Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leaf carbon assimilation in a water-limited world

Abstract Over the past 150 years the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing, largely as a result of land-use change and anthropogenic emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. It is estimated that the atmospheric [CO2] will reach 70 Pa by the end of the 21st Century. The most important consequence of this rise in [CO2] is warming the surface temperature of the Earth by 0.4 – 0.6°C per decade throughout the 21st Century. Increasing [CO2] along with associated changes in temperature will most likely alter the structure and function of agro-ecosystems, affecting their productivity and their role as stable sinks to CO2 sequestration. Both CO2 and temperature are key variables affecting plant growth, development and functions. Moreover, because of the future scenario of higher temperature and evaporative demand, drought occurrences will be increased in frequency, intensity, and erratic pattern. The combination of elevated temperatures and the increased incidence of environmental stress will probably constitute the greatest risk caused by climate change to the agro-ecosystems in arid or semiarid areas of the world. The purpose of this paper is to review the exchange of carbon driving the main ecophysiological processes of plants in response to climate change and environmental stresses. Drought and salinity first affect the acquisition of CO2 by increasing stomatal and mesophyll resistances, and only after cause irreversible damages to the biochemical apparatus. Heat stress denatures thylakoid membranes, but this action may be counteracted by the synthesis of many isoprenoids in the chloroplasts from carbon freshly fixed by photosynthesis. There is rising concern about the impact of environmental stress on tree growth with this future scenario of global climate change. The combination of elevated temperatures and the increased incidence of environmental stress (particularly drought and salinity) will probably constitute the greatest risk caused by global climate change to the forest ecosystems in arid or semiarid areas of the world.
Security attacks impact for collective perception based roadside assistance: A study of a highway on-ramp merging case

Road critical situations like highway on-ramp merging require a high coordination level between vehicles within a short time while they are driving at high velocity. Augmented perception system that can provide information about non-communicating vehicles in timely manner can drastically help vehicles to safely merge on the highway and avoid incidents. However, this reliance on coordination by information exchange between vehicles requires resilience against cyber attacks and against any other driver misbehavior or error. In this paper, we proposed and implemented a perception model that has been integrated in the merging control algorithm proposed in the literature to enhance the capability of the Road Side Unit (RSU) to detect the surrounding objects on the road. Moreover, we developed in this paper several attack models and we measure through simulations their impacts on collective perception-based on-ramp merging control algorithm.
Long Short-Term Memory Deep-Filter in Remote Photoplethysmography

Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) is a recent technique for estimating heart rate by analyzing subtle skin color variations using regular cameras. As multiple noise sources can pollute the estimated signal, post-processing techniques, such as bandpass filtering, are generally used. However, it is often possible to see alterations in the filtered signal that have not been suppressed, although an experienced eye can easily identify them. From this observation, we propose in this work to use an LSTM network to filter the rPPG signal. The network is able to learn the characteristic shape of the rPPG signal and especially its temporal structure, which is not possible with the usual signal processing-based filtering methods. The results of this study, obtained on a public database, have demonstrated that the proposed deep-learning-based filtering method outperforms the regular post-processing ones in terms of signal quality and accuracy of heart rate estimation.
Economics of Blockchain Storage

Miners in a blockchain system are suffering from the ever-increasing storage costs, which in general have not been properly compensated by the users’ transaction fees. In the long run, this may lead to less participation of miners and jeopardize the blockchain security. In this paper, we study the economics of blockchain storage and identify the incentive issues related to this storage cost problem. More specifically, we model the interactions among users (who generate transactions) and miners in two stages, where the users set the transaction fees in Stage 1, and the miners select which transactions to include in Stage 2. Through characterizing the Nash equilibrium of the two-stage game, we find that the transaction fees indeed cannot cover the storage costs under the current practice in general, due to the negative externality and the unfair delay-based pricing. We also identify that a longer block interval can alleviate the concern by raising the transactions fees at the expense of larger delay.
Locomotion in ground beetles (Coleoptera carabidae): an interpretation of leg structure in functional terms

