Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stable and accurate methods for identification of water bodies from Landsat series imagery using meta-heuristic algorithms

Abstract. Identification of water extents in Landsat images is challenging due to surfaces with similar reflectance to water extents. The objective of this study is to provide stable and accurate methods for identifying water extents in Landsat images based on meta-heuristic algorithms. Then, seven Landsat images were selected from various environmental regions in Iran. Training of the algorithms was performed using 40 water pixels and 40 nonwater pixels in operational land imager images of Chitgar Lake (one of the study regions). Moreover, high-resolution images from Google Earth were digitized to evaluate the results. Two approaches were considered: index-based and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. In the first approach, nine common water spectral indices were investigated. AI algorithms were utilized to acquire coefficients of optimal band combinations to extract water extents. Among the AI algorithms, the artificial neural network algorithm and also the ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, and particle swarm optimization (PSO) meta-heuristic algorithms were implemented. Index-based methods represented different performances in various regions. Among AI methods, PSO had the best performance with average overall accuracy and kappa coefficient of 93% and 98%, respectively. The results indicated the applicability of acquired band combinations to extract accurately and stably water extents in Landsat imagery.
THE MODEL UPDATING OF MASS, DAMPING AND STIFFNESS MATRICES

Model updating for quadratic eigenvalue problems (QEPs) is pro- posed by Friswell, Inman and Pilkey (1998), to incorporate the measured model data into the model which only produces the mass and stifiness matrices, that closely match the experimental model data. In this paper, we consider a numer- ical model for updating QEPs which produces not only the mass and stifiness matrices, but also the damping matrix will be updated. To this end the com- plete set of eigenpairs will be employed.
Polar-Coded Cross-Packet HARQ Based On Polarizing Matrix Extension

In this letter, polar-coded cross-packet hybrid automatic repeat request (XP-HARQ) using multilevel coded modulation (MLCM) to improve throughput performance is investigated. Firstly, a novel polar-coded XP-HARQ framework combining polar codes, MLCM, and level-independent XP-HARQ by using polarizing matrix extension is proposed. Then, a two-step throughput-based code design method is developed to generate optimal code rates and corresponding bit protect pairs and new information bit sets in extended codes. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms level-independent Turbo-coded XP-HARQ and state-of-art hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) using polar-coded modulation.
Educación emprendedora con juegos serios: una estrategia para replicar

Seguramente, más de uno se sorprendió en su momento por el precio de los bombillos ahorradores. Pagar menos en la cuenta de la energía sonaba muy bien, hasta ver la gran diferencia de precio con respecto a los bombillos tradicionales. Eso fue justamente lo que detectó un joven emprendedor hace 20 años: ¿Por qué esos bombillos eran tan caros? ¿Qué sentido tenía comprarlos, si el ahorro en la cuenta de la energía prácticamente se estaba pagando por adelantado en la tirilla de compra de cada bombillo? Sin respuestas claras, Jobst Viertel, un emprendedor colombo-alemán, decidió comprar un bombillo para investigar. Al llegar a su casa, lo desarmó y se dio cuenta de que la diferencia con un foco tradicional era bastante simple, y que la multinacional, que acaparaba las estanterías del supermercado, estaba simplemente abusando del comprador. Fue así como inició su primer emprendimiento, con el que logró fabricar bombillos ahorradores y venderlos a un tercio del precio de su competidor principal. Su filosofía era clara: hay que producir para la base de la pirámide que, en nuestro país, es la mayoría; para aquellos que ni en sueños habrían imaginado disfrutar los beneficios de los bombillos ahorradores en su casa. Así son los emprendedores: observadores, cuestionadores; ven oportunidades y resuelven problemas; son como Clark Kent, Diana Prince o Peter Parker, gente aparentemente común, pero que esconde detrás de su ropa unas ganas incansables de transformar el mundo. Personas apasionadas y resilientes, que muchas veces salvan patria cuando se habla de desigualdad, desempleo, entre otros. Por eso, no es de sorprenderse que, en una época donde la creciente incertidumbre juega con la economía mundial a su antojo, el emprendimiento se esté convirtiendo en uno de los activos más importantes de todos los países.
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Obstructed Labor Among Pregnant Women at Selected Public Hospitals in Mogadishu- Somalia: Multi-Centered Case-Control Study

