Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the geometry of the first and second Painlevé equations

In this paper we explicitly compute the transformation that maps the generic second-order differential equation y″ = f(x, y, y′) to the Painlevé first equation y″ = 6y2 + x (resp. the Painlevé second equation y″ = 2y3 + yx + α). This change of coordinates, which is a function of f and its partial derivatives, does not exist for every f; it is necessary that the function f satisfies certain conditions that define the equivalence class of the considered Painlevé equation. In this work we will not consider these conditions and the existence issue is solved on line as follows: if the input equation is known then it suffices to specialize the change of coordinates on this equation and test by simple substitution if the equivalence holds. The other innovation of this work lies in the exploitation of discrete symmetries for solving the equivalence problem.
A feature learning method for scene text recognition

Reading text in scene images is a challenging task and is still an active research nowadays. The difficulties come from low resolution, complex background, non uniform lightning or blurring effects of scene images. This paper focuses on recognizing characters in scene images based on the feature learning method proposed in [6] and the conclusion on comparison between sparse coding and vector quantization in [8] to build better feature representations before training the model by using SVM. We asset the performance of the proposed method on some popular scene image datasets such as ICDAR 20033 and Chars74k4. Experimental results show that our proposed system has reached an encouraging recognition rate for both ICDAR 2003 and Chars74k datasets. More specially, our system archived 83.8% (62-class problem), 87% (36-class problem) of recognition rate on ICDAR 2003 Sample subset (698 images), and 73.8% accuracy on GoodImg subset (7705 images) of Chars74K dataset. In this work, our contribution is that we applied the ideas as well as the conclusions in [8] for scene text recognition problem and the experimental results show that our system outperforms other existing methods.
Do Alike Think Alike? A Descriptive Study on Attitudinal Homogamy among Swedish Couples

Abstract: This study examines whether attitudinal homogamy is associated with well-established homogamy in religiosity, ethnicity, education and age. Attitudinal homogamy is measured among 1095 co-residing Swedish couples for attitudes towards gender equality, work, values in life and social conservatism. Calculations were made with variable-centered approach (VCA) and couple-centered approach (CCA). In addition, linear regression models were used to determine whether homogamy in religiosity, ethnicity, education and age were associated with attitudinal homogamy. Couples showed strong similarity in attitudes on gender equality (r=0.29) and social conservatism (r=0.27), moderate similarity in attitudes to values in life (r=0.18), and somewhat weak, yet statistically significant, similarity in attitudes to work (r=0.11). The probability that these results has occurred by chance is less than one in a thousand. However, none of the well-established areas of homogamy regarding religiosity, ethnicity, education and age were statistically associated with the four areas of attitudinal homogamy. Our main conclusion is that we find homogamy on various attitudinal dimensions but they are not related to other type of couple homogamy.
Influence of Parenting Styles on Academic Performance among Girls in Public Secondary Schools in Kenya

This study investigated the influence of authoritarian parenting style on Academic Performance among Girls in Public Secondary Schools in Kenya.The study employed correlation survey design. The study was informed by Baumrind’s Theory of Parenting Styles (TPS). Thirteen secondary schools in Makadara Sub-County were randomly sampled. The target population of the study comprised form two students sampled through stratified sampling and counseling teachers were randomly sampled. The study used questionnaire, interview guide and document analysis guide to collect data. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive (mean and standard deviations) and inferential statistics(Pearson correlation coefficients) on IBM SPSS version 22 while qualitative data was analyzed using quotes and narratives. The findings of the study revealed that authoritarian parenting style had a negative association of 43.2% on girls’ academic performance.
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations are exceptionally rare in thyroid transcription factor (TTF-1)-negative adenocarcinomas of the lung