Recordings of maximum running speeds and maximum horizontal pulling (= pushing) forces have been obtained for 72 species of cursorial and fossorial ground beetles (Carabidae: Coleoptera) belonging to 19 tribes and 12 supertribes. Fore leg, pro- and meso-femoral and tibial and mid leg measurements have also been made and all these parameters have been correlated with body lengths. It was found that those species (mainly Carabinae group I, i.e. Nebriini, Notiophilini, Loricerini, Elaphrini, Cicindelini) with relatively long, slender pro-and mesofemora, long pro - and mesotibiae and small meso-coxal articulations were faster runners (i.e. sprinters) but weaker horizontal pushers. In contrast, species (mainly Carabinae group II, i.e. Broscini, Trechini, Pogonini, Bembidiini, Patrobini, Pterostichini, Zabrini, Callistini, Oodini, Licinini, Harpalini) with relatively short, broad pro-femora, short (slender) mesofemora, short pro– and mesotibiae, and larger meso-coxal articulations were stronger horizontal pushers but were slower runners. Carabinae group III (Scaritini), however, which have very short, narrow pro- and mesofemora, very short pro- and mesotibiae, and large meso-coxal articulations were found to be very strong horizontal pushers but very slow (relatively) runners. The Carabini (including Cychrini), however, resemble Carabinae group II in their running and pushing abilities although their legs are structurally similar to those of Carabinae group I (i.e. relatively long and slender with small meso–coxal articulations). In fact, species of Carabini are fast walkers, their prey is generally slow moving (i.e. slugs, snails and caterpillars) and they hunt in restrictive habitats such as weed patches, meadows or woodland grass which produce a considerable amount of environmental resistance. Most Carabini have a heavy, powerful body which seems to be well adapted to overcoming this resistance.
Research on Task Pricing of Internet Labor Crowdsourcing Platform

Internet labor crowdsourcing platform is a self-service platform via mobile network. Users could download the APP and become a member of the platform to complete tasks with money in return, which makes the pricing of tasks critically significant. To find out the relation between pricing and completion rate, several factors are established according to tasks’ features. Then work out the influence ratio of each factor using PLS regression and global search. With the influence ratio obtained, optimal pricing solution could be found with multi-objective 0-1 integer programming. At last, simulation is applied to evaluate the result, which shows an improvement over both completion rate and platform cost.
Coded Caching with Device Computing for Content Computation in Mobile Systems

Edge caching and computing have been regarded as an efficient approach to tackle the wireless spectrum crunch problem. In this paper, we design a coded caching with device computing scheme for content computation, e.g., VR rendering, to minimize the average transmission bandwidth. Because both coded data and stored data can be the data before or after computing, the proposed scheme has numerous edge computing and caching paths corresponding to different bandwidth requirement. We thus formulate a joint coded caching and computing optimization problem to decide whether the mobile devices cache the input data or the output data, which tasks to be coded cached and which tasks to compute locally. The optimization problem is shown to be 0-1 nonconvex nonsmooth programming which can be decomposed into the computation programming and the coded caching programming. Computation programming can be solved by utilizing the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), and then a low complexity algorithm is proposed to obtain the acceptable solution for the coded cache programming. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides a significant bandwidth saving by taking full advantage of the caching and computing capability of mobile devices.
On Computation and Generalization of Generative Adversarial Networks under Spectrum Control

