Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aesthetic appreciation of architecture in lay people and experts

Es ist eine einzigartige Eigenschaft von Menschen, die Asthetik ihrer Umgebung wertzuschatzen. Dieses Phanomen betrifft nicht nur Kunstwerke oder Naturschauspiele, es erstreckt sich bis hin zu unserer nachstgelegenen Umgebung in welcher wir leben und arbeiten: die gebaute Umwelt. Auch wenn Personen westlicher Kulturen ihre meiste Zeit in Innenraumen verbringen, existiert nur wenig Forschung daruber, wie spezifische Variationen architektonischer Merkmale menschliches Verhalten beeinflussen. Daruber hinaus mussen bisherige Forschungsbefunde zur neuronalen Untermauerung asthetischer Wertschatzung fur den Bereich der Architektur noch uberpruft werden. Um diesen Forschungsfragen nachzugehen, wurde der Effekt der Kontur, der Raumhohe und der wahrgenommenen Geschlossenheit von Innenraumen auf Gefallensbewertungen von Laien und Experten der Architektur untersucht. Bisherige Forschungsergebnisse, welche dem linken dorsolateralen prafrontalen Cortex (linker DLPFC) eine wichtige Rolle fur asthetische Bewertungen zuschreiben, wurden zudem aufgegriffen, um diesen Zusammenhang mit Hilfe transkranieller Gleichstromstimulation (tDCS) fur architektonische Stimuli zu testen. Innerhalb beider Versuchsgruppen wurden Wechselwirkungen zwischen den Effekten von Raummerkmalen auf Gefallensbewertungen gefunden. Diese Ergebnisse legen nicht nur nahe, dass spezifische Raumkompositionen fur asthetische Bewertungen ausschlaggebend sind, sondern auch, dass sich der Einfluss jedes einzelnen Raummerkmals auf Gefallensbewertungen von Experten und Laien in ihrem Ausmas unterscheidet. Allerdings wurde kein Effekt der Gleichstromstimulation auf die asthetischen Bewertungen beider Versuchsgruppen gefunden. In Hinblick auf neuere Erkenntnisse zu variierenden tDCS-Effekten auf den DLPFC, deuten diese Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass die kortikale Exzitabilitat dieses Gehirnbereichs nicht in der intendierten Art und Weise beeinflusst wurde.
Cognitive activity modelling: a case study of lane change schemas and sensation seeking

We propose a method to investigate differences of driving at a tactical level, between different categories of drivers. We analysed the naturalistic driving performance of 19 French drivers using an instrumented vehicle. We assessed their sensation seeking scores with the Zuckerman questionnaire. We observed a significant correlation between their sensation seeking score and their mean speed on motorway. We set up a method to model their tactical behaviour and investigate possible correlation between their sensation seeking score and their tendency to perform certain types of behaviour. We applied it to the study of lane changes on motorways. We could model two categories of lane changes but we show that they were not correlated with the sensation seeking score. Despite this negative first result, we are proposing an innovative approach for this kind of study.
Survey on Contribution of Agent Technology for Implementing an Application for Mobile devices

Internet technology is spread widely in a short time span. With the growth of internet electronic data exchange is also increasing; which is responsible for the invention of e-business. The use of e-commerce is also suddenly increases with the upcoming technologies invented in the field of e-business. The traditional e-commerce system requires the human interaction for selling to buying process, but with the invention of intelligent agent technology the task become simpler. In a wide range of internet application new breed of software is used which is nothing but an intelligent agent. Intelligent agents are used as a supplement of human interaction, managing electronic mail and intelligent user interfaces. In the next phase of e-commerce trading mobile agent technology is introduced. Mobile agents are intelligent, pro-active and independent representatives of businesses. As we know stationary agents supports to automate trading capabilities and intelligent negotiation models; and mobile agents can easily connect with mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. This paper investigates how mobile agents can be more beneficial in e-commerce society and their contribution in e-trading.
Restoring a keystone predator may endanger a prey species in a human‐altered ecosystem: the return of the snow leopard to Sagarmatha National Park

