Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Approximate Multi-Agent Fitted Q Iteration

—We formulate an efﬁcient approximation for multi-agent batch reinforcement learning, the approximate multi-agent ﬁtted Q iteration ( AMAFQI ). We present a detailed derivation of our approach. We propose an iterative policy search and show that it yields a greedy policy with respect to multiple approximations of the centralized, standard Q-function. In each iteration and policy evaluation, AMAFQI requires a number of computations that scales linearly with the number of agents whereas the analogous number of computations increase exponentially for the ﬁtted Q iteration ( FQI ), one of the most commonly used approaches in batch reinforcement learning. This property of AMAFQI is fundamental for the design of a tractable multi-agent approach. We evaluate the performance of AMAFQI and compare it to FQI in numerical simulations. Numerical examples illustrate the signiﬁcant computation time reduction when using AMAFQI instead of FQI in multi-agent problems and corroborate the similar decision-making performance of both approaches.
Monitoring of Non-point Source Pollutants Generated by a Flower Farm

This paper considers the effect of rainfall on non-point source (NPS) pollutant loads. The impact of runoff on the occurrence of NPS pollutants was found to be influenced by rainfall amount, rainfall intensity, and the number of antecedent dry days (ADD), both independently and in combination. The close correlation (R2 = 0.9920) between rainfall and runoff amounts was demonstrated at the study site (a flower farm) over the period between January 2011 and December 2013. The relationships among pollutant levels, runoff, and rainfall was not satisfactory results except for the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5). The correlation coefficients between BOD5, and both runoff and rainfall, were greater than 0.92. However, the relationships of other pollutants, such as Suspended Solid (SS), Chemical Oxygen Demand (CODMn), Total Nitrogen (TN), and Total Phosphorus (TP), with runoff and rainfall had correlation coefficients of less than 0.70. The roles of rainfall was different from rainfall categories on the occurrence of runoff. Instantaneous rainfall intensity was a principle factor on the occurrence of runoff following light rainfall events (total ≤ 30 mm). For rainfall of intermediate intensity (total precipitation 31-50 mm), the combined effect of both average rainfall intensity and ADD was found to influence runoff generation. We conclude that the control of NPS pollutants with the reflection of the climate change that makes the remarkable effect of amounts and forms on the rainfall and runoff.
Detecting changes in global climate induced by greenhouse gases

A quantitative search for a theoretically predicted CO2 signal in surface air temperature data extending back to 1899 was marginally successful in a statistical sense. However, the nature of the signal strength time series suggested that this result is an artifact of large-scale decadal variations at the beginning and end of the record. Application of the “fingerprint” strategy to three different global fields of climate variables over the last 25–35 years showed no significant CO2 signal. The analysis pointed up the need to use: (1) model signal-to-noise ratios in selecting fields for subsequent analysis and (2) multiple fields in the detection process. Most importantly, we found the primary pattern of natural air temperature variability to be very similar to the expected CO2 signal, thus suggesting that the air temperature field is not the best place to attempt early detection of the CO2 signal. By contrast, the primary pattern of natural variability and the expected CO2 signal in the ocean's surface temperature are substantially different; this suggests the oceans as a low-noise environment in which to attempt early detection.
Relation between sea level and bottom pressure and the vertical dependence of oceanic variability

The relation between large‐scale sea level and bottom pressure variability is studied using long (50‐yr) simulations of a general circulation model under realistic forcing. Admittance and coherence analyses are used to characterize the bottom pressure and sea level relationship as a function of period, horizontal spatial scale, and location. At the model grid scale (1°), bottom pressure is found to be essentially equivalent to sea level at periods <30 days, except in the tropics. This equivalence still holds for longer periods (∼100 days), but only at high latitudes (>60°) and in shallow depths (<200 m). Elsewhere, bottom pressure and sea level fields can differ significantly. Results indicate an increase of the importance of baroclinic signals with decreasing latitude and spatial scale, with significant baroclinic signals at intra‐seasonal and longer periods present in many subtropical and mid‐latitude regions. Variability is clearly baroclinic at inter‐annual periods, regardless of location and spatial scale. Results have broad implications for the interpretation and processing of both satellite altimetry and gravity data and for their assimilation into numerical models.
Extreme runup from the 17 July 2006 Java tsunami

