Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterizing the Representativity Error of Cloud Profiling Observations for Data Assimilation

Active observations from profiling instruments such as cloud radar or lidar have proved invaluable in improving our understanding of clouds and their interaction with the atmosphere. However, while they undoubtedly contain a wealth of information about the atmospheric state, the assimilation of such observations into NWP models has so far had mixed success. One reason is the mismatch of scales between the relatively coarse model resolution and the narrow beam‐width of the instruments. To obtain an optimal analysis, this representativity error due to this mismatch in scales must be included within the observation error covariance matrix. In this paper, we demonstrate how a relatively straightforward approach that uses the local variance of the measurement combined with a global estimate of correlation provides a useful estimate of the representativity error. We also show how the method can be used to estimate the correlation in representativity error between observations in both the horizontal and vertical, potentially removing the need to thin the observations, or inflate their observation error. The method is evaluated using 2‐D and 3‐D fields of simulated and observed radar reflectivity before an example application to profiling observations is shown using Cloudsat data.
CUNY Academic Works

Devices and technologies to measure and report water consumption at sub-daily intervals are growing in popularity. Data from these devices are creating new opportunities to manage the supply and demand of water in near real-time. To this end, the EU FP7 iWIDGET ( I mproved W ater efficiency through I CT for integrated supply-D emand side mana GE men T ) project is developing a state-of-the art analytics platform for the integrated management of urban water. Key challenges include extracting useful insights from high-resolution consumption data and exploring a range of decision-support tools for water utilities and consumers. To overcome these challenges, iWIDGET is developing a distributed, open, robust, collaborative architecture that allows partners and utilities to collect and process data from a large number of sensors in parallel and analyze data on demand. We present a distributed system that enables flexible, near real-time monitoring of water networks by providing four critical mechanisms. First, a means to regularly poll water utility raw data systems. Second, assimilation of fresh data into a purposely designed, high-performance database. Third, geographically local or remote analytic systems poll the database to incorporate the latest consumption information in their analysis. Lastly, an online portal based platform is used to trigger analysis and review results. A key architectural feature of this system is a loose coupling between central storage and analytic systems. Communication between the central storage and processing components utilizes standard techniques, including WaterML, over RESTful web services. This arrangement avoids restrictions on the underlying technologies in analytical components and allows analytic systems to execute on different operating systems and run-times. The system is under active development and will enable a wide variety of tools for water utilities and individual consumers. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 318272.
Effect of pollution on the ECO phytocenological assessment of Thymus caucasicus (Lamiaceae lindl.) populations in the territory of eastern Azerbaijan, Ardabil

Ecological and phytocenological assessments of 3 populations of Thymus caucasicus L. species were carried out in Ardabil. Classification of Th.caucasicus phytocenose on ecological groups were developed for the first time. In the result, the associations and their floristic composition and ecology were identified. Age, efficiency, aging indexes were appointed during cenological assessments of the Th.caucasicus formations. 3 natural cenopopulation of Th.caucasicus species were assessed, cenological situation studied in the territory, in 2013-2015 years and it was found that the 1st and 3rd populations were transition, 2nd was mature in 2013, in 2014, 1st was young, 2 nd and 3rd were mature, 1st and 2nd were young in 3rd was mature in 2015. Analysis of the parameters of population illustrated that restoration is higher in 1st and 2nd cenopopulation in 2015 rather than in 2013 - 2014.degradation of pasture to be casued that thymus population distrbution were significance decreased in the ardabil proviense.
Internet Telephony Architecture Roadmap Status of this Memo

Interactive voice and video communication is slowly migrating to Internet protocols and the public Internet. However, third-generation wireless networks are likely to use Internet protocols extensively. This memo summarizes the IETF protocol architecture for providing such services in both landline and wireless environments based on IETF-specified protocols. It describes the basic functionality of the major components and provides an overview of how the various protocols can be used together to provide Internet telephony services. It also points out where additional standardization efforts may be needed. It is also intended for those seeking an introduction to the emerging architecture.
Changes in Social and Economic Development of Small Farms in Poland

