste. We also find that policy intensity has a negative but relatively slight role, whereas wind power price does not affect curtailment due to government pricing.
Bootstrap one-sided confidence intervals for the log-normal mean

SUMMARY Boostrap procedures for computing lower and upper confidence limits for the mean of a log-normal distribution based on complete samples are presented. The procedures are based on an approximate pivotal statistic and are shown to yield confidence bounds that are often nearly equal to the optimal (uniformly most accurate unbiased) bounds that require complex numerical algorithms.
Massive Grant-Free Access With Massive MIMO and Spatially Coupled Replicas

Massive multiple access schemes, capable of serving a large number of uncoordinated devices while fulfilling reliability and latency constraints, are proposed. The schemes belong to the class of grant-free coded random access protocols and are tailored to massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) base station processing. High reliability is obtained owing to an intra-frame spatial coupling effect, triggered by a simple device access protocol combined with acknowledgements (ACKs) from the base station. To provide system design guidelines, analytical bounds on error floor and latency are also derived. The proposed schemes are particularly interesting to address the challenges of massive machine-type communications in the framework of next generation massive multiple access systems.
Géométrie de systèmes Hamiltoniens intégrables : le cas du système de Gelfand-Ceitlin

Le systeme de Gelfand-Ceitlin a ete decouvert par V. Guillemin et S. Sternberg en 1983. C'est un systeme bien connu en geometrie, mais ses singularites sont mal comprises. Le but de cette these est d'etudier la geometrie et la topologie des systemes hamiltoniens integrables et la relation avec la theorie de Lie et la geometrie symplectique et de Poisson. On s'interesse au systeme de Gelfand-Ceitlin sur une orbite coadjointe generique du groupe SU(3). Pour une description geometrique de ce systeme, on a etudie la topologie de la variete ambiante. On calcule ses invariants (les groupes de cohomologie, d'homotopie). On etudie le proble��me de convexite en relation avec ce systeme. L'etude des singularites de ce systeme montre que toutes les singularites sont non degenerees de type elliptique, sauf une degeneree. On decrit soigneusement le comportement du systeme au voisinage de cette singularite, on donne un modele simple pour la singularite degeneree que l'on prouve grâce a un theoreme qui etablit un symplectomorphisme entre la singularite degeneree et le modele de flots geodesiques sur la sphere S3.
Assessment of the bioaccessibility of phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity in raw and pickled white cabbage and gherkins

White cabbage and gherkin are vegetables that are widely consumed as pickles as well as raw vegetables. In this research, we explored the effect of pickling on the bioaccessibility of phenolics and flavonoids and changes in anti-oxidant activity after in vitro digestion. In general, the pickling process enhances the bioaccessibility of phenolics and flavonoids in white cabbage and gherkin. The bioaccessibility of total phenolics (TP) in cabbages, pickled cabbages, gherkins, and pickled gherkins is determined as 125.2%, 185.1%, 369.2%, and 462%, respectively. In contrast, after in vitro digestion of raw and pickled vegetables, total antioxidant activity is reduced. So it can be concluded that both raw and pickled gherkins are good sources of bioaccessible phenolics and flavonoids. The consumption of these vegetables and their pickles is suggested to promote the reduction of diseases plagued by free radicals.
Approximate Carath{\'e}odory's theorem in uniformly smooth Banach spaces

We study the 'no-dimension' analogue of Carath{\'e}odory's theorem in Banach spaces. We prove such a result together with its colorful version for uniformly smooth Banach spaces. It follows that uniform smoothness leads to a greedy de-randomization of Maurey's classical lemma \cite{pisier1980remarques}, which is itself a 'no-dimension' analogue of Carath{\'e}odory's theorem with a probabilistic proof. We find the asymptotically tight upper bound on the deviation of the convex hull from the $k$-convex hull of a bounded set in $L_p$ with $1 < p \leq 2$ and get asymptotically the same bound as in Maurey's lemma for $L_p$ with $1 < p < \infty. $
Field theory of monochromatic optical beams: II. Classical and quantum paraxial fields

This work is the second part of an investigation aiming at the study of optical wave equations from a field-theoretic point of view. Here, we study classical and quantum aspects of scalar fields satisfying the paraxial wave equation. First, we determine conservation laws for energy, linear and angular momentum of paraxial fields in a classical context. Then, we proceed with the quantization of the field. Finally, we compare our result with the traditional ones.
Distributed Matrix Multiplication Using Speed Adaptive Coding

