Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance of post-processing algorithms for rainfall intensity measurements of tipping-bucket rain gauges

A number of rain events recorded from May to September 2013 at the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) have been selected to investigate the performance of post-processing algorithms used to calculate the Rainfall Intensity (RI) from Tipping-Bucket Rain Gauges (TBRGs). We assumed a drop counter catching-type gauge as a working reference and compared rainfall intensity measurements with two calibrated TBRGs operated at a time resolution of 1 min. The two TBRGs differ in their internal mechanics, one being a traditional single-layer dual-bucket assembly, while the other has two layers of 5 buckets. The drop counter gauge operates at a time resolution of 10 s, while the time of tipping is recorded for the two TBRGs. The post-processing algorithms employed for the two TBRGs are based on the assumption that the tip volume is uniformly distributed over the inter-tip period. A series of data of an ideal TBRG is reconstructed using the virtual time of tipping derived from the drop counter data. From the comparison between the ideal gauge and the measurements from the two real TBRGs the performance of different post-processing and correction algorithms are statistically evaluated over the set of recorded rain 10 events. The improvement obtained by adopting the inter-tip time algorithm in the calculation of the RI is confirmed. However, by comparing the performance of the real and ideal TBRGs, the beneficial effect of the inter-tip algorithm is shown to be relevant for the mid-low range of rainfall intensity values (where the sampling errors prevail), while its role vanishes with increasing the RI, in the range where the mechanical errors prevail.
AccessBot: an Enabling Technology for Telepresence

The goal of the AccessBotTM project is to provide a new form of access for the disabled that integrates teleconferencing with life-sized display screens, robotics and high speed networking, to create a virtual presence for the handicapped participant at meetings. The use of a life-sized display and high-fidelity video and audio conferencing rather than existing conference room meeting systems is to ensure that the handicapped participant commands as equal a presence as the regular participants in the meeting. The use of a zoom/pan/tilt camera empowers the handicapped participant with capabilities beyond what is "humanly" possiblegiving them a "bionic" eye with which they can see far greater distances. This paper will describe the implementation of the AccessBot and the lessons learned from its deployment at the Supercomputing 1998 conference in Orlando, Florida; and at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ ACCESS Center in Washington D.C.
Tumor Necrosis Factor-α in Sera of Obese Patients: Fall with Weight Loss

In view of the recent demonstration that obesity in animals and humans is associated with an increase in tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) expression, that this expression falls with weight loss, and that TNFα may specifically inhibit insulin action, the possibility that TNFα may be a mediator of insulin resistance has been raised. We have undertaken this study to investigate whether serum TNFα concentrations are elevated in obese subjects, whether they fall after weight loss, and whether this fall parallels the fall in insulin release after glucose challenge. Obese patients (age range: 25–54, weight mean ± sd: 96.4 ± 13.8 kg, body mass index: 35.7 ± 5.6 kg/m2) were started on a diet program. The mean weight fell to 84.5 ± 11.3 (P < 0.0001) and body mass index to 31.3 ± 4.9 (P < 0.0001). Plasma TNFα concentrations were markedly elevated in the obese (3.45 ± 0.16 pg/mL), when compared with controls (0.72 ± 0.28 pg/mL), and fell significantly (2.63 ± 1.40 pg/mL) after weight loss (P < 0.02). The magnitude of i.
Minimum-cost forest for uncertain multicast with delay constraints

The use of multicast transmission can efficiently reduce the consumption of network resources by jointly serving multiple destinations with a single source node. Currently, many multicast applications impose the constraint wherein multicast flows must be processed by a series of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) before reaching their destinations. Given a multicast transmission, there are usually multiple server nodes, each of which is able to host all the required VNFs. Thus, the multicast flow should be initially steered to one or a few selected server nodes that act as pseudo sources, and the destinations will then retrieve new flow from any of these pseudo sources. In this paper, we model this kind of multicast as an uncertain multicast with multiple pseudo sources, whose routing structure is usually a forest consisting of multiple isolated trees. We then characterize and construct the Delay-guaranteed Minimum Cost Forest (D-MCF) such that each path from the source to the destination satisfies the end-to-end delay constraint. To tackle this NP-hard problem, we design two efficient methods, the Partition Algorithm (PA) and the Combination Algorithm (CA), to approximate the optimal solution. Theoretical analyses and evaluations indicate that these two methods can generate the desired routing forest for any multicast transfer. Moreover, the PA method achieves a better balance between performance and time consumption than the CA method. The evaluation results show that PA-(Ω+ 20) can reduce total cost by 49:02% while consuming 12:59% more time, thus significantly outperforming the CA-(Ω+ 20) method.
Design of Pseudoinverse Method for Robotic Arm