The article discusses the progress of changes in the area structure of individual farms and related to this changes in the number of workers in agriculture as well as the issue of unused labour resources in Poland. The research material are public statistics data (Polish Statistical Office – GUS) and the results of own research carried out at IAFE-NRI. A detailed analysis of the decline in the share of people working in agriculture among the total number of employed in our country indicates that in the recent period the scale of decline in the value of this indicator is accelerating. These tendencies were mainly the result of a much larger than before increase in the number of non-agricultural workers, especially among rural residents.
First validation of the Haptic Sandwich : a shape changing handheld haptic navigation aid Conference or Workshop Item

This paper presents the Haptic Sandwich, a handheld robotic device that designed to provide pedestrian navigation instructions through a novel shape changing modality. The device resembles a cube with an articulated upper half that is able to rotate and translate (extend) relative to the bottom half, which is grounded in the user’s hand when the device is held. The poses assumed by the device simultaneously correspond to heading and proximity to a navigational target. The Haptic Sandwich provides an alternative to screen and/or audio based pedestrian navigation technologies for both visually impaired and sighted users. Unlike other robotic or haptic navigational solutions, the haptic sandwich is discrete in terms of form and sensory stimulus. Due to the novel and unexplored nature of shape changing interfaces, two user studies were undertaken to validate the concept and device. In the first experiment, stationary participants attempted to identify poses assumed by the device, which was hidden from view. In the second experiment, participants attempted to locate a sequence of invisible navigational targets while walking with the device. Of 1080 pose presentations to 10 individuals in experiment one, 80% were correctly identified and 17.5% had the minimal possible error. Multi-DOF errors accounted for only 1.1% of all answers. The role of simultaneous or independent actuator motion on final shape perception was tested with no significant performance difference. The rotation and extension DOF had significantly different perception accuracy. In the second experiment, participants demonstrated good navigational ability with the device after minimal training and were able to locate all presented targets. Mean motion efficiency of the participants was between 32%-56%. Participants made use of both DOF. Keywords— Haptics and Haptic Interfaces, Physical HumanRobot Interaction, Personal Robots, Human Centered Robotics, Assistive Technology
Detecting Informative Web Page Blocks for Efficient Information Extraction Using Visual Block Segmentation

As the structure of a Web page is getting more complicated, the construction of wrapper induction rules becomes more difficult and time-consuming. The main problem in most wrapper induction methods is the difficulty in discriminating the meaningful blocks that contain the target information from the noise blocks that contains irrelevant information such as advertisements, menus, or copyright statements. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the RIPB(recognizing informative page blocks) algorithm that detects the informative blocks in a Web page by exploiting the visual block segmentation scheme. RIPB uses the visual page segmentation algorithm to analyze and partition a Web page into a set of logical blocks, and then groups related blocks with similar structures into a block cluster and recognizes the informative block clusters by applying some heuristic rules to the cluster information. The results of a series of experiments indicate that RIPB contributes to improve the accuracy of information extraction by allowing the wrapper induction module to focus only on the informative block information and ignore other noise information in building extraction rules.
Dependency-based n-gram models for general purpose sentence realisation

Abstract This paper presents a general-purpose, wide-coverage, probabilistic sentence generator based on dependency n-gram models. This is particularly interesting as many semantic or abstract syntactic input specifications for sentence realisation can be represented as labelled bi-lexical dependencies or typed predicate-argument structures. Our generation method captures the mapping between semantic representations and surface forms by linearising a set of dependencies directly, rather than via the application of grammar rules as in more traditional chart-style or unification-based generators. In contrast to conventional n-gram language models over surface word forms, we exploit structural information and various linguistic features inherent in the dependency representations to constrain the generation space and improve the generation quality. A series of experiments shows that dependency-based n-gram models generalise well to different languages (English and Chinese) and representations (LFG and CoNLL). Compared with state-of-the-art generation systems, our general-purpose sentence realiser is highly competitive with the added advantages of being simple, fast, robust and accurate.
Elastically Adaptive Deformable Models

