Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross-domain Compositing with Pretrained Diffusion Models

Diffusion models have enabled high-quality, conditional image editing capabilities. We propose to expand their arsenal, and demonstrate that off-the-shelf diffusion models can be used for a wide range of cross-domain compositing tasks. Among numerous others, these include image blending, object immersion, texture-replacement and even CG2Real translation or stylization. We employ a localized, iterative refinement scheme which infuses the injected objects with contextual information derived from the background scene, and enables control over the degree and types of changes the object may undergo. We conduct a range of qualitative and quantitative comparisons to prior work, and exhibit that our method produces higher quality and realistic results without requiring any annotations or training. Finally, we demonstrate how our method may be used for data augmentation of downstream tasks.
Measuring Organisation Capital at the Firm Level: A Production Function Approach

Organisation capital is one of the key intangible assets of firms, driving innovation and firm performance. Measuring this asset has been notoriously difficult, however. Differently to other intangible assets, firms do not build up organisation capital primarily by monetary investment but rather through establishing new organisational routines and building up trust, which often do not coincide with any financial expenditure. Quantifying such efforts at the firm level has largely failed so far. This paper takes up a traditional production function approach which includes, in addition to labour and tangible assets, investment in all measurable intangible assets (technological and non-technological knowledge, software and databases, firm-specific human capital, brand equity), but excluding organisation capital. The residuum of the estimation is considered as a measure of a firm' organisation capital. Using panel data from the German innovation survey, we find higher organisation capital in young and small firms. Our measure tends to show a u-shaped link to qualitative indicators such as organisational innovation.
Pecan shell by-products—phenolic compound contents and antimicrobial properties

Pecans are a popular nut throughout the world. The USA produces several million kg/yr of pecan kernels and shells. Pecan kernels have high phenolic compound content and pecan shells have even higher phenolic concentrations than the kernels. High phenolic contents in biological materials have been linked to high antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. If pecan shells could be shown to have good antimicrobial potential, then it would demonstrate possible alternative uses for this by-product of pecan production. The total phenolics, flavonoids, and phenolic acid contents were determined for native pecans from Central Texas. Then, the in vitro antimicrobial activity of pecan shell water extracts was determined for four microbes (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus mutans) and general oral cavity bacteria. The total phenolic content of the shells was 60% higher and the total flavonoid content of the shells was five times higher than the kernels. The pecan shells contained gallic, vanillic and caffeic acid. Water extracts from pecan shells inhibited the growth of the bacteria studied, and inhibited the growth of oral cavity specimens. Overall, the pecan shell water extracts showed good potential for antimicrobial activity.
The Emerging Artificial Intelligence Protocol for Hierarchical Information Network

The recent development of artificial intelligence enables a machine to achieve a human level of intelligence. Problem-solving and decision-making are two mental abilities to measure human intelligence. Many scholars have proposed different models. However, there is a gap in establishing an AI-oriented hierarchical model with a multilevel abstraction. This study proposes a novel model known as the emerged AI protocol that consists of seven distinct layers capable of providing an optimal and explainable solution for a given problem.
Turning Noises to Fingerprint-Free "Credentials": Secure and Usable Authentication for Drone Delivery

Drone delivery is an emerging service that gains growing attention. Authentication is critical to ensure a package is picked up by a legitimate drone (rather than a malicious one) and delivered to the correct receiver (rather than an attacker). As delivery drones are expensive and may carry important packages, a drone should stay away from users until the authentication succeeds. Thus, authentication approaches that require physical contact of drones cannot be applied. Bluetooth can indicate proximity without physical contact but is vulnerable to radio relay attacks. Our work leverages drone noises for authentication. While using sounds for authentication is highly usable, how to handle various attacks that manipulate sounds is an unresolved challenge. It is also unclear whether such a system is robust under various environmental sounds. We address these challenges by exploiting unique characteristics of drone noises. We thereby build an authentication system that does not rely on any sound fingerprints, keeps resilient to attacks, and is robust under environmental sounds. An extensive evaluation demonstrates its security and usability.
Effect Analysis of Climate Change on the Reproduction of Mosquitoes and Infection Rate Sensitivity for SI/SIR Epidemical Model in the Case of Malaria Disease