Twenty‐five years ago, the snow leopard Uncia uncia, an endangered large cat, was eliminated from what is now Sagarmatha National Park (SNP). Heavy hunting pressure depleted that area of most medium–large mammals, before it became a park. After three decades of protection, the cessation of hunting and the recovery of wild ungulate populations, snow leopards have recently returned (four individuals). We have documented the effects of the return of the snow leopard on the population of its main wild prey, the Himalayan tahr Hemitragus jemlahicus, a ‘near‐threatened’ caprin. Signs of snow leopard presence were recorded and scats were collected along a fixed trail (130 km) to assess the presence and food habits of the snow leopard in the Park, from 2004 to 2006. Himalayan tahr, the staple of the diet, had a relative occurrence of 48% in summer and 37% in autumn, compared with the next most frequent prey, musk deer Moschus chrysogaster (summer: 20%; autumn: 15%) and cattle (summer: 15%; autumn: 27%). In early summer, the birth rate of tahr (young‐to‐female ratio: 0.8–0.9) was high. The decrease of this ratio to 0.1–0.2 in autumn implied that summer predation concentrated on young tahr, eventually altering the population by removing the kid cohort. Small populations of wild Caprinae, for example the Himalayan tahr population in SNP, are sensitive to stochastic predation events and may be led to almost local extinction. If predation on livestock keeps growing, together with the decrease of Himalayan tahr, retaliatory killing of snow leopards by local people may be expected, and the snow leopard could again be at risk of local extinction. Restoration of biodiversity through the return of a large predator has to be monitored carefully, especially in areas affected by humans, where the lack of important environmental components, for example key prey species, may make the return of a predator a challenging event.
Evidence of adaptive evolution in the cranial morphology of Tropidurid lizards from coastal Peru

Head morphology is known for being a good predictor of diet characteristics in lizards. Head height and width are considered to be the most important head dimensions being related to a higher bite force, which allows certain lizards to consume different prey items. In this study head dimensions are compared between four species of the South American lava lizard genus Microlophus , which were paired considering their main diet (herbivorous and insectivorous). Head height, width and length were measured for each species and compared between them independently of body size. It was found that head height and width were strongly related with the diet of each species, as the ones with a semi-herbivore diet showed bigger values for these traits. Additionally, the head was longer in insectivorous species, which is a result not reported before. The different morphologies of the study species support a possible case of adaptive evolution, since both types of diet and head morphology arose from different clades in the Microlophus phylogeny. Consequently, the results of this study give evidence of a strong link between species and their constraints on specific diets. Further ecomorphological studies are needed to enrich the knowledge about this subject which is relatively understudied in South American desert lizards.
Notes on the genus Hydraenida GERMAIN, with description of a new species from Chile (Coleoptera: Hydraenidae)

A new species of Hydraenida GERMAIN, H. guerreroi sp.n. , is described from Chile. It is well characterised by the structure of the aedeagus. The sexual dimorphism of the pronotum of the species of Hydraenida is discussed, and some ecological data of H. guerreroi and H. sanctijacobi JACH are provided. The aedeagus of the unknown species figured by BALFOUR-BROWNE (1975) is confirmed to be H. robusta PERKINS, as suggested by PERKINS (1980).
Comparison of Investment Behaviour of Source Countries in China

Foreign direct investment in China by country of origin, on the one hand, presents significant diversification in terms of the total number of investing countries; on the other hand, it also shows great concentration in terms of the overwhelming dominance of developing source countries, particularly the Asian Newly Industrialising Economies. This article aims to explore the characteristics and investment behaviour of the major source countries and, in particular, to compare the differences in investment behaviour of the two source country groups of developing and developed source countries. It argues that because of the differences in economic and technological development levels, developing and developed country investors should have differences in their investment behaviour. This study revealed several main differences in investment behaviour in terms of investment pattern, mode of entry, export propensity and the use of production technology between developing and developed source countries in China.
On The Correlated Impact Of The Factors Of Risk Aversion On Decision-Making

Risk aversion is among the most advertised and complex factors influencing a decision, but it is itself subject to an intricate complex of both objective and subjective factors. The present paper set out to investigate some of the factors that would have appeared obvious in influencing attitudes towards risk, such as value of options, probability of options, level of information (specifically on probability) and position of the respondent relative to the outcome of the risk (loss or gain). For this purpose we devised a survey testing each of these elements and allowing for interpretation of their interdependence. After analyzing hypothetical situations, we also investigated how these were reflected in self-assessment and real-life behavior. What we found is that, although these factors do play their intuitive role in fundamenting decisions in contexts of risk, they are ill correlated to one another and may themselves not be coherent across different contexts.
A Bayesian Examination of Weak Identification in Stock Price Decompositions

This paper employs the state-space model to reexamine the fundamental issue in finance about whether it is the expected returns or the expected dividends growth that is primarily responsible for the stock price variations. We use Bayesian methods to conduct inference and show that there is a substantial uncertainty about the contributions of expected returns and expected dividends to the fluctuation in the price-dividend ratio when using the aggregate returns and dividends data. The substantial uncertainty of the contributions results from the model being weakly identified, in the sense of Nelson and Startz (2007). Our finding challenges the long held notion in the existing literature that it is the expected returns that contribute most to the price-dividend
Centralized Fusion of Unscented Kalman Filter Based on Huber Robust Method for Nonlinear Moving Target Tracking

