Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and validation of the Landsat-8 surface reflectance products using a MODIS-based per-pixel atmospheric correction method

ABSTRACT Landsat satellites have the longest history of making global-scale Earth observations at medium spatial resolution of any series of satellites and have been widely used in various remote-sensing fields. However, many remote-sensing applications, including large-area or long-term land-cover monitoring, need Landsat reflectance data that have had accurate atmospheric correction carried out. In this research, a MODIS-based per-pixel atmospheric correction procedure was developed and employed to produce the surface reflectance (SR) product. A total of 510 Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) scenes covering the whole of China in 2013 were collected and processed. The mean relative differences between the surface and top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance for China, composited and expressed as percentages, were found to be 67, 47, 18, 13, 4, 4, and 7% for Landsat-8 OLI bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, respectively. Then, the accuracy of MODIS atmospheric products was validated using ground-based sun-radiometer observation network data, including Sun/sky-radiometer Observation Network (SONET) and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) data collected from 14 SONET/AERONET stations. The validation results showed that the MODIS atmospheric products are reliable for China, with an R2 value of 0.78 and a root mean square error (RMSE) value of 0.12 for aerosols, and an R2 value of 0.98 and an RMSE of 0.25 for water vapour. Third, the SR product using our per-pixel atmospheric correction method was evaluated by comparison with the MODIS daily surface reflectance product (MOD09GA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) provisional Landsat-8 SR product, with a mean R2 of 0.93 and an RMSE of 0.02 for MOD09GA; and with a mean R2 of 0.97 and an RMSE of 0.01 for the USGS SR product. Finally, the advantage of our per-pixel atmospheric correction method over the per-scene method was investigated by analysis of the spatial variation of the atmospheric parameters within one Landsat scene (about 1.51.5), with a mean standard deviation value of 0.03–0.09 for aerosol. When such aerosol variation was omitted as the per-scene atmospheric correction method, the SR absolute error due to aerosol optical thickness (AOT) spatial variation was about 0.027, 0.018, 0.005, 0.003, 0.002, 0.0007, and 0.003 for the seven reflectance bands of Landsat-8. Therefore, use of Landsat-8 SR products over China with our per-pixel atmospheric correction was proved reliable, and more promising than the per-scene method, especially for the short-wavelength bands.
Segmentation of Overlapping Cervical Cells by Multiple Level Set Functions Optimization

: Segmentation of overlapping cervical cells is helpful in medical applications for classification of cytologic specimens. The presence of blood, mucus, reduces the accuracy of Pap smear test in this situation it leads to false negative results. Segmentation of the nucleus and cytoplasm of cervical cells within the clumps is very critical. The whole region representing the cellular clumps is segmented which is very difficult to analyze the individual cell within the clump, thus the amount of information conveyed for specimen classification and diagnosis is limited. The methodology addresses these issues by utilizing an optimization of multiple level set functions. Here each function represents a cell within a clump and it has both unary (intra-cell) and pair wise (inter-cell) constraints. The constraints that are based on edge strength and cell shape are unary constraints and the constraint which are based on the area of the overlapping regions are inter-cell constraints. The steps consists of cell clump detection and nuclei detection using the Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) algorithm. The second step then optimizes the initial segmentation using a level set method that utilizes multiple level set functions. The main goal of our methodology is to segment each and every cell within the clump and produce a significantly larger number of fully segmented cells to improve the classification of cytologic specimens.
Advisory Committees

Purpose. A Career and Technical Education (CTE) Advisory Committee is a broad-based group with representatives from education, industry, and the community at large that actively assists in planning and implementing career and technical education programs. Advisory committees collectively advise the program's educators and administrators on a variety of aspects of the program and provide valuable resources to the program. Advisory committees do not have administrative or policy-making authority, but they serve as valuable partners in the education process. Members are knowledgeable and interested volunteers who represent the community, its businesses, and families. By combining community expertise with educational know-how, advisory committees can assure that the program leads to multiple options for students after high school graduation.
Tourism Efficiency: Bootstrap-Data Envelopment and Tobit Panel Data Analysis

