Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A unified model of lenition as modulation reduction: gauging consonant strength in Ibibio 1

We review and elaborate an account of consonantal strength that is founded on the model of speech as a modulated carrier signal. The stronger the consonant, the greater the modulation. Unlike approaches based on sonority or articulatory aperture, the account offers a uniform definition of the phonetic effect lenition has on consonants: all types of lenition (such as debuccalisation, spirantisation, and vocalisation) reduce the extent to which a consonant modulates the carrier. To demonstrate the quantifiability of this account, we present an analysis of Ibibio, in which we investigate the effects of lenition on the amplitude, periodicity, and temporal properties of consonants. We propose a method for integrating these different acoustic dimensions within an overall measure of modulation size. Not only does the modulated-carrier account cover all the classically recognised lenition types, but it also encompasses loss of plosive release in final stops – which, although not traditionally classed as lenition, is clearly related to processes that are.
Vérification formelle de conditions d'ordonnancabilité de tâches temps réel périodiques strictes

Nous formalisons en Coq le probleme de l'ordonnancement de tâches periodiques strictes non preemptives et prouvons formellement le theoreme du a Jan Korst donnant la condition necessaire et suffisante pour l'ordonnancabilite de telles tâches.
Competing simple and complex contagion processes with heterogeneous adoptability

Empirical evidence reveals that a contagion process often occurs with mixing simple and complex contagion, meaning that while some agents follow simple contagion, the others follow complex contagion. Inspired by this observation, we propose a generalized model of contagion dynamics unifying both simple and complex contagion with heterogeneous adoptability of agents. We illustrate a phase diagram with respect to the transmission probability and the fraction of nodes with complex contagion. We find that our generalized contagion model exhibits a rich variety of phase transitions such as continuous, discontinuous, and hybrid phase transitions, criticality, tricriticality, and double transitions. Especially, we find a double phase transition showing continuous transition and following discontinuous transition in the density of adopted nodes with respect to a transmission probability. We show that the double transition occurs with an intermediate phase in which nodes following simple contagion become adopted but nodes with complex contagion remain susceptible.
An automated apparatus for the simulation of prebiotic wet‒dry cycles under strictly anaerobic conditions

Abstract Prebiotic chemical evolution on the early Earth may have been driven in part by fluctuating environments, for example wet‒dry and temperature cycling in volcanic rock pools. Here, we describe the setup, operating principle and test applications of a newly developed ‘wet‒dry apparatus’ (WDA) designed to simulate such fluctuating environments. The WDA allows adjusting the duration of the cycles, the temperature during the wet and dry phases and the organic and mineral components, which are all key parameters in wet–dry simulations. The WDA's most important features, however, are (i) that it is automated, which means that long-time experiments are possible without the need for an operator and (ii) that the virtual absence of free oxygen in the early Earth's atmosphere at ground level can be simulated. Rigorously oxygen-free conditions were achieved by passing 99.999% nitrogen gas through two alkaline pyrogallol solutions in series, prior to entering the WDA. We used three chemical systems to test the WDA: (i) the amino acid glycine in the presence and absence of clay minerals, (ii) linoleic acid (an oxygen-sensitive amphiphile) with and without the mineral olivine, and (iii) alkaline pyrogallol solution. We observed that clay minerals greatly accelerated the decomposition of glycine under wet‒dry conditions. Glycine peptides were formed as minor products. In the course of the glycine experiments, we developed a reliable gas chromatographic method to quantify the cyclic dipeptide 2,5-diketopiperazine. The decomposition of linoleic acid in wet‒dry cycles was promoted by both air and olivine. And finally, the extremely oxygen-sensitive pyrogallol solution was used as a colour indicator for residual oxygen in the WDA. The simulation facility in our laboratory currently consists of eight identical WDAs and a surrounding infrastructure. It can be made available to others who wish to perform cyclic wet–dry experiments.
Aeroelastic Analysis of an Atypical Geometry Building by Solving Fluid-structure Interaction Problem through Load Transmission Method

Aims: On this work, a methodology that solves the fluid-structure interaction problem through load transmission method approach is presented. This methodology is applicable to any building’s geometry, nevertheless, in order to develop a solution, it was proposed a building with a geometry not considered in design codes of structures under wind pressures. In order to compare the results of this methodology a tall building model widely studied by different authors is also analysed. Methodology: First of all, two computational fluid mechanics models were developed in order to obtain the pressures of the wind around the two buildings proposed in a dynamic way. Later, the obtained dynamic pressures were transferred according to the load transfer method on the Structural Mechanical Building model through time-history analysis solved by means of a direct integration method to obtain the dynamic aeroelastic response of the structures. Results: The dynamic aeroelastic response for both models is obtained. Conclusion: This methodology does not present any restriction in the model’s geometry and leads to analyse important aspects for the structural analysis such as state of stress of the structural elements and structure displacements, accordingly, the method is suitable for structures under wind pressures that are not considered in the codes. The results obtained through this methodology present a good approach to those obtained by means of fluid structure-interaction models.
Contagion risk: How stakeholders mediate the impact of rivals’ misfortunes on firms

