Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trio-Connectivity for Efficient Uplink Performance in Future Mobile HetNets

The technical challenges, e.g. the mobility management and the offloading process, hinder the conventional cellular systems to meet the huge data traffic requirements of the next generation mobile communications. The traditional system (e.g dual-connectivity (DC)) has been proposed to improve the mobility management, however, it will inherit the big trade-off in the offloading process between the energy consumption for the small cell (SC) discovery (SCD) process and the efficiency of utilizing the system resources (e.g. frequency and signaling). In this paper, we present a framework to model the potential offloading opportunities as well as the offloading loss when a typical user equipment (UE) performs the inter-frequency (IRF) scan periodically. The proposed framework also studies the impact of the SCD on the energy efficiency. To improve the system performance and reduce the power consumption at the UEs, a new scheme, trio-connectivity (TC), is proposed in this paper to tackle the aforementioned challenges. The TC includes three planes: control-plane (C-plane), user-plane (U-plane) and indication-plane (I-plane). The I-plane works as an indicator to help the UE to identify and discover the SCs in the system prior to offloading. The role of the I-plane is to keep the SCD on one frequency channel regardless of the number of frequency channels in the system. In the proposed offloading mechanism, some of the energy consumption is transferred from the UE to the network. By using the proposed framework, UE energy efficiency and system energy efficiency as well as the total energy consumption are derived as performance metrics to compare between the TC and the DC. The results show that the TC can outperform the DC in dense cellular systems.
Grammatical Attributes in the Language of Communication: Conceptualization of Time, Tense and Aspect in English

Time is a concept which is related to our perception of reality. A vast majority of languages have mechanisms which enable the speakers to express time. Many languages have grammatical means that make it possible for users to express the time when an action or event occurs. Among these languages, most of them also express time with a verb, and more specifically, with various verbal tenses. The verbal tense, a grammatical category which differs significantly from one language to another, may also be considered a grammatical component of time. Verbal tense can provide us with a particular kind of insight into our perception of chronological time which is expressed with and within the tense of the verb. Tense is concerned about how events are located, perceived and referred to along the past-present-future timeline. Aspect is about the manner in which a verbal action is experienced or regarded. In general linguistic approaches, tense and aspect are treated as complementary ways of encoding time. They relate the happening described by the verb to time in the past, present or future. However, tense differs from aspect in showing the time reference, while aspect shows how the action or state of the verb is envisaged or seen as happening or occurring. Time, tense and aspect are inter-related concepts; time is usually perceived in relation to tense and aspect. In the current paper, it is the author’s conviction that knowledge in the distinction between the three concepts (time, tense, aspect) will enable English speakers to communicate better, grammatically. Keywords : Time, Tense, Aspect, Grammar, English, Communication. DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/92-03 Publication date: August 31 st 2020
Dimensional Stabilization of Wood in Use.

Abstract : There are two basic types of wood treatments for dimensional stability: (1) those which reduce the rate of water vapor or liquid absorption but do not reduce the extent of swelling to any great degree and (2) those which reduce the extent of swelling and may or may not reduce the rate of water absorption. Terms most often used to describe the effectiveness of the first type of treatment are moisture-excluding effectiveness (MEE), which can be determined in either water or water vapor form, and water repellency (WR), which is a specific liquid test. The term used to describe the effectiveness of the second type of treatment is reduction in swelling (R) or antishrink efficiency (ASE). Most of the type (1) treatments have very low R or ASE values. The R or ASE values can be determined in water vapor tests or single-soak liquid test for water-leachable treatments, or in double-soak liquid tests for nonleachable treatments. In selecting a treatment to achieve product stability to moisture, at least three factors must be considered. The environment of the end product is the most important factor. If the product will come into contact with water, nonleachable--and perhaps even bonded--treatments will be needed. If, however, the product will be subjected to changes in relative humidity in an indoor environment, a leachable or water-repellent treatment might be satisfactory. The degree of dimensional stability must also be considered. If very rigid tolerances are required in a product --as in pattern wood dies--a treatment with very high R or ASE values is needed. If, on the other hand, only a moderate degree of dimensional stability is satisfactory, a less rigorous treatment will suffice.
Multiple Bipolar Fuzzy Measures: An Application to Community Detection Problems for Networks with Additional Information

