Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Response versus scan-angle corrections for MODIS reflective solar bands using deep convective clouds

The absolute radiometric calibration of the reflective solar bands (RSBs) of Aqua- and Terra-MODIS is performed using on-board calibrators. A solar diffuser (SD) panel along with a solar diffuser stability monitor (SDSM) system, which tracks the degradation of the SD over time, provides the baseline for calibrating the MODIS sensors. MODIS also views the moon and deep space through its space view (SV) port for lunar-based calibration and computing the background, respectively. The MODIS instrument views the Earth’s surface using a two-sided scan mirror, whose reflectance is a function of the angle of incidence (AOI) and is described by response versus scan-angle (RVS). The RVS for both MODIS instruments was characterized prior to launch. MODIS also views the SD and the moon at two different AOIs. There is sufficient evidence that the RVS is changing on orbit over time and as a function of wavelength. The SD and lunar observation scans can only track the RVS variation at two AOIs. Consequently, the MODIS Characterization Support Team (MCST) developed enhanced approaches that supplement the onboard calibrator measurements with responses from the pseudo-invariant desert sites. This approach has been implemented in Level 1B (L1B) Collection 6 (C6) for select short-wavelength bands. This paper presents an alternative approach of characterizing the mirror RVS to derive the time-dependent RVS correction factors for MODIS RSBs using tropical deep convective cloud (DCC) targets. An initial assessment of the DCC response from Aqua-MODIS band 1 C6 data indicates evidence of RVS artifacts, which are not uniform across the scans and are more prevalent at the beginning of the earth-view scan.
Object works interaction model-integrating multiple views

We present an interaction model for a software development environment that provides consistent multiple views through the use of a drag-and-drop user interface. The multiple views allow the user to examine many details and aspects of the program's elements, while retaining the general context. We have embodied the interaction model in an object-oriented development environment for the professional C++ programmer. <<ETX>>
Three attempts to replicate the moral licensing effect

The present work includes three attempts to replicate the moral licensing effect by Sachdeva, Iliev, and Medin (2009). The original authors found that writing about positive traits led to lower donations to charity and decreased cooperative behavior. The first two replication attempts (student samples, 95% power based on the initial findings, N Study1 = 105, N Study2 = 150), did not confirm the original results. The third replication attempt (MTurk sample, 95% power based on a meta-analysis on self-licensing, N = 940) also did not confirm the moral licensing effect. We conclude that (1) there is as of yet no strong support for the moral self-regulation framework proposed in Sachdeva et al. (2009) (2) the manipulation used is unlikely to induce moral licensing, and (3) studies on moral licensing should use a neutral control condition.
Chapter 9 Techniques for Studying Brain Structure and Function

Recent years have seen rapid improvement in neuroscience techniques for studying brain structure and function in humans and our primate relatives. These techniques offer new routes of inquiry into our evolutionary history. This chapter offers an overview of a collection of these methods, including discussion of each technique’s strengths, weaknesses, and relevance to neuroarchaeology. Keyword Neuroscience techniques Comparative neuroanatomy
Churn Prediction in Telecommunication Industry using Decision Tree

Telecommunication industry provides customers an opportunity to choose from various service providers. However, certain factors such as low switching costs and deregulation by the government have contributed to the risk of customers switching to competitors. Customer churn can therefore be defined as the switching of a customer from services of one provider to another. Since it can be a costly risk, it needs to be managed properly. The presented paper aims at predicting customer churn using Decision Trees, one of the most widely used classification technique based on data mining. KeywordsChurn Prediction, Classification, Decision tree,
Anticipatory Scheduling of Freight in a Synchromodal Transportation Network

We study the problem of scheduling freight transportation in a synchromodal network considering stochastic freight arrivals. In a synchromodal network, freights can be transported using any mode and any route as long as they arrive to their destination within their time-window. Furthermore, transportation plans can change at any decision moment given the actual circumstances. Performance is measured over the entire network and over time. We model this problem as a Markov Decision Process and propose a heuristic solution based on Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP). Due to the multi-period nature of the problem, the one-step look-ahead perspective of traditional ADP designs can make the heuristic flounder and end in a local-optimum. To tackle this, we study the inclusion of Bayesian exploration using the Value of Perfect Information (VPI). In a series of numerical experiments, we show how VPI significantly improves a traditional ADP algorithm. Furthermore, we show how our proposed ADP-VPI combination achieves more than 20% gains over the profit achieved by common practice heuristics. Finally, we discuss our experience with merging VPI into ADP and elaborate on further research directions in the anticipatory scheduling of freight in a synchromodal transportation network.
Abdominal tuberculosis presenting as ascites in an older indigenous woman: a case report

