Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of Worldwide Tsunami Hazard Map for Evacuation Planning and Rescue Operations

The world tsunami hazard map is developed to understand the pattern of occurrence of tsunami across the globe and for using this database for preparing effective evacuation plan and rescue operations. It has been developed by using Web GIS tools. HTML, CSS, Java Script, JQuery, IIS and Maps API are utilized to develop hazard map. These data can be even used by government authorities as well as by other nodal agencies.
Potential Chimeric Peptides to Block the SARS-CoV-2 Spike RBD

Background: There are no known medicines or vaccines to control the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (nCoV). Antiviral peptides are superior to conventional drugs and may also be effective against COVID-19. Hence, we investigated the SARS-CoV-2 Spike RBD (nCoV-RBD) that interacts with hACE2 for viral attachment and entry. Methods: Three strategies and bioinformatics approaches were employed to design potential nCoV-RBD - hACE2 interaction-blocking peptides that may restrict viral attachment and entry. Firstly, the key residues interacting with nCoV-RBD - hACE2 are identified and hACE2 sequence based peptides are designed. Second, peptides from five antibacterial peptide databases that block nCoV-RBD are identified; finally, a chimeric peptide design approach is used to design peptides that can bind to key nCoV-RBD residues. The final peptides are selected based on their physiochemical properties, numbers and positions of key residues binding, binding energy, and antiviral properties. Results: We found (i) three amino acid stretches in hACE2 interact with nCoV-RBD; (ii) effective peptides must bind to three key positions of nCoV-RBD: Gly485/Phe486/Asn487, Gln493, and Gln498/Thr500/Asn501; (iii) Phe486, Gln493, and Asn501 are critical residues; (iv) AC20 and AC23 derived from hACE2 may block two key critical positions; (iv) DBP6 identified from databases can block the three sites of the nCoV-RBD interacting with one critical position Gln498; (v) seven chimeric peptides were considered promising among which cnCoVP-3, cnCoVP-4, and cnCoVP-7 are the top three; and (vi) cnCoVP-4 meets all the criteria and is the best peptide. Conclusion: All the ten peptides need experimental validation for their therapeutic efficacy.
A Modeling Study on the Impacts of Typhoon Morakot's (2009) Vortex Structure on Rainfall in Taiwan Using Piecewise Potential Vorticity Inversion

In this study, the impacts of Typhoon Morakot’s (2009) vortex structure on the extreme rainfall in Taiwan were investigated using piecewise potential vorticity (PV) inversion. The control (CTL) experiment, starting at 0000 UTC 7 August or 15 h before landfall, reproduced the event realistically and was validated against the observations. By altering the PV perturbation inside 750 km from its center, we conducted sensitivity experiments in which the size and circulation strength of TY Morakot were reduced/weakened in the initial field in several different ways. In the sensitivity tests, particularly those in which the initial PV within the inner core (≤ 250 km) was significantly weakened, the storm made landfall earlier, stayed over land longer, and exited Taiwan later. Such track changes were accompanied by a contraction and spin-up of the inner core at the early stages of the integration, Corresponding author: Shin-Yi Huang, Department of Earth Sciences, National Taiwan Normal University. No. 88, Sec. 4, Ting-Chou Rd., Taipei, 11677 Taiwan E-mail: hshinyi0828@gmail.com # The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. J-stage Advance Published Date: 20 April 2020 Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan Vol. 98, No. 4 708
Efficiency of the Brazilian Bitcoin: A DFA Approach

