Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Homogenization of a set of parallel fibres

Abstract Rigorous results concerning the possibility of homogenizing a set of parallel fibres are given from the viewpoint of electromagnetic scattering. We deal with the classical time-harmonic Maxwell problem and distinguish the two cases of polarization, i.e. electric field parallel to the fibres (E∥) and magnetic field parallel to the fibres (H∥). Assuming a low density of fibres, we obtain, in the E∥ case, an effective medium with a possibly negative permittivity, whereas in the H∥ case the fibres disappear completely. On the other hand, for a high density of fibres, the E∥ case leads to a perfectly conducting medium and the H∥ case to a dielectric medium with a surface current on its boundary.
Towards optimal phased-array tile configurations for large new-generation radio telescopes and their application to NenuFAR

Context. Recent instrumental developments have aimed to build large digital radio telescopes made of ∼ 100k antennas. The massive data rate required to digitise all elements drives the instrumental design towards the hierarchical distribution of elements by groups of O (10) that form small analogue phased arrays that lower the computational burden by one to two orders of magnitude. Aims. We study possible optimal layouts for a tile composed of five to 22 identical elements. We examine the impact of the tile layout on the overall response of an instrument. Methods. We used two optimisation algorithms to find optimal arrangements of elements in the tile using: (i) a deterministic method (Kogan) based on beam pattern derivative properties; and (ii) a stochastic method (modified simulated annealing) to find global optima minimising the side-lobe level while increasing the field of view (FOV) of the tile, a required condition for all-sky surveys. Results. We find that optimal tile arrangements are compact circular arrays that present some degree of circular symmetry while not being superimposable to any rotated version of themselves. The ‘optimal’ element number is found to be 16 or 17 antennas per tile. These could provide a maximum side-lobe level (SLL) of –33dB (–24dB) used with dipole (isotropic) elements. Due to constraints related to the analogue phasing implementation, we propose an approaching solution but with a regular arrangement on an equilateral lattice with 19 elements. By introducing random relative rotations between tiles, we compared and found that the 19-element equilateral tile results in better grating lobe mitigation and a larger FOV than that of rectangular tiles of 16 antennas. Conclusions. Optimal tile arrangements and their regular versions are useful to maximise the sensitivity of new-generation hierarchical radio telescopes. The proposed solution was implemented in NenuFAR, a pathfinder of SKA-LOW at the Nançay Radio Observatory.
Undaria pinnatifida (Wakame) Intake Ameliorates High-Fat Diet-Induced Glucose Intolerance via Promoting GLUT4 Expression and Membrane Translocation in Muscle

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), a lifestyle-related disease, is developed due to eating habits and decreased physical activity. Diabetes also increases the risk of cancer and major neurodegenerative diseases; controlling the onset of diabetes helps prevent various illnesses. Eating seaweed, such as Undaria pinnatifida (wakame), is a part of the Asian food culture. Therefore, we analyzed the antidiabetic effect of wakame intake using the high-fat diet-induced diabetes mouse model. Furthermore, we analyzed the effect of wakame extract on the cell membrane translocation of glucose transporter-4 (GLUT4) and activation of insulin signal molecules, such as AKT and AMPK, in insulin-sensitive tissues. Differentiated C2C12 cells were incubated with wakame components. The membrane translocation of GLUT4 and phosphorylation of AKT and AMPK were investigated with immunofluorescence staining and Western blotting, respectively. Also, male C57BL/6J mice were fed the normal diet (ND), high-fat diet (HFD), ND with 1% wakame powder (ND + W), or HFD with 1% wakame powder (HFD + W). We evaluated the effect of wakame intake on high-fat diet-induced glucose intolerance using an oral glucose tolerance test. Moreover, we analyzed insulin signaling molecules, such as GLUT4, AKT, and AMPK, in muscle using Western blotting. GLUT4 membrane translocation was promoted by wakame components. Also, GLUT4 levels and AKT and AMPK phosphorylation were significantly elevated by wakame components in C2C12 cells. In addition, the area under the curve (AUC) of the HFD + W group was significantly smaller than that of the HFD group. Furthermore, the level of GLUT4 in the muscle was increased in the wakame intake group. This study revealed that various wakame components exerted antidiabetic effects on the mice on a high-fat diet by promoting glucose uptake in the skeletal muscle, enhancing GLUT4 levels, and activating AKT and AMPK.
Consensus of heterogeneous multi-agent systems

In this study, the consensus problem of heterogeneous multi-agent system is considered. First, the heterogeneous multi-agent system is proposed which is composed of first-order and second-order integrator agents in two aspects. Then, the consensus problem of heterogeneous multi-agent system is discussed with the linear consensus protocol and the saturated consensus protocol, respectively. By applying the graph theory and Lyapunov direct method, some sufficient conditions for consensus are established when the communication topologies are undirected connected graphs and leader-following networks. Finally, some examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results.
Topology Optimization of the IPMSMs Considering Both the MTPA and FW Controls Under the Voltage and Current Limitations