The purpose of this study is to improve the current methodology SI/SIR by introducing the sensitivity of infection rate to climate change variables such as temperature and humidity to reproduce infection by anophelines gambaie. The improvement provides a satisfactory model, where the number of mosquitoes is controlled by the time and seasons, which change the malaria reaction. Rwanda weather facilitates the lodgment of these vectors where the variation of temperature is ranged between 10 and 29°C and humidity is in the range of 30% – 97%. With climate change, distress the change into the number of mosquitoes is complex to change, this makes the reaction of the infection rate to respond proportionally to the change of mosquito and it is effective for the population at risk of malaria to respond to this change, especially in some season where the infection rate can be more than 0.2. Furthermore, analysis and comparison are made, where the infection rate as a time-dependent variable, demonstrate a significant result where the explanation of the result has the meaning of the climate change variables. The result provided by the new model proves the importance of the focus mostly on infection rate sensitivity.
Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Review of Systemic Barriers to Reducing the Over-Representation of Black Men in the UK Psychiatric System

This chapter briefly summaries research over the past four decades (and prior) associated with black men and mental health in the UK. The chapter also examines some responses to the research. This is because we unfortunately remain in a situation where black men in Britain are 17 times more likely than white counterparts to be diagnosed with a psychotic illness. Research into the mental health needs of black men has been conducted repeatedly in the UK, with each new generation hopeful for change. By briefly exploring some policies that have emerged to address this inequality, this chapter highlights the barriers to change.
Unisite Catalysis without Rotation of the γ-ε Domain in Escherichia coli F1-ATPase*

Unisite [γ-32P]ATP hydrolysis was studied in ECF1 from the mutant βE381C after generating a single disulfide bond between β and γ subunits to prevent the rotation of the γ/ε domain. The single β-γ cross-link was obtained by removal of the δ subunit from F1 and then treating with CuCl2 as described previously (Aggeler, R., Haughton, M. A., and Capaldi, R. A. (1996) J. Biol. Chem. 270, 9185–9191). The mutant enzyme, βE381C, had an increased overall rate of unisite hydrolysis of [γ-32P]ATP compared with the wild type ECF1 due to increases in the rate of ATP binding (k +1), Pi release (k +3), and ADP release (k +4). Release of bound substrate ([γ-32P]ATP) was also increased in the βE381C mutant. Cross-linking between Cys-381 and the intrinsic Cys-87 of γ caused a further increase in the rate of unisite catalysis, mainly by additional effects on nucleotide binding in the high affinity catalytic site (k +1 and k +4). In δ-subunit-free ECF1 from wild type or βE381C F1, addition of an excess of ATP accelerated unisite catalysis. After cross-linking, unisite catalysis of βE381C was not enhanced by the cold chase. The covalent linkage of γ to β increased the rate of unisite catalysis to that obtained by cold chase of ATP of the noncross-linked enzyme. It is concluded that the conversion of Glu-381 of β to Cys induces an activated conformation of the high affinity catalytic site with low affinity for substrate and products. This state is stabilized by cross-linking the Cys at β381 to Cys-87 of γ. We infer from the data that rotation of the γ/ε rotor in ECF1 is not linked to unisite hydrolysis of ATP at the high affinity catalytic site but to ATP binding to a second or third catalytic site on the enzyme.
The Use of Project Gutenberg and Hexagram Statistics to Help Solve Famous Unsolved Ciphers