Bitcoin’s evolution has attracted the attention of investors and researchers looking for a better understanding of the efficiency of cryptocurrency markets, considering their prices and volatility. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this understanding by studying the degree of persistence of the Bitcoin measured by the Hurst exponent, considering prices from the Brazilian market, and comparing with Bitcoin in USD as a benchmark. We applied Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), for the period from 9 April 2017 to 30 June 2018, using daily closing prices, with a total of 429 observations. We focused on two prices of Bitcoins resulting from negotiations made by two different Brazilian financial institutions: Foxbit and Mercado. The results indicate that Mercado and Foxbit returns tend to follow Bitcoin dynamics and all of them show persistent behavior, although the persistence in slightly higher for the Brazilian Bitcoin. However, this evidence does not necessarily mean opportunities for abnormal profits, as aspects such as liquidity or transaction costs could be impediments to this occurrence.
Estrogenic potency of effluent from two sewage treatment works in the United Kingdom

Rainbow trout were exposed for 3 weeks (in a flow‐through system) to various dilutions of treated effluent (25, 50, 75, and 100%) from Harpenden and Chelmsford sewage treatment works (STW) during November 1994 and August 1996, respectively, and the induction of plasma vitellogenin was measured. Significant (p < 0.05) increases in plasma vitellogenin concentrations occurred in fish held in effluent from Harpenden STW at concentrations of 50% and above. At Chelmsford STW, the effluent appeared to be more potent, causing induction of vitellogenin in fish at concentrations as low as 25% (compared with 50% for the Harpenden effluent). Exposure to lower concentrations of effluent emanating from Chelmsford in April of the following year indicated that estrogenic activity was diluted to no‐effect levels at this STW at concentrations between 12 and 25%.
Observer‐predictor feedback for consensus of discrete‐time multiagent systems with both state and input delays

This article is concerned with the consensus problem for discrete‐time multiagent systems with both state and input delays. Single observer‐predictor‐based protocols and multiple observer‐predictors feedback protocols are simultaneously established to predict the future state such that the input delay that can be arbitrarily large yet bounded is completely compensated. It is shown that the consensus of the multiagent system can be achieved by the single/multiple observer‐predictors feedback protocol. Moreover, sufficient conditions guaranteeing the consensus of the multiagent system are provided in terms of the stability of some simple observer‐error systems, and the separation principle is discovered. Finally, a numerical example is worked out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
Initial Results From the Newly Upgraded LTX-β

LTX-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\beta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, the upgraded Lithium Tokamak Experiment, recently began its first campaign with a goal to study the transport properties of gradient-free electron temperature profile equilibria with increased toroidal field and neutral beam injection. The temperature-gradient-free equilibria in LTX were enabled by the lithium plasma-facing surface. To make the lithium surface conditions more consistent for LTX-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\beta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, a new, faster lithium evaporator system has been developed. The toroidal magnetic field has been nearly doubled to ≥0.3 T. Auxiliary heating and fueling with a high flux (35 A, 20 kV) neutral beam has begun. The beam provides core fueling without cold edge neutrals, to test whether flat temperature profiles can be sustained, and makes possible core ion temperature measurements via charge exchange recombination spectroscopy. Neutral beam fueling has been demonstrated with increases in line-integrated density. The coupling of the beam matches well with NUBEAM predictions for shine through. Improved performance has been observed following lithium evaporative coatings and an increase in field strength.
Achieving Privacy-Preserving and Verifiable Data Sharing in Vehicular Fog With Blockchain

Vehicular sensing is advocated to perform data collection by exploiting a plethora of vehicular on-board sensors; meanwhile, with the merging of vehicular sensing and fog computing, the deployed road side units (RSUs) can act as fog nodes to collect and share vehicular sensory data at the network edge. However, there are still several problems in terms of the secure and reliable sharing of sensory data in vehicular fog. To resolve these issues, in this paper, we present an efficient, privacy-preserving and verifiable sensory data collection and sharing scheme with a permissioned blockchain in vehicular fog. During the data collection phase, by combining the homomorphic 2-DNF (Disjunctive Normal Form) cryptosystem and an identity-based signcryption scheme, our proposed scheme achieves the secure and verifiable computation of the average and variance of the collected vehicular sensory data. Meanwhile, to achieve efficient and reliable data sharing, we exploit a permissioned blockchain to maintain an immutable and tamper-proof record of the derived sensory data. Security analysis demonstrates the security properties of the proposed scheme, in terms of location privacy preservation, verifiability and immutability. Performance evaluations are conducted to validate the efficiency of the proposed scheme, i.e., improvements in computation and communication efficiency in comparison with a scheme without exploiting blockchain.
Asymptotic Behavior of Spatial Coupling LDPC Coding for Compute-and-Forward Two-Way Relaying