: Obstructed labor (OL) is a typical reason for maternal morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. A retrospective case-control study was conducted to determine the prevalence and risk factors of obstructed labor among pregnant women at selected public hospitals in Mogadishu-Somalia. Methods: a retrospective case-control study was conducted to ascertain risk factors of obstructed labor among pregnant women at selected public hospitals in Mogadishu-Somalia, from 1 st July 2020 to 30 th December 2020. The study site was one of the selected public hospitals in Mogadishu-Somalia, including Banadir, SOS, Madina Daynile, and Demartino public hospitals. The Maternal Sociodemographic factors, clinical factors, and complications associated with obstructed labor were obtained from selected public and clinical data. These variables were coded numerically and computerized using statistical analysis software called statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 24). Results : 143 out of 960 patients were obstructed Labor prevalence of 14.8%; according to age group, 22% were 15–19 years, over 47.2% were married, had educational levels (25.52%), and patients were illiterate. The majority (89.5%) of the patients were rural dwellers with (80.2%) who came from a distance between 30-59Km. Being nulliparous (first pregnancy) was the leading cause for the patients in obstructed labor (27.27%) of all the cases group. This was followed by being referred with Obstructed Labor (OL) (72.0%) and referred from Private health facilities alone, forming about (65.0%). The fetal risk factors observed in this study were Cephalo-pelvic disproportion, with a reported (71.1%), and fetal malpresentation, with (23.8%). The dominant maternal complication type reported in this study was ruptured uterus (43.3%) among obstructed labor. The most typical fetal complication was birth Asphyxia (40.5%), although there was a significant association between demographics, Obstetrical risk factors, and the developing obstructed labor. Conclusion: This study showed a high prevalence of obstructed labor, and sociodemographic attributes and obstetrical factors are causal factors to its development. The results of this study make it clear that the Ministry of Health and other healthcare stakeholders must seek to scale up present facility-based interventions to improve maternal outcomes and lessen the effects and incidences of obstructed labor.
Detecting social groups from space – Assessment of remote sensing-based mapped morphological slums using income data

ABSTRACT Over the last decades, massive urbanization processes lead to the emergence of large slum areas making them home to about a seventh of the global population. Although the variety of morphological characteristics varies significantly within as well as across cities, common determinants exist. Informal, or unplanned settlements in particular, do show similar morphologies over the world. They are characterized mostly by extremely high building densities and small building sizes, irregular arrangement of buildings and street network and are often located at exposed sites . Based on these characteristics, we deploy satellite images for a systematic mapping of morphological slum areas in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil based solely on physical characteristics and analyse the mapping result with the official census data. Outcomes show first that morphological slums are a semantic and spatial sub-group of all slum areas contained by the Brazilian census and that remote sensing-based mapping yields accuracies of almost 94%. Second, analysis of census-based income data proofs that while almost 45% of all mapped slum blocks are characterized by incomes below the poverty line, as defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), this holds true for only about 6% of the formal urban neighbourhoods.
Langmuir–Blodgett films of stearic acid deposited on substrates at different orientations relative to compression direction: alignment layer for nematic liquid crystal

ABSTRACT The Langmuir monolayer at an air–water interface shows remarkably different surface pressure (π)–area (A) isotherm, when measured with the surface normal of a Wilhelmy plate parallel or perpendicular to the direction of compression of the monolayer. Such difference arises due to difference in stress exerted by the monolayer on the plate in different direction. In this article, we report the effect of changing the direction of substrate normal with respect to the compression of the monolayer during Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) film deposition on the morphology of the films. The morphology of the LB film of stearic acid is studied using an atomic force microscope. The morphology of the LB films is found to be different due to difference in the stress in different directions. The role of such surface morphology on the alignment of a nematic liquid crystal (LC) in LC cells is studied. The granular texture of LB films of stearic acid supports the homogeneous alignment of the LC whereas the uniform texture supports the homeotropic alignment of the LC. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
An Example of (Too Much) Hyper-Parameter Tuning In Suicide Ideation Detection

This work starts with the TWISCO baseline, a benchmark of suicide-related content from Twitter. We find that hyper-parameter tuning can improve this baseline by 9%. We examined 576 combinations of hyper-parameters: learning rate, batch size, epochs and date range of training data. Reasonable settings of learning rate and batch size produce better results than poor settings. Date range is less conclusive. Balancing the date range of the training data to match the benchmark ought to improve performance, but the differences are relatively small. Optimal settings of learning rate and batch size are much better than poor settings, but optimal settings of date range are not that different from poor settings of date range. Finally, we end with concerns about reproducibility. Of the 576 experiments, 10% produced F1 performance above baseline. It is common practice in the literature to run many experiments and report the best, but doing so may be risky, especially given the sensitive nature of Suicide Ideation Detection.
Automata and linear temporal logic : translations with transition-based acceptance