Abstract This study aims to investigate the dynamics of contagion and its impact on firms, specifically focusing on how a rival’s failure to control an event can have adverse consequences for other firms. Through a comprehensive analysis of relevant theories, literature, and real-world cases, the study identifies key factors that contribute to the contagion process and proposes a framework for assessing the associated risk. The research highlights the crucial role of stakeholders in mediating the effects of rivals’ misfortunes on other firms and emphasizes how stakeholders’ identities shape their risk evaluations, thereby affecting the occurrence of contagion. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing a conceptualization of the contagion process and introducing the concept of “stakeholder identity” within the context of organizational and operational risk management. The findings offer practical insights to firms by emphasizing the significance of contagion risk, which is often overlooked in operational risk management strategies. Additionally, the study provides valuable guidance on how firms can effectively assess their vulnerability to contagion, enabling them to proactively manage and mitigate their risk.
Asymptotically efficient adaptive allocation schemes for controlled Markov chains: finite parameter space

The authors consider a controlled Markov chain whose transition probabilities and initial distribution are parameterized by an unknown parameter theta to some known parameter space Theta . There is a one-step reward associated with each pair of control and following state of the process. The objective is to maximize the expected value of the sum of one-step rewards over an infinite horizon. By introducing the loss associated with a control scheme, the authors show that the problem is equivalent to minimizing the loss. They define uniformly good adaptive control schemes and restrict attention to these schemes. They develop a lower bound on the loss associated with any uniformly good control scheme. Finally, they construct an adaptive control scheme whose loss equals the lower bound and is therefore optimal. >
Approximation algorithms for sequential batch‐testing of series systems

We introduce and study a generalization of the classic sequential testing problem, asking to identify the correct state of a given series system that consists of independent stochastic components. In this setting, costly tests are required to examine the state of individual components, which are sequentially tested until the correct system state can be uniquely identified. The goal is to propose a policy that minimizes the expected testing cost, given a‐priori probabilistic information on the stochastic nature of each individual component. Unlike the classic setting, where variables are tested one after the other, we allow multiple tests to be conducted simultaneously, at the expense of incurring an additional set‐up cost. The main contribution of this article consists in showing that the batch testing problem can be approximated in polynomial time within factor 6.829 + ε , for any fixed ε ∈ ( 0 , 1 ) . In addition, we explain how, in spite of its highly nonlinear objective function, the batch testing problem can be formulated as an approximate integer program of polynomial size, while blowing up its expected cost by a factor of at most 1 + ε . Finally, we conduct extensive computational experiments, to demonstrate the practical effectiveness of these algorithms as well as to evaluate their limitations. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 275–286, 2016
SERS polarization-independent performance of two-dimensional sinusoidal silver grating

This letter demonstrates a possibility to overcome the polarization-dependent problem in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) performance by two-dimensional (2D) sinusoidal silver grating. A reproducible SERS substrate with a large area can be easily fabricated by maskless laser interference photolithography. The polarization-independent SERS performance and SERS enhancement factor (EF) of this substrate are deduced by finite difference time domain and demonstrated by R6G SERS detection experiments. SERS performance of 2D sinusoidal grating is polarization-independent over the whole 360° and EF can be 5 orders of magnitude as possible. Moreover, this long-range SERS substrate can realize label-free SERS detection of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT). This letter demonstrates a possibility to overcome the polarization-dependent problem in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) performance by two-dimensional (2D) sinusoidal silver grating. A reproducible SERS substrate with a large area can be easily fabricated by maskless laser interference photolithography. The polarization-independent SERS performance and SERS enhancement factor (EF) of this substrate are deduced by finite difference time domain and demonstrated by R6G SERS detection experiments. SERS performance of 2D sinusoidal grating is polarization-independent over the whole 360° and EF can be 5 orders of magnitude as possible. Moreover, this long-range SERS substrate can realize label-free SERS detection of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT).
Risk Factors of Mortality in the Intensive Care Unit Following Cardiac Surgery for Congenital Heart Diseases in Children

