Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dominance of tectonics over climate in Himalayan denudation

Landscape denudation in actively deforming mountain ranges is controlled by a combination of rock uplift and surface runoff induced by precipitation. Whereas the relative contribution of these factors is important to our understanding of the evolution of orogenic topography, no consensus currently exists concerning their respective infl uences. To address this question, denudation rates at centennial to millennial time scales were deduced from 10Be concentrations in detrital sediments derived from 30 small basins (10-600 km2) in an ~200-km-wide region in central Nepal. Along a northward, strike-perpendicular transect, average denudation rates sharply increase from <0.5 mm/yr in the Lesser Himalayas to ~1 mm/yr when crossing the Physiographic Transition, and then accelerate to 2-3 mm/yr on the southern flank of the high peaks in the Greater Himalayas. Despite a more than five-fold increase in denudation rate between the southern and northern parts of this transect, the corresponding areas display similar precipitation rates. The primary parameter that presents a signifi cant co-variation with denudation is the long-term rockuplift rate that is interpreted to result from the ramp-fl at transition along the Main Himalayan Thrust. We propose that, in this rapidly uplifting mountain range, landscapes adjust quickly to changing climatic conditions, such that denudation is mainly limited by the rate at which material is pushed upward by tectonic processes and made available for removal by surface processes. In this particular context, variations in precipitation appear to have only a second-order role in modulating the denudation signal that is primarily set by the background rock-uplift rate. © 2014 Geological Society of America.
Remaking Feminism: Or Why Is Postfeminism So Boring?

Post feminism can be boring and frustrating to analyse because its message requires little unpacking and lies prominently on the surface of these narratives. For many of us in the business of offering feminist critiques of popular culture in the twenty-first century, it can seem like we‘re simply tilting at windmills. This article touches on those sensations of boredom and ennui which trouble a feminist cultural critic attempting to make sense of the postfeminist distractions of popular culture. Yet I will also try to inject some new interest into this study by identifying how postfeminism becomes more and more an empty signifier, not simply because it has become overburdened with meanings over the past two decades, but also and more significantly because the majority of the audience it addresses when ventriloquising a form of "old" feminism simply don‘t recognise the feminist rhetoric that it is parasitic upon.
Psychological group support attenuates distress of waiting in couples scheduled for assisted reproduction

The aim of the study is to determine whether a cognitive-behavioral group treatment could lead to a decrease of psychological distress in couples waiting for assisted reproduction. Fifty consecutive couples included in the waiting list for IVF-ET or ICSI were randomly allocated either to receive Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment (CBT Group) or just waiting (Observation Group). The group is formed by 8-10 couples; 12 meetings are provided for a period of 4 months. Two psychometric test have been administered (Symptom Rating Test and Westbrook Coping Scales) at baseline and after 4 months. At baseline, females showed a higher level of SRT than males (F = 16.6 ± 14.1; M = 10.2 ± 9.0; <emph type="7">p</emph> = 0.01). This became evident for anxiety (F = 5.6 ± 4.9; M = 3.3 ± 3.0, <emph type="7">p</emph> = 0.004), somatization (F = 3.0 ± 2.5; M = 1.8 ± 2.1, <emph type="7">p</emph> = 0.01) and feelings of inadequacy (F = 3.9 ± 3.7; M = 2.3 ± 2.7, <emph type="7">p</emph> = 0.01). After 4 months in the males of Observation Group (from 2.3 ± 2.0 to 4.0 ± 2.8, <emph type="7">p</emph> = 0.01) there was an increase of the level of anxiety. No other meaningful differences in other variables were found. In females of CBT Group a trend towards a significant decrease in the total value of psychological uneasiness (the SRT) (from 17.7 ± 13.7 to 14.1 ± 14.0, <emph type="7">p</emph> = 0.07) was found. A long wait before the scheduled intervention of assisted reproduction increased anxiety levels, namely in male partners. CBT avoids such a 'waiting stress' and could be useful for stimulating discussion and awareness inside the couple. Shortening the waiting list and psychological support would be provided by infertility centres
Challenges in Multiscale Modeling of Polymer Dynamics

