Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining visible and infrared radiometry and lidar data to test simulations in clear and ice cloud conditions

Abstract. Measurements taken during the 2003 Pacific THORPEX Observing System Test (P-TOST) by the MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS), the Scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (S-HIS) and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) are compared to simulations performed with a line-by-line and multiple scattering modeling methodology (LBLMS). Formerly used for infrared hyper-spectral data analysis, LBLMS has been extended to the visible and near infrared with the inclusion of surface bi-directional reflectance properties. A number of scenes are evaluated: two clear scenes, one with nadir geometry and one cross-track encompassing sun glint, and three cloudy scenes, all with nadir geometry. CPL data is used to estimate the particulate optical depth at 532 nm for the clear and cloudy scenes and cloud upper and lower boundaries. Cloud optical depth is retrieved from S-HIS infrared window radiances, and it agrees with CPL values, to within natural variability. MAS data are simulated convolving high resolution radiances. The paper discusses the results of the comparisons for the clear and cloudy cases. LBLMS clear simulations agree with MAS data to within 20% in the shortwave (SW) and near infrared (NIR) spectrum and within 2 K in the infrared (IR) range. It is shown that cloudy sky simulations using cloud parameters retrieved from IR radiances systematically underestimate the measured radiance in the SW and NIR by nearly 50%, although the IR retrieved optical thickness agree with same measured by CPL. MODIS radiances measured from Terra are also compared to LBLMS simulations in cloudy conditions, using retrieved cloud optical depth and effective radius from MODIS, to understand the origin for the observed discrepancies. It is shown that the simulations agree, to within natural variability, with measurements in selected MODIS SW bands. The impact of the assumed particles size distribution and vertical profile of ice content on results is evaluated. Sensitivity is much smaller than differences between measured and simulated radiances in the SW and NIR. The paper dwells on a possible explanation of these contradictory results, involving the phase function of ice particles in the shortwave.
STUDY OF THE ANTICANCER POTENTIAL OF CELERY SEED OIL AGAINST CHEMICALLY INDUCED HEPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMA IN RATS: A MECHANISTIC APPROACH.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the major primary malignant tumour of the liver, represents a complex and fatal malignancy driven primarily by oxidative stress and inflammation. Celery seed oil (CSO) is a rich source of phytochemicals endowed with potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. In this study, we examined the molecular mechanisms by which CSO inhibited diethylnitrosamine (DENA)induced hepatocellular carcinoma in rats by analysing the expression patterns of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kB), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and caspase-3 immunohistochemically. In addition, serum TNF-α level and liver nitric oxide content were investigated. Rats were administered CSO (300 mg/kg, p.o.) four weeks after DENA-induced HCC. There was a significant elevation in serum TNF-α level and liver nitric oxide content, upregulation of PCNA, NF-kB and COX-2 in DENA-exposed rats. Administration of CSO decreased the expression of PCNA and increased the expression of caspase-3, indicating antiproliferative and apoptotic effects, respectively. Moreover, CSO markedly suppressed all aforementioned elevated inflammatory parameters. Our study provides evidence that CSO exerts its anticancer effect through antiproliferative, proapoptotic and anti-inflammatory mechanisms.
A control allocation sterategy based on multi-parametric quadratic programming algorithm

Control allocation is an important part of a system. It implements the function that map the desired command forces from the controller into the commands of the different actuators. In this paper, the authors present an approach for solving constrained control allocation problem in vessel system by using multi-parametric quadratic programming (mp-QP) algorithm. The goal of mp-QP algorithm applied in this study is to compute a solution to minimize a quadratic performance index subject to linear equality and inequality constraints. The solution can be pre-computed off-line in the explicit form of a piecewise linear (PWL) function of the generalized forces and constrains. The efficiency of mp-QP approach is evaluated through a dynamic positioning simulation for a vessel by using four tugboats with constraints about limited pushing forces and found to work well.
Anatomical Variations of the Circle of Willis as seen at the University Teaching Hospital,Lusaka,Zambia