Tourism is an important sector for countries, not only for cultural but also for economic activities. The tourism sector, which operates effectively, contributes to the development of the country's economy. Therefore, the study aims at calculating tourism efficiency and identifying factors that influence it. The study discussed 18 European countries that are among the world's major destination centers. Firstly, tourism efficiency scores were calculated with the data covering the period 2002-2019. Inputs are the number of tourists and tourism expenditures, and output is tourism revenues. Tourism sector efficiency was calculated with the standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. Because of the possible statistical limitations of the DEA method, analysis was repeated with the Bootstrap-DEA method. The resulting efficiency scores were used as dependent variables in the Tobit model. The variables including per capita income, digitalization, energy consumption, financial development, political stability, and life expectancy at birth were handled as new trends of tourism efficiency in the Tobit panel data analysis. Boostrap DEA results, which yield more accurate results, gave efficiency results for a smaller number of countries than the efficiency analysis performed with standard DEA. Tobit panel data analysis results showed that income per capita, digitalization, political stability, and life expectancy at birth enhanced tourism efficiency. In the study, unlike the literature, tourism efficiency was not considered at the level of companies, but at the level of countries. In addition to the standard DEA analysis, the Bootstrap DEA method was used, which yielded superior results. Additionally, not only the efficiency values were calculated in the study, but also the factors affecting the tourism efficiency were determined.
A Clade-Speciﬁc Arabidopsis Gene Connects Primary Metabolism and Senescence

Nearly immobile, plants have evolved new components to be able to respond to changing environments. One example is Qua Quine Starch ( QQS , AT3G30720), an Arabidopsis thaliana -speciﬁc orphan gene that integrates primary metabolism with adaptation to environment changes. SAQR ( Senescence-Associated and QQS-Related , AT1G64360), is unique to a clade within the family Brassicaceae ; as such, the gene may have arisen about 20 million years ago. SAQR is up-regulated in QQS RNAi mutant and in the apx1 mutant under light-induced oxidative stress. SAQR plays a role in carbon allocation: overexpression lines of SAQR have signiﬁcantly decreased starch content; conversely, in a saqr T-DNA knockout (KO) line, starch accumulation is increased. Meta-analysis of public microarray data indicates that SAQR expression is correlated with expression of a subset of genes involved in senescence, defense, and stress responses. SAQR promoter::GUS expression analysis reveals that SAQR expression increases after leaf expansion and photosynthetic capacity have peaked, just prior to visible natural senescence. SAQR is expressed predominantly within leaf and cotyledon vasculature, increasing in intensity as natural senescence continues, and then decreasing prior to death. In contrast, under experimentally induced senescence, SAQR expression increases in vasculature of cotyledons but not in true leaves. In SAQR KO line, the transcript level of the dirigent-like disease resistance gene (AT1G22900) is increased, while that of the Early Light Induced Protein 1 gene ( ELIP1 , AT3G22840) is decreased. Taken together, these data indicate that SAQR may function in the QQS network, playing a role in integration of primary metabolism with adaptation to internal and environmental changes, speciﬁcally those that affect the process of senescence.
Linking Land and Sea: Towards Global Reconstructions of the Jurassic World

The Jurassic is traditionally famous for shallow marine sediments that are often very fossiliferous, notably in Europe, where the standard chronostratigraphic subdivisions were established and defined. However, widespread marginal and non-marine Jurassic sediments are also known, and are of great importance for the wellpreserved terrestrial biotas they contain, as well as for their hydrocarbon and coal reserves. IGCP Project 506 is directed towards finding means of correlation between marine and non-marine Jurassic rocks, as a foundation for a better understanding of the evolution of the Earth during the Jurassic Period.
Designing Information Technology to Support Distributed Cognition Ceo Publication G 93-16 (236) Designing Information Technology to Support Distributed Cognition Designing Information Technology to Support Distributed Cognition