We present a novel technique for the automatic adaptation of a deformable model's elastic parameters within a Kalman lter framework for shape estimation applications. The novelty of the technique is that the model's elastic parameters are not constant, but time varying. The model for the elastic parameter variation depends on the local error of t and the rate of change of the error of t. By augmenting the state equations of an extended Kalman lter to incorporate these additional variables and take into account the noise in the data, we are able to signiicantly improve the quality of the shape estimation. Therefore, the model's elastic parameters are initialized always to the same value and they subsequently modiied depending on the data and the noise distribution. In addition, we demonstrate how this technique can be par-allelized in order to increase its eeciency. We present several experiments to demonstrate the eeectiveness of our method.
Towards a semantic web representation from a 3D geospatial urban data model

L'urbanisation un processus d'évolution continue qui est actuellement étudié par nombre de chercheurs. Les modèles d'information de la ville, multi-sources et multidimensionnels, sont souvent utilisés pour comprendre le paysage urbain, qui est constante évolution. Ces modèles peuvent cependant poser des problèmes d'interopérabilité et de perte de données lors de conversions, souvent nécessaires pour permettre leur intégration. modèles conceptuels qui peuvent pertes de données lors conversions, peuvent également contribuer type d'approche modèle-centrée permet de définir une représentation commune. Récemment, mouvement vers la représentation de données basée sur les graphes et la sémantique a gagné en popularité pour understand the ever-changing urban landscape. These models may encounter issues with interoperability and data-loss if conversion is required for integration. Today we can base ourselves on conceptual models which can help deal with data losses during conversion and may also help preserve data interoperability. This kind of model-driven approach can be useful as common representation. Recently, a movement towards graph and semantic based data representations has also grown in popularity to respond to these issues. As a first step, we consider CityGML, a common standard that can be used to represent 3D urban information. We propose a strategy for converting the semantics of CityGML conceptual model into ontologies and later to semantic web formats to facilitate integration. In addition, we propose a method for converting and storing CityGML instances into RDF individuals that respect the generated ontology. This proposed approach overcomes the loss of semantic information resulting from the direct translation of different types of data into graphs such as RDF.
Web-based implementation of the Personalised System of Instruction: A case study of teaching mathematics in an online learning environment.

This paper presents a case study of a university discrete mathematics course with over 170 students who had access to an online learning environment (OLE) that included a variety of online tools, such as videos, self-tests, discussion boards, and lecture notes. The course is based on the ideas of the Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) modified to take advantage of an OLE. Students’ learning is examined over a period of two years, and compared with that in a more traditionally taught part of the course. To examine students’ behaviour, learning strategies, attitudes and performance, both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used as a mixed methodology approach, including in-depth interviews ( N =9), controlled laboratory observations ( N =8), surveys ( N =243), diary studies ( N =10), classroom observations, recording online usage behaviour, and learning assessments. The paper aims to increase understanding of whether PSI, supported by an OLE, could enhance student appreciation and achievement as findings suggest.
Approximate mechanism design without money

The literature on algorithmic mechanism design is mostly concerned with game-theoretic versions of optimization problems to which standard economic money-based mechanisms cannot be applied efficiently. Recent years have seen the design of various truthful approximation mechanisms that rely on enforcing payments. In this paper, we advocate the reconsideration of highly structured optimization problems in the context of mechanism design. We argue that, in such domains, approximation can be leveraged to obtain truthfulness without resorting to payments. This stands in contrast to previous work where payments are ubiquitous, and (more often than not) approximation is a necessary evil that is required to circumvent computational complexity. We present a case study in approximate mechanism design without money. In our basic setting agents are located on the real line and the mechanism must select the location of a public facility; the cost of an agent is its distance to the facility. We establish tight upper and lower bounds for the approximation ratio given by strategyproof mechanisms without payments, with respect to both deterministic and randomized mechanisms, under two objective functions: the social cost, and the maximum cost. We then extend our results in two natural directions: a domain where two facilities must be located, and a domain where each agent controls multiple locations.
Learning local transductions is hard

Local deterministic string-to-string transductions are generalizations of morphisms on free monoids. Learning local transductions reduc s to inference of monoid morphisms. However, learning a restricted class of morphisms, the so-called fine morphisms, is an intractable problem, because the decision version of the em pirical risk minimization problem contains anNP-complete subproblem.
Online Collaborative Learning System Using Speech Technology

