Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Masers in evolved star winds

Abstract This review summarises current observations of masers around evolved stars and models for their location and behaviour, followed by some of the many highlights from the past 5 years. Some of these have been the fruition of long-term monitoring, a vital aspect of study of stars which are both periodically variable and prone to rapid outbursts or transition to a new evolutionary stage. Interferometric imaging of masers provide the highest-resolution probes of the stellar wind, but their exponential amplification and variability means that multiple observations are needed to investigate questions such as what drives the wind from the stellar surface; why does it accelerate slowly over many tens of stellar radii; what causes maser variability. VLBI parallaxes have improved our understanding of individual objects and of Galactic populations. Masers from wide range of binary and post-AGB objects are accessible to sensitive modern instruments, including energetic symbiotic systems. Masers have been detected up to THz frequencies with Herschel and ALMA's ability to resolve a wide range of maser and thermal lines will provide accurate constraints on physical conditions including during dust formation.
Design, Implementation and Testing of a new Profiling Interface for MPI

MPI is a library that is widely-used to develop applications to run in parallel. It provides an efficient profiling interface- PMPI - which is used by many profiling tools based on MPI. However, PMPI supports a single profiling tool at a time and the application must be re-linked with the tool each time a new tool is to be used. This one tool at a time nature of PMPI leads to monolithic tool designs, that are tailored for a certain MPI application and profiling goal. Hence, it discourages the reusability and modularity of the code leading to a very complex tool nature. On the other hand, if tools could work in coordination and could be utilized concurrently, desired tool functionalities could be achieved by combination of simpler tools. This approach would enhance testabilitiy, reusability and modularity of tools. The major question related to such an approach is, how to make tools work concurrently and in coordination with each other. In this thesis a prototype of an interface - called QMPI- , that enables concurrent and collaborative execution of tools is designed, implement and tested. The final design of the interface is made by enhancing and extending other previous designs, which are also a part of this thesis work. The final design aims to achieve concurrent execution of tools by successive calls of tool wrappers in a nested fashion. The order of the tools in the toolchain is determined by a vector data structure, in which each tool has their corresponding instance. The final design is fully implemented along with some simple tools, that are used for testing the final design implementation. Finally, some performance tests are conducted to prove the efficiency of our QMPI prototype. It is shown that, linking QMPI with the MPI application - without using tools- causes negligible time overhead. Since QMPI provides such a low time overhead it can be linked with applications by default, in order to enable simple activation or deactivation of tools. Furthermore, it is also shown that our prototype implementation has linear timeoverhead scaling with the increasing size of the toolchain. It provides low time overhead for a realistic size of toolchain.
Reasons for women to terminate a pregnancy : a qualitative study

The right of women to exert a choice regarding their reproductive behaviour is a fundamental right within the context reproductive rights. Reproductive rights and health encompass the exertion of individual choice but also adequate, safe and accessible health care services. Within this framework, the right to abortion and the right to access to safe abortion services is an integral part of reproductive rights and health. Reproductive rights and the right of women to choose the outcome of their reproductive behaviour, came to the foreground in terms of population policies and programmes that were concerned with rapid population growth. The widespread use of contraception and family planning programmes and the outcomes thereof, led to a focus on the rights of women in totality as well as the personal exertion of their choices. It is important to investigate the reasons that lead women to make a decision to terminate a pregnancy. In terms of demographics, answers are provided in terms of statistical rankings and weightings but no focus is given to the personal situations, circumstances and experiences of women. This is crucial to be able to determine the reasons for women terminating a pregnancy as reasons and sets of reasons are intricately linked within primary and secondary relationships. No reason stands in isolation to another, and a holistic view of a woman’s true and personal reality is required to understand why some women choose to terminate their pregnancy and other choose an alternate outcome.
Interventions for Intimate Partner Violence Against Women

Sufficient evidence regarding the effectiveness of physician screening, counseling, and referral for intimate partner violence is lacking. However, even in the absence of sufficient evidence, many medical organizations recommend that physicians make efforts to identify and refer patients who have experienced abuse. This article presents 3 cases that illustrate the interaction between patients experiencing violence in intimate relationships and physicians and other members of the health care team. Suggestions for care are based on guidelines and evidence where available. Resources to assist physicians with referral to appropriate services also are provided.
THE ALLEGHENY COUNTY SHORT-TERM AIR POLLUTION EFFECTS (SHAPE) STUDY ON THE ELDERLY