The 17 July 2006 magnitude Mw 7.8 earthquake off the south coast of western Java, Indonesia, generated a tsunami that effected over 300 km of coastline and killed more than 600 people, with locally focused runup heights exceeding 20 m. This slow earthquake was hardly felt on Java, and wind waves breaking masked any preceding withdrawal of the water from the shoreline, making this tsunami difficult to detect before impact. An International Tsunami Survey Team was deployed within one week and the investigation covered more than 600 km of coastline. Measured tsunami heights and run‐up distributions were uniform at 5 to 7 m along 200 km of coast; however there was a pronounced peak on the south coast of Nusa Kambangan, where the tsunami impact carved a sharp trimline in a forest at elevations up to 21 m and 1 km inland. Local flow depth exceeded 8 m along the elevated coastal plain between the beach and the hill slope. We infer that the focused tsunami and runup heights on the island suggest a possible local submarine slump or mass movement.
Effects of Water Applications and Soil Tillage on Water and Salt Distribution in a Vertisol

Under limited water resources, modern irrigation methods tend to save water and improve water and salt regimes within the root zone. This study deals with the combined effects of water application methods and tillage practices on water and salt distributions, runoff production, and soil loss in a field irrigated with moving irrigation systems (MIS). An experiment was conducted in a cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L. cv. Sivon) field at Hazorea, Israel, where the main soil type is vertisol (Typic Chromoxerets). Sprinkling (SP) and flooding (FL) MIS, and conventional (CT) and microbasin (MB) tillage, were compared in terms of runoff and soil loss from runoff microplots (5 m 2 ), soil water content and salinity distribution with depth, yield, and plant height. Under SP conditions, no runoff and soil loss were obtained for either tillage practice. In the FL/CT treatment, the mean runoff and soil loss were about 25% of the irrigation water and 0.59 kg m -2 . The FL/MB treatment reduced the runoff and soil loss to 5.8% and 0.02 kg m -2 , respectively. The soil water contents in the SP treatments were generally lower than in the FL treatments, especially in the 0.1-to 0.6-m soil layer. No significant differences in the soil salinity, plant height, and seed-cotton yield were observed between the treatments. Microbasins tillage reduces water losses under flooding MIS to a point where they become practically similar to those obtained under sprinkler MIS. It can potentially lead to lower water losses if the microbasins storage capacity is matched to the water application rate, to avoid runoff.
Guanophilic fungi in three caves of southwestern Puerto Rico

INTRODUCTION Bat guano or bat guano-enriched soil is one of the most important substrates for fungi in the cave environment along with dung, plant debris, carcasses and other organic debris. Poulson (1972) reported that bat guano habitat is simple in structure but with just enough species to constitute a complete ecosystem. The fungi present commonly serve as saprotrophs and/or pathogens or as transient chemoheterotrophic microorganisms (Northup et al., 1997). It is the fungal biodiversity, its medical or biodegradation potential, and its role as part of the trophic chain in cave ecosystems that attract the attention of mycologists. During the Spanish governance of Puerto Rico no major efforts were made to study cave fungi, although enormous efforts were devoted to guano mining. In the late 19th century, British and American
Bib2vec: Embedding-based Search System for Bibliographic Information

We propose a novel embedding model that represents relationships among several elements in bibliographic information with high representation ability and flexibility. Based on this model, we present a novel search system that shows the relationships among the elements in the ACL Anthology Reference Corpus. The evaluation results show that our model can achieve a high prediction ability and produce reasonable search results.
Investigating aerosol-cloud interactions