Method Inception Score FID CIFAR-10 STL-10 CIFAR-10 STL-10 Real Data 11.24± . 12 26.08± . 26 7.8 7.9 CNN Baseline WGAN-GP 6.72± . 11 8.42± . 09 39.0± . 29 54.1± . 35 Orthogonal Reg. 7.31± . 09 8.77± . 07 25.7± . 33 44.5± . 30 SN-GAN 7.39± . 05 8.83± . 07 24.7± . 25 45.5± . 34 Ours CNN Spectral Norm. 7.35± . 05 8.69± . 08 25.2± . 22 44.8± . 39 Spectral Constraint 7.43± . 08 8.97± . 05 24.8± . 30 44.0± . 42 Lipschitz Reg. 7.43± . 08 8.99± . 06 24.1± . 28 45.3± . 38 SC + Divergence Reg. 7.44± . 05 9.21± . 09 24.3± . 21 41.9± . 37 SN + D-Optimal Reg. 7.48± . 06 9.25± . 08 23.0± . 27 40.5± . 41 ResNet Orthogonal Reg. 7.90± . 05 8.83± . 05 22.3± . 26 44.9± . 35 SN-GAN 8.21± . 05 9.15± . 06 19.5± . 22 43.0± . 44 SN + D-Optimal Reg. 8.06± . 06 9.65± . 06 20.5± . 18 39.9± . 33 Image Generation
FluSpider as a new vision of digital influenza surveillance system: based on Big Data technologies and Massive Data Mining techniques

With the development of the number of Internet users, we have becoming able to quantify real world social phenomena up to date. One of the most important problems in healthcare is monitoring the current level of pandemic influenza. In this article, we propose FluSpider, a new vision of digital surveillance system that is based on tracking web pages followers, to estimate the current level of influenza across the world. Our method uses Big Data technologies and Massive Data Mining methods to provide accurate results. Our evaluation shows that FluSpider system can solve the Influenza Like Illness epidemic monitoring problem in near real time and ahead of two weeks of traditional centers.
The use of IT in teaching forensic science

For a number of years the Forensic Science Unit at the University of Strathclyde has offered teaching in the forensic sciences at undergraduate (BSc) and postgraduate level (MSc, MPhil and PhD). The Unit also undertakes professional short course training where courses are tailored to individual needs and may count towards a post graduate award. Traditionally this teaching has been supported by lecturing, tutorials, practical and problem solving exercises. Video and CD-ROM technology has also been used very effectively at undergraduate level. With the continuing requirement to support student learning through interactive technologies and specifically to provide on-line assessment the use of the World Wide Web as a tool to achieve has also been successfully implemented.
Profile of uveitis in a tertiary care centre in South India

PURPOSE: To study anatomic, demographic and etiologic profile of patients attending a uvea clinic in a tertiary hospital in South India. To study the characteristics, treatment response and complications of uveitis. METHODS: Hospital-based cross-sectional study of 104 uveitis patients conducted over a twelve-month period, from November 2015 to November 2016. The patients were categorized into anatomical and etiological groups.The pattern of inflammation was described. RESULTS: The age of the patients ranged from 3 to 87 years with mean age was 38.75 years. The age group of 31 – 40 years had the highest prevalence of uveitis. Gender distribution was almost equal. Visual disturbance was the most common symptom at presentation. Systemic illness were associated with uveitis in 43% of patients with non-infectious etiology. The most common location of inflammation was the anterior eye segment. Thirty-six percent of patients had no known identifiable causes. Bilateral eye involvement was found in 75% of non-infectious disease and 55% of idiopathic cases. Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease was the most common identifiable cause among non-infectious etiologies and viral uveitis among infections. Toxoplasmosis and tuberculosis were the commonest cause of posterior uveitis. Vogt Koyanagi Harada disease was the commonest cause of panuveitis. Childhood uveitis accounted for 7.6%of all uveitis cases. Commonest cause was Juvenile idiopathic arthritis related uveitis. Viral etiology was the commonest cause of those patients with a high intraocular pressure during the episode of uveitis. CONCLUSIONS: Idiopathic anterior uveitis was the most prevalent diagnosis. Patients with non-infectious and idiopathic uveitis had a higher recurrence rate of inflammatory episodes. Most patients were young and presented with non-infectious etiologies having more bilateral presentations. One-third of the patients in the study had visual impairment. Uveitis may have a strong socioeconomic and quality of life impact because it often affects younger working-age patients.
Biocompatible Polymers Combined with Cyclodextrins: Fascinating Materials for Drug Delivery Applications