Compute-and-forward (CAF) relaying is an effective way to increase bandwidth efficiency of wireless two-way relay channels. Design of error-correcting codes and their decoding algorithms suitable for CAF relaying schemes remains an important issue to be studied. In this paper, we will analyze an asymptotic behavior of LDPC codes over two-way relay channels based on density evolution (DE). Because of the asymmetric characteristics of the channel, we use the population dynamics DE combined with DE formulas for asymmetric channels to obtain the belief propagation (BP) thresholds. Additionally, we also evaluate the asymptotic performance of spatially coupled LDPC codes for two-way relay channels. The results indicate that the spatially coupled codes yield improvements in the BP threshold compared with corresponding uncoupled codes for two-way relay channels.
Fusarium wilt of banana in Australia: a review

The history of Fusarium wilt of bananas (caused by F. oxysporum f.sp. cubense) and the research conducted on the disease in Australia is summarised in this review. Subjects covered include the classification of banana cultivars, the cultivars in production in the Australian banana industry, the distribution and diversity of the pathogen in Australia and pathogenicity and control of the disease.
Designing Secure and Efficient Biometric-Based Access Mechanism for Cloud Services

The demand for remote data storage and computation services is increasing exponentially in our data-driven society; thus, the need for secure access to such data and services. In this article, we design a new biometric-based authentication protocol to provide secure access to a remote (cloud) server. In the proposed approach, we consider biometric data of a user as a secret credential. We then derive a unique identity from the user's biometric data, which is further used to generate the user's private key. In addition, we propose an efficient approach to generate a session key between two communicating parties using two biometric templates for a secure message transmission. In other words, there is no need to store the user's private key anywhere and the session key is generated without sharing any prior information. A detailed Real-Or-Random (ROR) model based formal security analysis, informal (non-mathematical) security analysis and also formal security verification using the broadly-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool reveal that the proposed approach can resist several known attacks against (passive/active) adversary. Finally, extensive experiments and a comparative study demonstrate the efficiency and utility of the proposed approach.
A Coordinated Voltage Control for Overvoltage Mitigation in LV Distribution Grids

The design of intelligent strategies for grid management is a cost-effective solution to increase the hosting capacity of distribution grids without investing in the reinforcement of the grid assets. This paper presents a distributed voltage control algorithm to coordinate Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) and Distributed Generation (DG) in a scenario of high renewable penetration. The proposed control algorithm relies on a dual decomposition approach and aims at mitigating possible voltage rise events occurring in the Low Voltage (LV) grid by solving an optimization problem of power minimization. Instead of using local control strategies, in the proposed solution, the voltage control burden is distributed among all the available resources in the grid, which cooperate to resolve the existing voltage violations. The performance of the developed voltage control has been tested under realistic distribution grid scenarios, using stochastic load profiles together with photovoltaic generation profiles obtained in the presence of both clear sky and cloudy sky conditions. The algorithm is also compared to a strategy that considers only DG management, highlighting the benefits associated to the proposed coordination of DG and Energy Storage Systems (ESSs).
GEOTAXIS/PHOTOTAXIS AND BIOCHEMICAL PATTERNS IN HETEROCAPSA (=CACHONINA) ILLDEFINA (DINOPHYCEAE) DURING DIEL VERTICAL MIGRATIONS