Introduction Approximately 70% of lung adenocarcinomas express TTF-1. EGFR mutations are present in 13-15% of Western adenocarcinoma patients. This paper investigates TTF1 as a negative predictor of mutant EGFR in lung adenocarcinomas. Results In the pilot cohort (N = 301) two of 224 specimens positive for EGFR mutations had negative TTF-1 expression (sensitivity 99.1%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 96.8-99.9%). Estimated negative predictive values (NPV) for EGFR mutation prevalence rates of 13% and 15% are 99.5% (95% credible interval (CRI) 98.6%-99.9%) and 99.4% (CRI – 98.4%-99.9%). For EGFR mutation rates of 13% and 15%, using validation cohort data (211 patients), the estimated NPVs were 97% (95% CRI 92%-99%) and 96% (95% CRI 91%-99%). Methods Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumors from lung adenocarcinoma patients were analyzed for EGFR mutations by allele-specific PCR in the ‘pilot cohort’. TTF-1 status was documented as positive or negative. Negative predictive value (NPV) for a range of true prevalence of EGFR mutation (1%-50%) was estimated using Bayesian modeling. The hypothesis was validated in a separate ‘validation’ cohort using the same modeling. Conclusion An overwhelming majority of TTF-1 negative adenocarcinomas will be negative for EGFR mutations. This finding allows for earlier initiation of chemotherapy in newly diagnosed TTF-1 negative adenocarcinomas of the lung with stage IV disease.
Dynamic model of an arrayed-type ultrasonic microconveyor for control design

This paper presents a new generation of compliant piezoelectric microconveyors for microobjects based on the cooperation of arrayed direct-drive standing wave ultrasonic actuators. A method using an equivalent electromechanical circuit is proposed for estimating and analysing the optimum driving force. On the basis of the proposed method, the friction drive optimization of the microrobot is performed through the implementation of an electromagnetic field-based preload controller. Preliminary experiments were also performed in order to demonstrate the proposed control method.
The IRIDICA BAC BSI Assay: Rapid, Sensitive and Culture-Independent Identification of Bacteria and Candida in Blood

Bloodstream infection (BSI) and sepsis are rising in incidence throughout the developed world. The spread of multi-drug resistant organisms presents increasing challenges to treatment. Surviving BSI is dependent on rapid and accurate identification of causal organisms, and timely application of appropriate antibiotics. Current culture-based methods used to detect and identify agents of BSI are often too slow to impact early therapy and may fail to detect relevant organisms in many positive cases. Existing methods for direct molecular detection of microbial DNA in blood are limited in either sensitivity (likely the result of small sample volumes) or in breadth of coverage, often because the PCR primers and probes used target only a few specific pathogens. There is a clear unmet need for a sensitive molecular assay capable of identifying the diverse bacteria and yeast associated with BSI directly from uncultured whole blood samples. We have developed a method of extracting DNA from larger volumes of whole blood (5 ml per sample), amplifying multiple widely conserved bacterial and fungal genes using a mismatch- and background-tolerant PCR chemistry, and identifying hundreds of diverse organisms from the amplified fragments on the basis of species-specific genetic signatures using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (PCR/ESI-MS). We describe the analytical characteristics of the IRIDICA BAC BSI Assay and compare its pre-clinical performance to current standard-of-care methods in a collection of prospectively collected blood specimens from patients with symptoms of sepsis. The assay generated matching results in 80% of culture-positive cases (86% when common contaminants were excluded from the analysis), and twice the total number of positive detections. The described method is capable of providing organism identifications directly from uncultured blood in less than 8 hours. Disclaimer: The IRIDICA BAC BSI Assay is not available in the United States.
Chemical Potential Tuning and Enhancement of Thermoelectric Properties in Indium Selenides