A few studies have assessed the effects of the current levels of air quality in relation to stationary and indoor emission sources, monitoring sites and susceptible populations. To address this issue, first, an ecological evaluation of admissions of the elderly aged ≥65 years and the PM10 for the period 1995-2000 was carried out to assess vulnerability of this population. Secondly, a longitudinal study was conducted during the period of May 2003 to May 2004 among adults aged 50 to 79 years who had a cardiopulmonary diagnosis and resided in Allegheny County. Each participant maintained a diary of symptoms, peak expiratory flow rates and daily activities for up to two months.The ecological data showed high rates of admissions among the elderly. Individuals admitted multiple times often had a diagnosis related to acute conditions compared to the chronic diagnoses among those admitted only one-time. The admission category of whether an individual was admitted multiple times or one-time appeared to be significantly related to the PM10. The longitudinal study included a total of 32 participants, mean age 66. The average 24-hr PM10 level was 24.36 µg/m3. The results showed an association between PM10 and the cardiopulmonary symptoms suggesting a possible effect of air pollution. Additionally, the results of the continuous monitoring sites were highly correlated during both study periods. This finding proposes a review of the current federal and county air pollution monitoring strategies. Efforts should be re-directed at appropriate apportionment of individuals' exposure levels and examining possible sources of emissions that impact the living environments. This can be achieved through personal monitoring in conjunction with physiological assessments for improved exposure-outcome extrapolation. The public health significance of this study is that the less severe incidences reported by participants do not often require urgent medical support, but can eventually burden the body's physiological mechanism leading to hospitalization or death. The implication of the results is that the current ambient air quality standards do not appear to be entirely protective of all different population groups. The elderly who have underlying health conditions appear to be susceptible to the current exposure levels.
Quality and acceptability of Monascus biopigment beverage

The study aimed to develop a Monascus biopigment beverage, which was made from the extract of Monascus-fermented rice, and evaluate its quality and acceptability as a functional drink. In addition, the stability of secondary metabolites, monacolin K and citrinin, on different acid concentrations (0.2, 0.4 and 0.6% w/v), various temperature treatments (30, 60 and 90oC), and daylight exposure for 30 days was determined. A method of enhancing monacolin K to citrinin ratio was included in the extraction process by partial heating of Monascus-fermented rice with ethanol at 65oC for 60 minutes. Preference ranking test and quality scoring were performed for the preliminary and final screening, respectively, of beverage formulations. On the other hand, quantification of monacolin K and citrinin in stability studies was done using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV-Vis spectrophotometer. Results showed that two formulations, both with the lowest amount of Monascus extract added (7.2 mL per 250 mL), were significantly acceptable and comparable but the sample with less sugar and acidulant contents (9.7% sugar, 0.3% acidulant) was preferred and analyzed for physicochemical tests. The developed beverage had a pH of 2.8, titratable acidity (TA) of 0.31% expressed as citric acid while 0.32% as malic acid, total soluble solids (TSS) of 11oBrix, 2,2 diphenyl-1-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity of 16.66%, and total phenolic content of 4.13 mg catechin (per 250 mL beverage). No visible peak was observed in both monacolin K (lovastatin equivalent) and citrinin determination. The metabolites were shown to decrease when the extract was subjected to different acid concentrations and temperature treatments as well as when exposed to daylight for 30 days. Conversely, increase in the ratio of monacolin K to citrinin was observed in partial heating of Monascus-fermented rice, thus the need to include in the extraction method. The study suggested that aside from imparting color, Monascus biopigment could be incorporated in the beverages to improve its functional properties.
Life cycle assessment of buildings – A nZEB case using streamline and conventional analysis

This paper addresses the LCA of buildings using conventional or streamlined approaches applied to a real life-scale nZEB prototype – Solar XXI building. Results show the use phase has the greatest impacts, and the production of materials follows in importance. In this particular nZEB case, performance impacts of the use phase should consider the energy efficiency options and the energy produced by renewable sources, having a lower negative impact when compared to conventional and equivalent buildings. Though results show that both approaches can be used, when compared in absolute terms they are contrasting both in the production and in the use life cycle stages. In the former, there is underestimation of effects in the streamlined approach, being solved in the frame of a new project. In the latter, difference is due to a combined effect of boundaries simplification and to different assumptions used to calculate energy consumption in the use stage.
Morphology Specific Stepwise Learning of In-Hand Manipulation With a Four-Fingered Hand

