Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative Study on Nitrogen Assimilation and Gene Regulation of different Kentucky bluegrass Cultivars in response to Nitrate supply

Background: Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L) is one of the most popular cool-season turfgrass worldwide, but the mechanisms of this species in response to low nitrogen (N) still remain unclear. In this study, we characterized two cultivars ‘Bluemoon’ and ‘Balin’ distinctly in morphological, chromosomal, physiological and molecular attributes to N supply.Results: Bluemoon was more tolerant to low N than Balin by exhibiting higher turf quality (TQ), photosynthetic ability, activities of N reductases and synthetases and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). Gene expression profiling showed that there were 968 and 336 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) after eliminating genetic background differences in Bluemoon and Balin respectively during low N stress, and these DEGs highly enriched in ‘Nitrogen metabolism’, ‘Pyruvate metabolism’ and ‘Carbon fixation in photosynthetic’ pathways. The identified genes related to carbon (C) metabolism highly expressed in Bluemoon, which could generate more NADPH then result in more N reduction comparing with Balin. Moreover, R2R3-MYB transcription factors were predicted to bind the promoter of GS to enhance the efficiency of GS/GOGAT cycle.Conclusion: These results could be crucial molecular regulations for improving the tolerance to low N and NUE in Bluemoon. The climate and geography in origins may shape the N assimilation patterns in Kentucky bluegrass via long-term domestication. Taken together, the findings help elucidate the low N tolerance mechanisms in Kentucky bluegrass and would be valuable for the genetic improvement of NUE aiming to promote low-input turfgrass management.
Trophic transfer of organochlorine pesticides through food-chain in coastal marine ecosystem

The present study was designed to characterize the bioaccumulation of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in marine organisms (zooplankton, oyster, crab, and goby) on different trophic level. In the present study, sedentary bivalve (oyster) showed strong correlations in OCPs levels with surface sediment in the study area. This indicates the two compartments can be used as alternative for pollution monitoring of OCPs even in narrow scale in space. Bioaccumulation and trophic transfer of OCPs was strongly associated with their hydrophobicity (i.e., KOW). HCHs with log KOW < 5 did not show any enrichment through food-chain. However, log BAF values of OCPs with log KOW > 5 positioned over the 1:1 lines of log BAF and log KOW of the top predator, indicating the greater fugacities in the higher trophic level and thus the occurrence of biomagnification via ingestion. Based on trophic transfer factors (TTF), more hydrophobic OCPs with log KOW > 5 were enriched by several to several ten times in the highest trophic level relative to the lowest trophic level. This finding can be used in the establishment of marine environmental water quality criteria by considering biomagnification factors (TTF in this study) of OCPs.
Flight investigation of manual and automatic VTOL decelerating instrument approaches and landings

A flight investigation was undertaken to study the problems associated with manual and automatic control of steep, decelerating instrument approaches and landings under simulated instrument conditions. The study was conducted with a research helicopter equipped with a three-cue flight-director indicator. The scope of the investigation included variations in the flight-director control laws, glide-path angle, deceleration profile, and control response characteristics. Investigation of the automatic-control problem resulted in the first automated approach and landing to a predetermined spot ever accomplished with a helicopter. Although well-controlled approaches and landings could be performed manually with the flight-director concept, pilot comments indicated the need for a better display which would more effectively integrate command and situation information.
Building Disaster Resilience within the Emirati EnergySector through a Comprehensive Strategic MitigationPlan

Disasters, both natural and man-made, have been occurring with increasing frequency and effect in recent decades in many countries around the world. Such threats have been shown to result in a loss of life, property and income and all of which have an impact on the country’s socio-economic structure and geo-political positioning. The UAE is steadily adapting its policies and practices to manage any potential disaster, whether natural or man-made. However, evidently the UAE is exposed and vulnerable to tectonic activity from a number of sources and yet there is little in the form of seismic detection, protection, resistance or design for some of the newest and tallest structures in the world. The paper highlights the importance of the strategic mitigation planning for disaster resilience within the Emirati Energy sector. It discusses the issue of disaster globally and then specifically with regards to the UAE, forming a critical analysis on crisis and its management. A broad literature review of the problems readily associated within the discourse is undertaken so that the definition, classification and the application of the disaster and its management cycle are appropriately contextualised in regards to the Emirati problem. The window of opportunity that the UAE has for improvement is emphasised by the findings of this paper.
Formative Evaluation of an Arabic Online Vocabulary Learning Games Prototype: Lessons from a Malaysian Higher Learning Institution Experience