Background: The ideal distribution of blood to the brain and the collateral potential of the Circle of Willis (CW) is believed to be dependent largely on the morphology and the presence of all the component vessels of the CW. Several studies have shown that variations in the CW play an important role in the development of cerebrovascular diseases (CVD) such as cerebrovascular accidents or stroke, aneurysms and infarctions. Despite these CVDs being on the increase, no study on anatomical patterns or variations has been conducted in the local and subregional population. The study aimed to determine the anatomical variations of the CW as seen at the University Teaching Hospital, Zambia. Methods: The study was undertaken to observe the morphology of the CW using gross dissection in 185 post mortem non pathological brains. A data collection form was used to capture information such as age, sex, external diameter of the posterior communicating arteries (PcoA) and aneurysms. Univariate and multivariate analysis was used to determine factors associated with hypoplasia of both left and right PcoA. Statistical analysis was performed with STATA version 12. Results: This study showed that 90.3% of the brain specimen had complete circles. Hypoplasia (< 1mm diameter) was 30.3% and 36.2% in the right and left PcoA respectively. The proportion of males 149 (80.5%) were significantly higher (p < 0.0001) than females 36 (19.5%). The median age for individuals with hypoplasia (<1.0mm) of the right and left PcoA was 48 and 46 years respectively; the medians were statistically different (p < 0.0001). A significant association between age and hypoplasia of the PcoA was observed (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The study revealed significant variations in the CW in the brain specimens studied at the University Teaching Hospital, Zambia. Hypoplasia in the PcoA was the most common noted variation with CW incompleteness in a few cases. No aneurysm was observed.
The Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Performance of the Greek Banking Sector: An Event Study Approach

This paper examines the impact of Greek mergers and acquisitions on the performance of the Greek Banking Sector during the period 1996-2009. With the use of event study methodology, we reject the “semi-strong form” of Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) of the Athens Stock Exchange. We find that ten days prior to the announcement of a merger and acquisition, shareholders receive considerable and significant positive cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs). Also the results show that significant positive CAARs are gained upon the announcement of horizontal and diversifying bank deals. The overall results indicate that bank mergers and acquisitions have no impact and do not create wealth. We also examine operating performance of the Greek Banking Sector by estimating twenty financial ratios. Findings show that operating performance does not improve, following mergers and acquisitions. There are also controversial results when comparing merged to non-merged banks.
Mitigating the atmospheric CO2 increase and ocean acidification by adding limestone powder to upwelling regions

[1] The feasibility of enhancing the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere by adding calcium carbonate (CaCO3) powder to the ocean and of partially reversing the acidification of the ocean and the decrease in calcite supersaturation resulting from the absorption of anthropogenic CO2 is investigated. CaCO3 could be added to the surface layer in regions where the depth of the boundary between supersaturated and unsaturated water is relatively shallow (250–500 m) and where the upwelling velocity is large (30–300 m a−1). The CaCO3 would dissolve within a few 100 m depth below the saturation horizon, and the dissolution products would enter the mixed layer within a few years to decades, facilitating further absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere. This absorption of CO2 would largely offset the increase in mixed layer pH and carbonate supersaturation resulting from the upwelling of dissolved limestone powder. However, if done on a large scale, the reduction in atmospheric CO2 due to absorption of CO2 by the ocean would reduce the amount of CO2 that needs to be absorbed by the mixed layer, thereby allowing a larger net increase in pH and in supersaturation in the regions receiving CaCO3. At the same time, the reduction in atmospheric pCO2 would cause outgassing of CO2 from ocean regions not subject to addition of CaCO3, thereby increasing the pH and supersaturation in these regions as well. Geographically optimal application of 4 billion t of CaCO3 a−1 (0.48 Gt C a−1) could induce absorption of atmospheric CO2 at a rate of 600 Mt CO2 a−1 after 50 years, 900 Mt CO2 a−1 after 100 years, and 1050 Mt CO2 a−1 after 200 years.
Response of South American Terrestrial Ecosystems to Future Patterns of Sea Surface Temperature

Global warming in the first half of the 21st century is likely to have profound influences on South American vegetation and climate. Although coupled atmosphere-biosphere models have been widely used to forecast future vegetation patterns under various scenarios of global warming, they have not been used to assess the potentially critical role of variations in sea surface temperature (SST) in modifying the climate-vegetation interactions. Here, we use monthly output of a 100-year coupled model run to investigate the relationship between SST, precipitation, and productivity of vegetation. Specifically, we assess statistical correlations between SST variability and vegetation in six different South America regions: Northern South America, Western Amazonia, Eastern Amazonia, Northeast Brazil, Central Brazil, and Patagonia. Our model robustly simulates changes in mean precipitation, net primary production (NPP), upper canopy leaf area index (LAI), and lower canopy LAI under warming and nonwarming scenarios. Most significantly, we demonstrate that spatial-temporal variability in SST exerts a strong influence over the vegetation dynamics in all six South American regions.
The Latest Recommended System using Collaborative filter for Travel Packages