Pseudoinverse method for control end-effector movement of a robotic arm is presented in this paper. For that task we used the robotic arm DOBOT. We made simulation model in Matlab environment and SimMechanics toolbox. We described the pseudoinverse method and problem-solving of pseudoinverse for non-square matrices. In the near future we will make implementation of this method to the control end-effector movement of a robotic arm and therefore we created a simulation to how many digits we will need for correct calculating of goniometric functions in DSP.
Rural Small Businesses in Turbulent Times

This paper explores differences in behaviour and performance between rural and urban small firms during the economic downturn. The authors had anticipated that the ‘thinness’ of the rural environment would have had adverse effects. However, their survey of 6,300 respondents showed that rural small firms were performing marginally better. Both groups were proactively striving to cope with falling demand, not waiting for things to get better, but rural firms had better sales and fewer price reductions. The authors attribute this to local embeddedness, a more stable customer base and less competition. They note too the relative independence of rural businesses.
Impact of Land Institutional Factors on Farm Management and Soil Quality

Soil quality has important implications for sustainable agricultural development and food self-sufficiency in many developing countries. A decrease in soil nutrient stocks, one of the components of soil quality, necessitates more inputs and greater management skills in order to compensate for the reduction in nutrients availability. This is why the interaction of agricultural development and soil quality management attracts widespread attention from researchers. Applying plot level data on input/output, and a selected number of soil quality indicators and farm household level information, from the three villages, this paper examines the impact of land fragmentation and land tenure on soil management, the dynamic component of soil quality, crop husbandry and rice yield at plot level. A 2SLS econometric approach is applied to simultaneously estimate the interlinked relationships between these variables. From these results we conclude that land fragmentation does play a role in farm management practices and decisions. The land tenure status of a plot does not affect crop husbandry decisions on labor and herbicide use. Farmers on rented-in plots do, however, use more chemical fertilizers (phosphorus and potassium). This implies that farmers care more about short-term yields than about the built-up of long-term soil productivity. In order to sustain long-term soil productivity, measures should be taken to ensure that the prices for renting land reflect such soil investments.
Gc-ms analysis and antimicrobial activity of volatile oil of Pituranthos tortuosus (desf.)

في هذا البحث تم تحضير الزيت الطيار لنبات (شبت الجبل ) بيترانثيس تورتوسيس بواسطة التقطير بالبخار ووجدت نسبته 0.5 كما تم تحليل الزيت باستخدام كروماتوجرافيا الغاز المتصلة بجهاز طيف الكتلة وقد تم التعرف على 8 مركبات من مكونات الزيت حيث كان مركب ابيول الشبت هو المركب الرئيسي في هذا الزيت (94.76%) وهذا المركب له تأثير كقاتل للحشرات ومساعد للمركبات المخلقة التي لها نفس التأثير .
Efeitos da radioterapia sobre as condições bucais de pacientes oncológicos

Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho, Departamento de Patologia, Faculdade de Odontologia de Aracatuba, Aracatuba, Rua Jose Bonifacio, 1193, Vila Mendonca, CEP 16015-050, SP, Brasil
A Multiband Printed Antenna Suitable for Wireless Applications

This study deals with a new research work on a low cost multiband printed antenna which can be used for three operating frequency bands GSM900/PCS/WIFI/Bluetooth. The achieved antenna is mounted on an FR-4 substrate. In this study, the solts technique is used to obtain the multiband behavior. The different solts are inserted in the radiator face and the back face that is the ground. The whole circuit is optimized taking into account the good matching of the input impedance in the operating frequency bands with a stable radiation pattern. In order to optimize the proposed antenna structure we have used CST-MW and to compare the obtained simulation results we have conducted another electromagnetic simulation by using HFSS solver. The final circuit validated into simulation has been fabricated and tested which permits to validate the proposed multiband antenna.
Developing Three-Dimensional CFD City Model Based on Public Accessible Information for Street-Level Wind Risk Assessment