The authors are equal contributors to this paper and gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions by Jim Meindl and two anonymous reviewers. Abstract Cognition in organizations is a distributed phenomenon, in which individual members of an organization reflect upon their experience, make plans, or take action. Organizational learning or organizational cognition are familiar terms, but it is only the individual persons in an organization who create interpretations and test understandings, as they think and learn in their organizational setting. Coordinated outcomes emerge in organizations when individuals think and act in ways that take others in the organization and their interdependencies into account. We argue that much of the effort to design information technology to support cognition in organizations has not addressed its distributed quality. Such systems have tended to focus either on the individual as an isolated decision maker, or on the group as a producer of a decision or policy statement in common. In distributed cognition, by contrast, the group is a set of autonomous agents who act independently yet recognize that they have interdependencies. To guide the design of information technology, we propose that distributed cognition be viewed as a hermeneutic process of inquiry, emphasizing the importance of individual interpretation and group dialogue. Hermeneutics provides a theory of the interpretive process through which an individual gives meaning to organizational experience. Inquiry systems provide a theory of how a community of inquirers build and test knowledge representations through dialogue. Together, hermeneutics and inquiry systems are used to propose a set of design principles to guide the development of information technology that supports distributed cognition. The design principles we describe in the paper are ownership, easy travel, multiplicity, indeterminacy, emergence and mixed forms. 3 Applications of information technology which embody these design principles would support distributed cognition by assisting individuals in making interpretations of their situation, reflecting on them, and engaging in dialogue about them with others. The objective is to refine their own understanding of the situation and better appreciate the understandings of others, enabling them to better take their interdependencies into account in their individual actions. A project to develop such a system is discussed, along with some implications for research. 4 Information technologies have been applied with considerable success to the core tasks of organizations, as evidenced by computer systems for on-line reservations, order entry or integrated manufacturing. But information technologies have been applied with less success in …
Long-Term Design of Mangrove Landﬁlls as an Effective Tide Attenuator under Relative Sea-Level Rise

: A mangrove ecosystem is an important option in Ecosystem based Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR). The effectiveness of an artiﬁcial mangrove landﬁll in reducing tidal amplitudes was studied by performing a coupled numerical model that simulated wave propagation and soil consolidation. The constructed model simulated the propagation of tide over an artiﬁcial landﬁll that was subjected to land subsidence, sea-level rise, vegetation growth, and sediment deposition. A case study analysis conﬁrmed that the tidal amplitudes are reduced if the initial elevation of the landﬁll is appropriately considered to achieve an equilibrium state of the landﬁll over its lifetime. Sediment deposition may be the only dependable source to sustain the surface elevation of a mangrove with relative sea-level rise. Sediment deposition is important to promote vegetation growth, which in turn contributes to sedimentation by enhancing a tranquil hydrodynamic environment. An insufﬁcient initial elevation of the landﬁll will result in less effective protection against tidal propagation after it substantially subsides.
WS-BPEL Extension for People ? BPEL4People

Human user interactions are currently not covered by the Web Services Business Processes Execution Language (WS-BPEL), which is primarily designed to support automated business processes based on Web services. In practice, however, many business process scenarios require user interaction. This paper describes scenarios where users are involved in business processes, and defines appropriate extensions to WS-BPEL to address these. Copyright Notice © Copyright SAP AG and International Business Machines Corp 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from SAP AG (“SAP”) and International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”). This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially over time. The information contained in this document represents the current view of IBM and SAP on the issues discussed as of the date of publication and should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of IBM and SAP. All data as well as any statements
Steric e ﬀ ect on Li + coordination and transport properties in polyoxetane-based polymer electrolytes bearing nitrile groups †

