Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Meteorological Drought Assessment in Sharjah, UAE Using Drought Indices

Drought is a natural disaster that significantly affects environmental and socio-economic conditions. It occurs when there is a period of below average precipitation in a region, and it results in water supply shortages affecting various sectors and life adversely. Droughts impact the ecosystems, crop production, and erode livelihoods. Monitoring drought is essential especially in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to the scarcity of rainfall for an extended period of time. In this study, drought is assessed in Sharjah UAE using monthly precipitation and average temperature data recorded for 35 years (1981-2015) at the Sharjah International Airport. The standardized precipitation Index (SPI), and the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) are selected to predict future droughts in the region. SPI and RDI are fitted to the statistical distribution functions (gamma and lognormal) in an annual time scale and then, a trend analysis of index values is carried out using Mann-Kendal test. The correlation between SPI and RDI indices was found to be high where both showed high drought frequencies and a tendency to get drier over time, thus indicating the need of appropriate drought management and monitoring.
A Real-time Plan-view Method For Following Bending Roads

This paper presents a few methods for improving a plan-view algorithm for finding roads in images used in autonomous vehicle navigation. The boundary of coordinate transformation is divided into a number of linking parts to follow a bending road, and a fast algorithm is developed to generate a transforming grid in real-time. It is found that a new method of edge detection carried out on a texture image yielded from the plan- view image shows a better performance than that of the usual edge detection directly on the grey level image. Second-order polynomials are used to approximate the road edges combined with the flexible boundary, improving the capability to follow a bending road.
Structure and Activity of a Selective Antibiofilm Peptide SK-24 Derived from the NMR Structure of Human Cathelicidin LL-37

The deployment of the innate immune system in humans is essential to protect us from infection. Human cathelicidin LL-37 is a linear host defense peptide with both antimicrobial and immune modulatory properties. Despite years of studies of numerous peptides, SK-24, corresponding to the long hydrophobic domain (residues 9–32) in the anionic lipid-bound NMR structure of LL-37, has not been investigated. This study reports the structure and activity of SK-24. Interestingly, SK-24 is entirely helical (~100%) in phosphate buffer (PBS), more than LL-37 (84%), GI-20 (75%), and GF-17 (33%), while RI-10 and 17BIPHE2 are essentially randomly coiled (helix%: 7–10%). These results imply an important role for the additional N-terminal amino acids (likely E16) of SK-24 in stabilizing the helical conformation in PBS. It is proposed herein that SK-24 contains the minimal sequence for effective oligomerization of LL-37. Superior to LL-37 and RI-10, SK-24 shows an antimicrobial activity spectrum comparable to the major antimicrobial peptides GF-17 and GI-20 by targeting bacterial membranes and forming a helical conformation. Like the engineered peptide 17BIPHE2, SK-24 has a stronger antibiofilm activity than LL-37, GI-20, and GF-17. Nevertheless, SK-24 is least hemolytic at 200 µM compared with LL-37 and its other peptides investigated herein. Combined, these results enabled us to appreciate the elegance of the long amphipathic helix SK-24 nature deploys within LL-37 for human antimicrobial defense. SK-24 may be a useful template of therapeutic potential.
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WATER DEVELOPMENT1

Decisions to develop water resources systems so far have been primarily taken on the basis of engineering and economic feasibilities. Very rarely, if ever, sociological feasibility has been considered, except in a very broad sense. Planning is for the people, and it should improve the quality of life. Hence, it is argued that water resources decisions ought to be primarily social ones, and that the success or failure of any resource development should not only be judged by its techno-economic excellence but also by its impact on people. Water resources planning process is discussed, and the difficulties associated with the evaluation of sociological feasibility of projects are enumerated. The social consequences of water development projects are traced through planning, construction, operation and management impacts. Finally, it is suggested that the foremost factor in the success of any water management program is the public understanding and acceptance of that program.
Design and Implementation a Testing Environment for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper discusses the design, implementation and analysis of a system analysis for wireless sensor network. Current testing systems have low efficiency on software environment. We proposed a service oriented software approach, and gave out an experimental analysis of reliability. The testing system greatly decreases the development workload on server. Experiment reveals that the result of reliability analysis is accurate and the testing system is effective.
Study on the Spatio–Temporal Evolution of China’s Smart Water Co-Governance in G–E–P Mode

