Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new species of Monoon (Annonaceae) from Peninsular Malaysia

Monoon malayanum I.M. Turner & Utteridge (Annonaceae) is described and a conservation assessment is presented for it. The new species is a medium-sized tree known from lowland tropical forest in Peninsular Malaysia. It is similar to, but readily distinguished from, Monoon sclerophyllum (Hook.f. & Thomson) B. Xue & R.M. K. Saunders.
Dynamical Synergies of Multidigit Hand Prehension

Hand prehension requires highly coordinated control of contact forces. The high-dimensional sensorimotor system of the human hand operates at ease, but poses several challenges when replicated in artificial hands. This paper investigates how the dynamical synergies, coordinated spatiotemporal patterns of contact forces, contribute to the hand grasp, and whether they could potentially capture the force primitives in a low-dimensional space. Ten right-handed subjects were recruited to grasp and hold mass-varied objects. The contact forces during this multidigit prehension were recorded using an instrumented grip glove. The dynamical synergies were derived using principal component analysis (PCA). The contact force patterns during the grasps were reconstructed using the first few synergies. The significance of the dynamical synergies, the influence of load forces and task configurations on the synergies were explained. This study also discussed the contribution of biomechanical constraints on the first few synergies and the current challenges and possible applications of the dynamical synergies in the design and control of exoskeletons. The integration of the dynamical synergies into exoskeletons will be realized in the near future.
Prairie Basin Wetlands of the Dakotas: A Community Profile,

Abstract : The shallow basin wetlands of the Dakotas form the bulk of the portion of the Prairie Pothole Region lying within the United States. This region produces a large proportion of North America's waterfowl and other prairie dwelling marsh and aquatic birds. The Prairie Pothole Region is also a major world supplier of cereal grains. Consequently, wetlands in the region are often drained for crop production or are otherwise cropped when water conditions permit. Prairie basin wetlands vary greatly in their ability to maintain surface water and in their water chemistry, which varies from fresh to polysaline. In addition, these wetlands are affected by a variety of agricultural land uses and practices, including pasture, cultivation, technical forage removal, idle conditions, and burning. It is important to understand how these factors operate in prairie basin wetlands, since they greatly affect the plant and animal communities in these basins.
InterGrid : A Case for Internetworking of Islands of Grids

Over the last few years, several Grids have been set up to share resources such as computers, data, and instruments to enable collaborative research. These Grids follow models and heterogeneous policies restricted by the requirements of e-Science applications for which they have been created, which has resulted in islands of Grids. A structure that allows Grids to grow in a scalable manner by allowing peering between Grids is still not possible. There has been a profound interest in providing interoperability between different Grids. In this paper, we propose a model that (a) promotes interlinking of islands of Grids through peering arrangements to enable inter-Grid resource sharing; (b) provides a scalable structure for Grids that allow them to interconnect with one another and grow in a sustainable way; (c) creates a global cyberinfrastructure to support e-Science and eBusiness applications. This work identifies the need for a business ecosystem, called the InterGrid, which promotes the internetworking of islands of Grids and allows Grids to grow in a similar way as the Internet. We examine current global systems that grow by enabling networks of networks and propose an architecture for the InterGrid. The architecture is composed of InterGrid Gateways responsible for managing peering arrangements between Grids. We discuss the main components of the architecture and present a research agenda to enable the InterGrid vision.
Saline lake ichnology : composition and distribution of cenozoic traces in the saline, alkaline lakes of the Kenya Rift Valley and Eocene Green River Formation, U.S.A.

A detailed study was made of the composition and distribution of modern and fossil animal and plant traces around saline, alkaline lakes in tectonically active, closed lake-basins. Modern and Pleistocene traces that were examined in lake basins of the Kenya Rift Valley (Lakes Bogoria, Magadi, and Nasikie Engida) were compared directly with fossil traces from the Eocene Lake Gosiute in the Green River Formation of Wyoming, U.S.A. , which had a similar hydrochemistry. Analysis of lithofacies and the stratigraphic packaging of the sediments hosting biogenic structures was undertaken so that their vertical and lateral distribution could be used to interpret lake histories and to help to develop depositional models of enigmatic sedimentary successions. A focus was given to the application of the results for paleoecology and stratigraphy, and a model for predicting the position of different trace associations in vertical successions and in different parts of saline, alkaline lake basins has been developed. Evidence from the Kenyan lakes and Eocene Lake Gosiute shows that (1) sedimentary environments are diverse in underfilled basins, and frequent lake-level fluctuations strongly impact the distribution of sedimentary environments suitable for the production and preservation of biogenic structures; (2) the distribution of biogenic structures in underfilled basins is related to the geomorphological and structural setting, tectonic activity, catchment lithology, the basin margin or basin centre location, climate, and salinity and alkalinity, together with other finer-scale environmental and biological controls; (3) because saline environments are restrictive, sites of relatively dilute inflow (springs, rivers and deltas, ephemeral streams) provide oasis-like habitats for animals and plants, and contribute to the increased diversity and laterally variable distribution of saline-lake trace assemblages; and (4) the vertical distribution of trace fossils in a stratigraphic succession reflects changing environments through time; important stratigraphic surfaces, usually formed during periods of lake-level fall, can be recognized from the overprinting patterns of traces produced under different conditions.
Why Do Deepfake Detectors Fail?