In this paper we introduce the concept of multiple bipolar fuzzy measures as a generalization of a bipolar fuzzy measure. We also propose a new definition of a group, which is based on the multidimensional bipolar fuzzy relations of its elements. Taking into account this information, we provide a novel procedure (based on the well-known Louvain algorithm) to deal with community detection problems. This new method considers the multidimensional bipolar information provided by multiple bipolar fuzzy measures, as well as the information provided by a graph. We also give some detailed computational tests, obtained from the application of this algorithm in several benchmark models.
Status, Challenges and Strategies of Dar es Salaam Seaport-Hinterland Connectivity

Dar es Salaam seaport serving the Tanzania hinterland and other seven landlocked countries in East and Central Africa, The rapid economic growth of the hinterlands resulted to the increasing demand for overseas products from their country’s residents, this create congestion at Dar es Salaam seaport. Due to this, the connection for the movement of commodities from seaport to its hinterland has noticeably very slow. A qualitative research methodology technique is used in this article to explore the status, challenges and strategies of Dar es Salaam seaport-hinterland connectivity. The findings reveal that even though Dar es Salaam seaport is linked to the hinterland through both railway and road transport, but is hugely dependent on road transport. Regular tariffs increase for imports, insufficient number of trains and wagons connecting Dar es Salaam seaport, poor qualities of roads and railway infrastructures, congestion at the roads and the absence of new freight station are the main existing challenges in which significantly affect the smoothness of Dar es Salaam seaport-hinterland connectivity. Furthermore, the article proposes various enhancing strategies to combat named challenges. These strategies will be crucial to the government in decision making on how to develop and advancing Dar es Salaam seaport-hinterland connectivity.
Curvas Principais para a Seleção de Dados de Treinamento Neural com Grandes Volumes de Dados

—In environments with big data problems, to make a smart data selection with the goal of training machine can be essential to reduce the computational demand of the application. This paper presents a method based on principal curves for data selection during the neural networks training in an experiment of particle collision with high events rate. The method used real data of collision and it accomplished 3 selection approaches through mapping of Euclidean distances in each event to the respective Principal Curve. Preliminary results in the classification of neural networks presented low differences using the selection method and considerable reduction in the training time.
Integrated Frequency Selective Surface and Antenna Printed on a Transparent Substrate

This letter presents an integrated design of a frequency modulation (FM) radio antenna and a band-stop frequency selective surface (FSS) printed on a thin and transparent glass substrate. The glass is enclosed by a rectangular aluminum frame. Such a structure can be readily applied to the windows of a car or building. The FSS is implemented with an array of cross dipoles printed using silver compound, which is able to prevent the penetration of incident 2.4 GHz signal. On the other hand, the FM antenna is also implemented on the same surface as the FSS. By joining 19 cross elements with conductive strips, the FM antenna forms a T-shaped monopole within the frame. The antenna is then fed by a 50 Ω coaxial probe and its 6 dB return loss bandwidth covers the entire FM radio channels from 87.5 to 108 MHz. The ingenious integration of the FM antenna and FSS is potentially very useful in applications that require both shielding and wireless communications, while maintaining the optical transparency at the same time.
A novel hybrid feature selection and modified KNN prediction model for coal and gas outbursts

