Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modelling Groundwater Rebound after Coalfield Closure: An Example from County Durham, UK

Paradoxically, efforts to predict the rate and spatial variation in groundwater rebound after coalfield closure are hindered by both the lack and superabundance of various kinds of data. There is generally a lack of suitable hydrogeological records, largely because the methods of groundwater investigation most suited to solution of operational problems during mining operation are not well-suited to providing the classic hydraulic parameters needed in groundwater models. This is compounded by the frequent mismatch between the definitions of these hydraulic parameters and the hydrogeologically "non-standard" nature of underground workings. On the other hand, mine abandonment plans are often so complicated that detailed synthesis of such records for purposes of regional hydrogeological analysis is a truly Herculean task. Furthermore it is by no means clear whether standard Darcian approaches to aquifer modelling are really applicable to mined strata. Confronted with these problems, a lumped parameter modelling approach has been developed which relies on physical characteristics of the system, without demanding complete specification of permeabilities. Deterministic modelling of groundwater rebound in the large (5000km 2 ; 14 seams) abandoned coalfield of County Durham using this approach yielded results comparable to those obtained using a standard darcian model. Both studies indicated the critical dependence of predictions on the value of storage coefficient (void ratio) assigned to the old workings and intervening start. Unlike the standard darcian model, the lumped parameter code is sufficiently economic in terms of cpu time that it lends itself readily to Monte Carlo simulations. The resulting probabilistic predictions are more "honest" than straightforward deterministic results.
FairCloud - Auction-driven Cloud Scheduling ?

With Cloud Computing, access to computational resources has become increasingly facilitated, and applications can oﬀer improved scalability and availability. However, those properties are supported by an energy consumption that is not proportional to the workload, and a pricing model that cannot be tailored to diﬀerent types of users. One way of improving energy eﬃciency is by reducing the idle time of resources - resources are active but serve a limited useful business purpose. We present FairCloud, a Cloud-auction scheduler that facilitates the allocation by allowing the adaptation of Virtual Machines (VM) requests (through conversion to other VM types and resource degradation), depending on the user proﬁle. Additionally, this system implements an internal reputation system, to detect providers with low Quality of Service (QoS). FairCloud was implemented using CloudSim and the extension CloudAuctions. It was tested with the Google Cluster Data. We observed that we achieve faster allocations and increased CPU utilisation, translating in more requests satisﬁed, improved energy eﬃciency and a higher provider proﬁt. Our reputation mechanism proved to be eﬀective by lowering the ranking of the providers with lower quality.
The Economic Cost of Huanglongbing (Citrus Greening) to Florida’s Orange Industry: Estimates of Producer and Consumer Surplus

Introduction This study estimates the economic impact of Hunglongbing (HLB) often referred to as Citrus Greening on Florida’s orange industry using the economic welfare approach (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz 2004). Citrus green was initially observe in backyard citrus in South Florida in 2005 (Burrow et al. 2014). By February 2009 the disease had spread to every major citrus producing county in the state of Florida. Hodges and Spreen (2012) estimate that greening cost Florida $8.92 billion in revenue and $4.62 billion in gross domestic product between the 2006/2007 and 2010/2011 crop seasons. These estimates are generated using a mathematical programming model of Florida’s citrus industry developed by Spreen, Brewster, and Brown (2003) that primarily focuses on the price levels for different types of citrus given different sources of demand. The economic impact on gross domestic product is then generated using IMPLAN (Mig, Inc. 2010). This study takes an the alternative approach of estimating the change in producer and consumer surplus based on a structural model of the supply and demand of Florida orange.
Knowledge Complement for Monte Carlo Tree Search: An Application to Combinatorial Games

MCTS (Monte Carlo Tree Search) is a well-known and efficient process to cover and evaluate a large range of states for combinatorial problems. We choose to study MCTS for the Computer Go problem, which is one of the most challenging problem in the field in Artificial Intelligence. For this game, a single combinatorial approach does not always lead to a reliable evaluation of the game states. In order to enhance MCTS ability to tackle such problems, one can benefit from game specific knowledge in order to increase the accuracy of the game state evaluation. Such a knowledge is not easy to acquire. It is the result of a constructivist learning mechanism based on the experience of the player. That is why we explore the idea to endow the MCTS with a process inspired by constructivist learning, to self-acquire knowledge from playing experience. In this paper, we propose a complementary process for MCTS called BHRF (Background History Reply Forest), which allows to memorize efficient patterns in order to promote their use through the MCTS process. Our experimental results lead to promising results and underline how self-acquired data can be useful for MCTS based algorithms.
Citrus: Orchestrating Security Mechanisms via Adversarial Deception