We propose a robust method for tracking nonlinear target with the fusion unscented Kalman filter (FUKF). We noticed that when some outliers exist in the measurements of the sensors, they cannot track the target accurately by using the standard Kalman filters. The robust statistics theory is used in this paper to solve this problem. The measurement noise variance which is at the time of the outlier is restructured through minimizing the designed cost function. Then, the standard fusion unscented Kalman filter is used to track the target in order to avoid the bias brought by the linear approximation. Compared to the traditional tracking method and Huber robust method (HFUKF), this method has a more accurate performance and can track the target efficiently while the outliers exist. Last, simulation examples in three different conditions are given and the simulation results show the advantages of the proposed method over the fusion unscented Kalman filter (FUKF) and the Huber robust method (HFUKF).
Demand planning approaches to aggregating and forecasting interrelated demands for safety stock and backup capacity planning

Results of demand planning serve as the basis of every planning activity in a demand–supply network and ultimately determine the effectiveness of manufacturing and logistic planning, such as capacity and safety stock planning, in the network. The uncertainty of demand signals that are propagated and magnified over the network becomes the crucial cause of ineffective operation plans. With the globalization of demand–supply networks and the desire for a more integrated operation plan, demand planning is now one of the greatest challenges facing manufacturers. To manage the demand variability, appropriate demand aggregation and statistical forecasting approaches are known to be effective. This paper will use the bivariate VAR(1) time-series model as a study vehicle to investigate the effects of aggregating two interrelated demands. It is shown that the aggregated time series of two VAR(1) times series is equivalent to the sum of two AR(1) time series. Through theoretical development, the paper further explores the properties of the aggregated time series and provides guidelines for practitioners to determine proper aggregation and forecasting approaches. An important finding of this research is that demand aggregation is far more effective than statistical forecasting in operations planning for any two demands with low positive correlation or negative correlation.
DEVELOPMENT OF NIR SPECTROSCOPY MODELS FOR STARCH CONTENT PREDICTION AND ETHANOL PRODUCTION FROM MUTANT GRAIN SORGHUM by KAELIN E. SAUL

The growing demands for renewable energy sources have led researchers to investigate other biomass sources, aside from maize. Grain sorghum is comparable to maize in its starch content and can be grown in regions with drier climates, where maize is a less suitable crop for these areas. In attempts to increase yield prior to harvest and for ethanol production, this study focuses on mutant grain sorghum. One hundred and nine mutant grain sorghum samples were analyzed for their chemical and physical properties and fermented into ethanol. The current method for starch analysis is time-consuming and tedious. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) models were developed as fast, cost-effective, and non-destructive methods for grain sorghum starch content analysis. Each mutated grain sorghum sample was scanned in a wavelength range from 4,000 to 10,000 cm as a whole grain and in flour form. Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression method was used for NIR model development. The coefficients of determination (R) of 0.77 and 0.90 were achieved for starch content calibration and prediction models, respectively. This model demonstrates the possibility of a positive correlation between the actual and calculated values for starch content. Another PLS first derivative model with R = 0.95 for calibration and a reduced wavelength range (4,000-5,176 cm), using 39 of the original 109 samples (27 for calibration and 8 for validation), was created to predict the fermentation efficiency.
Identifying critical aspects from learners' perspective

This paper discusses what it takes to identify critical aspects from learners’ perspectives. The critical aspect is a vital component of variation theory, and can be described as “a particular way of seeing something . defined by the aspects discerned, that is, the critical features of what is seen” [1]. In order to experience reading, for example, you have to discern all the aspects in reading, such as the shapes of letters, the sounds in different contexts, the meaning of a word and the direction of a text as well as the semantic value of a word. Without discerning these aspects of the phenomenon ‘reading’, it is not possible to experience reading. That is made possible by discerning aspects when they vary, like letters that in a way are similar, but yet have different shapes. For someone with impaired reading, all aspects are not discerned. The difference between aspects and critical aspects is that the latter are those needed to develop learning. In the current study, respondents with dyslexia describe what they experience when they read. From this data as well as from earlier studies using variation theory, the focus turns to whether it is possible to identify each person’s potential critical aspects. In this study the object of learning is reading ability. The questions the paper responds to are: • How do the respondents themselves explain their reading deficit? • What potential critical aspects could be found by analyzing what the respondents already have discerned?
Simulations of solitonic core mergers in ultralight axion dark matter cosmologies