The mechanical and physical properties of polymeric materials originate from the interplay of phenomena at different spatial and temporal scales. As such, it is necessary to adopt multiscale techniques when modeling polymeric materials in order to account for all important mechanisms. Over the past two decades, a number of different multiscale computational techniques have been developed that can be divided into three categories: (i) coarse-graining methods for generic polymers; (ii) systematic coarse-graining methods and (iii) multiple-scale-bridging methods. In this work, we discuss and compare eleven different multiscale computational techniques falling under these categories and assess them critically according to their ability to provide a rigorous link between polymer chemistry and rheological material properties. For each technique, the fundamental ideas and equations are introduced, and the most important results or predictions are shown and discussed. On the one hand, this review provides a comprehensive tutorial on multiscale computational techniques, which will be of interest to readers newly entering this field; on the other, it presents a critical discussion of the future opportunities and key challenges in the multiscale modeling of polymeric materials and how these methods can help us to optimize and design new polymeric materials.
Etale homotopy and sums-of-squares formulas

Abstract This paper uses a relative of BP-cohomology to prove a theorem in characteristic p algebra. Specifically, we obtain some new necessary conditions for the existence of sums-of-squares formulas over fields of characteristic p>2. These conditions were previously known in characteristic zero by results of Davis. Our proof uses a generalized étale cohomology theory called étale BP2.
Robot exploration with fast frontier detection: theory and experiments

Frontier-based exploration is the most common approach to exploration, a fundamental problem in robotics. In frontier-based exploration, robots explore by repeatedly computing (and moving towards) frontiers, the segments which separate the known regions from those unknown. However, most frontier detection algorithms process the entire map data. This can be a time consuming process which slows down the exploration. In this paper, we present two novel frontier detection algorithms: WFD, a graph search based algorithm and FFD, which is based on processing only the new laser readings data. In contrast to state-of-the-art methods, both algorithms do not process the entire map data. We implemented both algorithms and showed that both are faster than a state-of-the-art frontier detector implementation (by several orders of magnitude).
The power of simply singing together in the classroom

j.H. Nketia, perhaps the foremost African musicologist once said, "A village that has no organized music or neglects singing and dancing is said to be dead" (Chernoff 1979 p.36). I believe what Nketia is referring to, in this quote, is the importance of music in building a sense of community and the people's relationship to the society they live in. Nketia's words are central to the focus of my talk today. Let's imagine for a minute that the village Nketia speaks of is a community of learners or a classroom of students. If the lack of music or singing and dancing defines a classroom of learners without life, I shudder to think how many classrooms would, in Nketia's description, be close to dying. Is this the case and what can be done to change the situation? To begin, I would like to encourage you, as musicians, as music educators, as teachers committed to providing quality music programs in schools, to open your minds to the possibility that everyone should and could sing with their students in their classrooms. For some of you this idea may be one you can wholeheartedly support. It seems like a logical and sensible remedy to Nketia's 'dead' classroom. But others of you may have serious doubts. Imagine this scenario: a classroom teacher implements singing with her students when in fact she herself knows next to nothing about music theory, certainly does not have. a trained voice and moreover is singing with goals that are very different from those of the music specialist. How could this possibly be a good idea? Wouldn't this hurt the music program? Damage the quality of the children's singing voices? To find answers to some of these questions I've raised, I want to describe an incident that has haunted me for quite some time. Recently, I coordinated an arts program for a non-profit organization that provided an artist-in-residence program for a very large elementary school in the greater Boston area. One day I was at the school, wandering through the hallways after observing one of the artists at work with students when I bumped into the head of the Music Department. As she and I continued walking down the hall, she gave me a brief update on the types of music programs her department was providing for the students across this particular school district. As we passed one of the kindergarten rooms, we heard the voices of children singing. She stopped short, turned abruptly to me and said, "Don't you just hate it when you hear some of these teachers singing with their students? They sing so badly and are so out of tune. I just can't stand it. "
The effect of intrapartum dental support use among nulliparous during the second stage of labor – a randomized controlled study