A three-dimensional city model based on public accessible online information has been developed with success in this study. Detailed procedures on how to develop such model for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation by using online maps, public accessible building information and online multimedia data will be reported in this paper. The city model developed in this study covers Marina Bay area of Singapore that includes highly developed urban region with many skyscrapers, greenery and water bodies, making it suitable for future urban heat island investigation. It can predict the street-level wind climate with a resolution of meters and has been validated by comparing with the measured wind data. We then conduct a risk assessment study of urban wind channels caused by a tropical typhoon, Vamei, which passed by Singapore on 27 th Dec 2001. Furthermore, the application of the CFD city model in improving a real time wind prediction system for water quality control purpose is discussed.
Estudo sobre a asociación entre a calidade de vida relacionada coa sáude, a acitivade física e outros hábitos, na comunidade do sistema universitario de Galicia

Given all the beneficial aspects reported by healthy lifestyles for a community, the aime of this study was to identify the degree of physical activity, obesity and adherence to the Mediterranean diet, the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, as well as their association with the quality of life related to health in the university community of Galicia, during the academic year 2014/15, in order to establish proposals aimed at improving their habits. The total sample size was 1.016 participants (439 students, 259 PDI and 318 PAS) of both sexes. Results were extracted through the application of the questionnaires: IPAQ, Test Kidmed, SF-12, and a tobacco and alcohol test, to measure the level of physical activity, the degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet, physical and mental health, and identify the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, respectively. All the university community participated voluntarily, fulfilling the criteria of the Declaration of Helsinki. The university community shows inadequate lifestyles, with high prevalences in Overweight, Obesity and Sedentary, which increase progressively with age; and high consumption of tobacco and alcohol. These results do not deviate significantly from the habits of the Spanish population. Concerning the Mediterranean diet, the PDI and PAS showed very good adherence, unlike the students, whose adherence was very low. Members of the university community show a very high perception of their own health (80-90%) in both sexes, and present values of HRQOL, both physical and mental, similar to those of the general Spanish population. We found that Obesity and Physical Activity are associated with HRQOL and not with the consumption of Tobacco and Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet, it was difficult to interpret the association with alcohol consumption. The conclusion addresses the need to change habits of diet, tobacco and alcohol consumption towards healthier patterns and proposes a model for promoting physical activity in the university educational context.
An Empirical Study of the Relationship Among Knowledge Integration and Cluster Innovation

The powerful development tendency of industrial cluster has close relation with its innovation advantages and continuously ongoing innovative activities that are propelled by innovation impetus. This paper analyzed strategy interaction using the game theory, the optimal strategy for knowledge integration to realize upgrading of technological trajectory needs match culture. Organizational culture suitability acts as a significant moderator. This research provides useful tools for organizational performance management.
The idea exposure paradigm in design idea generation

This paper presents a design experiment that was conducted to study the effects of idea exposure in design idea generation. Earlier studies have shown that idea exposure can stimulate and interfere with cognitive processes relating to succeeding idea generation, which in turn results in either process gains or losses concerning design outcome. However, fairly little is known about the network and interplay between supplementary effects of idea exposure. Perhaps the most relevant form of cognitive interference in creative design problem-solving is design fixation. Designers may become influenced by presented solutions, so that they reproduce features or principles instead of finding new ways to fulfil functional requirements. In the experiment, subjects were exposed to different amounts and types of examples prior to idea generation. Idea generation performance was measured by the amount of new concepts produced by each subject. The results showed that positive design outcome was correlated with the commonality of examples presented, whereas the amount of examples did not show a respective effect. Fixating effects were measured by analysing genealogical links between examples and generated solutions using a weighted link density metric, also presented in this paper. Presenting common instead of unusual examples led to a higher genealogical linkage between examples and generated ideas; this indicates that common examples cause more fixation than novel ones.
Deep learning based hand gesture recognition in complex scenes

Recently, region-based convolutional neural networks(R-CNNs) have achieved significant success in the field of object detection, but their accuracy is not too high for small objects and similar objects, such as the gestures. To solve this problem, we present an online hard example testing(OHET) technology to evaluate the confidence of the R-CNNs' outputs, and regard those outputs with low confidence as hard examples. In this paper, we proposed a cascaded networks to recognize the gestures. Firstly, we use the region-based fully convolutional neural network(R-FCN), which is capable of the detection for small object, to detect the gestures, and then use the OHET to select the hard examples. To enhance the accuracy of the gesture recognition, we re-classify the hard examples through VGG-19 classification network to obtain the final output of the gesture recognition system. Through the contrast experiments with other methods, we can see that the cascaded networks combined with the OHET reached to the state-of-the-art results of 99.3% mAP on small and similar gestures in complex scenes.
Review on Biometric Security System for Newborn Baby