This article proposes a novel topology optimization, which can maximize the average torque of the interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSMs) in both the maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) and field weakening (FW) regions. In principle, the back electromotive force (EMF), which is proportional to a rotating speed, should be suppressed below the dc-link voltage to protect a power supply system. However, because the design and current reference of the IPMSM are coupled to affect the back EMF, it has been challenging to simultaneously determine the optimal design and current reference under such a voltage limitation. To solve the abovementioned issue, this article derives the design-dependent FW current reference in terms of the elementwise relative densities, which are set as design variables in topology optimization. In addition, the selection criterion between the MTPA and FW operations is proposed under the same design parametrization. After estimating the motor-design parameters, the proposed method simultaneously determines the optimal design and the corresponding current reference in both the MTPA and FW regions. The simulation and experimental results clearly demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.
Demonstration of 1024x1024 pixel dual-band QWIP focal plane array

QWIPs are well known for their stability, high pixel-pixel uniformity and high pixel operability which are quintessential parameters for large area imaging arrays. In this paper we report the first demonstration of the megapixel-simultaneously-readable and pixel-co-registered dual-band QWIP focal plane array (FPA). The dual-band QWIP device was developed by stacking two multi-quantum-well stacks tuned to absorb two different infrared wavelengths. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the mid-wave infrared (MWIR) band extends from 4.4 - 5.1 μm and FWHM of the long-wave infrared (LWIR) band extends from 7.8 - 8.8 μm. Dual-band QWIP detector arrays were hybridized with direct injection 30 μm pixel pitch megapixel dual-band simultaneously readable CMOS read out integrated circuits using the indium bump hybridization technique. The initial dual-band megapixel QWIP FPAs were cooled to 68K operating temperature. The preliminary data taken from the first megapixel QWIP FPA has shown system NE▵T of 27 and 40 mK for MWIR and LWIR bands respectively.
Robust visual tracking via online informative feature selection

An efficient and effective algorithm which online exploits informative features for visual tracking is presented. First, a high-dimensional multi-scale spatio-colour image feature vector is developed, which takes into account both appearance and spatial layout information; secondly, this feature vector is randomly projected onto a low-dimensional feature space, where its projections preserve intrinsic information of the high-dimensional feature vector but effectively avoid the curse of dimensionality; and finally, an online feature selection technique to design an adaptive appearance model is proposed, which explores the most informative features from the projections via maximising entropy energy. Experiments on extensive challenging sequences demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art algorithms.
Differences in Root Morphologies of Contrasting Wheat (Triticum aestivum) Genotypes Are Robust of a Drought Treatment

We aimed to assess the effect of water deprivation on root traits and to establish if the wheat cultivars Spica and Maringa would be useful as parental germplasm for a genetic analysis of root traits. Plants were grown in two markedly different soils under well-watered and water-limited treatments in controlled environment growth cabinets. The drought treatment was imposed as a gradual depletion of water over 28 days as seedlings grew from a defined starting moisture content. The root traits analyzed included length, nodal root number, thickness and nodal root angle. The relative differences in traits between genotypes generally proved to be robust in terms of water treatment and soil type. Maringa had a shallower nodal root angle than Spica, which was driven by the nodal roots. By contrast, the seminal roots of Maringa were found to be similar to or even steeper than those of Spica. We conclude that the differences in root traits between Spica and Maringa were robust to the drought treatment and soil types. Phenotyping on well-watered soil is relevant for identifying traits potentially involved in conferring water use efficiency. Furthermore, Spica and Maringa are suitable parental germplasm for developing populations to determine the genetics of key root traits.
Broadband asymmetric acoustic transmission in a gradient-index structure

We propose a scheme of realizing broadband asymmetric acoustic transmission using gradient-index structure, and demonstrate an implementation utilizing phononic-crystal-based metamaterials which can realize an idealized model with desired parameters. The asymmetric transmission is valid within a remarkably broad frequency range. This phenomenon stems from the break of the geometric symmetry of wave trajectories along two opposite directions, essentially different from the mechanisms of previous designs. The numerical results agree well with the analytical predictions using acoustic ray theory. Our design may have potential applications in many fields such as ultrasonic therapy and noise control.
Deep CCD photometry in globular cluster. IX - M10

CCD data is used to produce a color-magnitude diagram of the cluster NGC 6254 (M10). The distance modulus, reddening, and metallicity for M10 are derived. The distance modulus is 0.2 m larger than previous estimates. It is estimated that the age of M10 is 17 + or - 1 Gyr. The M10 color-magnitude diagram is compared to Bolte's (1989) diagram for NGC 288, showing that these two clusters are coeval. 43 refs.
Few-shot Named Entity Recognition with Joint Token and Sentence Awareness