In past research, in-hand object manipulation for various sized and shaped objects has been achieved. However, the network had to be trained for each different motion. Training data takes time to acquire and increases the hardware load, thereby increasing the cost for training data. Four-fingered in-hand manipulation is especially difficult as a high number of joints need to be controlled in synchrony. This paper presents a method that reduces the required training data for in-hand manipulation with the idea of pretraining and mutual finger motions. The Allegro Hand is used with soft fingertips and integrated 6-axis F/T sensors to evaluate the proposed method. To make the network more versatile, the training data included objects of various sizes and shapes. When pretraining the network, one shot learning suffices to learn a new task; mutual finger motions can be exploited to use three-fingered pretraining data for four-fingered manipulation. Both data-sharing and weight-sharing were used and show similar results. Crucially, pretraining data from fingers with the same kinematic chain has to be used, showing the importance of morphology specific learning. Moreover, objects with untrained sizes and shapes could be manipulated.
Shock interactions in multi-fluid plasmas

Shock interactions in plasmas can occur in settings as varied as stellar physics, inertial confinement fusion experiments and planetary entry of spacecraft. In unmagnetised plasmas, shock interactions with density discontinuities typically result in vorticity being deposited on the discontinuity, driving interfacial instability. In the context of fusion, such instabilities are highly detrimental to performance. In the magneto-hydrodynamic limit, it has been theoretically demonstrated that in a magnetized plasma the structure of the shock interaction usually changes such that vorticity is transported from the discontinuity, resulting in the suppression of interfacial shear instabilities. This suppression is potentially beneficial in inertial confinement fusion experiments. The magneto-hydrodynamic limit, however, only applies if the plasma length scales are small in comparison to the length-scales characterizing the problem of interest. This allows effects including charge separation, self-generated electric and magnetic fields and a host of wave phenomena to be neglected. In the present work, the influence of finite plasma length-scales on shock interactions in magnetized and unmagnetised plasmas is explored computationally.
Automated land use classification: Supervised segmentation of road structures on aerial images using shape regression

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision have been showed to be promising for automated land use classification of remotely sensed data. However, current state-of-the-art per-pixel segmentation networks fail to accurately capture geometrical and topological properties on land use segmentation, as these methods have inherently a lot of freedom. These geometrical and topological properties of land use structures are crucial for describing land usage on topographical maps, as their purpose is to present insight into topology and borders of land use structures. In order to preserve the geometrical and topological properties of land use structures, a novel segmentation method is introduced and tested on road structures in this thesis. Unlike current state-of-the-art segmentation networks, this new method performs the segmentation task by utilizing shape regression techniques as currently applied by state-of-the-art object detection networks. As modern object detection methods are only able to perform regression on simplistic shapes, and road structures generally describe complex shapes, a new topology preserving annotation generation method is introduced that subdivides a complex road structure into a set of oriented rectangular shapes. Since not many publicly available land use datasets contain both aerial images and per-pixel annotations, a new dataset based on aerial images and land use annotations, covering large areas of the Netherlands, is introduced as well. The results show that the novel segmentation method is capable of learning the newly introduced road structure representation, which preserves geometrical and topological properties. The connectedness property, however, is lost. The novel method does currently not outperform current state-of-the-art per-pixel segmentation networks, although several directions for future work are proposed to improve the segmentation performance of the shape regression based technique and preserve the connectedness property.
Primary prevention of congenital anomalies and the role of folic acid

Congenital anomalies are an important diagnostic group in the perinatal healthcare. Only some of these anomalies have an individual cause (complex anomalies accompanying chromosomal aberrations, congenital anomalies with monogenic inheritance, typical anomalies caused by strong teratogens etc.). The majority of cases of congenital ano malies is caused by multiple and complex factors that are hard to identify. Therefore – the so called primary prevention of congenital anomalies becomes much more important during last years. Primary prevention of congenital anomalies itself is composed of various guidelines and recommendations that should prevent the formation of the anomaly. Specific role in the primary prevention has the folic acid supplementation that is world-wide recommended as the prevention of neural tube defects.
QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND FACTORS ON POULTRY PATHWAY

