Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) models aim to estimate remaining useful life (RUL) of complex systems, enabling lower maintenance costs and increased availability. A substantial body of work considers the development and testing of new models using the NASA C-MAPSS dataset as a benchmark. In recent work, the use of ensemble methods has been prevalent. This paper proposes two adaptations to one of the best-performing ensemble methods, namely the Convolutional Neural Network – Long Short-Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) network developed by Li et al. (IEEE Access, 2019, 7, pp 75464–75475)). The first adaptation (adaptable time window, or ATW) increases accuracy of RUL estimates, with performance surpassing that of the state of the art, whereas the second (sub-network learning) does not improve performance. The results give greater insight into further development of innovative methods for prognostics, with future work focusing on translating the ATW approach to real-life industrial datasets and leveraging findings towards practical uptake for industrial applications.

It is known that various members of Constantine's family, of his own generation and the generation before, were Christian. It is often taken for granted that Constantine encouraged or required their Christian faith. However, in fact there is only evidence for Constantine's influence on the faith of his mother Helena. This paper examines the evidence for Christianity in the imperial family before Constantine became publicly Christian, and suggests that some of these women may even have been Christian independently of Constantine's influence.

Let me start with a fascinating volume that Paolo Felice Sacchi and Marco Formisano have edited on Epitomic Writing in Late Antiquity and Beyond, the first volume in the new series sera tela, devoted to ‘Studies in Late Antique Literature and its Reception’, edited by Marco Formisano. This inaugural volume gets the new series off to a very good start. Sacchi and Formisano offer a new approach to epitomic writing, seen as a typical product of late antique literary culture. The aim of the volume is to focus not so much on what is lost and cut out in the process of condensation, but on the value of the epitomic as a hermeneutic category as well as on its aesthetic value, both textual and visual. The individual contributions follow this editorial lead admirably closely, examining the interplay of repetition, fragmentation, dismemberment and re-composition, cutting and re-uniting, and defamiliarization, and showing how epitomic writing can be playful and entertaining, how it can represent a sophisticated act of interpretation, and serve as a ‘tool for investigating the very borders and paradoxes of language’ (12), even for conveying a spiritual experience.

I study whether the Dodd–Frank whistleblower program reduced informed trading by corporate insiders. To identify the effect, I partition firms based on the extent to which this program affected the likelihood of whistleblowing at each firm. I find a relative reduction in trading profits on purchases made by insiders at more affected firms after the program was initiated. I analyze insider sales in settings where they are more likely to be informed and find a reduction in the number of sales before negatively perceived events. The results suggest that whistleblower protections and rewards can effectively deter insider trading.

The figure of the Roman emperor – ubiquitous yet ever-elusive – remains the flame to which Roman historians are ever drawn. And Fergus Millar's The Emperor in the Roman World remains the yardstick against which all subsequent efforts are judged, and with which they are all inevitably in dialogue. That is true too of Caesar Rules, the major new offering from Olivier Hekster, a one-time doctoral student of Millar's, and now one of the leading contenders for his crown. Hekster's core interest is what the emperor was; in particular, how this institution could survive and adapt to changing circumstances despite the fact that formally it did not exist, certainly was not defined, and practically existed in a society antithetical on principle to both monarchy and change. Hekster finds the key for this long-worried lock in ‘the presentation and perception of power’ (10), and in particular the expectations – from all sides, and at all times – that both consolidated and constrained emperors’ authority. To demonstrate this he conceives a largely unprecedented ambition in this context: to consider source material in all media from the late Republic to the reign of Justinian.

The delay estimation for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing automotive radars can be achieved through the use of different filters. This paper compares two of these filters, namely the matched filter and the zero forcing filter through two metrics, which are the peak to side lobe ratio and the integrated side lobe ratio estimated on their range profiles. The analysis is then extended to the minimum mean squared error filter.

Using data on nearly 20,000 restaurants in China during the COVID-19 outbreak, we find evidence that the government-sponsored rent reduction program reduced debt overhang problems. Rent reductions, which averaged 36,000 RMB per restaurant, increase the open rate of restaurants by 3.7%, revenue by 11,000 RMB, and the number of employees by 0.36. Larger restaurants with higher committed costs benefit more from the rent reduction. The stimulus has a positive spillover effect that boosts the revenue of restaurants in the immediate vicinity of subsidized restaurants. The treatment effect varies with organizational structure in a manner consistent with an information frictions hypothesis.