Using three-dimensional simulations, we study the dynamics and final structure of merging solitonic cores predicted to form in ultralight axion dark matter halos. The classical, Newtonian equations of motion of a self-gravitating scalar field are described by the Schr\"odinger-Poisson equations. We investigate mergers of ground state (boson star) configurations with varying mass ratios, relative phases, orbital angular momenta and initial separation with the primary goal to understand the mass loss of the emerging core by gravitational cooling. Previous results showing that the final density profiles have solitonic cores and Navarro-Frenk-White-like tails are confirmed. In binary mergers, the final core mass does not depend on initial phase difference or angular momentum and only depends on mass ratio, total initial mass, and total energy of the system. For nonzero angular momenta, the otherwise spherical cores become rotating ellipsoids. The results for mergers of multiple cores are qualitatively identical.
Data Driven Based Method for Field Information Sensing

Acquiring the field information on temperature, pressure, concentration, or velocity is crucial for the monitoring of chemical reactors, multiphase flow systems, heat transfer units, atmospheric pollutants diffusion, and underground pollutant migration. In this paper, a dimensionality reduction matrix completion (DRMC) method is proposed for the field information sensing (FIS) of objects of interest from the scattered point measurement data. An objective functional that casts the FIS task as an optimization problem is proposed. An iteration scheme is developed for solving the proposed objective functional. Numerical simulations are implemented to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. It is found that differing from common inverse problems, numerical simulation approaches, and tomography based field measurement methods, in the proposed method the field information can be reconstructed without the knowledge on governing equations of the measurement objects, initial conditions, boundary conditions, and physical properties of materials, except the limited number of the measurement data. As a result, an alternative insight is introduced for the FIS problems.
Diagnosing ice sheet grounding line stability from landform morphology

Abstract. The resilience of a marine-based ice sheet is strongly governed by the stability of its grounding lines, which are in turn sensitive to ocean-induced melting, calving, and flotation of the ice margin. Since the grounding line is also a sedimentary environment, the constructional landforms that are built here may reflect elements of the processes governing this dynamic and potentially vulnerable environment. Here we analyse a large dataset (n = 6275) of grounding line landforms mapped on the western Ross Sea continental shelf from high-resolution geophysical data. The population is divided into two distinct morphotypes by their morphological properties: recessional moraines (consistently narrow, closely spaced, low amplitude, symmetric, and straight) and grounding zone wedges (broad, widely spaced, higher amplitude, asymmetric, sinuous, and highly variable). Landform morphotypes cluster with alike forms that transition abruptly between morphotypes both spatially and within a retreat sequence. Their form and distribution are largely independent of water depth, bed slope, and position relative to glacial troughs. Similarly, we find no conclusive evidence for morphology being determined by the presence or absence of an ice shelf. Instead, grounding zone wedge construction is favoured by a higher sediment flux and a longer-held grounding position. We propose two endmember modes of grounding line retreat: (1) an irregular mode, characterised by grounding zone wedges with longer standstills and accompanied by larger-magnitude retreat events, and (2) a steady mode, characterised by moraine sequences that instead represent more frequent but smaller-magnitude retreat events. We suggest that while sediment accumulation and progradation may prolong the stability of a grounding line position, progressive development of sinuosity in the grounding line due to spatially variable sediment delivery likely destabilises the grounding position by enhanced ablation, triggering large-magnitude retreat events. Here, the concept of stability is multifaceted and paradoxical, and neither mode can be characterised as marking fast or slow retreat. Diagnosing grounding line stability based on landform products should be considered for a wider geographic range, yet this large dataset of landforms prompts the need to better understand the sensitivity of marine-based grounding lines to processes and feedbacks governing retreat and what stability means in the context of future grounding line behaviour.
Models for Short-Term Forecasting of Spike Occurrences in Australian Electricity Markets: A Comparative Study

Understanding the dynamics of extreme observations, so called spikes, in real-time electricity prices has a crucial role in risk-management and trading. Yet the contemporaneous literature appears to be at the beginning of understanding the dierent mechanisms that drive spike probabilities. We reconsider the problem of short-term, i.e., half hourly, forecasts of spike occurrence in the Australian electricity market and develop models, tailored to capture the data properties. These models are variations of a dynamic binary response model, extended to allow for regime specic eects and an asymmetric link function. Furthermore, we study a recently proposed approach based on the autoregressive conditional hazard model. The proposed models use load forecasts and lagged log-prices as exogenous variables. Our in- and out-of-sample results suggest that some specications dominate and can therefore be recommended for the problem of spike forecasting.
An Excitation Signal Source with Capability of Temperature-drift Suppression for Eddy Current Detection

An excitation signal source which is capable of suppressing temperature drifting is designed in this paper. The influence of temperature drifting of the amplifier on the stability and accuracy of data measurements is also studied. The mathematical model on which the design is based is introduced and discussed. The experimental results show that the design is effective in suppressing temperature drifting of the amplifier, therefore it significantly improves the consistency and accuracy of results when it is applied to the application of thickness measurement of PCB copper foil . Keywords-Temperature-drifting, Integrating circuit, Lock-in amplifier, Excitation signal