Automata theory provides powerful tools for designing and implementing decision procedures for temporal logics and their applications to the automatic verification of systems against their logical specifications. Implementing these decision procedures by making use of automata built from the systems and their specifications with translation procedures is challenging in practice due to the tendency of the automata to grow easily unmanageably large as the size of the systems or the logical specifications increases. This thesis develops the theory of translating propositional linear time temporal logic (LTL) into nondeterministic automata via self-loop alternating automata. Unlike nondeterministic automata, self-loop alternating automata are expressively equivalent to LTL and allow a conceptually simple translation of LTL specifications into automata using a set of rules for building automata incrementally from smaller components. The use of generalized transition-based acceptance for automata throughout all constructions gives rise to new optimized translation rules and facilitates designing heuristics for the minimization of automata by making use of language containment tests combined with structural analysis of automata. The generalized definition also supports the translation of self-loop alternating automata into nondeterministic automata by essentially applying the standard subset construction; this construction can be further simplified and optimized when working with automata built from LTL formulas. The translation rules can also be used to identify a syntactic subclass of LTL for which the exponential increase caused by the subset construction in the number of states of the automaton can always be avoided; consequently, the satisfiability problem for this subclass, which is shown to extend related subclasses known from the literature, is NP-complete. Additionally, the emptiness of generalized nondeterministic automata is shown to be testable without giving up generalized transition-based acceptance by using a new variant of the well-known nested depth-first search algorithmwith improved worst-case resource requirements.
Early vocabulary in two varieties of South American Spanish: Quantitative and qualitative differences

This article presents a cross-cultural comparison of the size and composition of the expressive vocabulary of young children speaking two dialectal varieties of South American Spanish. Ninety-one Peruvian and 91 Argentinian toddlers (mean age: 22.5 months), matched on gender, age and maternal education, were assessed through the respective adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Results revealed a vocabulary growth compatible with a spurt in both groups. A marginally significant country-by-gender interaction indicated that while Argentinian children exhibited an accelerated lexical growth before age 2;0 regardless of gender, only Peruvian girls did so; Peruvian boys presented a more gradual and later increase. We also found between-group qualitative differences in vocabulary composition: Argentinian toddlers with vocabularies of up to 100 words exhibited a significantly higher proportion of Nouns, while Peruvian children, especially those with a lexical mass under 50 words, had a higher percentage of Social words. Both findings are discussed in terms of possible cross-cultural differences linked to input quality and early interactions, and avenues for further research are proposed.
Dynamics and stability of gap-flow interference in a vibrating side-by-side arrangement of two circular cylinders

In this work, the coupled dynamics of the gap flow and the vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a side-by-side (SBS) arrangement of two circular cylinders is numerically investigated at Reynolds numbers $100\leqslant Re\leqslant 500$ . The influence of VIV is incorporated by allowing one of the cylinders to vibrate freely in the transverse direction, which is termed as a vibrating side-by-side (VSBS) arrangement. A comparative three-dimensional study is performed between the stationary side-by-side (SSBS) and the VSBS arrangements to examine the characteristics of the complex coupling between the VIV and the gap flow. The results are also contrasted against the isolated configurations without any proximity and gap-flow interference. Of particular interest is to establish a relationship between the VIV, the gap flow and the near-wake instability behind bluff bodies. We find that the kinematics of the VIV regulates the streamwise vorticity concentration, which accompanies a recovery of the two-dimensional hydrodynamic response at the peak lock-in. Moreover, the near-wake instability may develop around an indeterminant two-dimensional streamline saddle point along the interfaces of a pair of imbalanced counter-signed vorticity clusters. The interaction between the imbalanced vorticity clusters and the gap-flow momentum are closely interlinked with the prominence of streamwise vortical structures. In both SSBS and VSBS arrangements, the flip-flopping frequency is significantly low for the three-dimensional flow, except at the VIV lock-in for the VSBS arrangement. While an early onset of VIV lock-in is observed for the vibrating configuration, a quasi-stable deflected gap-flow regime with stably deflected gap flow is found at the peak lock-in. The increase of the gap-flow proximity interference promotes the energy transfer and stabilizes the VIV lock-in. Finally, we employ the dynamic mode decomposition procedure to characterize the space–time evolution of the vortex wake system behind the cylinders.
First-principles structure determination of interface materials: The NixInAs nickelides

This work was supported in part by the EPSRC Grants No. EP/G007489/2, No. EP/J010863/1, and No. EP/I009973/1. All data supporting this study are provided as Supplemental Material accompanying this paper [25]. Computational resources from the University College London and London Centre for Nanotechnology Computing Services as well as HECToR and Archer as part of the UKCP consortium are gratefully acknowledged.
Extending UTAUT with competitive pressure for SMEs digitalization adoption in two European nations: a multi-group analysis