ABSTRACT Few-shot learning has been proposed and rapidly emerging as a viable means for completing various tasks. Recently, few-shot models have been used for Named Entity Recognition (NER). Prototypical network shows high efficiency on few-shot NER. However, existing prototypical methods only consider the similarity of tokens in query sets and support sets and ignore the semantic similarity among the sentences which contain these entities. We present a novel model, Few-shot Named Entity Recognition with Joint Token and Sentence Awareness (JTSA), to address the issue. The sentence awareness is introduced to probe the semantic similarity among the sentences. The Token awareness is used to explore the similarity of the tokens. To further improve the robustness and results of the model, we adopt the joint learning scheme on the few-shot NER. Experimental results demonstrate that our model outperforms state-of-the-art models on two standard Few-shot NER datasets.
Belief in karma is associated with perceived (but not actual)
 trustworthiness

Believers of karma believe in ethical causation where good and bad outcomes can be traced to past moral and immoral acts. Karmic belief may have important interpersonal consequences. We investigated whether American Christians expect more trustworthiness from (and are more likely to trust) interaction partners who believe in karma. We conducted an incentivized study of the trust game where interaction partners had different beliefs in karma and God. Participants expected more trustworthiness from (and were more likely to trust) karma believers. Expectations did not match actual behavior: karmic belief was not associated with actual trustworthiness. These findings suggest that people may use others’ karmic belief as a cue to predict their trustworthiness but would err when doing so.
Structural and electrical properties of AuPd/Mo bi-layer films for transition edge sensors

We have tuned the transition temperature of the AuPd/Mo bi-layer in the temperature range 100–800 mK and used models derived from the Usadel theory to predict and fit the behaviour of the transition temperature. As expected, the influence of the AuPd on the transition temperature is stronger than that found by others from pure Au, but weaker than that of pure Pd. The extracted coherence length of the Cooper pairs in the metal alloy points to the greatest influence coming from the Pd part of the AuPd. X-ray measurements show the films to be textured, with the Mo(110) and AuPd(111) peaks being dominant in the out-of-plane direction. The transition width is seen to increase with the spread of the orientation of the z direction of the individual grains.
An acoustic study of strident fricatives in Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin has a distinction between flat and palatalized post‐alveolar fricatives in addition to the alveolar–palatoalveolar contrast, which has been shown to have well‐defined acoustic correlates. The goal of the study is to identify the acoustic cues to the place distinction in these strident fricatives and to evaluate how the acoustic properties map onto relevant phonetic features. Acoustic analyses were conducted of 216 fricative‐vowel syllables produced by six speakers in three vowel and four tone contexts. Measures were taken of the properties of the frication noise and comparisons between fricative and vowel. The lower frequency limit of the frication noise, spectral peak location, spectral moments, spectral tilt, normalized amplitude, relative amplitude in specific frequency regions, and F2 onset frequency and movement in the adjacent vowel were examined. The results indicate the lower frequency limit of the frication noise is associated with distinct formant regions: F4 or F5 for the alveolar, F3 .
FedPos: A Federated Transfer Learning Framework for CSI-Based Wi-Fi Indoor Positioning

This article proposes FedPos, a federated transfer learning framework together with a novel position estimation method for Wi-Fi indoor positioning. Compared with traditional machine learning with privacy leakage problems and the cloud model trained through federated learning (FL) fails in personalization, the FedPos framework aggregates nonclassification layer parameters of models trained from different environments to build a robust and versatile encoder on the cloud server while preserving user privacy. The global cloud encoder can aggregate different classifiers and then construct personalized models for new users through fine-tuning. The proposed framework can be updated incrementally and is highly extensible. Specifically, we exploit channel state information (CSI) as the positioning feature and assess the transferability of a lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN) in unfamiliar environments. We evaluate the performance of our proposed framework and position estimation method in different indoor environments. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed framework can achieve a mean localization error of 42.18 cm in a 64-position living room. They also confirm that FedPos can achieve a 5.22% average localization performance boost and reduce the average model training time by about 34.78% when compared with normal training. By reusing part of the feature extractor layers that are trained from other environments, at least 65% of training data can be saved to achieve a localization performance that is similar to the base model. Overall, the proposed position estimation method can effectively improve localization accuracy as compared with seven other existing CSI-based methods.
Tropical Cyclone Track Characteristics as a Function of Large-Scale Circulation Anomalies