Polymer electrolytes (PEs) that consist of polyoxetane with nitrile side chains and lithium bis(tri ﬂ uoromethanesulfonyl)amide were studied as electrolytes for Li secondary batteries. Our previous study showed that Li + ion coordination with the polar nitrile groups tethered to the main chain plays a crucial role in enhancing the Li + ion transport properties in poly(3-(2-cyanoethoxymethyl)-3- ethyloxetane) (PCEO). Herein, we report the e ﬀ ects of the absence of ethyl groups on the main chain of PCEO on Li + ion coordination, thermal properties, and ionic transport, by employing a structural analog, poly(3-(2-cyanoethoxymethyl)-oxetane). We found that the steric hindrance derived from the ethyl groups in PCEO resulted in more-pronounced Li + coordination with the nitrile side chains, and thereby more e ﬀ ective Li + ion transport was achieved. We also demonstrated successful charge/discharge cycling of a Li/LiFePO 4 cell using nitrile-functionalized PE.
Observations of Gulf Stream frontal eddies in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras

The Frontal Eddy Dynamics (FRED) experiment was conducted offshore North Carolina between Cape Fear and Cape Hatteras from May through November 1987. Frontal eddies propagating northward along the North Carolina shelf break were observed during a 3-week intensive shipboard and aircraft survey phase, followed by a six-month (long-term) mooring and remote sensing monitoring phase. Using observations of a frontal eddy named Abbott from the intensive phase, it has been established that a frontal eddy cold dome can propagate out of the South Atlantic Bight past Cape Hatteras. The focus here therefore is on frontal eddy observations in the long-term data set in the immediate vicinity of Cape Hatteras. The long-term moorings indicate that 39 northward propagating frontal eddies were observed immediately south of Cape Hatteras, giving a recurrence interval of once every 4–5 days. Two types of frontal eddies are identified, dependent on the bimodal character of the amplitude of the parent Gulf Stream meanders. During the small-meander mode, the mean Gulf Stream front is approximately aligned with the 100-m isobath, and the small warm filaments rarely penetrate beyond mid-shelf. During the large-meander mode, the mean Gulf Stream front is displaced offshore, but the larger warm filaments often penetrate onto the inner shelf. The duration of each meander mode at Cape Hatteras is 2–3 months, with rapid (several day) transitions between the modes. The transition to the large-meander mode appears to be related to local interactions with cold core rings in the Sargasso Sea rather than the offshore deflections of the Gulf Stream at the Charleston Bump. The intense observations of Eddy Abbott occur during the small-meander mode, demonstrating that even when the Gulf Stream is closer to the confining topography of the continental shelf, frontal eddy cold domes can propagate beyond Cape Hatteras and form new warm filaments in the Middle Atlantic Bight.
An Eﬀicient Constraint Programming Approach to Preemptive Job Shop Scheduling

Constraint Programming has been widely, and very successfully, applied to scheduling problems. However, the focus has been on uninterruptible tasks, and preemptive scheduling problems are typically harder for existing constraint solvers. Indeed, one usually needs to represent all potential task interruptions thus introducing many variables and symmetrical or dominated choices. In this paper, building on mostly known results, we observe that a large class of preemptive disjunctive scheduling problems do not require an explicit model of task interruptions. We then introduce a new constraint programming approach for this class of problems that significantly outperforms state-of-the-art dedicated approaches in our experimental results
Comparative evaluation of unintentional extrusion of gutta-percha versus sealer on teeth presenting periapical radiolucency: a retrospective radiographic study on treatment outcome

Objective: The purpose of this study is the radiographic evaluation of endodontically treated teeth presenting periapical radiolucency and unintentional over�lling with gutta-percha or sealer on treatment outcome and persistence of the extruded materials. Materials and Methods: After assessment using periapical index (PAI), 202 roots �lled with gutta-percha and Roth 811 sealer, exhibiting unintentional over�lling and periapical radiolucency were selected. All cases had at least 1 year follow-up. Type of extruded material, periapical status, and removal/persistence of the extruded material were evaluated. Data were statistically analyzed using logistic and linear regression analysis. Results: Tooth location, follow-up period and type of the extruded material were the only factors that signi�cantly affected the outcome (p<0.05). The persistence of extruded material was signi�cantly affected by its type and the recall time (p<0.05). Conclusions: It can be concluded that posterior roots, over�lling with sealer compared to gutta-percha and cases with long recall period present a signi�cantly better rate of complete healing.
Applying FDR control subsequently to large scale one-way ANOVA testing in proteomics: practical considerations