The use of digital game-based learning is a new trend of instructional practices in different fields of knowledge. The research and studies related to this field are increasingly attracting the researchers all over the world to further explore the various aspects of educational games models, the design and development of games itself, the evaluation insights and many more. This chapter describes an experience of the formative evaluation of an online game among Arabic language learners at the elementary level in the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). The mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative research approaches were utilized to investigate the usability, practicality and effectiveness of this games prototype in the real settings. This chapter also described the process and phases of evaluation throughout the responses from participants which vary from experts in ID and SME, lecturers and learners as the actual users.
Remarks on the physiological effects of defoliation on sugar maple and some impacts on syrup production

The information I am going to present today is a conglomeration of some of the research on the effects of defoliation that has been done on sugar maple and oak. It involves work done by Drs. David Houston, Johnson Parker, Robert Gregory and me. Dr. Houston, a plant pathologist, and Dr. Parker, a plant physiologist, work with the USDA Forest Service in Hamden, Ct. ; Dr. Gregory is a plant physiologist who is retired from the Forest Service in Burlington, Vt.
Does the Government Drive Chinese Banking Performance – An Analysis of the Chinese Banking System

We evaluate the Chinese government, foreign investors and private investors’ financial impact upon Chinese banking performance. The paper focuses on major banks within China and evaluates the relationship between the ownership structure and the overall financial performance of the Chinese banks. Our findings span the period of 2001-2016 and show a very strong inverse relationship between bank performance measures in high government ownership Chinese banks. Furthermore, we find positive relationship between private and foreign ownership levels and Chinese bank performance. We conclude that Chinese government ownership’s primary motive is not optimal financial performance, but other non-financial motives.
THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

The purpose of this work is to find to what extent the thermal properties of the building materials, the allowed indoor temperature swing, determined by the comfort interval, and, to some extent, the ventilation strategy can affect the heating and cooling demand of a building. It is well known that a thermally heavy building, that is a building with a high heat capacity, often demands less energy for heating and cooling and have a more stabile indoor temperature due to heat storage in the building structure. A great number of studies have been done in this area and it is often debated to what extent the heat capacity of the building structure can be used as heat or cool storage. The heat storage potential of a building structure has been analysed using analytical solutions for both sinusoidal variation and a unit step of the indoor temperature. In three case studies, numerical calculation programs have been used to analyse the thermal behaviour of a building unit. The first case study focuses upon the influence of the building’s thermal mass and of the comfort intervals upon the heating and cooling demand during a 24-hour period. The second case study focuses on how different ventilations strategies can influence the heating and cooling demands of a building during a 24-hour period. The third case study compares the heating and cooling demand during one year for four buildings, each with a heavy and a light construction, respectively. Apart from the main task, two complementary projects are presented. In the first project, heat and moisture conditions are simulated in an earth-tube system designed to pre-heat the inlet air to a terrace building using the thermal mass of the ground surrounding the building. In the second complementary project, the energy use during the life cycle of four buildings is assessed. By choosing the right material in the building structure and adjust the comfort interval and ventilation to the current internal heat gain it is possible to decrease the heating and / or cooling demand of the building when part of the surplus heat is stored in the building structure. However, the amount of heat stored is small compared to the total energy use of a regular building. According to this study, the most important material parameter regarding heat storage is the thermal effusivity.
EFFECTIVENESS OF INTEGRATED FLIGHT SIMULATOR TRAINING IN PROMOTING B-52 CREW COORDINATION

Abstract : This report represents the findings of a study designed to assess the value of a B-52 flight simulator electronically linked to a T-2a navigator trainer in promoting crew coordination. Seventy-five SAC aircrews undergoing B-52 transition training at Castle Air Force Base were used as subjects. Integrated and non-integrated simulator training of these crews was contrasted. The results as indicated by certain of the measures used enable a favorable recommendation to be made regarding the effectiveness of the B-52 integrated crew trainer. Special attention is devoted to a discussion of two aspects of communication, pattern and volume, and the relation of these aspects to crew coordination.
Issues on Analysis and Design of Single-Phase Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Inverters