Smart water co-governance (SWCG) is a fundamental driving force to reduce the water crisis and promote the sustainable development of water resources. To explore the applicability and development of SWCG in different regions, the authors of this paper took 31 provinces of China (with the exception Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) as research districts and used the three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to measure and compare the efficiency of smart water governance (SWG) in the government–enterprise–public (G–E–P) mode and without public participation in the government–enterprise (G–E) mode in 2019. Then, the Malmquist model was used to measure the spatio–temporal evolution of the G–E–P mode from 2010 to 2019, focusing on the analysis of the top ten provinces of the China Internet Development Index in 2019. According to the empirical analysis, the following results were obtained: (1) the efficiency of SWCG in the G–E–P mode was significantly higher than that in G–E model, as 13 provinces showed a significant decline and 10 provinces had a small change. In addition, SWCG in the G–E–P mode showed a good development trend in the eastern and southern regions. (2) The governance efficiency, pure technical efficiency, and scale efficiency showed upward trends, but the technological progress index and total factor productivity were still low. Therefore, SWG should vigorously promote public participation and the independent implementation of enterprises under the guidance and restriction of the government. Meanwhile, the construction of an SWG infrastructure and the level of science and technology should be strengthened. In addition, each province should adjust the input–output structure according to its redundancy or deficiency, weigh the suitability of the input level and scale, and strengthen the matching and support of the ability of multi-subjects and factors to ensure that an appropriate input–output scale level is reached and the efficiency of SWCG is improved.
Interaction between Microbes, Minerals, and Fluids in Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Systems

The discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the late 1970s widened the limits of life and habitability. The mixing of oxidizing seawater and reduction of hydrothermal fluids create a chemical disequilibrium that is exploited by chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea to harness energy by converting inorganic carbon into organic biomass. Due to the rich variety of chemical sources and steep physico-chemical gradients, a large array of microorganisms thrive in these extreme environments, which includes but are not restricted to chemolithoautotrophs, heterotrophs, and mixotrophs. Past research has revealed the underlying relationship of these microbial communities with the subsurface geology and hydrothermal geochemistry. Endolithic microbial communities at the ocean floor catalyze a number of redox reactions through various metabolic activities. Hydrothermal chimneys harbor Fe-reducers, sulfur-reducers, sulfide and H2-oxidizers, methanogens, and heterotrophs that continuously interact with the basaltic, carbonate, or ultramafic basement rocks for energy-yielding reactions. Here, we briefly review the global deep-sea hydrothermal systems, microbial diversity, and microbe–mineral interactions therein to obtain in-depth knowledge of the biogeochemistry in such a unique and geologically critical subseafloor environment.
Calibration Technology of the Articulated Arm Flexible CMM

A simple and practical calibration method is proposed to calibrate the articulated arm flexible CMM. Firstly, a quasi-spherical coordinate system is put forward based on DH method according to the special structure of the articulated arm flexible CMM. This calibration method is presented to determine and separate machine parameters and errors in a creative way based on multiple reversal technology. Experiments were carried out for a Faro Platinum 4ft articulated arm CMM by using a Chameleon 9159 5Q orthogonal CMM. The results prove the feasibility of the proposed method for articulated arm CMM calibration, and all parameters are separated completely. It provides a theoretical base for introducing error compensation and improves the measurement accuracy of the articulated arm CMM.
CRNNTL: Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network and Transfer Learning for QSAR Modeling in Organic Drug and Material Discovery

