Modeling Autoregressive Models in Cool Island Effects associated with Remote Telemeter Technology (ASTER) in Taiwan: A GIS Approach

AbstractA microclimate is the unique climate of a small-scale region, such as a field or parts of urban or rural areas. The weather variables in a microclimate include temperature, wind, humidity, land forms, and water regimes. In Northern Taiwan's Taoyuan County, irrigation ponds take a long time to heat up during the summer months, keeping these rural areas cooler than surrounding urbanized areas. Based on Geographic Information System (GIS) layers associated with Digital Terrain Modeling (DTM), along with Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) images, this paper examines temperature variables in four counties/cities in Taiwan for the past century. Urban development is found to have contributed to temperature increases, but an understanding of the cooling mechanism is still incomplete. Temperatures in the Taoyuan tableland have declined, at odds with trends in other areas in Taiwan as well as on a global scale. In Taoyuan, the Times-Series Regression Model was used to extrapolated a downward trend from a mean current temperature of 21.3°C currently down to 19.72°C in 2099, assuming the area of irrigation ponds remain unchanged

Primulina titan sp. nov. (Gesneriaceae) from a Limestone Area in Northern Guangxi, China

A new species of Gesneriaceae, Primulina titan, is described and photographed from northern Guangxi, China. It resembles P. hunanensis,but can be distinguished by combined morphological characters of leaf,bract, corolla, stamen and pistil. We found only one population with approx.800 mature individuals at the type locality. This species is provisionally assessed as vulnerable [VU D1] using IUCN criteria

Mobility of TX100 suspended multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and the facilitated transport of phenanthrene in real soil columns

AbstractThe transport behavior of TX100 suspended multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) through different soil columns as well as their effects on the mobility of phenanthrene was systematically studied. Results showed that the mobility of MWCNTs varied with soils, which was found to be correlated positively to the average soil particle diameters and soil sand contents, while correlated negatively to soil clay contents. The retention of MWCNTs on soil columns is most likely due to surface deposition and physical straining. Co-transport of phenanthrene with MWCNTs was tested in three selected soils (soil HB, DX and BJ), where MWCNTs could act as carriers of phenanthrene and enhance the mobility of phenanthrene in soils. However, during passing through the soil columns phenanthrene initially adsorbed onto MWCNTs could be partially “stripped” off. In soil with the lowest phenanthrene sorption affinity and highest water velocity (soil HB), only 8.5% phenanthrene was desorbed during transport, suggesting that a strong MWCNT-associated phenanthrene mobile may occur in this soil. More than 80% of phenanthrene was stripped off in soils with higher sorption affinity (soil DX and BJ), indicating the limitation of the co-transport of phenanthrene and MWCNTs in such soils

How Secure Are Large Language Models (LLMs) for Navigation in Urban Environments?

In the field of robotics and automation, navigation systems based on Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently shown impressive performance. However, the security aspects of these systems have received relatively less attention. This paper pioneers the exploration of vulnerabilities in LLM-based navigation models in urban outdoor environments, a critical area given the technology's widespread application in autonomous driving, logistics, and emergency services. Specifically, we introduce a novel Navigational Prompt Suffix (NPS) Attack that manipulates LLM-based navigation models by appending gradient-derived suffixes to the original navigational prompt, leading to incorrect actions. We conducted comprehensive experiments on an LLMs-based navigation model that employs various LLMs for reasoning. Our results, derived from the Touchdown and Map2Seq street-view datasets under both few-shot learning and fine-tuning configurations, demonstrate notable performance declines across three metrics in the face of both white-box and black-box attacks. These results highlight the generalizability and transferability of the NPS Attack, emphasizing the need for enhanced security in LLM-based navigation systems. As an initial countermeasure, we propose the Navigational Prompt Engineering (NPE) Defense strategy, concentrating on navigation-relevant keywords to reduce the impact of adversarial suffixes. While initial findings indicate that this strategy enhances navigational safety, there remains a critical need for the wider research community to develop stronger defense methods to effectively tackle the real-world challenges faced by these systems

A Bayesian measurement error model for two-channel cell-based RNAi data with replicates

RNA interference (RNAi) is an endogenous cellular process in which small double-stranded RNAs lead to the destruction of mRNAs with complementary nucleoside sequence. With the production of RNAi libraries, large-scale RNAi screening in human cells can be conducted to identify unknown genes involved in a biological pathway. One challenge researchers face is how to deal with the multiple testing issue and the related false positive rate (FDR) and false negative rate (FNR). This paper proposes a Bayesian hierarchical measurement error model for the analysis of data from a two-channel RNAi high-throughput experiment with replicates, in which both the activity of a particular biological pathway and cell viability are monitored and the goal is to identify short hair-pin RNAs (shRNAs) that affect the pathway activity without affecting cell activity. Simulation studies demonstrate the flexibility and robustness of the Bayesian method and the benefits of having replicates in the experiment. This method is illustrated through analyzing the data from a RNAi high-throughput screening that searches for cellular factors affecting HCV replication without affecting cell viability; comparisons of the results from this HCV study and some of those reported in the literature are included.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOAS496 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Control of absorption of monolayer MoS2_{2} thin-film transistor in one-dimensional defective photonic crystal

The light absorption and transmission of monolayer MoS$_{2}$ in a one-dimensional defective photonic crystal (d-1DPC) is theoretically investigated. The study shows that the strong interference effect decreases photon density in particular areas of the microcavity. The d-1DPC can reduce light absorption of monolayer MoS$_{2}$ and enhance light transmission. The impact of monolayer MoS$_{2}$ light absorption on the localization effect of photon is investigated when monolayer MoS$_{2}$ and the organic light-emitting diode are located in the same microcavity. However, monolayer MoS$_{2}$ does not reduce the localization effect of light by regulating the position of monolayer MoS$_{2}$ in the microcavity.Comment: 5pages,5figure

Quantum Cellular Neural Networks

We have previously proposed a way of using coupled quantum dots to construct digital computing elements - quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA). Here we consider a different approach to using coupled quantum-dot cells in an architecture which, rather that reproducing Boolean logic, uses a physical near-neighbor connectivity to construct an analog Cellular Neural Network (CNN).Comment: 7 pages including 3 figure