Two separate experiments with Heterocapsa (=Cachonina) illdefina Herman et Sweeney, one with and the other without water volume replacement, were performed in a 250‐L laboratory mesocosm (45‐cm diameter × 150‐cm height) to examine how diel vertical migration (DVM) relates to taxis sign and strength and to cellular biochemical state. Although only the cell population grown with water volume replacement maintained a division per day over the course of the experiment, periodic measurements during both experiments demonstrated that cells aggregating at the surface during the light period generally were deficient in all measured biochemical constituents compared to cells obtained from a midcolumn depth. More specifically, H. illdefina cells that aggregated at the surface during the light period in both experiments exhibited weakened positive geotaxis but strengthened positive phototaxis and were very deficient in lipid and free amino acid compared to midcolumn cells. Cells sampled at midcolumn during the light period exhibited similar but weaker taxes changes compared to surface samples, and geotaxis strength was inversely correlated with cell diameter, cellular DNA and protein content, and RNA/DNA ratio. In comparison, published data on Gymnodinium breve Davis, a harmful algal bloom species, showed that cells aggregating at the surface during the light period generally exhibited weakened negative geotaxis and strengthened positive phototaxis and were very deficient in lipid and chl a compared to midcolumn cells. Although the persistent tendency toward negative geotaxis was weaker in midcolumn subpopulations throughout the day, its strength was inversely correlated with cell diameter and cellular lipid content. The combined results for both species support a revised conceptual model of optimized DVM in autotrophic marine dinoflagellates incorporating generalized expressions of taxis and biochemical state of individual cells.
Fusarioses of certain wheat grain categories and their mycotoxicological infection

Certain climatological conditions favor the infection of wheat by field moulds, and influence very much the yield, the overall quality and the hygienic properties of the wheat. The investigations included 6 wheat varieties from the first locality and 5 varieties from the second locality. The investigated samples were most often contaminated by fungi of the genus Fusarium. Each wheat sample was classified with respect to the degree of contamination by these fungi as slightly fusarious contaminated and very fusarious contaminated grain. The mycotoxins, their metabolites, were isolated from the greatest number of contaminated grains.
Virtual Inertia From Smart Loads

The inertia of future power systems is expected to decrease with increasing penetration of renewable energy resources. Sufficient inertia is required to avoid large fluctuations in grid frequency and also limit the excessive rate of change of frequency (RoCoF). Unlike many previous works focusing on virtual inertia on the power supply side, this paper studies and quantifies potential virtual inertia from the load side. The analysis shows that, voltage-dependent loads coupled with electric spring (ES) technology can be operated as smart loads (SL) within the +/−5% tolerance of the ac mains voltage and offer virtual inertia. Following the U.K. National Grid frequency requirements, it is shown that the ES based SL can provide virtual inertia up to an inertia coefficient of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{SL}=2.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> s (when <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n_{p}=2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) with respect to its load power rating. The effectiveness of such virtual inertia extraction from SL has been verified by the simulation study on a CIGRE benchmark microgrid with high-resolution domestic demand model. The value of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{SL}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is shown to be around 1.3 s during the most part of the day and can increase the overall system inertia coefficient by 0.53 s if all the domestic loads are transformed into the proposed smart loads.
2D MoS2-Based Threshold Switching Memristor for Artificial Neuron

In this work, we use a two-terminal 2D MoS2-based memristive device to emulate an artificial neuron. The Au/MoS2/Ag device exhibits volatile resistance switching characteristics with a low threshold voltage and a high ON-OFF ratio of 106, originating from an Ag diffusion-based filamentary process. The leaky integrate-and-fire neuron implemented with this device successfully emulates the key characteristics of a biological neuron.
CD4-CD8- T cells in CD4-Deficient Mice Provide Help for Mucosal IgA to Salmonella