Researchers have long been searching for the materials to enhance thermoelectric performance in terms of nano scale approach in order to realize phonon-glass-electron-crystal and quantum confinement effects. Peierls distortion can be a pathway to enhance thermoelectric figure-of-merit ZT by employing natural nano-wire-like electronic and thermal transport. The phonon-softening known as Kohn anomaly, and Peierls lattice distortion decrease phonon energy and increase phonon scattering, respectively, and, as a result, they lower thermal conductivity. The quasi-one-dimensional electrical transport from anisotropic band structure ensures high Seebeck coefficient in Indium Selenide. The routes for high ZT materials development of In4Se3−δ are discussed from quasi-one-dimensional property and electronic band structure calculation to materials synthesis, crystal growth, and their thermoelectric properties investigations. The thermoelectric properties of In4Se3−δ can be enhanced by electron doping, as suggested from the Boltzmann transport calculation. Regarding the enhancement of chemical potential, the chlorine doped In4Se3−δCl0. 03 compound exhibits high ZT over a wide temperature range and shows state-of-the-art thermoelectric performance of ZT = 1.53 at 450 °C as an n-type material. It was proven that multiple elements doping can enhance chemical potential further. Here, we discuss the recent progress on the enhancement of thermoelectric properties in Indium Selenides by increasing chemical potential.
Pentoxifylline Prevents Loss of PP2A Phosphatase Activity and Recruitment of Histone Acetyltransferases to Proinflammatory Genes in Acute Pancreatitis

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are considered major signal transducers early during the development of acute pancreatitis. Pentoxifylline is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor with marked anti-inflammatory properties through blockade of extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) phosphorylation and tumor necrosis factor α production. Our aim was to elucidate the mechanism of action of pentoxifylline as an anti-inflammatory agent in acute pancreatitis. Necrotizing pancreatitis induced by taurocholate in rats and taurocholate-treated AR42J acinar cells were studied. Phosphorylation of ERK and ERK kinase (MEK1/2), as well as PP2A, PP2B, and PP2C serine/threonine phosphatase activities, up-regulation of proinflammatory genes (by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and chromatin immunoprecipitation), and recruitment of transcription factors and histone acetyltransferases/deacetylases to promoters of proinflammatory genes (egr-1, atf-3, inos, icam, il-6, and tnf-α) were determined in the pancreas during pancreatitis. Pentoxifylline did not reduce MEK1/2 phosphorylation but prevented the marked loss of serine/threonine phosphatase PP2A activity induced by taurocholate in vivo without affecting PP2B and PP2C activities. The rapid loss in PP2A activity induced by taurocholate in acinar cells was due to a decrease in cAMP levels that was prevented by pentoxifylline. Pentoxifylline also reduced the induction of early (egr-1, atf-3) responsive genes and abrogated the up-regulation of late (inos, icam, il-6, tnf-α) responsive genes and recruitment of transcription factors (nuclear factor κB and C/EBPβ) and histone acetyltransferases to their gene promoters during pancreatitis. In conclusion, the beneficial effects of pentoxifylline—and presumably of other phosphodiesterase inhibitors—in this disease seem to be mediated by abrogating the loss of cAMP levels and PP2A activity as well as chromatin-modifying complexes very early during acute pancreatitis.
On the Complexity of Gene Marker Selection

Gene marker selection from gene expression profiles has been extensively investigated in the Bioinformatics literature. The aim is usually to find a compact set of genes potentially correlated to a particular disease, which can then be candidate targets for new drugs and treatments. Available gene expression data sets are often noisy and sparse, having a low number of patient samples, for which a high number of expressed genes is recorded. These characteristics may pose challenges in finding proper gene markers. Using some available gene expression data sets for cancer diagnosis, we experimentally try to understand the influence of their sparsity in the performance of two popular gene marker selection methods.
Do foreign investors pay more for stocks in the United States ? An analysis by country of origin

We examine whether and why implicit equity transaction costs incurred by institutional investors across 51 countries differ from those of domestic institutions in the United States. Using a proprietary institutional trading dataset that discloses the home country of the initiator of a trade, we analyze round-trip implicit transaction costs conditional on the trader’s country of origin. The average daily equally (trade) weighted disadvantage of foreign institutional investors for purchases is 3.3 (3.3) basis points (bps) and 4.1 (3.0) bps for sales of common stocks and American Depository Receipts that traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ between 1 July 1999 and 30 September 2004. Therefore a roundtrip daily equally weighted disadvantage to foreign institutional investors is approximately 7.4 (6.3) bps. Several institutional background factors related to foreign investors’ countries of origin are relevant in explaining their disadvantage. * Corresponding author. Email: j.parwada@unsw.edu. au We thank Abel/Noser Corp for generously providing the data used in this study. We are grateful to Avner Kalay and participants at the Australasian Banking and Finance Conference and the La Trobe University seminar for many insightful comments. Usual disclaimers apply concerning any remaining errors.
Getting the Right Traits: Reproductive and Dispersal Characteristics Predict the Invasiveness of Herbaceous Plant Species