In discovery proteomics, as well as many other “omic” approaches, more than two biological conditions or group treatments can be compared in the one-way Analysis of Variance (OW-ANOVA) framework. The subsequent possibility to test for the differential abundance of hundreds (or thousands) of features simultaneously is appealing, despite requiring specific statistical safeguards, among which controlling for the False Discovery Rate (FDR) has become standard. However, using an FDR control procedure in a context where other multiple test corrections may also be involved because of the number of compared groups raises practical difficulties. This article surveys means to circumvent them, thanks to various practical data processing scenarios.
On the parameterized complexity of non-hereditary relaxations of clique

We investigate the parameterized complexity of several problems formalizing cluster identification in graphs. In other words we ask whether a graph contains a large enough and sufficiently connected subgraph. We study here three relaxations of Clique : s - Club and s - Clique , in which the relaxation is focused on the distances in respectively the cluster and the original graph, and γ - Complete Subgraph in which the relaxation is made on the minimal degree in the cluster. As these three problems are known to be NP -hard, we study here their parameterized complexities. We prove that s - Club and s - Clique are NP -hard even restricted to graphs of degeneracy ≤ 3 whenever s ≥ 3 , and to graphs of degeneracy ≤ 2 whenever s ≥ 5 , which is a strictly stronger result than its W[1] -hardness parameterized by the degeneracy. Concerning γ - Complete Subgraph , we prove that it is W [1]-hard parameterized both by the degeneracy, implying the W[1] -hardness parameterized by the number of vertices in the γ - complete-subgraph, and by the number of elements outside the γ -complete subgraph.
Lysosomal acid lipase de ﬁ ciency – early diagnosis is the key

: Lysosomal acid lipase de ﬁ ciency (LAL-D) is an ultra-rare lysosomal storage disease that may present from infancy to late adulthood depending on residual enzyme activity. While the severe form manifests as a rapidly progressive disease with near universal mortality within the ﬁ rst 6 months of life, milder forms frequently go undiagnosed for prolonged periods and typically present with progressive fatty liver disease, enlarged spleen, atherogenic dyslipidemia and premature atherosclerosis. The adult variant of LAL-D is typically diagnosed late or even overlooked due to the unspeci ﬁ c nature of the presenting symptoms, which are similar to common changes observed in the context of the metabolic syndrome. This review is aimed at delineating clinically useful scenarios in which pediatric or adult medicine clinicians should be aware of LAL-D as a differential diagnosis for selected patients. This is particularly relevant as a potentially life-saving enzyme replacement therapy has become available and the diagnosis can easily be ruled out or con ﬁ rmed using a dried blood spot test.
Detection of Dynamic Eccentricity Fault in Induction Motors Using Fast Fourier and Wavelet Packet Transform Methods

—This paper presents the effect of rotor dynamic eccentricity fault on the air gap magnetic field and stator current in a tested 3 phase squirrel cage induction motor. The distorted sinusoidal stator current is analyzed by Fast Fourier transform and wavelet packet transform methods to detect the fault. The magnetic fields in the stator, rotor and air gap are simulated using Finite Element Magnetic method. To achieve accurate model, all geometrical, electrical, mechanical, and physical characteristics of different parts of induction motor are considered in the model and the obtained results confirms this issue. To zoom on a particular frequency interval, the wavelet packet transform method is employed. The presented simulation results show although both methods wavelet and Fourier transforms are capable to detect the dynamic fault in the motor, though wavelet transform indicates the fault more clearly.