For this purport, we may first analyze the characteristics of the subsisting peregrinate packages and design a tourist-area-season topic (TAST) model which can represent peregrinate packages and tourists by different topic distributions. Besides, the topic extraction is conditioned on both the tourists and the intrinsic features (i.e., place locations, travelling seasons) of the landscapes. Predicated on this model, we propose a cocktail approach to engender the lists for personalized peregrinate package recommendation and withal elongate the TAST model to the tourist-cognation-area-season topic (TRAST) model for capturing the latent relationships among the tourists in each peregrinate group. Latest years have witnessed an tremendous magnification in recommender systems. There is an abundance of numerous avenues to explore this field, because of its Despite paramount progress. Indeed, this article expounds a case study of exploiting online peregrinate information for personalized peregrinate package recommendation. Here, the critical challenge is to address the unique characteristics of peregrinate data, which distinguish peregrinate packages from traditional items of others for recommendation.
Adaptation of Models Versus Variations in Form: Classifying Structures of City Government

A great deal of variability exists in American local government structures. It would be useful to analyze the differences in outcomes associated with different structures, but two factors stand in the way. First, there is no agreement about how to classify city governments. Second, many of the components used in existing classifications are inaccurately reported or missing in survey data. In this research note, a new classification system based on three easily determined components is developed and used to measure the current distribution of forms and variations in an expanded data set that includes almost all cities over 10,000 in population.
Nutritional Requirements for Growth of Agaricus brasiliensis

The nutritional requirements of A. brasiliensis in culture media were assessed by supplementing a basal medium (g L -1 ): (glucose, 10, KH2PO4, 1, MgSO4.7H2O, 0.5, (NH4)2SO4, 1, pH 5.5) with CaCl2, trace elements (FeSO4.7H2O; MnCl2.4H2O; ZnSO4.7H2O; CuSO4.5H2O), casein, yeast extract, peptone, B-vitamins or amino acids. Evaluations were based on the mycelial growth in solid or liquid culture (mm day -1 or mg day -1 ) and visual analysis of the colony. The addition of CaCl2 and trace elements was very important for the major mycelial growth of the fungi. The addition of casein and inositol to the medium did not have a significant effect on growth. The best growth result in solid medium was obtained with the basal medium plus the addition of yeast extract and peptone. In relation to the other nutrient sources, the mycelial growth in the presence of amino acids darkened the medium after two weeks. The addition of B-vitamins to the basal medium lead to slower mycelial growth; however, growth was more visually dense when compared to other nutritional sources. B-vitamins added separately did not have the same result, suggesting that the fungus requires two or more vitamins at the same time for better mycelial growth.
Shrinkage Estimation of Expression Fold Change As an Alternative to Testing Hypotheses of Equivalent Expression

Research on analyzing microarray data has focused on the problem of identifying differentially expressed genes to the neglect of the problem of how to integrate evidence that a gene is differentially expressed with information on the extent of its differential expression. Consequently, researchers currently prioritize genes for further study either on the basis of volcano plots or, more commonly, according to simple estimates of the fold change after filtering the genes with an arbitrary statistical significance threshold. While the subjective and informal nature of the former practice precludes quantification of its reliability, the latter practice is equivalent to using a hard-threshold estimator of the expression ratio that is not known to perform well in terms of mean-squared error, the sum of estimator variance and squared estimator bias. On the basis of two distinct simulation studies and data from different microarray studies, we systematically compared the performance of several estimators representing both current practice and shrinkage. We find that the threshold-based estimators usually perform worse than the maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) and they often perform far worse as quantified by estimated mean-squared risk. By contrast, the shrinkage estimators tend to perform as well as or better than the MLE and never much worse than the MLE, as expected from what is known about shrinkage. However, a Bayesian measure of performance based on the prior information that few genes are differentially expressed indicates that hard-threshold estimators perform about as well as the local false discovery rate (FDR), the best of the shrinkage estimators studied. Based on the ability of the latter to leverage information across genes, we conclude that the use of the local-FDR estimator of the fold change instead of informal or threshold-based combinations of statistical tests and non-shrinkage estimators can be expected to substantially improve the reliability of gene prioritization at very little risk of doing so less reliably.
Analyse économique des politiques de transferts de technologie et la corruption — Economic Analysis of technology transferring and corruption