Project Gutenberg, begun by Michael Hart in 1971, is an attempt to make public do-main electronic texts available to the pub-lic in an easily available and useable form. The number of available texts reached 60,000 by 2019. Classical cryptanalysis methods rely on the development and use of high-quality frequency tables of letter arrangements from a variety of sources. As the amount of text grows, frequency ta-bles of higher orders can be developed and may provide more solving power for clas-sical cryptographic algorithms. As a side-e? ect of the availability of a wide range of public domain texts, we were able to develop hexagram frequency tables of let-ters in the English language which were then a crucial factor to solving an unsolved transposition cipher of Mahon and Gillo-gly (2008). The texts themselves were then used as input to solve a book cipher of Thouless (1948) using the same scoring method.
The Forgotten Component of Plant Water Potential

: Experts in plant water relations are challenged to explain why the standard expression for the water potential of an intact, transpiring leaf omits one of the pressure components, namely the tissue pressure of the living leaf cells. Two questions are posed: A) Is there a reason for omitting this component? B) If not, what evidence exists that it may be ignored? When this component contributes significantly, the water potential cannot be interpreted in the accustomed way as measuring tension in the xylem sap.
Wind-driven gap development in Birkley Wood, a long-term retention of planted Sitka spruce in upland Britain

Management of planted forests in Britain is changing to incorporate biodiversity and other nontimber values by lengthening rotations, seeking alternatives to clear-felling, and identifying stands for nonintervention. However, there are particular uncertainties over stand development of exotic species on areas of high windthrow hazard. This study considered the effect of strong winds between 1987 and 2000 on stand development of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carriere) planted in 1923. Windthrown gap area increased eightfold through at least 38 separate events. Windthrow of trees assessed as stable occurred during periods of higher wind speed than those with windthrow of trees assessed as vulnerable, and there was a nonlinear relationship between wind speed and increase in gap area. Gap expansion contributed more to the increase in gap area than new gap formation, and the centre of the largest gap migrated downwind. Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of the stand remains undisturbed to an exten.
Soft-Switching Techniques for Single-Inductor Multiple-Output LED Drivers

Although a plethora of prior-art single-inductor multiple-output (SIMO) light-emitting diode (LED) drivers have been reported, they remain inadequate for resource-constraint drone applications due to compromised power efficiency and weight. This article proposes a monolithic SIMO red–green–blue–white LED driver that features high power efficiency and light weight. The former is obtained by employing our proposed soft-switched cross-current-eliminated controller and proposed on-chip bidirectional current sensor. The latter is achieved by means of employing a tiny inductor attributed to boundary conduction mode and high switching frequency. To the best of authors’ knowledge, the proposed SIMO LED driver is the first-ever design that features soft switching for all power switches and innate elimination of current cross-regulation. In comparison with the state-of-the-art designs listed in the benchmark table, the proposed design features the highest power efficiency of 96.2%, smallest output inductor of 820 nH, shortest LED current settling time of 900 ns, and the highest switching frequency of 2 MHz.
Agonist-stimulated Ligand Binding by the Platelet Integrin αIIbβ3 in a Lymphocyte Expression System (*)

The ligand binding activity of the platelet integrin αIIbβ3 is initiated by agonist-generated intraplatelet signals. We studied this process in vitro by expressing recombinant αIIbβ3 in Epstein-Barr virus-immortalized B lymphocytes. We found that phorbol ester stimulation induced the adhesion of lymphocytes expressing αIIbβ3 to immobilized fibrinogen. Moreover, replacement of the transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains of the α and β subunits of αIIbβ3 with those of αLβ2 significantly increased adherence, whereas replacement of only the cytoplasmic domains significantly decreased adherence. This suggests that transmembrane segments are involved in the agonist-induced modulation of αIIbβ3 activity. Similar results were seen when the αIIbβ3 activation-dependent monoclonal antibody PAC-1 was substituted for immobilized fibrinogen. We also found that the adherence of lymphocytes expressing β3 with either of the two αIIb/αL chimeras was similar to that of cells expressing αIIbβ3, whereas the adherence of cells expressing αIIb with either of the two β3/β2 chimeras was substantially decreased, suggesting that the identity of the cytoplasmic domain of β3, but not of αIIb, is critical for αIIbβ3 function. This report indicates that B lymphocytes contain signal transduction pathways involving protein kinase C that can increase the ligand binding activity of αIIbβ3 and demonstrates the utility of these cells as an expression system for the study of agonist-stimulated αIIbβ3 function.
Digital begriffsgeschichte: Tracing semantic change using word embeddings