To better understand the effect of species traits on plant invasion, we collected comparative data on 20 reproductive and dispersal traits of 93 herbaceous alien species in the Czech Republic, central Europe, introduced after 1500 A. D. We explain plant invasion success, expressed by two measures: invasiveness, i.e. whether the species is naturalized but non-invasive, or invasive; and dominance in plant communities expressed as the mean cover in vegetation plots. We also tested how important reproductive and dispersal traits are in models including other characteristics generally known to predict invasion outcome, such as plant height, life history and residence time. By using regression/classification trees we show that the biological traits affect invasion success at all life stages, from reproduction (seed production) to dispersal (propagule properties), and the ability to compete with resident species (height). By including species traits information not usually available in multispecies analyses, we provide evidence that traits do play important role in determining the outcome of invasion and can be used to distinguish between alien species that reach the final stage of the invasion process and dominate the local communities from those that do not. No effect of taxonomy ascertained in regression and classification trees indicates that the role of traits in invasiveness should be assessed primarily at the species level.
Motivations for crowdfunding: What Drives the Crowd to Invest in Start-UPS?

Equity-based crowdfunding is an increasingly popular source to fund start-ups. In equity-based crowdfunding, a form of crowdsourcing, many crowdfundees collectively fund a start-up by providing parts of the requested funding in prospect of financial returns. While extant research has provided insights into the crowd’s motives for participating in various forms of crowdsourcing initiatives, we know little about the motivations that drive the crowd to invest in start-ups via crowdfunding. In literature, there are ongoing calls to investigate this phenomenon since it is expected that motives for investing in start-ups via crowdfunding differ from motives for engaging in other forms of crowdsourcing initiatives. Against this background, this research aims at investigating why crowdfundees fund start-ups. In this research-in-progress paper we build on related literature to theoretically develop a research model and plan to validate this model with an empirical survey on an equity-based crowdfunding platform specialised on start-up funding. By giving concrete answers to this research questions, our research will take up on a deeper understanding of the crowd’s motivation for investing in start-ups and therefore theoretically contributes to the understanding of the body of knowledge in motivations in crowdsourcing.
Not as Awful as it Seems: Explaining German Case through Computational Experiments in Fluid Construction Grammar

German case syncretism is often assumed to be the accidental by-product of historical development. This paper contradicts this claim and argues that the evolution of German case is driven by the need to optimize the cognitive effort and memory required for processing and interpretation. This hypothesis is supported by a novel kind of computational experiments that reconstruct and compare attested variations of the German definite article paradigm. The experiments show how the intricate interaction between those variations and the rest of the German 'linguistic landscape' may direct language change.
Unexpected A-form formation of 4′-thioDNA in solution, revealed by NMR, and the implications as to the mechanism of nuclease resistance

Fully modified 4′-thioDNA, an oligonucleotide only comprising 2′-deoxy-4′-thionucleosides, exhibited resistance to an endonuclease, in addition to preferable hybridization with RNA. Therefore, 4′-thioDNA is promising for application as a functional oligonucleotide. Fully modified 4′-thioDNA was found to behave like an RNA molecule, but no details of its structure beyond the results of circular dichroism analysis are available. Here, we have determined the structure of fully modified 4′-thioDNA with the sequence of d(CGCGAATTCGCG) by NMR. Most sugars take on the C3′-endo conformation. The major groove is narrow and deep, while the minor groove is wide and shallow. Thus, fully modified 4′-thioDNA takes on the A-form characteristic of RNA, both locally and globally. The only structure reported for 4′-thioDNA showed that partially modified 4′-thioDNA that contained some 2′-deoxy-4′-thionucleosides took on the B-form in the crystalline form. We have determined the structure of 4′-thioDNA in solution for the first time, and demonstrated unexpected differences between the two structures. The origin of the formation of the A-form is discussed. The remarkable biochemical properties reported for fully modified 4′-thioDNA, including nuclease-resistance, are rationalized in the light of the elucidated structure.
The origin and formation of cuspy density profiles through violent relaxation of stellar systems