This thesis provides a comprehensive study of the problems in single-phase grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems. The main objective is to provide an explicit formulation of the dynamic properties of the power-electronic-based PV inverter in the frequency domain. Such a model is used as the main tool to trace the origins of the observed problems that cannot be studied with the conventional time-domain analyses. The dynamic model also provides the tool for deterministic control-system design. Grid-connected PV inverters have been reported to reduce damping in the grid, excite harmonic resonances and cause harmonic distortion. These phenomena can lead to instability or production outages and are expected to increase in the future, because the installed capacity of the grid-connected PV energy is rapidly growing. A PV generator (PVG) itself is a peculiar source affecting the inverter dynamic behavior. The PVG is internally a current-source with limited output voltage and power. The nonlinear behavior yields distinguishable operating regions: the constant-current region at the voltages lower than the maximum-power-point (MPP) voltage and constant-voltage region at the voltages higher than the MPP voltage. Such a behavior is quite well known but not really understood to need special attention. Vast majority of the photovoltaic inverters originate from the voltage-source inverter (VSI) with a capacitor connected at the input terminal for power-decoupling purposes. It is convenient to assume that the inverter is supplied by a voltage source and perform the analyses based on the existing modeling and design teqhniques of the voltage-fed (VF) VSI. However, the input voltage of a PV inverter must be controlled for MPP-tracking purposes, which implies that the inverter has to be analyzed as a current-fed (CF) inverter. Such analysis reveals that the CF VSI has second-order dynamics compared to the first-order dynamics of the VF VSI. The control dynamics of the CF VSI is also shown to incorporate right-half-plane zero and pole introducing control-system-design constraints. This thesis presents the dynamic modeling procedure of PV inverter both at open and closed loop taking into account the type of the input source. The dynamic behavior of the PVG is modeled as an operating-point-dependent dynamic resistance, which is shown to shift the operating point dependent zero and pole in the inverter control dynamics between the right and left halves of the complex plane. It is also shown that the negative-incremental-resistance behavior of the inverter output impedance makes the inverter prone to instability and the grid to harmonic resonance problems, and that such a behavior can originate e.g. from the grid synchronization and the cascaded control scheme. It is important to recognize such a behavior in order to enable reliable largescale utilization of the PV energy. iii
Quantitative analysis of the development of self-regulated learning in year 1 medical students

Doctors must constantly update their knowledge in order to provide the best quality patient care. (1) To do so, they should become ‘lifelong learners’ (1) through the development of self-regulated learning (SRL). (2) SRL can be de"ned as the ability of students to be active participants in their learning, behaviourally, motivationally and metacognitively. (3) SRL is vital for succeeding Year 1 of medical school, yet the transition to university can be challenging for students. (2)
Gait Mimicking : Attack Resistance Testing of Gait Authentication Systems

Biometric technology is rapidly evolving in today's society. A large part of the technology has its roots hundreds, or even thousands of years back in time, while other parts are new and futuristic. Research suggest that individuals can be identified by the way they walk, and this kind of biometrics, gait biometrics, is a rather new and definitely intriguing field. However, the technology is far from mature; the performance is not generally competitive to other biometrics, and it has not been thoroughly tested security-wise. This thesis aims to test the security strength of gait biometrics. It will focus on imitation, or mimicking of gait. The bottom line question is whether it is possible to learn to walk like someone else. If this turns out to be easy, it will have a severe effect on the potential of gait as an authentication mechanism in the future. The report is logically twofold. In one part, the reader is brought up to speed on the field of gait biometrics, and a software tool for gait authentication is developed and presented. Second, an experiment is conducted, involving extensive training of test subjects, and using sources of feedback like video and statistical analysis. The data is analyzed by regression, and the goal is to determine whether or not the participants are increasing their mimicking skills, or simply put: if they are learning. The first part of the experiment involves 50 participants that are successfully enrolled using the developed software. The results compete with state of the art gait technology, with an EER of 6.2%. The rest of the experiment is related to mimicking, and the thesis discovers that six out of seven participants seem to have a natural boundary to their performance, a "plateau", forcing them back whenever they attempt to improve further. The location of this plateau predetermines the outcome of an attack; for success it has to lie below the acceptance threshold corresponding to the EER. Exactly one such boundary is identified for almost all participants, but some data also indicate that more than one plateau can exist simultaneously. The final result however, is that a very limited amount of learning is present, not nearly enough to pose a threat to gait biometrics. Gait mimicking is a hard task, and our physiology works against us when we try to adopt specific gait characteristics.
Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity

espanolEl presente texto publicado en la Zona REMIX de la revista Communiars se corresponde con la introduccion del afamado libro Cultura Libre, del profesor Lawrence Lessig, presidente de la organizacion Creative Commons, dedicada a promover el acceso e intercambio culturales. El texto «Free Culture. How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity» (en espanol �Cultura Libre. Como los grandes medios usan la tecnologia y la ley para bloquear la cultura y controlar la creatividad�) es un libro publicado en 2004 y centrado en presentar otra manera de organizar la cultura y el conocimiento, abriendo las restricciones del obsoleto paradigma del copyright, y apoyandose en el modelo copyleft promovido desde el software libre. La introduccion que aqui se presenta traduce el espiritu abierto de un texto clave para la comprension y evolucion de la actualidad cultural. La version que se publica procede la version PDF de Free Culture, licenciada bajo Creative Commons en su variante BY-NC 1.0. EnglishThe present text published in the REMIX Zone of the Communiars Journal corresponds to the introduction of the famous book Free Culture, by Professor Lawrence Lessig, president of the Creative Commons organization, dedicated to promoting cultural access and exchange. The text �Free Culture. How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity� is a book published in 2004 and focused on presenting another way of organizing culture and knowledge, opening the restrictions of the obsolete paradigm of copyright, and relying on the copyleft model promoted by free software. The introduction presented here translates the open spirit of a key text for the understanding and evolution of current cultural reality. The version that is published is part of PDF version of Free Culture, licensed under Creative Commons in its variant BY-NC 1.0.
Interpersonal aspects of meditative traditions

In the entire spectrum of available meditations, those focused on interpersonal aspects have been relatively less studied. Such aspects need equal research attention in a world where majority of practitioners live a life populated with interpersonal joys, interactions, concerns and sufferings. The contemplative traditions rooted in India, from Yoga-Vedanta to Buddhism have emphasized development of positive interpersonal qualities, such as maitri, mudita, karuna and upeska. These concepts have been discussed in-depth in the present chapter, along with a review of the available research and future directions.
Demonstration of Noncorrosive, Capacitance- Based Water-Treatment Technology for Chilled-Water Cooling Systems

Abstract : This project demonstrated and validated a high-voltage capacitance-based water-treatment system for chilled-water cooling systems that was previously evaluated in separate work by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Construction Engi-neering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL). This emerging nonchemical technology, marketed as the Zeta Rod Water Management System, was shown to inhibit mineral scaling and biofouling in chilled-water systems without the need to use hazardous chemicals, including those typically applied to counteract the corrosive effects of conventional treatment chemicals. This project extended the earlier technology evaluation to four military installations with a variety of makeup water qualities and mechanical equipment. Demonstration results showed that this nonchemical water-treatment system effectively prevents corrosion, scaling, and biofouling in open-loop evaporative cooling towers using a wide range of makeup water chemistries (alkaline to acidic). It also can reduce system water usage by 20% because fewer blowdown cycles are needed to purge impurities, supporting DoD net zero water objectives for installations. A return-on-investment ratio of 3.37 was calculated. The validated applications are recommended for consideration by decision makers to reduce military installation chemical utilization and support Department of Defense Net Zero Water goals.
Improvements to the Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) Based Trackability Metric

Abstract : The Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) based Trackability Metric has been used at AMCOM for many years for autotracker performance evaluation. The origins of the metric stem from the frustrating experience of trying to use such measures as delta T and signal to noise ratios to specify autotracker performance requirements. This paper presents the most recent developments and improvements to the GLCM based Trackability Metric (TM) and the resulting performance enhancements. One of the new developments is the inclusion of a hot spot or most predominant feature metric. Additionally, the results of a sensitivity study for the accuracy of target segmentation verses the GLCM TM performance is presented. These new developments for the Trackability Metric should provide better state-of-the-art performance prediction and more accurate performance modeling for specific imaging autotracker designs. The results of these studies and the final implementation of the Trackability Metric are presented.
New Methods for the Detection and Interception of Frequency-Hopped Waveforms

Abstract : Three new methods for the detection and interception of frequency - hopped waveforms are presented. First presented are two types of sequential detectors: a purely sequential test that requires less data for a decision and a truncated sequential test that requires less data even while opeating under poor signal-to-noise ratios. Performances are evaluated via theoretical, numerical, and Monte Carlo analyses. Second, compressive-receiver-based-based interceptors are presented: (1) a locally optimal detector, which is compared against the optimal channelized detectors; (2) a simplified, suboptimal scheme, which trades off duty cycle against performance; (3) and a technique for estimating hop frequency. Quantified are the performances of the optimal and suboptimal detectors. Third, a detector based on the Amplitude Distribution Function (ADF) is presented. Given is a technique for deconvolving the ADF, enabling signal and noise separation. From this, a detection statistic is defined and statistically characterized, yielding a new class of detectors. The detectors are performance analyzed. Keywords: Spread spectrum, Frequency-hopped, Electronic counter measures, Interception, Probability, Detection, Statistics.