Abstract Recently, the use of word embedding models (WEM) has received ample attention in the natural language processing community. These models can capture semantic information in large corpora of text by learning distributional properties of words, that is how often particular words appear in specific contexts. Scholars have pointed out the potential of WEMs for historical research. In particular, their ability to capture semantic change might assist historians studying conceptual change or specific discursive formations over time. Concurrently, others voiced their criticism and pointed out that WEMs require large amounts of training data, that they are challenging to evaluate, and they lack the specificity looked for by historians. The ability to examine semantic change resonates with the goals of historians such as Reinhart Koselleck, whose research focused on the formation of concepts and the transformation of semantic fields. However, word embeddings can only be used to study particular types of semantic change, and the model’s use is dependent on the size, quality, and bias in training data. In this article, we examine what is required of historical data to produce reliable WEMs, and we describe the types of questions that can be answered using WEMs.
The effect of evapoconcentration on dissolved organic carbon concentration and quality in lakes of SW Greenland

Summary 1. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration was determined for a range of lakes of varying conductivity (30–4000 μS cm−1) in the low Arctic of SW Greenland. DOC concentration range from 100 mg C L−1, occasionally approaching 200 mg C L−1 in meromictic, oligosaline lakes. DOC concentration was strongly related to [log10] conductivity and total nitrogen. 2. Peak DOC concentrations (>80 mg L−1) occur in lakes located approximately 50 km from the present ice sheet margin, a zone of low effective precipitation; evaporative concentration is the first-order control on DOC concentration. Lakes at the coast and closer to the ice margin had lower DOC concentrations (<20 mg C L−1). Local factors, notably the presence or absence of an outflow and catchment morphometry, resulted in considerable variability in concentration (20–100 mg C L−1) within the area of maximum concentration around 51°W. 3. Despite their high DOC concentration, these lakes are essentially colourless. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) absorption (a375) was low in most lakes (<10 m−1) with maximum values (approximately 20 m−1) occurring in one humic-stained lake in the area. Absorption values corrected for DOC concentration () were very low (<0.6 m2 g−1 C) for all lakes apart from those at the coast, perhaps reflecting greater allochthonous inputs at these sites. 4. S, the spectral slope coefficient, ranged from 16 to 27 μm−1 and was weakly correlated with DOC concentration. Both a375 and S showed similar distribution patterns along the sampling gradient as did DOC, with maximum values at approximately 51°W. High and low S may indicate fresher, more rapidly flushed, systems with less degraded DOM or greater inputs from their catchments. 5. The lakes closer to the head of the fjord with higher conductivity, had low ( 21 μm−1) and this may reflect increasingly longer lake water residence times, greater DOM age and photochemical degradation.
A Quantitative, Sensitive and Rapid Validated Analytical RP-HPLC Method for the Estimation of Dapagliflozin in Bulk and Pharmaceutical Dosage Formulations

Gouru Santhosh Reddy1, Animesh Bera1, Madhurima Basak1, Krishnaveni Nagappan*1, Ramalingam Peraman2 1Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, JSS College of Pharmacy, JSS Academy of Higher Education & Research, Ooty, Nilgiris, Tamilnadu, India 2Division of Pharmaceutical Analysis and Quality Assurance, Raghavendra Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (RIPER), Ananthapuramu-515721, Andhra Pradesh, India
Population Biology of Faguscrenata Blume I. Demographic Genetic Differentiations of Lowland and Montane Populations in Toyama, Central Honshu, Japan