Microphysical and dynamical interactions between aerosols and clouds are associated with some of the largest uncertainties in projections of future climate. Many possible aerosol effects on clouds have been suggested, but large uncertainties remain. In order to improve model projections of future climate, it is essential that we improve our quantitative understanding of anthropogenic aerosol effects. Several studies investigating interactions between satellite-observed aerosol and cloud properties have been published in recent years. However, the observed relationships are not necessarily due to aerosol effects on clouds. They may be due to cloud and precipitation effects on aerosol, meteorological covariation, observational data errors or methodological errors. An analysis of methodological errors arising through climatological spatial gradients is performed. For region sizes larger than 4°×4°, commonly used in the literature, spurious spatial variations in retrieved cloud and aerosol properties are found to introduce widespread significant errors to calculations of aerosol-cloud relationships. Small scale analysis prior to error-weighted aggregation to larger region sizes is recommended. Appropriate ways of quantifying relationships between aerosol optical depth (τ) and cloud properties are considered, and results are presented for three satellite datasets. There is much disagreement in observed relationships between τ and liquid cloud droplet number concentration and between τ and liquid cloud droplet effective radius, particularly over land. However, all three satellite datasets are in agreement about strong positive relationships between τ and cloud top height and between τ and cloud fraction (f_c). Using reanalysis τ data, which are less affected by retrieval artifacts, it is suggested that a large part of the observed f_c-τ signal may be due to cloud contamination of τ. General circulation model simulations further demonstrate that positive f_c-τ relationships may primarily arise due to covariation with relative humidity, and that negative f_c-τ relationships may arise due to scavenging of aerosol by precipitation. A new method of investigating the contribution of meteorological covariation to the observed relationships is introduced. Extratropical cyclone storm-centric composites of retrieved aerosol and cloud properties are investigated. A storm-centric description of the synoptics is found to be capable of explaining spurious f_c-τ relationships, although the spurious relationships explained are considerably smaller than observed relationships.
Multiagent system for software monitoring and users’ activities in a network equipment

Este articulo presenta un sistema multiagente (SMA) que permite monitorear las actividades realizadas por los usuarios en los equipos de una red de area local. El concepto de distribucion y el uso de la movilidad, son propiedades de los agentes que proporcionan una amplia serie de alternativas para solucionar o hacer tareas en el lugar exacto donde se requieren. Para el desarrollo de este SMA se utilizo la metodologia GAIA y lenguaje AUML.
Adaptive Overload Control for Busy Internet Servers

As Internet services become more popular and pervasive, a critical problem that arises is managing the performance of services under extreme overload. This paper presents a set of techniques for managing overload in complex, dynamic Internet services. These techniques are based on an adaptive admission control mechanism that attempts to bound the 90th-percentile response time of requests flowing through the service. This is accomplished by internally monitoring the performance of the service, which is decomposed into a set of event-driven stages connected with request queues. By controlling the rate at which each stage admits requests, the service can perform focused overload management, for example, by filtering only those requests that lead to resource bottlenecks. We present two extensions of this basic controller that provide class-based service differentiation as well as application-specific service degradation. We evaluate these mechanisms using a complex Web-based e-mail service that is subjected to a realistic user load, as well as a simpler Web server benchmark.
SciBORQ: Scientific data management with Bounds On Runtime and Quality