Abstract Objective: We aimed to determine the effect of a dental support device (DSD) use on the course of labor and delivery in nulliparous women. Methods: A randomized, controlled, open-label study of nulliparous (at 37 + 0/7 and 41 + 3/7 weeks of gestation) in a single tertiary university-affiliated medical center. Exclusion criteria included maternal chronic diseases, multi-fetal gestation and fetal chromosomal or structural anomalies. Outcomes were analyzed according to the actual use of the DSD, and satisfaction questionnaires following delivery. Results: Overall, 191 women were randomized (93in the study group and 98 in the control group). The median duration of the second stage was similar between the groups (100.0 ± 91.0 versus 98.0 ± 128.8 min, p = 0.97) and the maximal VAS score was significantly higher in the DSD group (4.0 ± 8.5 versus 3.0 ± 6.8, p = 0.04). The rate of obstetrical interventions such as operative vaginal delivery or cesarean section during the second stage was significantly higher in the control group than in the study group (28.2% versus 12.3% and 6.4% versus 1.2%, respectively, p = 0.004), mainly due to prolonged second stage of labor (24.5% versus 8.6%, p = 0.005). Of the DSD group, 50.6% rated the use of the DSD as comfortable, 32.2% rated its effect on pain relief as high, 55.6% would recommend its use to their peers and 51.9% would like to use it in their consecutive delivery. Conclusion: The use of a DSD among nulliparous women appears to decrease the need for obstetrical intervention due to prolonged second stage of labor, with fair satisfaction of patients.
On the role of individual subunits in MscL gating: “All for one, one for all?”

The mechanosensitive channel of large conductance (MscL) is a homopentameric membrane protein that protects bacteria from hypoosmotic stress. Its mechanics are coupled to structural changes in the membrane, yet the molecular mechanism of the transition from closed to open states and the cooperation between subunits are poorly understood. To determine the early stages of channel activation, we have created a chemically addressable heteropentameric MscL, which allows us to selectively trigger only one subunit in the pentameric protein assembly. By employing a liposome leakage assay developed in house, we measured the size‐exclusion limits of MscL (G22C5 homopentamer and WT4G22C1 heteropentamer). Patch‐clamp, single‐channel conductance recordings were used to electrically characterize the various channel substates. We show that a decrease in the hydrophobicity of a pore residue in only one subunit breaks the energy barrier for gating and increases the pore diameter up to 10 Å. A further decrease on the hydrophobicity of the same pore residue in other subunits opens the channel further, up to a diameter of 25 Å. However, it is not sufficient for full opening of the channel. This suggests the presence of supplementary mechanisms other than only the hydrophobic gate for MscL opening and closing and/or insufficient expansion of the channel by hydrophobic gating in the absence of applied membrane tension. —Mika, J. T. , Birkner, J. P., Poolman, B. , Koçer, A. On the role of individual subunits in MscL gating: “All for one, one for all? ” FASEB J. 27, 882–892 (2013). www.fasebj. org
Scalable Platform for Malicious Content Detection Integrating Machine Learning and Manual Review