Recent rapid advancements in deepfake technology have allowed the creation of highly realistic fake media, such as video, image, and audio. These materials pose significant challenges to human authentication, such as impersonation, misinformation, or even a threat to national security. To keep pace with these rapid advancements, several deepfake detection algorithms have been proposed, leading to an ongoing arms race between deepfake creators and deepfake detectors. Nevertheless, these detectors are often unreliable and frequently fail to detect deepfakes. This study highlights the challenges they face in detecting deepfakes, including (1) the pre-processing pipeline of artifacts and (2) the fact that generators of new, unseen deepfake samples have not been considered when building the defense models. Our work sheds light on the need for further research and development in this field to create more robust and reliable detectors.
Port of Abbot Point long-term seagrass monitoring: annual report 2012-2013

Key Findings: 1. Seagrasses have been monitored quarterly at Abbot Point since 2008 with additional broader regional seagrass surveys conducted in 2008 and 2013. 2. After 18 months of recovery deep water seagrass underwent declines through 2013 following Tropical Cyclone Oswald and associated rainfall, high winds and flooding. 3. Inshore monitoring meadows have yet to show substantial recovery but in 2013 there were some initial signs of recovery with small amounts of Halodule uninervis present at two of the inshore meadows. 4. The density of deep water seagrass in the broader port limits dramatically declined in the 2013 baseline surveys compared with the last regional baseline surveys conducted in 2008. Similarly the density of seagrass at inshore meadows in the broader region declined from dry season 2008 to dry season 2013. 5. The total extent of all seagrass meadows in the broader Abbot Point area declined by 60% between the 2008 and 2013 wet season surveys. However by the 2013 dry season survey, total meadow area had increased again to be similar to the 2008 dry season. 6. The first ever recorded occurrence of Halophila tricostata in the Abbot Bay/Bowen area was made in the September 2013 baseline survey. 7. The broader scale baselines in 2013 have found meadows of the key inshore species Halodule uninervis and Zostera muelleri near to Abbot Point that could provide a means of recovery for Abbot Point meadows through dispersal of seeds and other propagules. 8. Light (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) monitoring indicated that during the seagrass growing season in the second half of 2013, the amount of light available was favourable for seagrass growth at both inshore and offshore sites. While some seagrass recovery was observed the lack of recovery at other meadows was likely due to a lack of available propagules (seeds, fragments, adult plants). 9. The declines in Abbot Point seagrasses over recent years mean that they likely have a reduced resilience to further impacts and stressors. The cumulative impacts of natural stressors need to be considered in conjunction with future developments associated with port expansions in formulating management strategies to protect seagrasses. 10. Assessments of seagrass seed banks and their viability will be a key addition to the monitoring program in 2014 to understand their resilience to impacts and potential for recovery.
Aerosol properties and their influences on marine boundary layer cloud condensation nuclei at the ARM mobile facility over the Azores

A multiplatform data set from the Clouds, Aerosol, and Precipitation in the Marine Boundary Layer (MBL) Graciosa, Azores, 2009–2010 field campaign was used to investigate how continental aerosols can influence MBL cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentration (NCCN). The seasonal variations of aerosol properties have shown that the winter and early spring months had the highest mean surface wind speed (> 5 m s−1) and greatest contribution of sea salt to aerosol optical depth (AOD), while continental fine mode aerosols were the main contributors to AOD during the warm season months (May–September). Five aerosol events consisting of mineral dust, pollution, biomass smoke, and volcanic ash particles were selected as case studies using Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) mobile facility measurements. The aerosols in Case I were found to primarily consist of coarse mode, Saharan mineral dust. For Case II, the aerosols were also coarse mode but consisted of volcanic ash. Case III had fine mode biomass smoke and pollution aerosol influences while Cases IV and V consisted of mixtures of North American pollution and Saharan dust that was advected by an extratropical cyclone to the Azores. Cases I, IV, and V exhibited weak correlations between aerosol loading and NCCN due to mineral dust influences, while Cases II and III had a strong relationship with NCCN likely due to the sulfate content in the volcanic ash and pollution particles. The permanent Eastern North Atlantic ARM facility over the Azores will aid in a future long‐term study of aerosol effects on NCCN.
Integration agiler Prozesse in die Softwaretechnik-Ausbildung im Informatik-Grundstudium