The feature selection of influencing factors of coal and gas outbursts is of great significance for presenting the most discriminative features and improving prediction performance of a classifier, the paper presents an effective hybrid feature selection and modified outbursts classifier framework which aims at solving exiting coal and gas outbursts prediction problems. First, a measurement standard based on maximum information coefficient(MIC) is employed to identify the wide correlations between two variables; Second, based on a ranking procedure using non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm(NSGAII), maximum relevance minimum redundancy(MRMR) algorithm is subsequently performed to find out candidate feature set highly related to the class label and uncorrelated with each other; Third, random forest(RF) is employed to search the optimal feature subset from the candidate feature set, then the optimal feature subset that influences the classification performance of coal and gas outbursts is obtained; Finally, an improved classifier model has been proposed that combines gradient boosting decision tree(GBDT) and k-nearest neighbor(KNN) for outbursts prediction. In the modified classifier model, the GBDT is utilized to assign different weights to features, then the weighted features are input into the KNN to verify the effectiveness of proposed method on coal and gas outbursts dataset. The experimental results conclude that our proposed scheme is effective in the number of feature and prediction accuracy when compared with other related state-of-the-art prediction models based on feature selection for coal and gas outbursts.
Evaluation of anuran diversity and success in tertiary wastewater treatment wetlands

Abstract Constructed wetlands (CWs) are a multifunctional environmental technology capable of supporting plant and wildlife communities and removing excess nutrients and other pollutants. Tertiary treatment wetlands have also been proposed as one solution to remove persistent pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) that remain after conventional wastewater treatment. Though aquatic wildlife is generally sensitive to environmental contaminants, it is unknown whether CWs can serve dual purposes supporting wildlife habitat and polishing wastewater. Our objective was to assess the capacity of a newly established CW for tertiary wastewater treatment to support amphibians. Specifically, we assessed adult anuran occupancy and tadpole and adult body size and condition relative to nearby unimpacted ponds. We found that a diverse community of adult anurans rapidly colonized the wetlands where successful reproduction was documented. Adult frogs and tadpoles were observed to have variable sizes among ponds with some life stages in better body condition at the tertiary treatment wetlands. Preliminary investigations suggest that tertiary treatment wetlands provide habitat for successful colonization and reproduction of anurans, but carryover effects need to be evaluated to determine if tertiary treatment wetlands serve as sinks or suitable habitat that supports stable populations.
Distributed Pressure Sensing Using an Embedded-Core Capillary Fiber and Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry

In this paper, we describe a distributed pressure sensor using a simplified and high sensitive microstructured optical fiber – the embedded-core fiber – and autocorrelation analysis of the data obtained from an optical frequency domain reflectometer (OFDR). The special fiber consists of a microcapillary, which has a germanium-doped core placed within the capillary wall. When this structure is subjected to pressure variations, an asymmetric stress distribution is induced within the fiber, entailing birefringence variations. Here, we show that the use of a commercial OFDR with submillimeter resolution together with an autocorrelation data analysis routine in the spectral domain allows mapping the fiber birefringence and performing distributed pressure sensing. In the experiments, the fiber passed through two pressure chambers, which allowed for pressure to be locally and independently applied. No cross-sensitivity between the pressure points was observed. The embedded-core fiber exhibited a birefringence sensitivity to pressure of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.8\times 10^{\mathbf {-7}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> bar <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\mathbf {-1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, which is 21% higher than that measured in commercial photonic crystal fibers using the same setup.
Trichoscopic Patterns of Nonscarring Alopecia's