This thesis examines the design, implementation and performance of a scalable analysis platform for the detection of malicious content. To reflect the deployment of actual production systems, we design our platform to explicitly model the passage of time and the involvement of human supervisors in the analysis process. This thesis shows how our platform can operate efficiently at a large scale. The thesis presents and evaluates our platform in the context of a case study focused on malware detection.To model the passage of time while still allowing for batch training methods our platform discretizes time into a series of retraining periods, allowing updated samples and labels to emerge during each period. During each retraining period, our platform combines the presently deployed model with externally available information about newly emerged samples to select samples for submission to a human labeling oracle. To support a large volume of data over successive timeframes, our platform uses advanced techniques to manage the size of data including compression and selective data retention. These operations support efficient feature extraction.Our platform is implemented in Python, allowing use of both the Python scientific stack (Numpy, Scipy, Scikit-Learn) and IPython for interactive, distributed computation. In the interest of scalability our system uses HDFS and Apache Spark to manage distributed data and computation. This thesis discusses our implementation as well as the hardware and software configuration supporting our system.This thesis presents an evaluation of our work using a malware dataset containing over 1 million samples collected over a period of 2.5 years. It begins by characterizing our dataset, including an examination of label shift over time motivating our work. It presents evidence demonstrating that by submitting a small fraction of samples for human review we are able to appreciably increase detection outcomes.We have released our code along with 3% of our case study data, allowing replication of our results on a single node. Note that detection performance will vary due to the decrease in available training data.
Belonging uncertainty and psychological capital: An investigation of antecedents of the leaky pipeline in STEM

Seaton, Gina, A. , M.S., Purdue University, August 2011. Belonging Uncertainty and Psychological Capital: An Investigation of Antecedents of the Leaky Pipeline in STEM. Major Professor: Jane R. Williams. Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM), especially in higher levels. Researchers term this phenomenon “the leaky pipeline. ” While the issue is well-documented in the literature, little is known about its antecedents. The current study offers insight into factors that relate to career choice and contribute to the lack of diversity in STEM fields by investigating how sense of belonging and psychological capital (PsyCap) influence important psychological, academic, and career outcomes for women in these fields. Female undergraduate STEM majors were recruited for participation at two times during the fall academic semester (N=182 at time one, N=86 at time two) and data were analyzed using correlation and regression. Results provide support for the influence of both sense of belonging and PsyCap as important correlates of an individual’s academic and career making decisions. Specifically, PsyCap mediated the relationship between belonging and well-being and belonging and career outcomes of engagement and participants’ intentions to apply to graduate programs in an unrelated major. In addition, PsyCap moderated the relationship between sense of belonging and participants’ intentions to switch majors and intentions to apply to graduate programs in a field unrelated to their current major. An increased understanding of the factors that contribute to the leaky pipeline in STEM will serve as a basis for developing further research questions and targeting interventions.
ORLA/OLAA: Orthogonal Coexistence of LAA and WiFi in Unlicensed Spectrum

Future mobile networks will exploit unlicensed spectrum to boost capacity and meet growing user demands cost-effectively. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has recently defined a License Assisted Access (LAA) scheme to enable global Unlicensed LTE (U-LTE) deployment, aiming at 1) ensuring fair coexistence with incumbent WiFi networks, i.e., impacting on their performance no more than another WiFi device; and 2) achieving superior airtime efficiency as compared with WiFi. We show the standardized LAA fails to simultaneously fulfill these objectives, and design an alternative orthogonal (collision-free) listen-before-talk coexistence paradigm that provides a substantial improvement in performance, yet imposes no penalty on existing WiFi networks. We derive two optimal transmission policies, ORLA and OLAA, that maximize LAA throughput in both asynchronous and synchronous (i.e., with alignment to licensed anchor frame boundaries) modes of operation, respectively. We present a comprehensive evaluation through which we demonstrate that, when aggregating packets, IEEE 802.11ac WiFi can be more efficient than LAA, whereas our proposals attains 100% higher throughput, without harming WiFi. We further show that long U-LTE frames incur up to 92% throughput losses on WiFi when using 3GPP LAA, whilst ORLA/OLAA sustain >200% gains at no cost, even in the presence of non-saturated WiFi and/or in multi-rate scenarios.
The Five‐Factor Model in Fact and Fiction