Despite the Internet being an apex of human achievement for many years, malicious activity and cyber attacks are becoming more prevalent than ever before. Large scale data collection using threat sources such as honeypots have recently been employed to gather information relating to these attacks. While this data naturally details attack properties, there exists challenges in extracting the relevant information from vast data sets to provide valuable insight and a standard description of the attack. Traditionally, threats are identified through the use of signatures that are crafted manually through the composition of IOCs (Indicators of Compromise) extracted from telemetry captured during an attack process, which is often administered by an experienced engineer. These signatures have been proven effective in their use by IDSs (Intrusion Detection Systems) to detect emerging threats. However, little research has been made in automating the extraction of emerging IOCs and the generation of corresponding signatures which incorporate host artefacts. In this paper we present Citrus: a novel approach to the generation of signatures by incorporating host based telemetry extracted from honeypot endpoints. Leveraging this visibility at an endpoint grants a detailed understanding of bleeding edge attack tactics, techniques, and procedures gathered from host logs.
Periodontal Vaccines-A Review

Periodontal disease, as a polymicrobial disease, is globally endemic as well as being a global epidemic. It is the leading cause for tooth loss in the adult population and has been positively related to life-threatening systemic diseases such as atherosclerosis and diabetes. As a result, it is clear that more sophisticated therapeutic modalities need to be developed, which may include vaccines. Up to now, however, no periodontal vaccine trial has been successful in satisfying all the requirements; to prevent the colonization of a multiple pathogenic biofilm in the subgingival area, to elicit a high level of effect or molecules such as immunoglobulin sufficient to opsonize and phagocytose the invading organisms, to suppress the induced alveolar bone loss, or to stimulate helper T-cell polarization that exerts cytokine functions optimal for protection against bacteria and tissue destruction. This article reviews all the vaccine trials so as to construct a more sophisticated strategy which may be relevant in the future. As an innovative strategy to circumvent these barriers, vaccine trials to stimulate antigen-specific T-cells polarized toward helper T-cells with a regulatory phenotype (Tregs, CD4+, CD25+, FoxP3+) have also been introduced. Targeting not only a single pathogen, but polymicrobial organisms, and targeting not only periodontal disease, but also periodontal disease triggered systemic disease could be a feasible goal.
Believable Communication Between Non-Player Characters

Motivation for this work comes from the belief that there is some untapped potential is giving non-player characters (NPCs) in video games the ability to share knowledge between themselves. This dissertation proposes a model for how NPCs in video games can communicate between themselves in a more believable way. This model gives NPCs the ability to perceive events from their surrounding environment, allowing them to change their behavior based on those events. We believe that by controlling how the information generated by the world and the player is shared over time among NPCs, interesting behaviors can emerge that give a richer gameplay experience to the player. The focus on time as the most important variable for how information is shared in a simulated world, where distance is taken into account, allows for different players do reach different game states, based on where and when did they perform their actions. Not only will different players perceive the world differently from each other but the way in which the agents(NPCs) in the game world perceive the player changes. In this multi-agent system of NPCs, we make use of decentralized systems to give each individual NPC the ability to make his decisions independently from the other NPCs and from this decentralized behavior emergent gameplay situations can happen. We detail here the different techniques game designers can use to make a system like this one work, the difﬁculties they might expect and the possibility to increase the complexity of NPCs for future works.
Administrative staff perception toward safety measures in AL-Najaf hospitals

Backwind: No doubt that occupations are associated with different safety concerns in all work fields, uniquely health care organizations, have the stock of workers who are more exposed to dangers from the different jobs. Therefore, the role of perception in strengthening and changing behaviors and concepts as general. This study focuses on evaluating management perception of the occupational health and safety measures used within a hospital in ALNajaf city. Methodology: A descriptive analytic design cross sectional study was carried out in al-Najaf City hospitals (AL-Sadder Medical City, AL-Forat AL-Awsat teaching hospital, AL-Zahra’a teaching hospital, AL-Hakeem teaching hospital and AL-Sajad hospital) from October 8th 2017 to September 16 2018. A non-probability (Purposive Sample) of (100) health administrator who manage different units of hospitals in order to assess their level of perception toward safety measures as well as finding out the relationship between the demographics of the element of the sample and their level of perception. A questionnaire consisting of two parts was used, including demographic information, and administrator’s perception toward safety measures. Results: The findings of the existing study specify that the overall assessment of administrator’s perception towards safety measures is fair. Conclusions: The study concluded that the administrator’s level of perception towards safety measures is affected by years of experience as an administrator, and also found that there is no return-to-work program in hospitals in AlNajaf city. Current study recommended that safety training is necessary so as to help employees to increase their knowledge and practice about health and safety at work. Recommendations Working on improving the policy and regulatory framework for occupational health in health organization, legalizations that keep the right of the employees and employer are necessary to be established and applied, tools and models for governments, employers and workers to establish practices that confer maximum safety at work, there is also the need for invest heavily into occupational health and safety research as it will influence positively on policy and decision making regarding health and safety issues among HCWs . and establishing a return-to-work program in workplace is a great need for rehabilitating the employees after being injured .
Game Content Placement through Progression Modeling