Background: Children with congenital heart diseases (CHDs) often require cardiac surgery, whose outcome depends on many preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative factors. Objectives: We aimed to investigate the factors associated with in-hospital mortality among patients undergoing pediatric heart surgery for CHDs. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study included patients younger than 18 who underwent cardiac surgery due to CHDs at the Children's Medical Center of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and were admitted to the open-heart surgery intensive care unit (OH-ICU) between March 2018 and March 2019. Patients with incomplete records were excluded. The collected data included age (months), weight (kg), type of congenital defect, duration of intensive care unit (ICU) stay, cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) time, aortic cross-clamping (XCT) time, postoperative (day 1) platelet count and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and mortality. Results: This study included 275 CHD patients who underwent cardiac surgery. The mean age and weight were 32.54 ± 37.4 months and 11.01 ± 8.43 kg, respectively. Those who died were younger (P = 0.05) and had lower weights (P = 0.001). An inverse relationship existed between thrombocytopenia and mortality. The NLR was higher in those who survived (mean 4.08 vs. 2.87), while the deceased patients had an extended duration of hospitalization, longer CPB time, and longer XCT time. Conclusions: Younger age, lower body weight, lower NLR ratio, lower platelet count, longer intraoperative CPB time, and XCT time were not associated with increased in-hospital mortality following cardiac surgery for CHDs. The Risk Adjustment for Congenital Heart Surgery (RACHS-1) score was not significantly related to mortality. Also, CPB and XCT times were significantly longer in cyanotic than in non-cyanotic patients. Cyanotic patients also had significantly lower platelets than non-cyanotic patients after the operation. Large, multicenter studies are needed to further investigate the predictors of mortality following surgery for CHDs.
Review of multi-layered magnetoelectric composite materials and devices applications

Multiferroic materials with the coexistence of at least two ferroic orders, such as ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, or ferroelasticity, have recently attracted ever-increasing attention due to their potential for multifunctional device applications, including magnetic and current sensors, energy harvesters, magnetoelectric (ME) random access memory and logic devices, tunable microwave devices, and ME antenna. In this article, we provide a review of the recent and ongoing research efforts in the field of multi-layered ME composites. After a brief introduction to ME composites and ME coupling mechanisms, we review recent advances in multi-layered ME composites as well as their device applications based on the direct ME effect, magnetic sensors in particular. Finally, some remaining challenges and future perspective of ME composites and their engineering applications will be discussed.
Due to, or in spite of? The effect of constraints on efficiency in quantum estimation problems

In this thesis, we study the interplay of constraints and complexity in quantum estimation. We investigate three inference problems, where additional structure in the form of constraints is exploited to reduce the sample and/or computational complexity. The first example is concerned with uncertainty quantification in quantum state estimation, where the positive-semidefinite constraint is used to construct more powerful, that is smaller, error regions. However, as we show in this work, doing so in an optimal way constitutes a computationally hard problem, and therefore, is intractable for larger systems. The second inference problem deals with phase retrieval and its application to characterizing linear optical circuits. The main chal- lenge here is the fact that the measurements are insensitive to complex phases, and hence, reconstruction requires deliberate utilization of interference. We propose a reconstruction algorithm based on ideas from low-rank matrix recovery. More specifically, we map the problem of reconstruction from phase-insensitive measurements to the problem of recovering a rank-one matrix from linear measurements. For the efficient solution of the latter it is crucial to exploit the rank-one constraint. Finally, we investigate low-rank tensor recovery – the problem of reconstructing a low-complexity tensor embedded in an exponentially large space. We provide evidence that with high probability succesful recovery is feasible by Gaussian product tensors with the number of measurements only depending on the target’s intrinsic complexity, and hence, scaling polynomially in the order of tensor. Therefore, the low-rank constraint can be exploited to dramatically reduce the sample complexity of the problem. Additionally, the use of measurement tensors with an efficient representation is necessary for computational efficiency.
Exploring the Diverse Bioactive Compounds from Medicinal Plants: A Review

Bioactive chemicals have been abundantly found in medicinal plants that hold immense potential for therapeutic applications. This review aims to explore the diverse range of medicinal plant bioactive substances and their pharmacological activities. The review opens by underlining the significance of medicinal plants as important sources for developing new drugs. The relevance of various extraction techniques and analytical procedures is emphasized as the methods used for the identification and extraction of bioactive components from these plants is covered in detail. The subsequent sections focus on specific categories of bioactive compounds and their associated pharmacological activities. We examine the possible uses of bioactive substances obtained from medicinal plants in the treatment of infectious disorders as well as their antibacterial characteristics. These chemicals' anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties are also examined, emphasizing their potential for treating inflammatory diseases and oxidative stress. The review also explores the anti-cancer potential of bioactive substances from therapeutic plants, illuminating their methods of action and their potential as innovative therapeutic agents. Furthermore, the neuroprotective and neuro-pharmacological effects of these compounds are discussed, emphasizing their relevance in neurological disorders. Immunomodulatory properties and cardiovascular health benefits of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants are also examined, providing insights into their potential applications in immunotherapy and cardiovascular disease management.
Fibrewise equivariant compactifications under étale groupoid actions