Abstract Factors that contribute to intraseasonal variability in western North Pacific tropical cyclone track types are investigated. It is hypothesized that the 700-mb large-scale circulation can affect tropical cyclone track characteristics by enhancing or excluding genesis in certain regions, and concurrently prohibiting or favoring recurving versus straight tracks. A track-type climatology indicates that genesis location alone may explain some of the variability in track type. Although some genesis regions have no preference for straight-moving or recurving tracks, a formation north of 20°N or east of 150°E and north of 10°N favors a recurvature track. These recurving storms are classified as recurving-north, and recurving storms that form in regions with nearly equal probability of straight or recurving tracks are classified as recurving south. A compositing technique is used to define anomalous 700-mb large-scale circulations that exist during the formation of tropical cyclones that subsequently fol.
Core ion interactions with BB ELF, lower hybrid, and Alfvén waves in the high‐latitude topside ionosphere

[1] We present simultaneous observations of ion distribution functions and plasma waves in the high-latitude topside ionosphere (500–1000 km) near local midnight during substorm activation. Using a new instrument, the Suprathermal Ion Imager (SII), we are able to explore two-dimensional ion distribution functions with unprecedented resolution in time (93 s−1) and energy, focusing on the lowest-energy core (<1 eV) population and suprathermal extensions thereof. The GEODESIC sounding rocket flew through regions containing broadband extremely low frequency (BB ELF) waves, large-amplitude Alfven waves, and lower-hybrid solitary structures (LHSS), all of which have been shown previously to correlate with ion heating. However, GEODESIC detected heating only in association with LHSS. Ion distributions in and near LHSS showed acceleration in the direction transverse to (TAI) with temperatures as high as 5–10 eV, appearing in regions 65 ± 25 m across. TAI were centered on much smaller structures (∼20 m across) of depleted plasma density and enhanced perpendicular electric fields from 0.1 to 10 kHz, consistent with observations from previous rocket flights. Also in agreement with previous findings, we find two distinct ion populations inside LHSS. The dominant population is composed of unheated, isotropic “core” Maxwellian ions having temperatures comparable to the surrounding ambient plasma, while roughly 10% of the plasma density corresponds to the TAI at pitch angles of 90 ± 5°. We argue that the TAI associated with LHSS is consistent with bulk heating of the core ions, and we describe two scenarios that can lead to the observed two-temperature distributions. The BB ELF wave emissions were correlated with LHSS heating at short scales and anticorrelated with auroral electron precipitation at large scales. The GEODESIC instruments observed no large-scale ion heating in association with BB ELF waves. Similarly, no ion heating was detected in the presence of large-amplitude, short perpendicular wavelength Alfven waves.
Bootstrapping the student t-statistic

Let X 1 ,. , , X n , n ≥ 1, be independent, identically distributed random variables and consider the Student t-statistic T n based upon these random variables. Gine, Gotze and Mason (1997) proved that T n converges in distribution to a standard normal random variable if and only if X is in the domain of attraction of a normal random variable and EX = 0. We shall show that roughly the same holds true for the bootstrapped Student t-statistic T * n . In the process we shall disclose all the possible subsequential limiting laws of T * n . The proofs introduce a number of amusing tricks that may be of independent interest.
Simulation and Flight Test of Autonomous Aircraft Estimation, Planning, and Control Algorithms

The development, summary, and validation of real time autonomous estimation, planning, and control algorithms for nonlinear aircraft are presented. Two square root estimation algorithms are developed and used to estimate the state dynamics, parameters, and uncertainty bounds of a nonlinear aircraft in real time. A square root sigma point filter approximates the uncertain state using a finite set of points, while a square root extended set-membership filter bounds the states and parameters of the nonlinear system using ellipsoidal sets. The estimation methods are integrated into online optimized model predictive control methodology for fast reconfigurable control, and a path planner based on streamlines for fast path planning around obstacles and for target pursuit. The performances of the estimation, planning, and control techniques are tested in flight using the SeaScan autonomous aircraft. The SeaScan platform is briefly described, and real time hardware in the loop and flight data are presented for a variety of applications using each of the algorithms.
Propagation focusing in the context of clutter statistics.

Fluctuations in reverberation (clutter) from scatterers at long range in shallow water can be affected by many mechanisms. Their statistics, in particular the scintillation index, depend not only on the statistics of the scatterers (their physical distribution, shape, orientation, etc.) but on the outward and return propagation paths. Focusing effects due to forward scattering from weak undulations in the seabed will be presented. Existing Fresnel–Kirchhoff theory for monostatic, vertical incidence on a two‐dimensional surface is adapted to demonstrate the behavior of the intensity’s scintillation index in bistatic geometry. In addition, using a simulation of bistatic geometry and a one‐dimensional surface, the intensity statistics are extended to include autocorrelation function and probability distribution. Bistatic geometries include source and receiver moving with constant separation, and moving source with fixed receiver. Fairly modest vertical undulations can result in significant fluctuation due to.