—There are hundreds of millions of people that play computer games daily and, although they have different needs, these people acknowledge that content (be it monsters, items or even doors) is one of the most important parts of a game. We ﬁrmly believe that placing content personalized to each person will improve the overall player experience, but how do we make content placement tailored to individual characteristics? This work proposes a computational model capable of placing content taking the player’s model into account by using an interest curve to place and pace the content. This model places, procedurally, the challenges according to the player’s model and progression of these challenges along the level. With this model, different players with different models would be playing the same game, while getting content directed to them. Our model was implemented having Legend of Grimrock 2 as a game environment, since it provides a mod-friendly editor and has the level’s information stored in an easy to access text ﬁle. Before testing our model’s content placement, a challenge validation was made, where we concluded that the designed challenges were being understood as intended. Final results indicated that the ordering of challenges according to the curve of interest appropriate to the player’s model only affects the positive emotions reported by the player, but does so in a very clear way. That is, choosing the moment when the challenges most valued by the player appear had no impact on the less positive aspects of the experience but ampliﬁed the positive moments.
MaquetistaVirtual Interactive Procedural Modeling

The techniques used in existing modeling applications prove to be time consuming, generic and inappropriate for models that have similar components, such as buildings. This led to the creation of a new approach to generate models from a textual description, called procedural modeling. Few users are able to make the necessary descriptions, continuing the problem of the creation being too long, tiring and di(cid:30)cult to learn. From this emerges the motivation to create a new and ex-peditious procedural modeling environment that will match the user’s skills. We aim to provide an interactive, natural and better learning procedural modeling approach than current ones. We consider the models edition by interacting directly on its representation, adapting a wiimote to enable procedural operators. To visualize the model we propose a solution of active stereoscopy which allows the user to observe the virtual model in a table with a depth feeling, watching it as if it were a physical model. We also propose functionalities such as component duplication and a template library, which abstract the user from procedural concepts and speeds up edition. We performed an experimental evaluation which primary purpose was to check feasibility of the proposed approach. The results of this assessment highlight the user preference for our more immersive and interactive approach. We conclude that it is feasible to create an immersive modeling that allows for a more interactive, enjoyable and good learning procedural edition.
Body Matters: Exploration of the Human Body as a Resource for the Design of Technologies for Meditation

Much research on meditation has shown its significant benefits for wellbeing. In turn, there has been growing HCI interest for the design of novel interactive technologies intended to facilitate meditation in real-time. In many of these systems, physiological signals have been mapped onto creative audiovisual feedback, however, there has been limited attention to the experiential qualities of meditation and the specific role that the body may play in them. In this paper, we report on workshops with 24 experts exploring the bodily sensations that emerge during meditation. Through material speculation, participants shared their lived experience of meditation and identified key stages during which they may benefit from additional aid, often multimodal. Findings emphasize the importance of recreating mindful physical sensations during moments of mind-wandering; in particular for supporting the regulation of attention through a range of embodied metaphors and haptic feedback, tailored to key transitions in the meditation process.
Laboratory Evaluation of Different Botanicals for the Control of Termite, Microterms spp (Isoptera: Termitidae)

Termite cause wide spread damage to a great variety of crops in tropical Africa. The damage can occur from seedling to harvest and usually occurs every year, as termites form more or less stable populations and foraging by various combinations of several species occurs throughout the year. In Africa the most important termite genera are: Macrotermes, Odnotermes, Pseudocanthotermes, Ancistrotermes and Microtermes. They are serious pests of agricultural crops, forest trees, rangeland, furniture and building structures made of wood in the region [1]. Sands [2], mentioned also termite poses serious threat to agricultural production in Ethiopia, particularly in western Wellega. The gradual increase in human and livestock populations, depletion of natural resource bases, lack of agricultural technology and information support system and poor land management, among other factors, in the West Wollega region have resulted in a gradual increase in termite population over decades [2].
HovercRaft: achieving scalability and fault-tolerance for microsecond-scale datacenter services