While performing distributed computations in today's cloud-based platforms, execution speed variations among compute nodes can significantly reduce the performance and create bottlenecks like stragglers. Coded computation techniques leverage coding theory to inject computational redundancy and mitigate stragglers in distributed computations. In this paper, we propose a dynamic workload distribution strategy for coded computation called Slack Squeeze Coded Computation ($S^2C^2$). $S^2C^2$ squeezes the compute slack (i.e., overhead) that is built into the coded computing frameworks by efficiently assigning work for all fast and slow nodes according to their speeds and without needing to re-distribute data. We implement an LSTM-based speed prediction algorithm to predict speeds of compute nodes. We evaluate $S^2C^2$ on linear algebraic algorithms, gradient descent, graph ranking, and graph filtering algorithms. We demonstrate a 19% to 39% reduction in total computation latency using $S^2C^2$ compared to job replication and coded computation. We further show how $S^2C^2$ can be applied beyond linear algebra.
Mapping Research Trends of Adapted Sport from 2001 to 2020: A Bibliometric Analysis

Objectives: To identify the research landscape in terms of keywords, annual outputs, journals, countries, and institutions and explore the hot topics and prospects regarding adapted sport research. Materials and methods: Publications designated as “article” on adapted sport retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. VOSviewer 1.6. 11, Citespace, and Bibliometrix in R Studio were applied for the bibliometric analyses. Results: A total of 1887 articles were identified. Over the past two decades, athletic performance, sociology/psychology, and rehabilitation were extensively investigated. Basketball, soccer, and swimming were the three most focused adapted sports. Researchers showed a growing interest in submitting their studies to sport science, rehabilitation, and sociological journals. Adapted sport research was more common in developed countries and regions. The UK contributed most publications accounting for about 20% of the total publications. Conclusions: With the growth of publications concerning adapted sport, the bibliometric analysis presented an overview of collaboration, trends, and hotspots in the field.
The Impact of Cultural Institutes on International Tourism

ABSTRACT It has been recognized that cultural institute programs that first started after World War II and aim to improve language familiarity and cultural awareness are beneficial for FDI and trade. We use gravity models to examine the impact from both the German Goethe-Institut and Chinese Confucius Institute (two large-scaled cultural institute programs) on tourism arrivals, a form of international trade. We find a positive impact on tourism arrivals from the Confucius Institute program but a negative impact from the Goethe-Institut program. In addition, both the Goethe-Institut and Confucius Institute programs help to reduce the impact of linguistic distance on international tourism.
A type theory for cartesian closed bicategories

We construct an internal language for cartesian closed bicategories. Precisely, we introduce a type theory modelling the structure of a cartesian closed bicategory and show that its syntactic model satisfies an appropriate universal property, thereby lifting the Curry-Howard-Lambek correspondence to the bicategorical setting. Our approach is principled and practical. Weak substitution structure is constructed using a bicategorification of the notion of abstract clone from universal algebra, and the rules for products and exponentials are synthesised from semantic considerations. The result is a type theory that employs a novel combination of 2-dimensional type theory and explicit substitution, and directly generalises the Simply-Typed Lambda Calculus. This work is the first step in a programme aimed at proving coherence for cartesian closed bicategories.
Transition to Motherhood: A Study on the Association between Somatic Symptoms during Pregnancy and Post-Partum Anxiety and Depression Symptoms

Several authors found that somatic symptoms during pregnancy such as nausea, vomiting, and levels of sleep, and fear of childbirth were associated with women’s post-partum psychopathological difficulties. The present study aimed to verify whether fear of childbirth can mediate the relationship between some somatic symptoms experienced during pregnancy (i.e., nausea, vomiting, and daily sleep duration) and the post-partum depressive and anxious symptoms. N = 258 mothers of children between 3 and 6 months of age filled out self-report questionnaires assessing somatic symptoms during pregnancy, fear of childbirth, and anxious and depressive symptoms during post-partum. Results showed that levels of vomiting during pregnancy (but not nausea and daily sleep duration) was associated with post-partum depression and anxiety. Furthermore, findings showed that fear of childbirth partially mediated the relationships between the levels of vomiting during pregnancy and post-partum state anxiety and depression. These results can have several clinical implications, allowing to implement preventive programs for post-partum depression, considering vomiting and fear of childbirth as important risk factors.
SINGLE-EPOCH BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATORS FOR BROAD-LINE ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI: RECALIBRATING Hβ WITH A NEW APPROACH