Our previous studies have shown that antigen-specific mucosal immune responses are induced in CD4 gene disrupted (CD4-/-) mice after oral immunization with recombinant Salmonella expressing fragment C of tetanus toxin (rSalmonella-Tox C). Furthermore, significant delayed-type hyper responsivities were detected. These findings indicate that antigen-specific T cells are induced in the absence of CD4 molecule. In this study, we further elucidated nature of antigen-specific T cells in those immunized mice. Analysis of T cell proliferative responses showed that a significant tetanus toxoid-specific proliferation was induced in CD4-CD8-, but not CD4-CD8+, T cells from Peyer's patches and spleen of CD4-/- mice given rSalmonella-Tox C orally. Furthermore, these CD4-CD8- T cells produced Th1 (IFN-γ and IL-2) and Th2 (IL-4) cytokines after oral immunization with rSalmonella-Tox C. Finally, CD4-CD8- T cells isolated from Peyer's patches of immunized CD4-/- mice when added to B cell cultures induced increased number of tetanus toxoid-specific IgG and IgA producing cells. These results suggest that CD4-CD8- T cells in CD4-/- mice are capable of inducing antigen-specific T helper cytokines and provide help for mucosal and systemic antibody responses against orally administered rSalmonella in the absence of CD4+ T cells.
Influence of Competition at the Community Level: An Experimental Version of the Null Models Approach

A major and sometimes acrimonious debate in community ecology has been over the influence of competition on ecological patterns-both in general (Strong et al. 1984) and over particular gradients such as predation, disturbance, and productivity (Grime 1973, Newman 1973, Connell 1975, Menge and Sutherland 1976, 1987, Southwood 1977, 1988, Oksanen et al. 198 1, Tilman 1988). In recent years it has become clear that differences among studies in both predicted and observed patterns are often simply a consequence of differences in methods of quantifying the influence of competition (e.g., Goldberg and Scheiner 1993, Grace 1993). In this note, I suggest and illustrate a method to quantify one group of measures of the influence of competition: the magnitude of effects on communitylevel parameters. Community-level parameters have been the implicit dependent variable in many of the general discussions of the "importance of competition": if competition were not occurring, would species composition or diversity differ from that actually observed? However, the major bulk of the experimental work on the consequences of species interactions has been at the level of individuals-either behavior or components of individual fitness (Connell 1983, Schoener 1983, Goldberg and Barton 1992). The lack of direct experimental tests of community-level consequences of species interactions is important because measurements on a single species at a time within a multispecies community will only extend to community-level effects if species are differentiallvi affected. While such differential impacts are likely, they are rarely tested directly. More generally, univariate analyses of one species at a time do not give a quantitative assessment of effects of species interactions on the entire community that can then be statistically compared among communities or environments.
Efeito da força iônica da solução de equilíbrio na adsorção de cádmio em Latossolos brasileiros

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o efeito da forca ionica na adsorcao de Cd em amostras de 17 Latossolos (horizonte A) de diversas regioes geograficas do Brasil. A reacao dos solos com 0,167 mmol L-1 de Cd(NO3)2 foi avaliada por 72 horas em solucoes de Ca(NO3)2 a 5, 50 e 150 mmol L-1 (pH 6,5; relacao solo:solucao 1:100) com forcas ionicas de 15, 150 e 450 mmol L-1, respectivamente. A adsorcao de Cd decresceu com o aumento da forca ionica em todos os solos, com valores medios adsorvidos iguais a 12,17, 6,92 e 5,70 mmol kg-1 para as forcas ionicas de 15, 150 e 450 mmol L-1, respectivamente. Na menor forca ionica, a fracao de Cd adsorvida foi positivamente correlacionada com argila, materia orgânica, area superficial especifica, caulinita, hematita e Fe2O3 extraido pelo ataque sulfurico, ditionito-citrato-bicarbonato de sodio e pelo oxalato acido de amonio, alem do Al2O3 do ataque sulfurico. Para a forca ionica de 150 mmol L-1, nao houve correlacao entre a fracao de Cd adsorvida e os atributos dos solos, enquanto em 450 mmol L-1 houve correlacao com a materia orgânica e area superficial especifica. O Cd nao e retido por sitios de adsorcao especifica, sendo potencialmente biodisponivel nesses Latossolos.