Molecular latent representations, derived from autoencoders (AEs), have been widely used for drug or material discovery over the past couple of years. In particular, a variety of machine learning methods based on latent representations have shown excellent performance on quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) modeling. However, the sequence feature of them has not been considered in most cases. In addition, data scarcity is still the main obstacle for deep learning strategies, especially for bioactivity datasets. In this study, we propose the convolutional recurrent neural network and transfer learning (CRNNTL) method inspired by the applications of polyphonic sound detection and electrocardiogram classification. Our model takes advantage of both convolutional and recurrent neural networks for feature extraction, as well as the data augmentation method. According to QSAR modeling on 27 datasets, CRNNTL can outperform or compete with state-of-art methods in both drug and material properties. In addition, the performances on one isomers-based dataset indicate that its excellent performance results from the improved ability in global feature extraction when the ability of the local one is maintained. Then, the transfer learning results show that CRNNTL can overcome data scarcity when choosing relative source datasets. Finally, the high versatility of our model is shown by using different latent representations as inputs from other types of AEs.
The use of alpacas as new-born lamb protectors to minimise fox predation

Summary. Canine attacks on newborn lambs are a problem for sheep farmers, causing substantial economic losses to the sheep industry. Anecdotal evidence indicates that alpacas reduce the losses caused by such attacks when placed within sheep flocks. A trial was conducted at two sheep farms in rural NSW where experimental – ewes grazing with alpacas - and control – ewes grazing without alpacas – groups, with replication within and across farms were organised with a total of 6,483 breeding ewes. Overall weaning percentages for each flock of sheep were tabulated at 14 weeks and evaluation of performance between groups was conducted using descriptive statistics. An inferential statistical t test for pairs was conducted to find out the level of significance of the difference in performance between the trial and control groups. Combined weaning percentage for the control groups was 69.8% while the experimental groups showed a combined weaning percentage of 82.6%. Assuming equal mortality rate because of natural causes among the groups, it may be concluded that the presence of alpacas within the lambing paddocks increased lambing weaning percentage by 13% with a = 0.025 (i.e. confidence level = 97.5%). The economic benefit is obvious considering that there is an increase of 13 lambs for each 100 breeding ewes that valued at market prices represent a meaningful marginal farm income.
Performance Simulation of Ground-Coupled Heat Pump(GCHP) System for a Detached House

ABSTRACT:Ground-coupled heat pump(GCHP) systems have been shown to be an environ- mentally-friendly, efficient alternative to traditional cooling and heating systems in both residential and commercial applications. Although some work related to performance evaluation of GCHP systems for commercial buildings has been done, relatively little has been reported on the residential applications. The aim of this study is to evaluate the cooling and heating performances of a vertical GCHP system applied to an artificial detached house(117 m 2 ) in Seoul. For this purpose, a typical design procedure was involved with a combination of design parameters such as building loads, heat pump capacity, borehole diameter, and ground thermal properties, etc. The cooling and heating performance simulation of the system was conducted with different prediction times of 8760 hours and 240 months. The performance characteristics including seasonal system COP, average annual power consumption, and temperature variations related to ground heat exchanger were calculated and compared.Keywords:Ground-coupled heat pump(지열 히트펌프), Vertical ground heat exchanger(수직형 지중열교환기), Detached house(단독주택), Hourly performance simulation(시간대별 성능 분석), Monthly performance simulation(월간 성능 분석)
A Sensorized Instrument for Skills Assessment and Training in Minimally Invasive Surgery