The amenability of the natural action of a discrete group on its Alexandroff (respectively on its Stone-Cech) compactification is equivalent to the amenability (respectively the exactness) of the group. Whereas amenability of groupoids has been widely studied, very few results are known concerning exactness of groupoids. Our purpose here is mainly to provide the topological background needed to investigate this notion. To that end, we study first the fibrewise compactifications of fibre spaces and in particular the Alexandroff and the Stone-Cech fibrewise compactifications. Starting from G-spaces, where G is an etale groupoid, we show that these two compactifications are G-spaces in a natural way. Applications to groupoids will be developed in a separate paper
On the Application of Data Clustering Algorithm used in Information Retrieval for Satellite Imagery Segmentation

: This study proposes an automated technique for segmenting satellite imagery using unsupervised learning. Autoencoders, a type of neural network, are employed for dimensionality reduction and feature extraction. The study evaluates different segmentation architectures and encoders and identifies the best performing combination as the DeepLabv3+ architecture with a ResNet-152 encoder. This approach achieves high performance scores across multiple metrics and can be beneficial in various fields, including agriculture, land use monitoring, and disaster response.
An effective dimensionality reduction approach for short-term load forecasting

Accurate power load forecasting has a significant effect on a smart grid by ensuring effective supply and dispatching of power. However, electric load data generally possesses the characteristics of nonlinearity, periodicity, and seasonality. In particular, for complex electric load systems, the presence of redundant information potentially reduces the real pattern extraction for load forecasting. Bearing in mind these issues, we propose an effective forecasting model in which a feature extraction module is introduced that is combined with the variational mode decomposition (VMD) with the variational autoencoder (VAE). In this combination, VMD is utilized for decomposing complex load series and VAE is used to filter the redundant information (noises) from each decomposed series. With two real data sets from China, we demonstrate that the proposed model can achieve highly accurate predictions, as we find the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) values for one-step-ahead prediction to be 1% (Nanjing) and 0.8% (Taixing), respectively.
Single field-of-view sounder atmospheric product retrieval algorithm: establishing radiometric consistency for hyper-spectral sounder retrievals

Abstract. The single field-of-view (SFOV) sounder atmospheric product (SiFSAP) retrieval algorithm has been developed to address the need to retrieve high-spatial-resolution atmospheric data products from hyper-spectral sounders and ensure the radiometric consistency between the retrieved properties and measured spectral radiances. It is based on an integrated optimal-estimation inversion scheme that processes data from the satellite-based synergistic microwave (MW) and infrared (IR) spectral measurements from advanced sounders. The retrieval system utilizes the principal component radiative transfer model (PCRTM), which performs radiative transfer calculations monochromatically and includes accurate cloud-scattering simulations. SiFSAP includes temperature, water vapor, surface skin temperature and emissivity, cloud height and microphysical properties, and concentrations of essential trace gases for each SFOV at a native instrument spatial resolution. Error estimations are provided based on a rigorous analysis for uncertainty propagation from the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) spectral radiances to the retrieved geophysical properties. As a comparison, the spatial resolution for the traditional hyper-spectral sounder retrieval products is much coarser than the native resolution of the instruments due to the common use of the “cloud-clearing” technique to compensate for the lack of cloud-scattering simulation in the forward model. The degraded spatial resolution in traditional cloud-clearing sounder retrieval products limits their applications for capturing meteorological or climate signals at finer spatial scales. Moreover, a rigorous uncertainty propagation estimation needed for long-term climate trend studies cannot be given due to the lack of direct radiative transfer relationships between the observed TOA radiances and the retrieved geophysical properties. With the advantages of the higher spatial resolution; the simultaneous retrieval of atmospheric, cloud, and surface properties using all available spectral information; and the establishment of “radiance closure” in the sounder spectral measurements, the SiFSAP provides additional information needed for various weather and climate studies and applications using sounding observations. This paper gives an overview of the SiFSAP retrieval algorithm and assessment of SiFSAP atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds, and surface products derived from the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) data.