PurposeIn this article, the authors draw-upon an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and propose a research model involving performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), facilitating conditions (FC) and competitive pressure (CP) as potential salient factors explaining the adoption of digitalization in European SMEs. The authors also postulate that there may be cross-cultural differences, thereby leading us to include the country as a moderator in the model.Design/methodology/approachThe authors validate this model with a cross-cultural sample involving 188 owner-managers from the Czech Republic and Slovakia and through the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques as well as multi-group analysis.FindingsThe results using the study’s global dataset indicate that PE, FC and CP significantly affect owner-managers intentions toward digitalization in SMEs. The authors’ application of the multi-group analysis also suggests that although the two countries differ in digitalization adoption intention, the differences are statistically insignificant. In the conclusion, the authors highlight several implications these findings have for theory and practice.Practical implicationsThe authors recommend that the providers of emerging digital technologies should improve on the performance features of those technologies and ensure they are relevant to the SMEs. By doing so, the adoption of digitalization will grow, because owner-managers of SMEs will have the confidence that adopting such technologies will improve their operations. Second, SMEs are required to provide adequate organizational and technical infrastructure to support digitalization adoption.Originality/valueAside from being among the few attempts to extend the explanatory power of UTAUT with PE, EE, FC and CP in investigating digitalization adoption in SMEs context, this study also validates its model with rigorous methodological approach as well as three datasets (global, Czech Republic and Slovakia) thereby strengthening the validity of the results.
Ionising photon budget in galaxies

Abstract Understanding the production of ionising photons in galaxies, how these photons propagate, ionise and heat the interstellar medium and possibly leak out of their host galaxies is key to understand many aspects of galaxy evolution and their contribution to reionisation. I will outline some projects currently undertaken to investigate the ionising photon budget.
Peningkatan (Upgrading) Rantai Nilai Sektor Pertanian Indonesia: Kajian Teori dan Hasil-hasil Empiris

Rantai nilai sektor pertanian negara berkembang, termasuk Indonesia, merupakan bagian dari rantai nilai global, terutama untuk rantai nilai produk perkebunan yang diperdagangkan secara global (misalnya kopi, kakao, teh, dan kelapa sawit). Banyak peneliti menggunakan perspektif rantai nilai global dengan fokus mengevaluasi hubungan antara perusahaan multinasional (yang dianggap sebagai aktor utama) dan aktor lain (termasuk produsen dan konsumen) dalam perdagangan internasional. Namun, argumen bahwa negara berkembang perlu memiliki kendali lebih besar atas rantai nilai global patut mendapat perhatian. Oleh karena itu, studi ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi strategi-strategi potensial untuk meningkatkan rantai nilai secara keseluruhan dan dengan cara yang lebih sistematis; sehingga memperkuat posisi dan pengaruhnya dalam rantai nilai global. Tujuan penelitian dicapai dengan meninjau literatur secara khusus tentang rantai nilai, tetapi juga dengan memperluas tinjauan ke literatur tentang politik, ekonomi dan manajemen. Selain itu, penelitian ini juga diperkuat dengan hasil penelitian empiris sebagai 'kasus' atau 'contoh' terkait dengan strategi yang diusulkan. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa peningkatan rantai nilai dicapai melalui kombinasi strategi, misalnya peningkatan nilai tambah produk dan perbaikan tata kelola rantai. Selain itu, penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa di era pasar liberalisasi, peran pemerintah seharusnya lebih terlihat. Pasar yang diliberalisasi tidak selalu mencapai ekuilibrium yang optimal, oleh karena itu pemerintah harus dapat memperbaikinya dengan peraturan dan/atau kebijakan yang relevan.
Evaluation of Acceleration Data for Falls Risk Prediction using Classication and Regression Analysis

Falls are a major problem not only for older adults, but also for health care systems, which have to spend enormous amounts of money in hospitalizations and long-term rehabilitation as result of injurious falls. We aim to assess the risk of falling as easy, accurate and inexpensive as possible to be able to identify those persons at high risk of functional decline and trigger appropriate clinical interventions. A new method are functional assessments with inertial sensors like the actibelt®. We analyzed the predictive value of the data recorded with this device in 171 community-dwelling female seniors with a mean age of 68 years included in the EU-Project VPHOP. Results showed that acceleration-based parameters provide an improvement in risk prediction over classical features. We could prove 18 variables retrieved by the inertial sensor to be valid or plausible. To identify variables with predictive power, we applied the following feature selection and dimension reduction techniques: sparse Partial Least Squares (sPLS), Elastic Nets (EN) and Principal Components Analysis (PCA). We found that PCA is useless for this kind of data, whereas EN are most applicable according to our results. From a range of different classification methods, Logistic Regression (LR) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) showed the best performance. LR presented a higher specificity in the classification of fallers/non-fallers with a True Positive Rate (TPR), or rate of correctly classified fallers, equal to 0.30 and a True Negative Rate (TNR), or rate of correctly classified non-fallers, equal to 0.92. The results of SVM were more sensitive with TPR=0.60 and TNR=0.85. The latter results are more suitable because the consequences of incorrectly classifying a non-faller are less harmful than vice versa. The commonly used accuracy has been shown to be insufficient to describe the performance of classifiers on datasets with strongly differing class sizes. Instead, we suggest the use of Youden's J or the F-score.