Based on an updated Hβ reverberation mapping (RM) sample of 44 nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs), we propose a novel approach for black hole (BH) mass estimation using two filtered luminosities computed from single-epoch (SE) AGN spectra around the Hβ region. We found that the two optimal-filter luminosities extract virial information (size and virial velocity of the broad-line region, BLR) from the spectra, justifying their usage in this empirical BH mass estimator. The major advantages of this new recipe over traditional SE BH mass estimators utilizing continuum luminosity and broad-line width are (1) it has a smaller intrinsic scatter of 0.28 dex calibrated against RM masses, (2) it is extremely simple to use in practice, without any need to decompose the spectrum, and (3) it produces unambiguous and highly repeatable results even with low signal-to-noise spectra. The combination of the two luminosities can also cancel out, to some extent, systematic luminosity errors potentially introduced by uncertainties in distance or flux calibration. In addition, we recalibrated the traditional SE mass estimators using broad Hβ FWHM and monochromatic continuum luminosity at 5100 Å (L5100). We found that using the best-fit slopes on FWHM and L5100 (derived from fitting the BLR radius–luminosity relation and the correlation between rms line dispersion and SE FWHM, respectively) rather than simple assumptions (e.g., 0.5 for L5100 and 2 for FWHM) leads to more precise SE mass estimates, improving the intrinsic scatter from 0.41 dex to 0.36 dex with respect to the RM masses. We compared different estimators and discussed their applications to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar sample. Due to the limitations of the current RM sample, application of any SE recipe calibrated against RM masses to distant quasars should be treated with caution.
CPviolation inDmeson decays: Would it be a sign of new physics?

Ascribing the large SU(3) violations in the Cabibbo forbidden decays of neutral D mesons to the final state interactions, one gets large strong phase differences, necessary for substantial direct CP violation. While the absolute value of the CP violating asymmetries depend on the uncertain strength of the penguin contribution, we predict an asymmetry for the decays into charged pions more than twice as large and having opposite sign with respect to that for charged kaons.
Destroying extremal Kerr-Newman black holes with test particles

It has been shown that a nearly extremal black hole can be overcharged or overspun by a test particle if radiative and self-force effects are neglected, indicating that the cosmic censorship might fail. In contrast, the existing evidence in literature suggests that an extremal black hole cannot be overcharged or overspun in a similar process. In this paper, we show explicitly that even an exactly extremal black hole can be destroyed by a test particle, leading to a possible violation of the cosmic censorship. By considering higher order terms, which were neglected in previous analysis, we show that the violation is generic for any extremal Kerr-Newman black hole with nonvanishing charge and angular momentum. We also find that the allowed parameter range for the particle is very narrow, indicating that radiative and self-force effects should be considered and may prevent violation of the cosmic censorship.
Selfish Dark Matter

We present a mechanism where a particle asymmetry in one sector is used to generate an asymmetry in another sector. The two sectors are not coupled through particle number violating interactions and are not required to be in thermal contact with each other. When this mechanism is applied to baryogenesis in asymmetric dark matter models, we find that the dark matter particles can be extremely light, e.g. much lighter than an eV, and that in some cases there is no need to annihilate away the symmetric component of dark matter. We discuss a concrete realization of the mechanism with signals in direct detection, at the LHC, at B-factories or future beam dump experiments. 1 ar X iv :1 50 4. 00 36 1v 1 [ he pph ] 1 A pr 2 01 5
Lens models under the microscope: Comparison of Hubble Frontier Field cluster magnification maps

We are grateful to all those who contributed to the data used here: Anahita Alavi, Marusa Bradac, Gabe Brammer, Benjamin Clement, Jose Diego, Claudio Grillo, Austin Hoag, Jens Hjorth, Mathilde Jauzac, Traci Johnson, RyotaKawamata, Jean-Paul-Kneib, Daniel Lam, Priya Natarajan, Masamune Oguri Johan Richard, Kevin Sebesta, Jonatan Selsing, Irene Sendra, Keren Sharon, Brian Siana, Tomasso Treu, Xin Wang and Adi Zitrin. We would like to thank Minnesota Supercomputing Institute whose technical support and computer resources were invaluable in producing the GRALE set of models. Financial support for this work was provided to SAR by NASA through grant HST-GO-13386 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. The background HFF images of Abell 2744 and MACS J0416 in Fig. 4 were taken from https://www.spacetelescope. org/images/heic1111c and https://frontierfields.org/meet-the-frontier-fields/, respectively. We thank the referee for the careful reading of the manuscript and suggestions that helped improve the paper.