It is shown that the cuspy density distributions observed in the cores of elliptical galaxies can be realized by dissipationless gravitational collapse. The initial models consist of power-law density spheres such as ρ∝r−1 with anisotropic velocity dispersions. Collapse simulations are carried out by integrating the collisionless Boltzmann equation directly, on the assumption of spherical symmetry. From the results obtained, the extent of constant density cores, formed through violent relaxation, decreases as the velocity anisotropy increases radially, and practically disappears for extremely radially anisotropic models. As a result, the relaxed density distributions become more cuspy with increasing radial velocity anisotropy. It is thus concluded that the velocity anisotropy could be a key ingredient for the formation of density cusps in a dissipationless collapse picture. The velocity dispersions increase with radius in the cores according to the nearly power-law density distributions. The power-law index, n, of the density profiles, defined as ρ∝r−n, changes from n≈2.1 at intermediate radii to a shallower power than n≈2.1 toward the centre. This density bend can be explained from our postulated local phase-space constraint that the phase-space density accessible to the relaxed state is determined at each radius by the maximum phase-space density of the initial state.
A Polynomial-time Algorithm for Model-Based Diagnosis

We present IDA | an Incremental Diagnostic Algorithm which computes minimal diagnoses from diagnoses, and not from con(cid:13)icts. As a consequence, by using a `weak' fault model, the worst-case complexity of the algorithm to compute the k+1-st minimal diagnosis is O(n 2k ), where n is the number of components. On the practical side, an experimental evaluation indicates that the algorithm can e(cid:14)ciently diagnose devices consisting of a few thousand components. IDA separates model interpretation from the search for minimal diagnoses in the sense that the model interpreter is replaceable. This (cid:12)ts well into the Constraint Logic Programming modeling paradigm where, for example, combinatorial circuits are modeled by CLP(B), analog circuits by CLP(<), and physiological models in medicine by constraints over (cid:12)nite domains.
Does habitat origin affect responsesof temperate bryophytes toenhanced UVB radiation ?

Bryophytes occur in habitats that differ widely in radiation regimes. Due to thinning of the ozone layer, the exposure to harmful UVB radiation has increased over the last decades. Information on bryophyte responses to UVB is scarce, particularly for temperate bryophytes. Knowledge on the effect of habitat origin on UVB sensitivity is absent.Therefore, we investigated whether habitat origin affects the sensitivity to UVB radiation in bryophytes. Nine species were selected from three contrasting habitats-forests (low UVB exposure), bogs/fens (high UVB exposure and physiologically active) and dunes (high UVB exposure but at high UVB levels mostly physiologically inactive)-within the Netherlands. Growth rates, DNA damage and UVB absorbing compounds were measured in all species after exposure to different levels of UVB radiation and their control treatments in a climate-controlled greenhouse for ten weeks. UVB radiation significantly increased DNA damage in most species and negatively affected growth rates in several species. UVB absorbing compounds were decreased in some of these temperate bryophytes. UVB responses were consistent within species from the same habitats. Species from the dune and the bog/fen habitat appeared to be more sensitive to UVB radiation, compared to species from the forest habitat in this experiment. Habitat origin thus seemed to influence the sensitivity of species against UVB radiation, with, paradoxically , increased sensitivity in species from those habitats that experience higher exposure to UVB under natural conditions. This may be related to the fact that other stresses than UVB may interfere with UVB tolerance.