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is carried out using long, narrow instruments and significantly reduces trauma to the body, postoperative pain, and recovery time. Unfortunately, the restricted access conditions, limited instrument motion, and degraded sense of touch inherent in MIS result in new perceptual-motor relationships, which are unfamiliar to the surgeon and require training to overcome. Current training methods do not adequately address the needs of surgeons interested in acquiring these skills. Although a significant amount of research has been focused on the development of sensorized systems for surgery, there is still a need for a system that can be used in any training scenario (laparoscopic trainer, animal laboratories, or real surgery) for the purpose of skills assessment and training. A sensorized laparoscopic instrument has been designed that is capable of noninvasively measuring its interaction with tissue in the form of forces or torques acting in all five degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) available during MIS. Strain gauges attached to concentric shafts within the instrument allow the forces acting in different directions to be isolated. An electromagnetic tracking system is used for position tracking. Two prototypes of the sensorized instrument were constructed. Position calibration shows a maximum root mean square (RMS) error of 1.3 mm. The results of the force calibration show a maximum RMS error of 0.35 N for the actuation force, 0.07 N in the x and y directions, and 1.5 N mm for the torque calibration with good repeatability and low hysteresis. Axial measurements were significantly affected by drift, noise, and coupling leading to high errors in the readings. Novel sensorized instruments for skills assessment and training have been developed and a patent has been filed for the design and operation. The instruments measure forces and torques acting at the tip of the instrument corresponding to all five DOFs available during MIS and provide position feedback in six DOFs. The instruments are similar in shape, size, and weight to traditional laparoscopic instruments allowing them to be used in any training environment. Furthermore, replaceable tips and handles allow the instruments to be used for a variety of different tasks.
Low-Complexity Robust Adaptive Beamforming Based on INCM Reconstruction via Subspace Projection

Adaptive beamforming is sensitive to steering vector (SV) and covariance matrix mismatches, especially when the signal of interest (SOI) component exists in the training sequence. In this paper, we present a low-complexity robust adaptive beamforming (RAB) method based on an interference–noise covariance matrix (INCM) reconstruction and SOI SV estimation. First, the proposed method employs the minimum mean square error criterion to construct the blocking matrix. Then, the projection matrix is obtained by projecting the blocking matrix onto the signal subspace of the sample covariance matrix (SCM). The INCM is reconstructed by replacing part of the eigenvector columns of the SCM with the corresponding eigenvectors of the projection matrix. On the other hand, the SOI SV is estimated via the iterative mismatch approximation method. The proposed method only needs to know the priori-knowledge of the array geometry and angular region where the SOI is located. The simulation results showed that the proposed method can deal with multiple types of mismatches, while taking into account both low complexity and high robustness.
Crater Obstacle Recognition and Detection of Lunar Landing Based on YOLO v4

During the landing process of an unmanned or manned lunar lander, the lunar image collected by the sensor has the characteristics of insufficient illumination, single surface texture, large scale changes and no prominent features, which makes it more difficult to detect landing obstacles in real time. Traditional image processing technology for obstacle recognition and detection is prone to missed and misdetected phenomena. Aiming at the problem of detecting crater obstacles during the descent of the lander, a lunar landing crater detection model based on YOLO v4 was proposed, and a crater data set was made, and the data set types were expanded through data enhancement algorithms, and the DenseNet network was used to enhance Feature extraction capabilities. Experiments on the crater data set show that the improved algorithm in this paper is better than YOLO v4 and YOLO v4 tiny in accuracy. Compared with YOLO v4, the average accuracy is increased from 72.65% to 77.24%, and good results are achieved.
Design and Fabrication of a Flapping Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Bird Kinematics

The artificial design of the bird was started out with the inspiration of bird flight and breaking that complex motion into a mechanism that is easily replicable. The design went with an active reference to the already existing as well as unique flapping wing UAV titled ʻsmart birdʼ by the Festo Corporation. But unlike the bird designed by Festo, we have changed the active torsion mechanism design and made it completely mechanical for steady flight. The bird will also feature video surveillance features with live feed send to any device on ground through Wi-Fi. Thus the design has taken a smart turn to building an UAV that flies like a bird, making it blend in and undetectable to the naked eye and provide surveillance capability over an area to any number of people on ground thus providing a new version to the concept ʻeyes in skyʼ. Keywords: Biologically Inspired Flight, Torsion Mechanism Using Material Elasticity, Experimental Techniques, Cost Effectiveness
Investigation of Antibacterial Activity and Cell Viability of Ag/Mg and Ag/Zn Co-doped Hydroxyapatite Derived from Natural Limestone