Cloud platform services must simultaneously be scalable, meet low tail latency service-level objectives, and be resilient to a combination of software, hardware, and network failures. Replication plays a fundamental role in meeting both the scalability and the fault-tolerance requirement, but is subject to opposing requirements: (1) scalability is typically achieved by relaxing consistency; (2) fault-tolerance is typically achieved through the consistent replication of state machines. Adding nodes to a system can therefore either increase performance at the expense of consistency, or increase resiliency at the expense of performance. We propose HovercRaft, a new approach by which adding nodes increases both the resilience and the performance of general-purpose state-machine replication. We achieve this through an extension of the Raft protocol that carefully eliminates CPU and I/O bottlenecks and load balances requests. Our implementation uses state-of-the-art kernel-bypass techniques, datacenter transport protocols, and in-network programmability to deliver up to 1 million operations/second for clusters of up to 9 nodes, linear speedup over unreplicated configuration for selected workloads, and a 4X speedup for the YCSBE-E benchmark running on Redis over an unreplicated deployment.
New Approach for PCB Boundary Scan Testing Using Unique TAP

- Traditional test and measurement equipments which rely on connecting external probes are no longer possible given the state of the art of today’s shrinking electronics. Since probing is extremely difficult if not impossible, other methods must be used. A novel approach for testing printed circuit boards is presented in this research. The new methodology provides an elegant solution for this problem. The approach is developed based on the IEEE 1149.1 Std for testing and debugging. It defines the architecture for testing modern integrated circuits over printed circuit boards without external probing. PCB compliant with this methodology contains one shared access interface to access testing logic. Chips compliant with this technique contain bypass registers only, whereas the IEEE 1149.1 compliant chips contain four types of registers. The shared access interface which is called test access port (TAP) has a USB port interface. The chips over the PCB are connected with the shared TAP using the star topology. Only one bidirectional data line has been used to connect each IC. The TAP is controlled by an open source software developed using Arduino application. The software is able to access the ICs logic and for automatic test pattern generation. It handled the details of the logic such that users can focus on the actual testing without having to worry about or having a need to know the implementation details at chip level. The logic circuit of this design is simulated and the hardware prototype is built successfully. The new design has the distinct feature of being less complex, less expensive and more reliable than IEEE 1149.1 Std. Also it has the new feature of being totally driven by an open source and user friendly software.
Polymethylsiloxane Polyhydrate (Enterosgel®) in the Complex Treatmentof Diarrhea Syndrome in Children with Diseases of the Digestive System

Objective: To evaluate the clinical efficiency of polymethylsiloxane polyhydrate (Enterosgel®) in the complex treatment of diarrhea syndrome in children. Patients and Methods: We carried out a retrospective analysis of the clinical results of 64 patients with gastroenterocolitis of noninfectious etiology (mean age 6.4 ± 0.7 years), i.e. a complete study of patients with complex treatment by Enterosgel®. The comparison group with no treatment by Enterosgel® consisted of 31 children (mean age 6.5 ± 0.9 years) with diarrhea syndrome. We conducted a comparative assessment of intoxication symptoms, the nature of the stool, clinical blood tests, and the length of hospital stay. Results: Normalization of the stool in patients whose complex treatment included Enterosgel® was faster, the length of hospital stay decreased by almost 2 times, and there were no negative changes in blood tests. Conclusion: The complex treatment of children with the pathology of the digestive system accompanied by diarrhea syndrome is efficient with the enterosorbent effect of Enterosgel®.
Brillouin based lasers, nonreciprocity, and cooling in silicon

We use a new class of optomechanical waveguides–that produce enhanced light-sound coupling–to realize strong and tailorable stimulated Brillouin scattering interactions silicon photonics. Exploiting these interactions in a variety of different structures, we create high-gain Brillouin amplifiers and integrated Brillouin lasers within a silicon-on-insulator platform. Using a Brillouin active multimode waveguide to realize efficient interband coupling, we also demonstrate a tunable and wideband (>100GHz) nonreciprocal light propagation as the basis for multiport circulator technologies. Leveraging similar concepts in a resonant geometry, we describe a high gain unidirectional amplifier that yields ∼30dB of optical isolation. Finally, we demonstrate laser cooling of Brillouin-active phonon modes within guided-wave systems as a means of controlling noise within a broad class of Brillouin technologies.