Objektorientierte Programmierung zu lehren erfordert einiges an Didaktik, da die Objektorientierung stark in die Praxis der Softwareentwicklung eingebunden ist. Das Paradigma muss aber nicht nur praktisch, sondern auch konzeptionell in den Software-Entwicklungsprozessen eingeordnet werden. Die Bezuge reichen von der Analyse uber den Entwurf und die Implementierung bis hin zur Integration in bestehende Softwarelandschaften. Nach unseren Erfahrungen ist fur eine solche Einordnung die klassische Veranstaltungsform mit Vorlesung und begleitenden, kleinen, bindungslosen Ubungen nicht mehr angemessen. Wir planen deshalb fur das Sommersemester 2003, die in die Objektorientierung einfuhrende Grundstudiumsveranstaltung neu zu strukturieren. Dabei sollen Prinzipien agiler Entwicklungsprozesse in den Ubungsteil eingehen. Agile Methoden sind durch ihre kurzen Projektzyklen, die sich iterativ entwickelnden Architekturen und die vielschichtigen Ruckkopplungsmechanismen aus unserer Sicht besonders geeignet. Die Studierenden lernen dadurch relevante Fragenstellungen der objektorientierten Softwareentwicklung in kurzer Zeit aus eigener Erfahrung kennen und konnen daruber in Rucksprachen diskutieren. So konnen dann Konzepte in der Vorlesung auf wissenschaftlichem Niveau reflektiert werden.
SIRENA: A CAD environment for behavioural modelling and simulation of VLSI cellular neural network chips

This paper presents SIRENA, a CAD environment for the simulation and modelling of mixed-signal VLSI parallel processing chips based on cellular neural networks. SIRENA includes capabilities for: (a) the description of nominal and non-ideal operation of CNN analogue circuitry at the behavioural level; (b) performing realistic simulations of the transient evolution of physical CNNs including deviations due to second-order effects of the hardware; and, (c) evaluating sensitivity figures, and realize noise and Monte Carlo simulations in the time domain. These capabilities portray SIRENA as better suited for CNN chip development than algorithmic simulation packages (such as OpenSimulator, Sesame) or conventional neural networks simulators (RCS, GENESIS, SFINX), which are not oriented to the evaluation of hardware non-idealities. As compared to conventional electrical simulators (such as HSPICE or ELDO-FAS), SIRENA provides easier modelling of the hardware parasitics, a significant reduction in computation time, and similar accuracy levels. Consequently, iteration during the design procedure becomes possible, supporting decision making regarding design strategies and dimensioning. SIRENA has been developed using object-oriented programming techniques in C, and currently runs under the UNIX operating system and X-Windows framework. It employs a dedicated high-level hardware description language: DECEL, fitted to the description of non-idealities arising in CNN hardware. This language has been developed aiming generality, in the sense of making no restrictions on the network models that can be implemented. SIRENA is highly modular and composed of independent tools. This simplifies future expansions and improvements. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Multi‐offset ground penetrating radar methods to image buried foundations of a medieval town wall, Great Yarmouth, UK

In conventional common‐offset (CO) usage, ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) methods may be problematic where a target is hosted within a structurally complex subsurface, or where coherent noise energy obscures the response to that target. This often occurs when imaging archaeology in urban environments, where reflected and diffracted air‐wave energy can be pervasive in the presence of cars, walls and other nearby features. To overcome such issues we show a multi‐offset (MO) GPR approach to urban surveying. Multi‐offset velocity analysis is used as a filter by which ground‐propagating signal energy is separated from airborne arrivals, with the latter suppressed on application of normal moveout corrections and stacking. Pre‐stack migration is applied and yields considerable improvement to target resolution compared with post‐stack routines. The MO‐derived model of GPR velocity can also show the subsurface distribution of archaeological layering. Methods are demonstrated for a 25‐fold MO GPR profile acquired, using unshielded antennas of 200 MHz centre‐frequency, over foundations of the medieval town wall of Great Yarmouth, UK. The buried foundations represent a vertical discontinuity in the ground, which truncates both natural geological and archaeologically prospective layers. In addition to this complex geometry, which itself hinders GPR imaging, coherent air‐wave noise is problematic because there are numerous above‐surface features (e.g. parked cars, above‐surface walls) in the immediate vicinity of the profile. The improvement offered by MO techniques is benchmarked against a conventional CO routine and compared with co‐located borehole records for a comprehensive subsurface interpretation. Target foundations appear ca. 1.5 m beneath the ground surface, and GPR data support artefactual evidence of the construction of a sixteenth century rampart on their interior side. Despite the increased survey effort, we recommend MO methods at any location where CO data are dominated with coherent noise energy, and where complex subsurface geometries degrade the output from standard migration algorithms. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Consumption-based Explanation of Expected Stock Returns Job Market Paper an Earlier Draft Was Circulated with the Title " a Consumption-based Explanation of the Cross Section of Expected Stock Returns. " I Am Grateful for Comments