Improving the antibacterial activity to avoid infections and keeping the biocompatibility at a safe level of HAp-based materials is highly important for biomedical applications. In this work, we investigate the antibacterial activity of 2.5Ag/2.5Mg co-doped HAp and 2.5Ag/2.5Zn co-doped HAp toward Escherichia coli bacteria. Moreover, their biocompatibility for osteoblastic cells (MC3T3-E1 cells) was also evaluated. The physical properties were characterized with necessary characterization tools such as X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller. Both 2.5Ag/2.5Mg and 2.5Ag/2.5Zn co-doped HAp consist of hydroxyapatite (HAp) and beta calcium triphosphate (β-TCP) phases. The antibacterial test reveals that 2.5Ag/2.5Mg co-doped HAp or 2.5Ag/2.5Zn co-doped HAp has an outstanding antibacterial activity with a killing rate of 99 ± 1%. More importantly, the cell viability for osteoblast cells with 2.5Ag/2.5Mg and 2.5Ag/2.5Zn co-doped HAp promotes the proliferation much more effectively than 2.5Ag-doped HAp or 5Ag-doped HAp.
Stemness, Inflammation and Epithelial–Mesenchymal Transition in Colorectal Carcinoma: The Intricate Network

In global cancer statistics, colorectal carcinoma (CRC) ranks third by incidence and second by mortality, causing 10.0% of new cancer cases and 9.4% of oncological deaths worldwide. Despite the development of screening programs and preventive measures, there are still high numbers of advanced cases. Multiple problems compromise the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer, one of these being cancer stem cells—a minor fraction of pluripotent, self-renewing malignant cells capable of maintaining steady, low proliferation and exhibiting an intriguing arsenal of treatment resistance mechanisms. Currently, there is an increasing body of evidence for intricate associations between inflammation, epithelial–mesenchymal transition and cancer stem cells. In this review, we focus on inflammation and its role in CRC stemness development through epithelial–mesenchymal transition.
The Protocatechuate 3,4-Dioxygenase Solubility (PCDS) Tag Enhances the Expression and Solubility of Heterogenous Proteins in Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli has been developed as the most common host for recombinant protein expression. Unfortunately, there are still some proteins that are resistant to high levels of heterologous soluble expression in E. coli. Protein and peptide fusion tags are one of the most important methods for increasing target protein expression and seem to influence the expression efficiency and solubility as well. In this study, we identify a short 15-residue enhancing solubility peptide, the PCDS (protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase solubility) tag, which enhances heterologous protein expression in E. coli. This PCDS tag is a 45-bp long sequence encoding a peptide tag involved in the soluble expression of protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase, encoded by the pcaHG98 genes of Pseudomonas putida NCIMB 9866. The 45-bp sequence was also beneficial for pcaHG98 gene amplification. This tag was shown to be necessary for the heterologous soluble expression of PcaHG98 in E. coli. Purified His6-PcaHG98e04-PCDS exhibited an activity of 205.63±14.23U/mg against protocatechuate as a substrate, and this activity was not affected by a PCDS tag. This PCDS tag has been fused to the mammalian yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) to construct YFP-PCDS without its termination codons and YFPt-PCDS with. The total protein expressions of YFP-PCDS and YFPt-PCDS were significantly amplified up to 1.6-fold and 2-fold, respectively, compared to YFP alone. Accordingly, His6-YFP-PCDS and His6-YFPt-PCDS had 1.6-fold and 3-fold higher soluble protein yields, respectively, than His6-YFP expressed under the same conditions. His6-YFP, His6-YFP-PCDS, and His6-YFPt-PCDS also showed consistent fluorescence emission spectra, with a peak at 530nm over a scanning range from 400 to 700nm. These results indicated that the use of the PCDS tag is an effective way to improve heterologous protein expression in E. coli.