Introduction: Indigenous people tend to have higher incidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (TB). The diagnosis of TB is a challenge among older patients because of its non-specific presentation, especially for cases of extrapulmonary TB. Case presentation: A 77-year-old indigenous woman presented with ascites secondary to abdominal TB. A computed tomography scan of the abdomen showed free fluid. The patient had a positive tuberculin test, and the ascitic fluid was an exudate with an adenosine deaminase activity test value of 80.76 IU l − 1.The mesenteric lymph biopsy showed a central area with caseating granulomas and peripheral giant cells, suggestive of TB commitment at the mesenteric lymph node level. The diagnosis was confirmed by a positive TB ascitic fluid culture. Anti-TB treatment improved the patient's symptoms. Conclusion: In patients with ascites as the primary symptom, abdominal TB should be suspected, especially among those belonging to special population groups such as indigenous or older people.
Return migration as failure or success ? The determinants of return migration intentions among Moroccan migrants in Europe

Different migration theories generate competing hypotheses with regard to determinants of return migration. While neoclassical migration theory associates migration to the failure to integrate at the destination, the new economics of labour migration sees return migration as the logical stage after migrants have earned sufficient assets and knowledge and to invest in their origin countries. The projected return is then likely to be postponed for sustained or indefinite periods if integration is unsuccessful. So, from an indication or result of integration failure return is rather seen as a measure of success. Drawing on recent survey data (N=2,832), this article tests these hypotheses by examining the main determinants of return intention among Moroccan migrants across Europe. The results indicate that structural integration through labour market participation, education and the maintenance of economic and social ties with receiving countries do not significantly affect return intentions. At the same time, investments and social ties to Morocco are positively related, and sociocultural integration in receiving countries is negatively related to return migration intentions. The mixed results corroborate the idea that there is no uniform process of (return) migration and that competing theories might therefore be partly
Relationship Between Protein Nutritional Status and Immunocompetence in Northern Bobwhite Chicks

ABSmAcr. -We investigated the effects of dietary protein quality on the development and functioning of the immune system in four-week-old Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) chicks. Chicks were fed isocaloric diets containing 8, 15, or 33% protein over a three-week period. Significant reductions in the rate of body growth were evident in chicks receiving 8 and 15% protein. Development of the bursa of Fabricius and spleen was significantly depressed in the 8% protein group compared to the other two treatments. Lymphocyte yields from dissociated lymphoid organs of chicks fed 8% protein were substantially reduced compared to birds fed higher levels of protein. In vitro lymphoproliferative responses of cultured splenocytes to mitogenic stimulation (concanavalin A, pokeweed mitogen, and Salmonella typhimurium), white-blood-cell counts, and in vivo measures of humoral immunity did not differ among dietary treatments. Cell-mediated immune function, as measured by an in vivo hypersensitivity response to an intradermal injection of a T lymphocyte-dependent mitogen (phytohemagglutinin), was significantly suppressed in the 8% protein group compared to the other two treatments. Several measures of immune-system development and function were significantly correlated with body mass change during the trial. Results indicated that four-week-old Northern Bobwhite chicks fed an 8% protein diet for three weeks may have difficulty expressing a competent immune response to pathogenic challenge in the wild. Received 30 January 1992, accepted 25 November 1992.
Performance of a microstrip-coupled TES imaging module for CMB Polarimetry

We have developed a 16-element, 97GHz, lownoise Transition Edge Sensor (TES) module that can be packed easily into large-format polarimetric imaging arrays. The technology was developed originally for the lowfrequency instrument of the CLOVER experiment, which was aimed at searching for the signature of primordial gravitational waves in the polarisation state of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Each module contains 16 slotline and microstrip-coupled TES bolometers, allowing eight polarimetric pixels with external waveguide OMTs, along with time-domain multiplexed SQUID readout. Here we describe the design of the modules, and explain how they were realised in practice, detailing some of the technology developed along the way. Performance was measured by following two parallel paths: (i) detailed characterisation of individual detectors using an exceedingly well understood, fully modelled, analogue SQUID readout system, and (ii) simultaneous measurements of the entire module using CLOVER's multichannel readout electronics. We describe the results of measurements on one of the modules, with an emphasis on uniformity of performance, and we assess the effect of non-uniformity on the operation of a complete array. Although the technology was developed in the context of CLOVER, the work has consequences for many instruments including future space telescopes such as BPol.
Effects of heat stress on the immune system , metabolism and nutrient partitioning : implications on reproductive success