Resume Parmi les strategies de transition vers la societe basee sur la connaissance une place est allouee a la diffusion des savoirs et le transfert des technologies. Le succes des transferts de technologie depend des accords entre les firmes, de la confiance mutuelle et des lois au sujet de la propriete intellectuelle. Le type d'accord de transfert, quant a lui, depend de l'environnement institutionnel, et, naturellement, du type de concurrence. La violation des lois et des accords a souvent lieu a l’occasion des transferts de technologie et des connaissances. Une des formes de violation est liee a la corruption. En premier lieu nous discutons les raisons economiques, culturelles et sociales qui font que la corruption existe et en quoi elle est nuisible pour des differents types d’economies. En second lieu, nous analysons les raisons d’etre des lois qui regissent les droits a la propriete intellectuelle, essayons de comprendre pourquoi elles ne sont pas toujours respectees, et quelle peut etre le genre des degâts que les violations provoquent. En troisieme lieu, nous analysons les politiques de diffusion des connaissances partant d’une situation simple, ou le transfert se produit en forme d’investissements directs (vente de ses produits, procedes de fabrication ou connaissances) entre les firmes heterogenes du point de vue d’equipement et de competence technologiques. Nous presentons des modeles analysant des consequences de la corruption dans quelques situations stylisees telles que: Donateur et destinataire font usage des technologies de differents niveaux de performances : — Le destinataire, « moins developpe » des deux, cherche a pirater la technologie innovante ; — La technologie legalement transferee (a bas prix par rapport aux couts lies a sa conception) occasionne l’accroissement de la concurrence entre les deux agents au detriment du donateur; — La corruption se produit, quand la technologie transferee est de qualite « mediocre » en comparaison avec celle qui a ete negociee. Dans chacun des cas la corruption peut se produire entrainant des contre-performances pendant le transfert et l'introduction d’une technologie dans le processus de la production, puisque l'efficacite d’une technologie peut etre differente selon les entreprises acquereuses. Nos modeles, decrivent des circonstances dans lesquelles la corruption peut surgir, et ils montrent, d’une part, pourquoi le comportement corrompu peut etre profitable pour des agents et pour la societe dans son entier. D’autre part, ils permettent d'evaluer des pertes economiques de la politique de R&D dues a la corruption.
The Influence of Family Political Discussion on Youth Civic Development: Which Parent Qualities Matter?

Evidence suggesting that the growth of civic roots in adolescence may be crucial to the long-term development of citizenship has stimulated research into factors that might influence civic development during this time. One interesting finding to emerge from that exploration is the apparent importance of discussion to the development of civic competence. Adolescents who discuss politics and current events with their parents, peers, or teachers tend to score higher than other youth on measures of civic behaviors, attitudes, and skills. They develop higher levels of political knowledge, show greater intention to vote in the future, and do better on a range of civic outcomes from petitioning and boycotting to raising money for charities and participating in community meetings (Torney-Purta et al. 2001; Andolina et al. 2003).
User and Performance Impacts from Franklin Upgrades

The NERSC flagship computer Cray XT4 system"Franklin" has gone through three major upgrades: quad core upgrade, CLE 2.1 upgrade, and IO upgrade, during the past year. In this paper, we will discuss the various aspects of the user impacts such as user access, user environment, and user issues etc from these upgrades. The performance impacts on the kernel benchmarks and selected application benchmarks will also be presented.
On the Lightning Electromagnetic Fields due to Channel with Variable Return Stroke Velocity

Numerical field expressions are proposed to evaluate the electromagnetic fields due to the lightning channel with variable values of return stroke velocity. Previous calculation methods generally use an average value for the return stroke velocity along a lightning channel. The proposed method can support different velocity profiles along a lightning channel in addition to the widely used channel-base current functions and also the general form of the engineering current models directly in the time domain without the need to apply any extra conversions. Moreover, a sample of the measured lightning current is used to validate the proposed method while the velocity profile is simulated by the general velocity function. The simulated fields based on constant and variable values of velocity are compared to the corresponding measured fields. The results show that the simulated fields based on the proposed method are in good agreement with the corresponding measured fields.
Tourism Development and Poverty Alleviation

Tourism development has become an important strategy to spur the country’s rural economy and social development and, especially, to alleviate poverty in China over the past two decades. This study examines tourism development and poverty alleviation in the Chinese context and explores the role of community-based tourism activities to secure and improve people’s livelihoods, using a “tourist model village” in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China, as a case study. The study reveals that tourism has not only provided a supplementary income and new employment opportunities to the rural community, but also has increased the appreciation of local culture and rural lifestyle. However, although the impacts of tourism are substantial for the few people who directly benefit, most residents have not benefited much from tourism. Tourism does not reduce rural poverty as much as might be expected from a large rural-based industry. There is great potential for public supporting system and local entrepreneurship to
The Contrastive Study and Translation Strategies on Conceptual Metaphor in Chinese and English Political Discourses

This thesis is intended to make a contrastive analysis with regard to the use of metaphors the public speeches at foreign university made by the American politicians and by the Chinese politicians with the guidance of Layoff's conceptual metaphor theory so as to find out the similarities and differences in metaphors in Chinese and English political discourses. The ultimate purpose of this thesis is to put forward some strategies, which will benefit future metaphor translation.