Cyclodextrins (CD) are a group of cyclic oligosaccharides with a cavity/specific structure that enables to form inclusion complexes (IC) with a variety of molecules through non-covalent host-guest interactions. By an elegant combination of CD with biocompatible, synthetic and natural polymers, different types of universal drug delivery systems with dynamic/reversible properties have been generated. This review presents the design of nano- and micro-carriers, hydrogels, and fibres based on the polymer/CD supramolecular systems highlighting their possible biomedical applications. Application of the most prominent hydrophobic aliphatic polyesters that exhibit biodegradability, represented by polylactide and polycaprolactone, is described first. Subsequently, particular attention is focused on materials obtained from hydrophilic polyethylene oxide. Moreover, examples are also presented for grafting of CD on polysaccharides. In summary, we show the application of host-guest interactions in multi-component functional biomaterials for controlled drug delivery.
Local adaptation to herbivory within tropical tree species along a rainfall gradient.

In tropical forests, insect herbivores exert significant pressure on plant populations. Adaptation to such pressure is hypothesized to be a driver of high tropical diversity, but direct evidence for local adaptation to herbivory in tropical forests is sparse. At the same time, herbivore pressure has been hypothesized to increase with rainfall in the tropics, which could lead to differences among sites in the degree of local adaptation. To assess the presence of local adaptation and its interaction with rainfall, we compared herbivore damage on seedlings of local vs non-local populations at sites differing in moisture availability in a reciprocal transplant experiment spanning a rainfall gradient in Panama. For 13 native tree species, seeds collected from multiple populations along the rainfall gradient were germinated in a shadehouse and then transplanted to experimental sites within the species range. We tracked the proportion of seedlings attacked over 1.5 years and quantified the percentage of leaf area damaged at the end of the study. Seedlings originating from local populations were less likely to be attacked and experienced lower amounts of herbivore damage than those from non-local populations, but only on the wetter end of the rainfall gradient. However, overall herbivore damage was higher at the drier site compared to wetter sites, contrary to expectation. Taken together, these findings support the idea that herbivory can result in local adaptation within tropical tree species; however, the likelihood of local adaptation varies among sites due to environmentally-driven differences in investment in defense or herbivore specialization or both.
Unique Polyhalogenated Peptides from the Marine Sponge Ircinia sp.

Two new bromopyrrole peptides, haloirciniamide A (1) and seribunamide A (2), have been isolated from an Indonesian marine sponge of the genus Ircinia collected in the Thousand Islands (Indonesia). The planar structure of both compounds was assigned on the basis of extensive 1D and 2D NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. The absolute configuration of the amino acid residues in 1 and 2 was determined by the application of Marfey’s method. Compound 1 is the first dibromopyrrole cyclopeptide having a chlorohistidine ring, while compound 2 is a rare peptide possessing a tribromopyrrole ring. Both compounds failed to show significant cytotoxicity against four human tumor cell lines, and neither compound was able to inhibit the enzyme topoisomerase I or impair the interaction between programmed cell death protein PD1 and its ligand, PDL1.
Palaeovegetation of China: a pollen data‐based synthesis for the mid‐Holocene and last glacial maximum

Pollen data from China for 6000 and 18,000 14C yr bp were compiled and used to reconstruct palaeovegetation patterns, using complete taxon lists where possible and a biomization procedure that entailed the assignment of 645 pollen taxa to plant functional types. A set of 658 modern pollen samples spanning all biomes and regions provided a comprehensive test for this procedure and showed convincing agreement between reconstructed biomes and present natural vegetation types, both geographically and in terms of the elevation gradients in mountain regions of north‐eastern and south‐western China.
Composition and Structure of Lowland Rain-Forest Tree Communities on Ta‘u, American Samoa1