Data warehouses underlying virtual observatories stress the capabilities of database management systems in many ways. They are filled, on a daily basis, with large amounts of factual information derived from intensive data scrubbing and computational feature extraction pipelines. The predominant data processing techniques focus on parallel loads and map-reduce feature extraction algorithms. Querying these huge databases require a sizable computing cluster, while ideally the initial investigation should run interactively, using as few resources as possible. In this paper, we explore a different route, one based on the observation that at any given time only a fraction of the data is of primary value for a specific task. This fraction becomes the focus of scientific reflection through an iterative process of ad-hoc query refinement. Steering through data to facilitate scientific discovery demands guarantees for the query execution time. In addition, strict bounds on errors are required to satisfy the demands of scientific use, such that query results can be used to test hypotheses reliably. We propose SciBORQ, a framework for scientific data exploration that gives precise control over runtime and quality of query answering. We present novel techniques to derive multiple interesting data samples, called impressions. An impression is selected such that the statistical error of a query answer remains low, while the result can be computed within strict time bounds. Impressions differ from previous sampling approaches in their bias towards the focal point of the scientific data exploration, their multi-layer design, and their adaptiveness to shifting query workloads. The ultimate goal is a complete system for scientific data exploration and discovery, capable of producing quality answers with strict error bounds in pre-defined time frames.
Knowledge assets assessment strategies: organizational value, processes, approaches and evaluation architectures

Purpose – Companies coping with global business are called more and more to lead their transformation into intelligent organizations, i.e. organizations able to leverage their intellectual capital to achieve their business objectives and envision new development paths. This paper, assuming that the organizational intellectual capital corresponds to the knowledge assets attributed to a company, aims to discuss the organizational value, the processes, the approaches and the evaluation architectures of the knowledge asset assessment strategies.Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of a literature review, first the sub‐processes of the assessment are discussed, highlighting the main features of the assessment of knowledge assets as well as the twofold nature of the knowledge asset assessment, distinguishing between stock and flow perspective of the evaluation. Second, the managerial reasons at the basis of the implementation of measurement systems for disclosing organizational knowledge resources are dis.
Eurographics/siggraph Symposium on Computer Animation (2003) a 2-stages Locomotion Planner for Digital Actors

This paper presents a solution to the locomotion planning problem for digital actors. The solution is based both on probabilistic motion planning and on motion capture blending and warping. The paper describes the various components of our solution, from the first path planning to the last animation step. An example illustrates the progression of the animation construction all along the presentation.
Digital Watermarking

Digital watermarking is a key ingredient to copyright protection. It provides a solution to illegal copying of digital material and has many other useful applications such as broadcast monitoring and the recording of electronic transactions. Now, for the first time, there is a book that focuses exclusively on this exciting technology. Digital Watermarking covers the crucial research findings in the field: it explains the principles underlying digital watermarking technologies, describes the requirements that have given rise to them, and discusses the diverse ends to which these technologies are being applied. As a result, additional groundwork is laid for future developments in this field, helping the reader understand and anticipate new approaches and applications.
Tripartite Information Mining and Integration for Image Matting

With the development of deep convolutional neural networks, image matting has ushered in a new phase. Regarding the nature of image matting, most researches have focused on solutions for transition regions. However, we argue that many existing approaches are excessively focused on transition-dominant local fields and ignored the inherent coordination between global information and transition optimisation. In this paper, we propose the Tripartite Information Mining and Integration Network (TIMI-Net) to harmonize the coordination between global and local attributes formally. Specifically, we resort to a novel 3-branch encoder to accomplish comprehensive mining of the input information, which can supplement the neglected coordination between global and local fields. In order to achieve effective and complete interaction between such multi-branches information, we develop the Tripartite Information Integration (T I2) Module to transform and integrate the interconnections between the different branches. In addition, we built a large-scale human matting dataset (Human-2K) to advance human image matting, which consists of 2100 high-precision human images (2000 images for training and 100 images for test). Finally, we con-duct extensive experiments to prove the performance of our proposed TIMI-Net, which demonstrates that our method performs favourably against the SOTA approaches on the alphamatting.com (Rank First), Composition-1K (MSE- 0.006, Grad-11.5), Distinctions-646 and our Human-2K. Also, we have developed an online evaluation website to perform natural image matting.
Code-Switching as a Social Act: The Case of Arabic Wikipedia Talk Pages