Heat stress (HS) is a global problem which jeopardizes animal welfare, profitability, and global food security. Indirect effects of HS such as reduced feed intake contribute to, but do not fully explain, decreased productivity. Heat stressed animals initiate metabolic changes that do not reflect their plane of nutrition. This indicates that HS directly effects metabolism and productivity independent of reduced feed intake. In a variety of species, environmental hyperthermia compromises the intestinal barrier function resulting in increased permeability to luminal content including bacteria and bacterial components. Presumably, heat stress causes leaky gut in ruminants as well. The leakage of luminal content into the portal and ultimately the systemic circulation elicits an inflammatory response that may facilitate the detrimental effects of HS on animal agriculture. Identifying flexible management strategies (i.e. nutritional supplementation) to immediately decrease HS susceptibility without negatively influencing production traits would be of great value to global animal agriculture. Infertility and subfertility in production animals represent important economic, health and welfare issues. Non-successful breeding and embryonic mortality are major limitations to reproductive efficiency. Additionally, with increased requirements for efficient production of animal protein to feed a growing world economy, compromised fertility represents a global food security concern. This proceedings paper will focus chiefly on ruminant and swine reproduction for which the majority of knowledge has been acquired. The primary objective of this paper is to review an environmental stress (hyperthermia) and a physiological condition (bacterial infection) that both impair fecundity and fertility in domestic animal species. The secondary objective is to provide a brief summary of potential mitigation strategies to improve animal reproductive efficiency in the face of such stressors.
Tutorial: DeepState: Bringing Vulnerability Detection Tools into the Development Cycle

Traditionally, methods such as binary analysis, symbolic execution, and fuzzing have been used in a context that is strongly geared towards discovering existing vulnerabilities, rather than use in the development cycle to prevent vulnerabilities from arising. Unit testing, in contrast, is firmly in place as part of the development cycle, but is usually very limited in its ability to explore "deep" paths in a system, or expose completely un-anticipated aspects of system behavior. Incorporating the tools used for vulnerability discovery into the development cycle requires large expansion in the expertise that developers must possess, and significant changes in their practices. DeepState is an open-source tool that provides a Google Test-like API to give C and C++ developers push-button access to symbolic execution engines, such as Manticore and angr, and fuzzers, such as Dr. Fuzz. Rather than learning multiple complex tools, developers can learn one (familiar) interface for defining a test harness, and can use tools built to find security vulnerabilities to automatically generate more powerful unit tests for software, in an approach that merges traditional unit testing, security analysis methods, and property-based testing. This tutorial will show how to use DeepState in development, including to produce complex library and API tests, and how to take advantage of both the ability to easily apply multiple security-oriented back-ends for test generation during development and the novel strategies for improving back-end performance provided by DeepState.
Design Exploration of AES Accelerators on FPGAs and GPUs

|The embedded systems are increasingly becoming a key technological component of all kinds of complex technical systems and an exhaustive analysis of the state of the art of all current performance with respect to architectures, design methodologies, test and applications could be very interesting. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), based on the well-known algorithm Rijndael, is designed to be easily implemented in hardware and software platforms. General purpose computing on graphics processing unit (GPGPU) is an alternative to recon(cid:12)gurable accelerators based on FPGA devices. This paper presents a direct comparison between FPGA and GPU used as accelerators for the AES cipher. The results achieved on both platforms and their analysis has been compared to several others in order to establish which device is best at playing the role of hardware accelerator by each solution showing interesting considerations in terms of throughput, speedup factor, and resource usage. This analysis suggests that, while hardware design on FPGA remains the natural choice for consumer-product design, GPUs are nowadays the preferable choice for PC based accelerators, especially when the processing routines are highly parallelizable.
Forage Quality, Mineral Constituents, and Performance of Beef Yearlings Grazing Two Crested Wheatgrasses

In the central Great Plains, crested wheatgrasses (Agropyron cristatum (L.) Gaetner and A. desertorium (Fischer ex Link) Schultes] are best utilized for early spring and late fall grazing. The principal objective of this study was to determine if beef (Bos taurus L.) yearlings grazing 'Ruff' (A. cristatum) during the spring grazing season had higher average daily gains and gains per hectare than cattle grazing `Nordan' (A. desertorum). These cultivars were evaluated in grazing trials (four replications) in eastern Nebraska in 1985, 1986, and 1987. The 0.8-ha pastures were seeded in the fall of 1983 on a Typic Argiudoll soil and were fertilized annually with 68 to 90 kg N ha-1. Grazing was for 6 wk each spring by yearling steers with a beginning average weight of 250 kg. Averaged over 3 yr, Ruff produced higher gains per hectare than Nordan (272 vs 245 kg ha-1) probably because it produced more herbage because of its better persistence. At the end of the trial, the averge basal cover of Ruff and Nordan were 21 and 6%, respectively. Three-year mean average daily gains were Ruff = 1.28 vs. Nordan = 1.34 kg d-1, which were unexpected, because Ruff generally had higher forage quality as measured by an array of parameters. Ruff forage had a higher, less desirable grass tetany ratio [K/(Mg +Ca)) than Nordan (2.6 vs. 2.3) averaged over 3 yr. Cattle grazing Ruff had lower blood serum Mg levels than cattle grazing Nordan (15.4 vs. 16.2 mg L-1, both of which were below the hypomagnesemia threshold of 18 mg L-1. This condition may have reduced intake and animal gains. These results indicate the need for evaluating pasture and range grass cultivars under grazing conditions.
Performance Evaluation of PWM Converter Control Strategy for PMSG Based Variable Speed Wind Turbine