(LINC) system, designed and being used in some institution's courses in mixed-mode learning, is presented in this paper. This mode combines face-to-face and distance approaches to education. LINC can achieve both collaborative and competitive learning. In order to provide both learners and tutors with a more natural way to interact with e-learning applications, a conversational interface has been included in LINC. Hence, the components and essential features of LINC+, the voice enhanced version of LINC, are described. We report evaluation experiments of LINC/LINC+ in a real use context of a computer programming course taught at the Université de Moncton (Canada). The findings show that when the learning material is delivered in the form of a collaborative and voice-enabled presentation, the majority of learners seem to be satisfied with this new media, and confirm that it does not negatively affect their cognitive load.
Organizational Characteristics, Modes of Internet Adoption and Their Impact: A Singapore Perspective

The Internet can be used for different purposes ranging from simple Internet presence to using it for business transformation. This study examines two modes of Internet adoption â€”basic and advanced. Questionnaires were sent to 566 firms in Singapore and 159 usable responses were received. Results suggested that firms operating in an advanced adoption mode invest more in Internet technology, had larger firm size, proactive business strategy and significantly greater perceived Internet contributions to competitive advantage than did those operating in a basic adoption mode. No significant differences were found between the two adoption modes in terms of industry sector and hierarchical level of respondents. The results provide some useful information on the relationships between adoption modes and organizational characteristics as well as the impact of adoption modes on the five dimensions of competitive advantage (namely, differentiation, cost, innovation, growth, and alliance). Implications of the results are discussed.
Conservation and threats to the resources of Lake Malawi

AbstractDevelopments taking place in the countries bordering the Great Lakes of Africa inevitably mean that changes are occurring in the ecology of those lakes and that such changes will continue. The role of the scientist is to find ways of minimizing the impact of such developments on lake environments.Fisheries are of vital importance to Malawi. Catch and effort data on the cichlid fisheries suggest that present yields are sustainable and that the fisheries can be well managed. The ornamental fish trade is dependent on external factors for its survival. Malawi has established a National Park to protect representative populations of the Malawi fish fauna; this has the status of World Heritage Site. Threats to the lake environment are: excessive fishery exploitation, introduction of alien fishes and plants, industrial pollution, and oil exploration with the risk of spills. Deforestation may affect lake levels and hence shore-based infrastructure, and also affects the character of affluent streams and spa.
Energy Efficiency Comparison of Asynchronous and Synchronous Circuits Operating in the Sub-Threshold Regime

Digital circuits operating in the sub-threshold regime are able to perform minimum energy operation at a given delay. In the sub-threshold regime circuit delay, hence the leakage energy consumption depends on the supply voltage exponentially. By reducing the idle time of the circuit both the supply voltage that realizes minimum energy operation and the energy consumption can be reduced. This paper presents an in-depth comparison of synchronous and asynchronous techniques in the sub-threshold operating regime for their energy efficiency. First, transistor level accurate high level sub-threshold energy consumption model is developed for both techniques. Afterwards, using the model energy consumption reduction due to the asynchronous operation is investigated analytically. Different architectural improvements such as pipelining and parallelism are considered. The model has also been applied to the benchmark circuits for comparing real world energy consumption values. From our analysis and simulations we have found out that asynchronous operation in the sub-threshold regime significantly lowers the supply voltage value that realizes the minimum energy operation and operating the digital circuits at a lower supply voltage value result in lower energy operation. Asynchronous operation resulted in energy consumption savings of up to 51% on the ISCAS85 benchmark circuits synthesized in a digital CMOS 0. 18μm process.
Chipertext stream construction by using super total labeling -antimagic of comb product graph

Development of ciphertext can be developed through labeling concept. Graphical labeling is a mapping of the elements of the graph (vertex or edge) to a set of positive integers. Mapping is called a functional function if each element on the graph is numbered with diﬀerent positive integers. The process in ciphertext development can be called a cryptosystem. Ciphertext aims to make the message delivered by the message sender unreadable by the person who was not intended as the recipient of the message. There are several ways to change the secret message, one of which is Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) method. In this system, plaintext or P is divided into blocks and sequential keys K . One of the science ﬁelds of discrete mathematics that can be applied to the development of ciphertext is graph theory, with the topic of labeling of the graph. In this article, we discussed about the development of ciphertext which is developed from the labeling of comb product graph, namely G = C 5 (cid:66) W 5 .