In poultry production, quality and quality control require good management throughout the entire production chain to follow performance upgrading and therefore increase profitability, and secondly the achievement of some products appropriate to the standards. People involved in poultry production must realize that the main purpose of the entire production system is customer requirements satisfaction. Improving quality is possible when all the stages of production of poultry meat are incorporated in the quality control methods and those methods are simple and practical.
VERMONT AGENCY OF TRANSPORTATION

VTrans utilized a process called Cured-In-Place Pipe (CIPP) from Insituform Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Chesterfield, MO, for the rehabilitation of three existing culverts along the I-91 corridor. These culverts were repaired in conjunction with two projects; Barnet IM SCRP (2), which specified the repair of two culverts (54 and 60 inches in diameters), and Rockingham IM SCRP (5) which specified the repair one culvert 66 inches in diameter. Both projects were completed during the 2008 construction season with minor to no concerns documented by the Project Residents with the exception of health concerns related to curing process.
Long Term Rainfall Trend Using High Resolution Gridded Data over the West Coast of Karnataka , India

Abstract—A 0.25ox0. 25o high resolution gridded dataset of daily observed rainfall is analyzed to study long term spatial and temporal trends on annual scales in west coast of Karnataka, located in west coast of India during 1901-2013. After testing the homogeneity for entire data set the monotonic two tailed Mann-Kendall test analysis is applied for the time series data to detect the trends in rainfall. Theil and Sen’s slope estimator test is used for finding the magnitude of change over a time period. The rainfall time series is divided in to four periods with the hydrological cycle of thirty years for finding the changes in trends with change in period. Most of the grid points shows a significant increase in trend in annual rainfall during 1901-2013. Rainfall is changing most significantly for every hydrological cycle.
A Modified Real-Time Fault-Tolerant Task Allocation Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

In WSNs, the sensor nodes are at risk of failure and malicious attacks (selective forwarding). This may have a profound negative effect when you consider real-time WSNs, making them challenging to deploy. When there is a delay in tasks allocation execution processes in real-time WSNs because of sensor nodes failures, this will cause disastrous consequences if the systems are safety-critical, e.g. aircraft, nuclear power plant, forest fire detection, battlefield monitoring, thus the need to developed a real-time system that is fault-tolerable. This paper developed a modified real-time fault-tolerant task allocation scheme (mRFTAS) for WSNs (wireless sensor networks), using active replication techniques. mRFTAS and RFTAS performance were compared using time of execution of the task, network lifetime and reliability cost. The mRFTAS performance showed an improvement over that of RFTAS when it comes to reducing the time it takes for task execution by 45.56% and reliability cost of 7.99% while prolonging the network lifetime by 36.35%.
A METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC WHOOSH SOUND DESCRIPTION

Usually, a sound designer achieves artistic goals by editing and processing the pre-recorded sound samples. To assist navigation in the vast amount of sounds, the sound metadata is used: it provides small free-form textual descriptions of the sound file content. One can search through the keywords or phrases in the metadata to find a group of sounds that can be suitable for a task. Unfortunately, the relativity of the sound design terms complicate the search, making the search process tedious, prone to errors and by no means supportive of the creative flow. Another way to approach the sound search problem is to use sound analysis. In this paper we present a simple method for analyzing the temporal evolution of the “whoosh” sound, based on the per-band piecewise linear function approximation of the sound envelope signal. The method uses spectral centroid and fuzzy membership functions to estimate a degree to which the sound energy moves upwards or downwards in the frequency domain along the audio file. We evaluated the method on a generated dataset, consisting of white noise recordings processed with different variations of modulated bandpass filters. The method was able to correctly identify the centroid movement directions in 77% sounds from a synthetic dataset.
A Distributional Semantic Methodology for Enhanced Search in Historical Records: A Case Study on Smell

In this paper we present a methodology based on distributional semantic models that can be ﬂexibly adapted to the speciﬁc challenges posed by historical texts and that allow users to retrieve semantically relevant text without the need to close-read the documents. We focus on a case study concerned with detecting smell-related sentences in historical medical reports. We demonstrate a process for moving from generic domain label input to a more nuanced evaluation of the semantics of smell in a set of sentences extracted from this corpus, and then develop a machine learning technique for compounding scores on a variety of modelling parameters into more effective classiﬁcations.