Based on demographic genetic differentiations, six isolated small lowland populations and one continuous large montane population of the Siebold's beech forests (Fagus crenata) in Toyama Prefecture, Honshu, Japan, were examined using isozymes as genetic markers. The results of within and among-population genetic variabilities revealed that all six lowland populations, which are fragmented and isolated from each other at present, showed significantly lower percentages of polymorphic loci (P) and lower mean numbers of alleles per locus (A) than the montane population. Fluctuations in allele frequencies were observed in lowland populations. Alleles that were rare in the montane populationshowed unexpectedly higher frequencies in some lowland populations. The mean FST value of the lowland populations (0.116) was significantly higher than that of the montane population in Tateyama (0.005)and several other populations analyzed. All these facts suggest that small isolated Siebold's beech populations remaining on the foothills in the lowlands of Toyama Prefecture have been exposed to climate shifts and strong human disturbances, which result in fragmentation and isolation of local populations. On the other hand, the large continuous montane population on Tateyama maintains a higher genetic variability, with genetic reshuffling within and among subpopulations. Spatial genetic localizations and the resulting changes in the size-class structure in lowland populations were also discussed in relation to the demographic changes.
Bayesian State Estimation in Sensorimotor Systems With Particle Filtering

In sensorimotor control, sensory feedback integrates with forward models to alleviate the impacts of sensory noise and delay on state estimation. The sensorimotor integration is subject to Bayesian inference and has been formulated by the Kalman filter in computational neuroscience. However, the Kalman filter, as an artificial optimal estimator to address the abstract characteristics of spatial perception, is inadequate to present the neural computation in the cerebellum. Besides, the nonlinear neuromuscular dynamics with tightly coupled state variables also substantially impedes the implementation of Kalman filter in realistic sensorimotor systems. Here we address the sensorimotor state estimate by using the particle filter, a nonlinear Bayesian estimator that can be implemented in arbitrary dynamic systems with the neurocomputational compatibility. Particle filtering is explicitly implemented in a biophysically realistic sensorimotor model of an upper limb integrating Hill-type muscles, tendons, skeleton, and primary afferents. By involving the command noises, the constructed neuromusculoskeletal model qualitatively represents the experimental variability in center-out reaching movements. Despite the initial estimation uncertainty and sensorimotor noises, the particle filter is able to approximate the actual states in forward-reaching movements. Furthermore, the simulated hand-position estimate is consistent with the experimental results, in the presence of forward model errors, neural noises, and sensory delays. The particle filter is demonstrated to effectively implement the Bayesian state estimation in biophysically realistic sensorimotor systems and provide better compatibility with neuronal computation than the Kalman filter.
Edge Computing-Based Privacy-Preserving Authentication Framework and Protocol for 5G-Enabled Vehicular Networks

Based on the functional characteristics of inter-vehicle communication networks under the current framework, a privacy-preserving authentication framework that combines fifth-generation communication technology (5G) and edge computing technology is proposed. The proposed framework is different from that used in the previous 802.11p-based inter-vehicle communication network architecture, and we use device-to-device technology to achieve communication between vehicles. One difference between a 5G-enabled model and a traditional model for vehicle ad hoc networks is that secure communication between vehicles in a 5G-enabled model is challenging. The authentication protocol proposed in this study can be divided into two parts. The first part involves authenticating and selecting an edge computing vehicle, wherein a fuzzy logic mathematical method is used in the selection process. The second part is the mutual authentication between edge computing and ordinary vehicles. In this process, the exchange of security information between vehicles in a group is possible. Simultaneously, the identity privacy and traceability of the vehicle are ensured. Moreover, the proposed signature scheme is proved to be secure under a random oracle model. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme has relatively lower computational and communication overhead than existing schemes.