When utility is non-separable in nondurable and durable consumption and the elasticity of substitution between the goods is high, marginal utility rises when durable consumption falls. The model explains both the cross-sectional variation in expected stock returns and the time variation in the equity premium. Small stocks and value stocks deliver relatively low returns during recessions when durable consumption falls, which explains their high average returns relative to big stocks and growth stocks. Stock returns are unexpectedly low at business-cycle troughs when durable consumption falls sharply, which explains the counter-cyclical variation in the equity premium.
Radio Frequency Identification - A Review of Low Cost Tag Security Proposals

With the increased awareness of the potential of RFID technology across a range of applications and as a new source of information emerge new points of attack. Due to cost issues most proposals focus on securing the RFID reader rather than the tag. This paper investigates some of the low-cost proposals for securing RFID tags from potential misuse through authentication and encryption.
Fast Blind Audio Copy-Move Detection and Localization Using Local Feature Tensors in Noise

—The increasing availability of audio editing software altering digital audios and their ease of use allows create forgeries at low cost. A copy-move forgery (CMF) is one of easiest and popular audio forgeries, which created by copying and pasting audio segments within the same audio, and potentially post-processing it. Three main approaches to audio copy-move detection exist nowadays: samples/frames comparison, acoustic features coherence searching and dynamic time warping. But these approaches will suffer from computational complexity and/or sensitive to noise and post-processing. In this paper, we propose a new local feature tensors-based copy-move detection algorithm that can be applied to transformed duplicates detection and localization problem to a special locality sensitive hash like procedure. The experimental results with massive online real-time au-dios datasets reveal that the proposed technique effectively determines and locating copy-move forgeries even on a forged speech segment are as short as fractional second. This method is also computational efﬁcient and robust against the audios processed with severe nonlinear transformation, such as resampling, ﬁltering, jsittering, compression and cropping, even contaminated with background noise and music. Hence, the proposed technique provides an efﬁcient and reliable way of copy-move forgery detection that increases the credibility of audio in practical forensics applications.
Learning from Multiple Complementary Labels

Complementary-label learning is a new weakly-supervised learning framework that solves the problem where each training example is supplied with a complementary label, which only speciﬁes one of the classes that the example does not belong to. Although a few works have demonstrated that an unbiased estimator of the original classiﬁcation risk can be obtained from only complementarily labeled data, they are all restricted to the case where each example is associated with exactly one complementary label. It would be more promising to learn from multiple complementary labels simultaneously, as the supervision information would be richer if more complementary labels are provided. So far, whether there exists an unbiased risk estimator for learning from multiple complementary labels simultaneously is still unknown. In this paper, we will give an afﬁrmative answer by deriving the ﬁrst unbiased risk estimator for learning from multiple complementary labels. In addition, we further theoretically analyze the estimation error bound of our proposed approach, and show that the optimal parametric convergence rate is achieved. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Adjusted Asymmetric Accuracy: A Well-Behaving External Cluster Validity Measure

There is no, nor will there ever be, single best clustering algorithm, but we would still like to be able to pinpoint those which are well-performing on certain task types and ﬁlter out the systematically disappointing ones. Clustering algorithms are traditionally evaluated using either internal or external validity measures. Internal measures quantify diﬀerent aspects of the obtained partitions, e.g., the average degree of cluster compactness or point separability. Yet, their validity is questionable because the clusterings they promote can sometimes be meaningless. External measures, on the other hand, compare the algorithms’ outputs to the reference, ground truth groupings that are provided by experts. The commonly-used classical partition similarity scores, such as the normalised mutual information, Fowlkes–Mallows, or adjusted Rand index, might not possess all the desirable properties, e.g., they do not identify pathological edge cases correctly. Furthermore, they are not nicely interpretable: it is hard to say what a score of 0.8 really means. Its behaviour might also vary as the number of true clusters changes. This makes comparing clustering algorithms across many benchmark datasets diﬃcult. To remedy this, we propose and analyse a new measure: an asymmetric version of the optimal set-matching accuracy. It is corrected for chance and the imbalancedness of cluster sizes.
Frisian TTS, an example of bootstrapping TTS for minority languages

A Frisian adaptation of a Dutch TTS system based on Festival, NeXTeNS, is presented as a case study in prototyping TTS for resource-poor minority languages. For these languages, demonstrator systems are essential to seed projects in speech and language technology. The conversion of a Dutch TTS system to a new language with minimal speech and language resources, Frisian, demonstrates that a TTS prototype can be built rapidly using existing modules and voices. An informal evaluation with native speakers of Frisian shows that such a hybrid prototype can already produce intelligible speech for demonstration purposes.