This article seeks to offer some considerations on Telemachus’ journey to Pylos and Sparta (Hom. Od. 1–4), interpreting it in the light of his social position as heir of a basileus. Can the beginning of the Odyssey represent a sort of formation for the young prince? And how does the text support this reading? After a brief review of the features of a Homeric basileus, it will be argued that the narrative presents the growth of Telemachus as that of a young prince who needs to comply with those features, and become acquainted with the heroic world he lives in at peace.

We settle the question of how to compute the entry and leaving arcs for turnpikes in autonomous variational problems, in the one-dimensional case using the phase space of the vector field associated with the Euler equation, and the initial/final and/or the transversality condition. The results hinge on the realization that extremals are the contours of a well-known function and that the transversality condition is (generically) a curve. An approximation algorithm is presented, and an example is included for completeness.

Raptors play a unique role in ecosystem services and are regarded as effective indicators of ecosystem health. In recent years, varieties of anthropogenic factors have threatened the majority of raptor species worldwide. Nepal is considered a global hotspot for threatened and declining raptor species, but there is limited information on the direct human threats to the raptor populations living in the country. In this paper, we identify important anthropogenic threats to raptors in Nepal based on raptor mortality data collected by powerline surveys and from monitoring of GPS-tagged raptors, complete various reports, and social media. We found that powerlines, poisoning, and persecution, mainly shooting, are significant threats to raptors in Nepal that were largely overlooked previously. We report 54 electrocuted raptors affecting eight species, 310 poisoned raptors of 11 species, and five persecuted raptors of four species; among them vultures are the most affected (>88%). Based on our findings, to safeguard the future of Nepal’s raptors, we propose the retrofitting of power poles and the use of flight diverters on powerlines in the most affected areas to reduce raptor interactions with powerlines, as well as an effective conservation education programme to prevent the use of unintentional poisoning.

Deynekoite, Ca9□Fe3+(PO4)7 (R3c, a = 10.3516(3)Å, c = 37.1599(17)Å, V = 3448.4(3)Å3 and Z = 6), a new mineral of the merrillite group was found in the contact facies of paralava of the Hatrurim Complex in the Daba-Siwaqa pyrometamorphic rock field, Jordan. The paralava, consisting of diopside, tridymite, anorthite, wollastonite and fluorapatite, is enriched in Fe-bearing phosphides and phosphates at the contact with the altered country rock. Cristobalite overgrowing tridymite has a fish-scales texture indicating that temperature of paralava could have reached 1500°C. Deynekoite with empirical formula (Ca8.90Na0.11K0.02)Σ9.03(Fe3+0.62Mg0.30Al0.05)Σ0.97P6.98V5+0.05O27.70(OH)0.30 forms transparent, light-yellow or light-brown grains up to 30–40 μm in size. Microhardness of deynekoite, VHN25 = 319(29) kg/mm2, corresponds to Mohs hardness = 4.5. Its density was calculated as 3.09 g⋅cm–3 on the basis of its empirical composition and structural data. Deynekoite is uniaxial (−), its refractive indices are ω = 1.658(3), ɛ = 1.652(3) (λ = 589 nm), and pleochroism is not observed. The formation of phosphides on the boundary of the paralava and country rock is connected with carbothermal reductive reactions and realised at temperatures above 1300°С. With decreasing temperature and increasing oxygen activity, phosphides are replaced by Fe2+-bearing phosphates. Deynekoite, which contains Fe3+ (substituting for Fe2+-phosphates) and a small amount of water, formed at temperatures of 600–800°C.