Integration of wind power to grid introduces power quality issues, which mainly consist of voltage regulation and reactive power compensation. Induction machines are mostly used as generators in wind power based generations. Induction generators draw reactive power from the grid to which they are connected. Therefore, the integration of wind power to power system networks is one of the main concerns of the power system engineers. The addition of wind power into the electric grid affect's the power quality This paper describes the modeling and control of a variable speed wind turbine system for medium power based Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG) which feeds an AC power grid. The generator speed is regulated under fluctuating wind speed through this converter. A dc link voltage controller is used to regulate the dc bus voltage under fluctuating wind and grid disturbance. The direct drive PMSG is connected to the load through a switch mode rectifier and a vector controlled pulse width modulated (PWM) IGBT-inverter. The generator side switch mode rectifier is controlled to achieve maximum power from the wind. The load side PWM inverter is using a relatively complex vector control scheme to control the amplitude and frequency of the inverter output voltage. The simulation results are obtained using MATLAB/SIMULINK software.
The economic value of the recreational red abalone fishery in northern California

There is a long tradition of recreational red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) fishing in northern California. The fishery is enjoyed by tens of thousands of fishers along Sonoma and Mendocino counties, but little is known about its economic value. Recreational fisheries are difficult to value because the catch is not sold commercially and the activity is dispersed along the coastline. For this study, we estimated the value to the fishers of the recreational red abalone fishery using the travel-cost estimation method, a non-market valuation approach. Using data for the 2013 season at more than 50 sites, we find that approximately 31,000 fishers derived between $24M and $44M per year of recreational value from the fishery. The lower figure was estimated based solely on fishers' driving costs, while the larger estimate results when also considering the time fishers spent on the activity. Examination of site-level variables influencing the choice made by fishers among the sites shows that key site selection criteria included 1) impacts of a harmful algal bloom in Sonoma County, 2) protection from northwest ocean swell, and 3) presence of amenities such as boat launches and restrooms. We show that the value of the fishery declined nearly $12M after stricter regulations were imposed in 2014 following a harmful algal bloom that killed thousands of abalone in Sonoma County. The economic value of the fishery clearly warrants investment in both the biological and economic sustainability of this important resource. Palabras clave Palabras clave de autor: Economic Impact; Haliotis rufescens; Non-Market Value; Socioeconomics; Sport fisheries; Travel Cost Method
Twisted space-time reduced model of large N QCD with two adjoint Wilson fermions

The space-time reduced model of large N QCD with two adjoint Wilson fermions is constructed by applying the symmetric twist boundary conditions with non-vanishing flux $k$. For large but finite $N=L^2$, the model should behave as the large N version of the ordinary lattice gauge model on a $V=L^4$ space-time volume. We perform a comparison of the $N$ dependence of several quantities in this model and in the $k$=0 model (corresponding to periodic boundary conditions). Although the Z$^4$(N) symmetry seems unbroken in all cases, the N-dependence analysis favours the use of the same values of $k$ and $L$ for which the symmetry is also unbroken in the pure gauge case. In particular, the $k=0$ model, studied recently by several authors, shows a large and irregular dependence on $N$ within our region of parameters. This makes this reduced model very impractical for extracting physical information about the large N lattice theory. On the contrary, the model for $N=289=17^2$ and large enough $k$ gives consistent results, even for extended observables as Wilson loops $W(R,T)$ up to $R,T$=8, matching the expected behaviour for the lattice model with a $17^4$ space-time volume.
LANDSCAPE CHANGE AND HABITAT AVAILABILITY IN THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN HIGHLANDS AND OLYMPIC PENINSULA

Methods for predicting the ecological impacts of land use change on biodiversity and ecosystem function are needed to guide land planning and resource management decisions. This study explores the consequences of alternative scenarios of land cover change on the abundance and arrangement of potential habitat for a suite of species in the Little Tennessee River Basin (LTRB) in the Southern Appalachian Highlands and the Hoh River Basin (HORB) on the Olympic Peninsula. We addressed two questions: (1) How does land ownership affect the availability of suitable habitat for a variety of species in changing landscapes (and how do restrictions on forest harvest then change habitat availability)? (2) Are species differentially affected by land cover changes that vary among landowners? Scenarios of land cover change were projected by using a spatially explicit model in which the probability of land being converted from one cover type to another was conditional upon social, economic, and ecological factors. Potentia.