Code-switching has been found to have social motivations in addition to syntactic constraints. In this work, we explore the social effect of code-switching in an online community. We present a task from the Arabic Wikipedia to capture language choice, in this case code-switching between Arabic and other languages, as a predictor of social influence in collaborative editing. We find that code-switching is positively associated with Wikipedia editor success, particularly borrowing technical language on pages with topics less directly related to Arabic-speaking regions.
Destrucción de instituciones comunitarias y deterioro de los bosques en la Reserva de la Biosfera Mariposa Monarca, Michoacán, México

THIS ARTICLE ANALYZES THE FACTORS THAT HAVE AFFECTED THE CONDITIONS OF COMMUNITY FORESTS IN TWO COMMUNITIES IN THE STATE OF MICHOACAN. IT USES THE PERSPECTIVE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION TO DESCRIBE THE WAYS IN WHICH, THROUGHOUT THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY, VARIOUS PUBLIC POLICIES AFFECTED COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS AND THE STRUCTURE OF INCENTIVES FOR DEALING WITH COMMON FORESTS. HOW HAVE THESE INSTITUTIONS AND INCENTIVES INFLUENCED THE PRACTICES INVOLVING THE USE OF RESOURCES? IN ONE CASE, THEY HAVE LED TO DETERIORATION AND IN THE OTHER, THEY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE CONSERVATION OF FOREST MASSES
Mixed Emotion Modelling for Emotional Voice Conversion

Emotional voice conversion (EVC) aims to convert the emotional state of an utterance from one emotion to another while preserving the linguistic content and speaker identity. Current studies mostly focus on modelling the conversion between several speciﬁc emotion types. Synthesizing mixed effects of emotions could help us to better imitate human emotions, and facilitate more natural human-computer interaction. In this research, for the ﬁrst time, we formulate and study the research problem of mixed emotion synthesis for EVC. We regard emotional styles as a series of emotion attributes that are learnt from a ranking-based support vector machine (SVM). Each attribute measures the degree of the relevance between the speech recordings belonging to different emotion types. We then incorporate those attributes into a sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) emotional voice conversion framework. During the training, the framework not only learns to characterize the input emotional style, but also quantiﬁes its relevance with other emotion types. At run-time, various emotional mixtures can be produced by manually deﬁning the attributes. We conduct objective and subjective evaluations to validate our idea in terms of mixed emotion synthesis. We further build an emotion triangle 1 as an application of emotion transition. Codes and speech samples are publicly available 2 .
REPRODUCTIVE BIOWGY OF KING MACKEREL, SCOMBEROMORUS CAVALLA, FROM THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

The reproductive biology ofking mackerel, Scomberomon18 cawJla, was studied from specimens collected off Texas, Louisiana, and northwest Florida in the Gulf of Mexico and off North and South Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. Gonads were examined from 1,163 females and 595 males obtained in 1977-78. Spawning was prolonged. Most'king mackerel were reproductively active from May through September. A few fish were in spawning condition as early as April and as late as October. All females were mature at 850-899 mm fork length (FL). Estimates of fecundity ranged from about 69,000 to 12,207,000 eggs for fish from 446 to 1,489 mm FL, 618 to 25,610 g total weight (TW), and 1 to 13 years ofage. Fecundity (F) was usually significantly correlated with FL, TW, and age in each area but TW was the best predic­ tor of fecundity in all areas combined (F = 1.854 x 10' (TW),. a. ;l) with i! = 0.856. King mackerel, Scomheromoruscavalla, is one ofthe most valuable commercial and recreational fish in the Gulf of Mexico and south Atlantic. It is an epipelagic, neritic species that occurs in the western Atlantic Ocean from Massachusetts to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Collette and Russo 1979, 1984). Most of the king mackerel caught off the southeastern United States are landed in Florida (Manooch 1979) where it is an important component of charter boat catches (Moe 1963; Brusher et al. 1978). Commer­ ciallandings in Florida during 1983 totaled 2,017 t and the estimated recreational Catch from the Gulf