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1. Measuring Sentence-Level and Aspect-Level (Un)certainty in Science Communications

   https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2021.emnlp-main.784  

   Pei, Jiaxin; Jurgens, David (January 2021, Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing)

   Certainty and uncertainty are fundamental to science communication. Hedges have widely been used as proxies for uncertainty. However, certainty is a complex construct, with authors expressing not only the degree but the type and aspects of uncertainty in order to give the reader a certain impression of what is known. Here, we introduce a new study of certainty that models both the level and the aspects of certainty in scientific findings. Using a new dataset of 2167 annotated scientific findings, we demonstrate that hedges alone account for only a partial explanation of certainty. We show that both the overall certainty and individual aspects can be predicted with pre-trained language models, providing a more complete picture of the author’s intended communication. Downstream analyses on 431K scientific findings from news and scientific abstracts demonstrate that modeling sentence-level and aspect-level certainty is meaningful for areas like science communication. Both the model and datasets used in this paper are released at https://blablablab.si.umich.edu/projects/certainty/. 

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2. Effects of Tightening Unit-level and System-level Constraints in Unit Commitment,

   Yan, Bing; Luh, Peter B.; Litvinov, Eugene; Zheng, Tongxin; Schiro, Dane; Bragin, Mikhail A.; Zhao, Feng; Zhao, Jinye; Lelic, Izudin (August 2019, IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting)

   Unit Commitment is an important problem faced by independent system operators. It is usually formulated as a Mixed Binary Linear Programming (MBLP) problem, and is believed to be NP hard. To solve UC problems efficiently, an idea is through formulation tightening. If constraints can be transformed to directly delineate an MBLP problem’s convex hull during data preprocessing, then the problem can be solved by using linear programming methods. The resulting formulation can be reused for other data sets, tremendously reducing computational requirements. To achieve the above goal, both unit- and system-level constraints are tightened with synergistic combination in this paper. Unit-level constraints are tightened based on existing cuts and novel “constraint-and-vertex conversion” and vertex projection processes. To tighten system-level constraints, selected cuts are applied and some potentially powerful cuts are identified. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of tightening unit- and system-level constraints. 

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3. Maldives Monsoon and Sea Level

   https://doi.org/10.14379/iodp.proc.359.2017  

   Betzler, C.; Eberli, G.P.; Alvarez Zarikian, C.A. (May 2017, Proceedings of the International Ocean Discovery Program)

   International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 357 successfully cored an east–west transect across the southern wall of Atlantis Massif on the western flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) to study the links between serpentinization processes and microbial activity in the shallow subsurface of highly altered ultramafic and mafic sequences that have been uplifted to the seafloor along a major detachment fault zone. The primary goals of this expedition were to (1) examine the role of serpentinization in driving hydrothermal systems, sustaining microbial communities, and sequestering carbon; (2) characterize the tectonomagmatic processes that lead to lithospheric heterogeneities and detachment faulting; and (3) assess how abiotic and biotic processes change with variations in rock type and progressive exposure on the seafloor. To accomplish these objectives, we developed a coring and sampling strategy centered on the use of seabed drills—the first time that such systems have been used in the scientific ocean drilling programs. This technology was chosen in the hope of achieving high recovery of the carbonate cap sequences and intact contact and deformation relationships. The expedition plans also included several engineering developments to assess geochemical parameters during drilling; sample bottom water before, during, and after drilling; supply synthetic tracers during drilling for contamination assessment; acquire in situ electrical resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements for assessing fractures, fluid flow, and extent of serpentinization; and seal boreholes to provide opportunities for future experiments. Expedition 359 was designed to address changes in sea level and currents, along with monsoon evolution in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives archipelago holds a unique and mostly unread Indian Ocean archive of the evolving Cenozoic icehouse world. Cores from eight drill sites in the Inner Sea of the Maldives provide the tropical marine record that is key for better understanding the effects of this global evolution in the Indo-Pacific realm. In addition, the bank geometries of the carbonate archipelago provide a physical record of changing sea level and ocean currents. The bank growth occurs in pulses of aggradation and progradation that are controlled by sea level fluctuations during the early and middle Miocene, including the mid-Miocene Climate Optimum. A dramatic shift in development of the carbonate edifice from a sea level–controlled to a predominantly current-controlled system appears to be directly linked to the evolving Indian monsoon. This phase led to a twofold configuration of bank development: bank growth continued in some parts of the edifice, whereas in other places, banks drowned. Drowning steps seem to coincide with onset and intensification of the monsoon-related current system and subsequent deposition of contourite fans and large-scale sediment drifts. As such, the drift deposits will provide a continuous record of Indian monsoon development in the region of the Maldives. A major focus of Expedition 359 was to date precisely the onset of the current system. This goal was successfully completed during the expedition. The second important outcome of Expedition 359 was groundtruthing the hypothesis that the dramatic, pronounced change in style of the carbonate platform sequence stacking was caused by a combination of relative sea level fluctuations and ocean current system changes. These questions are directly addressed by the shipboard scientific data. In addition, Expedition 359 cores will provide a complete Neogene δ13C record of the platform and platform margin sediments and a comparison with pelagic records over the same time period. This comparison will allow assessment of the extent to which platform carbonates record changes in the global carbon cycle and whether changes in the carbon isotopic composition of organic and inorganic components covary and the implications this has on the deep-time record. This determination is important because such records are the only type that exists in deep time. 

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4. Joint link-level and network-level reconfiguration for urban mmWave wireless backhaul networks

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2020.10.010  

   Liu, Yuchen; Hu, Qiang; Blough, Douglas M. (December 2020, Computer Communications)
5. Anisotropic stiffness measured using a toroidal probe in meso level and cell level

   Li, J.; Paradis, T.; Vandadi, M.; Rahbar, N.; Billiar, K. (July 2023, Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Conference (SB3C2023))

   We propose a method to measure anisotropic stiffness of microtissues and cells by two indentations in orthogonal directions using our novel toroidal probe. Our preliminary results indicate that this approach is applicable in measuring anisotropic stiffness of aligned tissues and cells. This method will provide researchers with a simple and cost-effective means for measuring mechanical anisotropy of micro-scale samples. 

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