Background: Hair loss (alopecia) is a common problem and is a major cause of psychological stress and anxiety among affected individuals. It is of utmost importance to diagnose these cases at the earliest and treat them accordingly. Trichoscopy provides a noninvasive option that can be used for early diagnosis and monitoring the progression of the hair disorders. Aims and Objectives: To perform trichoscopy and document the findings in patients with nonscarring alopecia's. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 cases satisfying the inclusion criteria were screened for general physical examination and scalp examination including hair shaft and root, and tests for hair anchorage and fragility were also done. The lesions were examined through dermoscope, photographs were taken, and findings were documented. Results: Among the total of 100 cases screened, 57 were female and 43 were male. The mean age of the study group was 26 ± 14.8 years. Females were affected by alopecia areata (AA) and female pattern hair loss (29.8%) equally, whereas males were most commonly affected by AA (41.8%). The common trichoscopic follicular features noted were broken hair (48%), black dots (48%), single hair follicle unit (45%), short vellus hair (44%), upright hair (41%), and yellow dots (40%). The common interfollicular features seen were honeycomb pigmentation (26%) and arborizing red lines (12%). Conclusion: The emergence of newer hair signs on trichoscopic studies aids in identification and has a definitive role in the diagnosis of clinically difficult cases, so it is recommended to use trichoscopy in the routine examination of nonscarring alopecia's.
The geo-temporal evolution of violence in civil conflicts: A micro analysis of conflict diffusion on a new event data set

Existing works on diffusion fail to account for the incapacitating effects conflict events may have on the operational capability of the combatant sides and how these effects may determine the evolution of a conflict. I hypothesize that it is those events with losses on the state side that are likely to be associated with geo-temporal spillovers, whereas events with insurgency losses are less likely to be associated with future mayhem in their vicinity. To test my arguments, I first introduce a new, comprehensive and detailed event dataset on the long-running civil conflict in Turkey. The Turkish State–PKK Conflict Event Database (TPCONED) includes the exact date and county-level location for the fatal events of the armed conflict between the Turkish state and the rebel organization PKK since its very beginning in 1984 with detailed information on combatant casualties. I then employ a split population bi-probit model which allows me to comprehensively depict the geotemporal evolution of the conflict by acknowledging, estimating and accounting for the variation in the underlying conflict proneness across locations as a latent variable that shapes the diffusion of events. The results of the statistical analyses offer support for my hypotheses and reveal that how events evolve over space and time is conditioned by the damages suffered by the combatant sides. I demonstrate the robustness of these results on a matched sample I obtain by employing the Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) on the data.
Improvement of Accuracy of Fixed-Width Booth Multipliers Using Data Scaling Technology

In this brief, we propose a data scaling technology (DST) for use in a low-error fixed-width Booth multiplier (FWBM) to reduce truncation errors. The proposed DST reduces the number of redundant bits in the multiplicand, yielding more efficient bits in low-error FWBMs. The truncation errors in FWBMs are reduced by adding a circuit incorporating the proposed DST to them as well as an error-compensation circuit. We found that the signal-to-noise ratio of the proposed DST-FWBM (1 bit) was more than 1.05 dB higher than that of an FWBM without the DST circuit. Long-width DST-FWBMs achieved an accuracy closely approaching the ideal value of a post-truncated multiplier. To verify its performance in a VLSI chip, we implemented the DST-FWBM in a 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS process. The proposed DST method was shown to considerably improve the accuracy of FWBMs, rendering this technology suitable for use in digital signal processing techniques.
Latency in Problem Solving as Evidence for Learning in Varanid and Helodermatid Lizards, with Comments on Foraging Techniques

Cognition and learning have been widely studied in vertebrates, but not across much phylogenetic breadth. Non-avian reptiles, for example, have been poorly studied. Anecdotal observations and a few previous studies suggest that lizards may have strong cognitive skills owing, in part, to behaviors such as optimal foraging and territoriality. We tested four lizard species, including three species of monitor lizard (Varanus spp.) and one species of beaded lizard (Heloderma), in a longitudinal, repeated-trials experimental design using a puzzle-feeder device to evaluate learning, in the form of latency trends over time. We used a Bayesian multilevel modeling statistical method and incorporated unsuccessful trials as censored data. Collectively, all lizards showed a pattern of decreasing latencies over time. We interpret this pattern as learning among our lizards. Notable individual and inter-specific differences were evident, however, suggesting that learning abilities differed among the lizards. In this case, the monitor lizards exhibited steeper declines in latencies and greatly reduced inter-individual variation in comparison to the beaded lizards. Finally, we found differential use of the claws versus the snout among the lizards, which is consistent with a previously posed hypothesis based on different species than we measured.
Adsorption removal of pharmaceutical and personal care products with functionalized metal-organic framework: adsorptive selectivity and mechanism

Pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) had been detected worldwide as an emerging contaminant in the aquatic system. Herein, we reported a kind of NH2-functionalized UiO-66 which exhibited effective removal toward diflunisal and salicylic acid. The capacity of UiO-66-NH2 was much higher than commercial activated carbon (AC) for the adsorption of PPCPs and it was because UiO-66-NH2 had a smaller pore size than AC. The UiO-66-NH2 also indicated some interactions, like π–π stacking and electrostatic interaction. The removal efficiency of diflunisal and salicylic acid from wastewater with the UiO-66-NH2 groups was higher than the original UiO-66. It could be explained with the acid-base attraction between the NH2 group of UiO-66-NH2 and the COOH group of diflunisal and salicylic acid. However, the performance of UiO-66-NH2 in the adsorption of carbamazepine was not very desirable. The base–base repulsion between the NH2 group of UiO-66-NH2 and the NH2 group of carbamazepine led to a decrease in the adsorption capacity of UiO-66-NH2. The UiO-66-NH2 could be regenerated with ethanol and reused for the adsorption removal of the adsorbates.
Wreckfish (Polyprion americanus). New Knowledge About Reproduction, Larval Husbandry, and Nutrition. Promise as a New Species for Aquaculture

Four different wreckfish (Polyprion americanus) broodstock batches were maintained in research facilities under different photo and thermo-period conditions, one in Greece, the Helenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR, n = 3) and three in Spain: Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO, n = 13) in Vigo, Aquarium Finisterrae (MC2, n = 21) in A Coruña and Consellería do Mar (CMRM, n = 11). The CMRM includes two centers that work together: Instituto Galego de Formación en Acuicultura (IGAFA) and Centro de Investigacións Mariñas (CIMA), both in Pontevedra. During the five years of the project DIVERSIFY (Exploring the biological and socio-economic potential of new-emerging candidate fish species for the expansion of the European aquaculture industry, 2013–2018) works focused on the reproductive biology of the species, broodstock, and larvae nutrition and development of incubation and larval rearing protocols have been carried out. In terms of reproduction, catch methods of new wild animals, the reproductive cycle, sperm characteristics evaluation, and spontaneous and induced spawning methods have been described for wreckfish. Regarding nutrition, the positive effect of two types of enrichment on the fatty acid profiles of Artemia and rotifer has been verified. The relationship between the fatty acid profile of the diets supplied to the broodstock and the fatty acid profile obtained in the oocytes and eggs of the females fed with different diets, has also been demonstrated. Finally, early larval ontogeny has been described and incubation and larval rearing protocols have been proposed based on the results obtained in the different experiments of temperature, growth, survival, and larval feeding that were carried out.
Blind Adaptive Low-Complexity Time-Domain Equalizer for 100-Gb/s Direct-Detection Optical OFDM Systems Over Long-Reach SSMF

In this article, we report a low-complexity blind adaptive time-domain equalizer (TEQ) to reduce the cyclic prefix (CP) length for 100-Gb/s direct-detection optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system combined with wavelength-division multiplexing system over 400-km standard single-mode fiber length. We show that a significant complexity reduction can be achieved by designing a modified cost function of multicarrier equalization based on orthogonality restoration (MERO) algorithm on one hand, and on deploying the symmetrical TEQ property on the other hand. Our article shows that the reduction of the system adaptation complexity can be realized up to 50% when designing and optimizing the stated system parameters. Our low-complexity MERO simulation model exhibits better performance, for a shorter CP length equal to $0.39$ % of the OFDM symbol duration, than the existing conventional algorithms in term of bit error rate versus optical signal-to-noise ratio with a much lower complexity.