Newborn swapping and abduction in hospitals are challenging issues which occurs all over the world. Traditional method to combat this problem have their own drawbacks, here a real time solution is provided by proposed model having five modules on raspberry Pi. Implemented module consisting of one camera for providing real time security against culprit who lifts the baby from cradle. Additionally a temperature sensor is used which gives the continuous updates about the baby’s health to medical staff and parents. The results of implemented modules shows that we can get the real time alert about culprit which will be easy to find out person who lifts the baby from cradle and also continuous data of temperature of baby’s body of providing time to time attention towards health. Proposed system has modules for scanning and matching of footprints of baby and hand impression of mother which provide a low cost solution to the newborn swapping rather than the expensive DNA procedures.
Approaches for content-based retrieval of symbolically encoded polyphonic music

This paper deals with content-based music retrieval (CBMR) of symbolically encoded polyphonic music. It is one of the key issues in the field of music information retrieval. Due to extensive research, there are already satisfactory methods for monophonic CBMR. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the polyphonic task. The problem has been approached in various ways; the majority of the methods suggested fall in two frameworks. The first framework models music as linear strings and the similarity is based on the well-known edit-distance concept. The second one models music as sets of two-dimensional geometric objects (consider the piano-roll representation), but the definition of similarity varies considerably within the framework. We scrutinise these frameworks trying to find common, relevant properties that either inhibit or boost the effectiveness of the methods. Although the edit-distance framework offers more efficient solutions, we conclude that the geometric framework is the choice for the CBMR task because of the very natural way of modelling music still preserving the features intrinsic to the task.
Ferromagnetism in Co doped CeO2: Observation of a giant magnetic moment with a high Curie temperature

We report room temperature ferromagnetism in single crystal Ce1−xCoxO2−δ (x⩽0.05) films deposited on a LaAlO3(001) substrate. Films were grown by a pulsed laser deposition technique and were thoroughly characterized using x-ray diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy coupled with electron energy loss spectroscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy-Z contrast, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, optical transmission spectroscopy, and magnetic measurements. These films are transparent in the visible regime and exhibit a very high Curie temperature ∼740–875K with a giant magnetic moment. Our results indicate that the ferromagnetic property is intrinsic to the CeO2 system and is not a result of any secondary magnetic phase or cluster formation.
Criterion for Many-Body Localization-Delocalization Phase Transition

We propose a new approach to probing ergodicity and its breakdown in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems based on their response to a local perturbation. We study the distribution of matrix elements of a local operator between the system’s eigenstates, finding a qualitatively different behavior in the many-body localized (MBL) and ergodic phases. To characterize how strongly a local perturbation modifies the eigenstates, we introduce the parameter G(L)=⟨ln(Vnm/δ)⟩, which represents the disorder-averaged ratio of a typical matrix element of a local operator V to energy level spacing δ; this parameter is reminiscent of the Thouless conductance in the single-particle localization. We show that the parameter G(L) decreases with system size L in the MBL phase and grows in the ergodic phase. We surmise that the delocalization transition occurs when G(L) is independent of system size, G(L)=Gc∼1. We illustrate our approach by studying the many-body localization transition and resolving the many-body mobility edge in a disordered one-dimensional XXZ spin-1/2 chain using exact diagonalization and time-evolving block-decimation methods. Our criterion for the MBL transition gives insights into microscopic details of transition. Its direct physical consequences, in particular, logarithmically slow transport at the transition and extensive entanglement entropy of the eigenstates, are consistent with recent renormalization-group predictions.
Journalists and Olympic Athletes: A Norwegian Case Study of an Ambivalent Relationship

This case study explores the relationship between media and sport. More specifically, it examines the association (i.e., the contact and communication) between Norwegian journalists and athletes during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada. Ten athletes and three journalists were interviewed about their relationship. To regulate and improve the journalist–athlete relationship during special events like the Olympics, media rules have been formulated. In regard to the on-site interactions, they accepted that they are working together where one was performing and the other reporting the event “back home. ” While the best advice is to be understanding of the journalists’ need for stories and inside information, the media coverage was perceived as a constant stress factor for the athletes. However, because of the media rules the athletes were able to keep their distance but one athlete did comment: “You will not survive if you take it personally. ”