Coastal evolution is influenced by past sea-level changes and resultant shifts from fluvial- to marine-dominant environments and the accompanying significant geochemical and isotopic changes in the water mass and sediments. We investigated the elemental and isotopic features of coastal sedimentary cores (27 m in length) from a small paleo-bay located on the southern coast of Korea to determine such geochemical variability and specify past changes in the bay environment and anoxic conditions and possible links to past climate changes. We analyzed total organic carbon (TOC), total sulfur (TS), their isotopes (δ13CTOC and δ34STS), and pyrite. The δ13CTOC values ranging from −25 to −19‰ (a proxy for terrestrial influence) were lower than average (−22.5‰) before 8300 cal yr BP and since 500 cal yr BP, while the intervening Early to Late Holocene showed higher δ13CTOC values, indicating a shallow coastal environment. The δ34STS values fluctuating between −35 and +5‰ resembled sedimentation rate change. Based on the changes in the ratios of TOC to TS (C/S ratios), sedimentation rate, and δ34STS, we found five possible periods with higher salinity and intensified anoxic conditions at millennial timescales: 8900–8200, 7950–6500, 5200–4300, 3500–2600, and 2000–1100 cal yr BP. These intensified anoxic conditions seem to have been influenced by increased air temperature and sea-surface temperature conditions, which could have intensified the intensity of thermal stratification (less ventilation and mixing) between surface and bottom waters and resultant anoxic conditions.

Over the course of one year (2021), we monitored the carbon isotope composition of atmospheric CO2 at three locations in Croatia: the Adriatic port city of Rijeka (Cfa climate) and at two rural sites: Gornje Jelenje (Cfb climate) in the vicinity of a main road and clean-air site Parg (Dfb climate). Carbon isotope composition at all sites shows seasonal variation, ranging from –41.3 to 25.2‰ for Δ14C and from –13.1 to –11.3‰ for δ13C. Rijeka systematically has the lowest and Parg the highest Δ14C, and δ13C at the sites are not statistically different one from another. The Δ14C of leaves of deciduous trees reflect the trend of atmospheric Δ14C. Based on the assumption that the investigated area is under the influence of two main sources of CO2: fossil and natural (sea exchange, biosphere, and undisturbed – clean air atmospheric component) the approximate share of fossil CO2 in total atmospheric CO2 has been estimated for Rijeka (2.1 ± 1.3%) and Gornje Jelenje (1.0 ± 0.9%). Comparison of our results with the data from European CO2 sampling stations indicates strong influence of CO2 from sea and biosphere. Backward trajectories indicate a possibility of Δ14CCO2 contribution from distant EU nuclear power plants, but movement of air masses should be considered in more detail to confirm this.

Despite a long settlement history, empirical investigations of the role of path dependency in the long-term evolution of human populations are scarce in Europe, and especially in the Mediterranean countries. Using spatially explicit econometric techniques, our study discusses the empirical evidence stemming from a quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of population growth rates in 115 districts of metropolitan Athens (Greece) over one century, distinguishing path dependency from the impact of other socio-economic forces on long-term urban expansion. The empirical findings of this study clarify how path-dependent regulation of population growth was heterogeneous over time and space, and depends on the specific stage of the city life cycle. After an initial period when path-independent population expansion reflected the inherent impact of exogenous shocks, path-dependent growth was associated with compact urbanization governed by agglomeration and scale advantages. Path-dependent growth was less intense during suburbanization, when the population spread over larger areas.

In 1913 a set of leg shackles was recovered among skeletal remains during excavations at the east end of the ruinous cathedral of Old Sarum, Wiltshire. A recent examination of the excavation’s photographic record indicates that two further similar examples were recovered at the same time. Since the early twentieth century a body of scholarship has refined our understanding of the arrangement of the east end of the cathedral, and a closer examination of the archive in the light of this work allows for both skeletal remains and shackles to be confidently located in an archaeological context related to the tomb of Bishop Roger. This paper explores the value this evidence has for our understanding of the so-called ‘Arrest of the Bishops’, an event of notable constitutional significance in the tumultuous reign of King Stephen. It goes on to examine the shock with which the event was recalled by contemporary writers to reflect on the power of shaming and incarceration as a device of extortion, political manipulation and the infliction of social death. The integral nature of iron bonds in these strategies lends them a socio-symbolic role and the reception of their use in this well-recorded episode may facilitate the interpretation of such items from early and high medieval contexts when, frequently, primary provenance is lacking.