Literature and personality psychology both address human nature, but they rarely address each other. We argue that the Five-Factor Model (FFM), a universal and heritable structure of enduring personality traits, provides a framework for integrating these two traditions. For the psychologist, fiction can provide illustrative examples, testable hypotheses about traits and psychological processes, and perhaps a better understanding of culture and history. For the writer and reader, an understanding of current knowledge about personality can contribute to a keener perception of human character and a deeper appreciation of its depiction. Literary critics have long been influenced by psychoanalytic theory, but they have not, by and large, kept up-to-date with developments in psychology. We argue that critics might fruitfully apply the methods and findings of contemporary trait psychology to broad questions about genres, literary periods, and individual authors, as well as to the interpretation of individual characters. We illustrate the use of FFM personality profiles in understanding the protagonists from works of Goethe, Moliere, and Voltaire. The FFM should be central to an evolving consciousness about human nature. Keywords: personality; Five-Factor Model; literature; traits; literary criticism; personality theory
Rhetorical Strategies That Elicit Response in Online Communities 3 2 Factors That Increase Likelihood of Reply

Conversation is a critical element to the success of online communities, both for the communities as a whole and the individual members. Yet conversations often fail: Forty percent of potential thread-starting messages in Usenet groups receive no response. When this happens, those who are trying to get information, support, or discussion from a group receive no benefit from their efforts. This paper presents a multi-method series of studies into community responsiveness to two rhetorical strategies: self-disclosing introductions and making requests. Introductions signal legitimacy and commitment, and requests reduce community effort by making clear what is needed. An analysis of a longitudinal sample of 40,931 messages from 99 Usenet groups shows that introductions referencing lurking and a personal connection to the topic of discussion increase the likelihood of getting a reply. So does making requests. Machine learning detects introductions and requests automatically within the text. A pair of experiments in which introductions and requests are added or removed from previously posted messages and reposted to Usenet groups shows that introductions referencing the group history cause an increase in reply counts, but requests do not. The research will inform the design of an automatic intervention triggered at the time messages are written that makes suggestions for strengthening rhetorical strategies when the community is unlikely to respond.
PENGARUH PENDEKATAN PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING DALAM MATERI PENCEMARAN LINGKUNGAN TERHADAP KEMAMPUAN ANALISIS

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji pengaruh pendekatan Problem-based Learning (PBL) dalam pembelajaran terhadap kemampuan analisis siswa SMA 1 Ambarawa. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian Quasi Experimental Design dengan pola Pre and Post-test Design yang diterapkan pada kelas X-7 sebagai kelompok kontrol dan X-8 sebagai kelompok eksperimen, pada materi pencemaran lingkungan. Teknik Pengambilan sampel menggunakan purposive sampling. Data tingkat keterlaksanaan PBL diperoleh melalui lembar observasi. Data jumlah solusi siswa dikumpulkan dengan angket dan lembar observasi. Data kemampuan analisis siswa dikumpulkan dengan tes. Data dianalisis secara kuantitatif. Data dianalisis dengan uji t dan uji regresi linier sederhana. Hasil observasi menunjukkan tingkat keterlaksanaan PBL tergolong tinggi (81,1%). Hasil uji t menunjukkan perbedaan yang nyata dari kedua kelompok (t hitung >t tabel ). Uji regresi linier sederhana mengindikasikan bahwa PBL berpengaruh nyata pada kemampuan analisis siswa (nilai sig. t table ). Simple linear regression test indicated that PBL brought a significant effect on students’s analysis s kills (probability sig.<0.05, r square 0.281). The conclusion of this research was that implementation of PBL approaches had a positive effect on student’s analysis skills
Exercise in the Metabolic Syndrome

The metabolic syndrome is a clustering of obesity, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension that is occurring in increasing frequency across the global population. Although there is some controversy about its diagnostic criteria, oxidative stress, which is defined as imbalance between the production and inactivation of reactive oxygen species, has a major pathophysiological role in all the components of this disease. Oxidative stress and consequent inflammation induce insulin resistance, which likely links the various components of this disease. We briefly review the role of oxidative stress as a major component of the metabolic syndrome and then discuss the impact of exercise on these pathophysiological pathways. Included in this paper is the effect of exercise in reducing fat-induced inflammation, blood pressure, and improving muscular metabolism.