ABSTRACT This study examined the composition and structure of tropical rain forest in four permanent plots on the island of Ta‘u, American Samoa. Two 1-ha plots were established in coastal forest, one in an abandoned coastal cultivation site (a “plantation” ca. 17 yr post-abandonment) and another in a Dysoxylum samoense–dominated coastal forest. Two 2-ha plots were established in lowland forest at 200–250 m elevation, one in an abandoned plantation (ca. 13 yr post-abandonment) and the other in less-disturbed mid- to late-secondary mixed lowland forest. In the total 6 ha, we encountered 54 tree species, with Dysoxylum samoense the most dominant species overall and abundant in all four plots. The upper forest plot was the most diverse plot and exhibited low similarity with any of the other three plots. This plot exhibited a rarefaction curve similar to those of four lowland hill forest plots on Tutuila but was most similar in composition to regenerating disturbed forest on Tutuila rather than mature, less-disturbed forest. Low similarity was found between the two Dysoxylum-dominated coastal forests and the Dysoxylum-Pometia–dominated Ottoville lava flow forest on Tutuila. By examining the populations of D. samoense across the four plots we found an impact of agriculture and cyclones on height structure of the forest. Examination of species' diameter class distributions allowed us to propose several hypotheses related to the life histories of several tree species. We documented the natural establishment of the introduced species Flueggea flexuosa into both abandoned plantations and natural forest. Monitoring these plots over time will allow us to better understand successional processes in natural and human-impacted forest including changes in composition, structure, relative abundance of nonnative species, as well as the impact of cyclones on different forest types.
General (Biolog GN) versus site-relevant (pollutant-dependent) sole-carbon-source utilization patterns as a means to approaching community functioning

Biolog community-level sole-carbon-source utilization patterns are widely applied to distinguish between the microbiota of different habitats or reveal disturbances in microbial ecosystems. Our objective was to examine whether the metabolic diversity measured in the Biolog system could be related to community functioning, thus providing more information than being merely discriminative for communities. To answer this question, we compared the percentages of specific pollutant utilizers with the percentages of the degraders of distinct general (Biolog) substrates in arbitrary samples of isolates, employing in both cases the isolate sample assay (ISA). Samples for arbitrarily selected isolates were taken from in situ enclosures situated in the anaerobic lignite-carbonization effluent Lake Schwelvollert (district of Weisenfels, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany). A different aerobic-carbonization wastewater treatment was carried out in each of the in situ enclosures. It was shown that distinct arbitrarily compiled isol.
Proactive VoD delivery pattern reconfiguration based on temporal-spatial channel prediction

With the help of big data analytics, predictive resource allocation (PRA) techniques for video on demand (VoD) have been recognized as promising methods to save timefrequency resources, for a number of VoD packets can be transmitted in good channels in advance to avoid the predicted transmissions in bad channel conditions. With the increasing demands on a fantastic user quality of experience, a smooth playback and a low start-up delay are of equal importance to the emerging VoD with high fidelity, which inevitably leads to a critical delay requirement of VoD packets. However, the issue of resource estimation with quality of service (QoS) requirements is still an unsolved puzzle in PRA. In this paper, we propose a martingales-based physical resource block (PRB) abstraction method, where the random characteristics of the service process are embedded in the minimum PRB consumption. Based on the method, a proactive QoS-guaranteed reconfiguration algorithm is developed to optimize the multi-user delivery pattern applied in the prediction window, aiming to maximize spectrum efficiency. In this algorithm, since the delay sensitivity of VoD content transmitted in advance is dulled compared with the original VoD stream, we divide the original VoD slice into two sub-slices and derive a three-dimensional delivery pattern. The gain of resource saving and the capability of QoS guarantee brought by the reconfiguration have been demonstrated by the simulation results.
Noncoordinated Individual Preference Aware Caching Policy in Wireless D2D Networks

Recent investigations showed that cache-aided device-to-device (D2D) networks can be improved by properly exploiting the individual preferences of users. Since in practice it might be difficult to make centralized decisions about the caching distributions, this paper investigates the individual preference aware caching policy that can be implemented distributedly by users without coordination. The proposed policy is based on categorizing different users into different reference groups associated with different caching policies according to their preferences. To construct reference groups, learning-based approaches are used. To design caching policies that maximize throughput and hit-rate, optimization problems are formulated and solved. Numerical results based on measured individual preferences show that our design is effective and exploiting individual preferences is beneficial.