Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Iron Kα Emission from X-Ray Reflection: Predictions for Gamma-Ray Burst Models

Recent observations of several γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglows have shown evidence for a large amount of X-ray line-emitting material, possibly arising from ionized iron. A significant detection of an X-ray spectral feature, such as that found in the Chandra observation of GRB 991216, may provide important constraints on the immediate environment of the burst and hence on progenitor models. The large Fe Kα equivalent widths inferred from the X-ray observations favor models in which the line is produced when the primary X-ray emission from the source strikes Thomson-thick material and Compton scatters into our line of sight. We present such reflection spectra here, computed in a fully self-consistent manner, and discuss the range of ionization parameters that may be relevant to different models of GRBs. We argue that the presence of a strong hydrogen-like Kα line is unlikely, because Fe XXVI photons would be trapped resonantly and removed from the line core by Compton scattering. In contrast, a strong narrow emission line from He-like Fe XXV is prominent in the model spectra. We briefly discuss how these constraints may affect the line energy determination in GRB 991216.
A critique of snapshot isolation

The support for transactions is an essential part of a database management system (DBMS). Without this support, the developers are burdened with ensuring atomic execution of a transaction despite failures as well as concurrent accesses to the database by other transactions. Ideally, a transactional system provides serializability, which means that the outcome of concurrent transactions is equivalent to a serial execution of them. Based on experiences on lock-based implementations, nevertheless, serializability is known as an expensive feature that comes with high overhead and low concurrency. Commercial systems, hence, compromise serializability by implementing weaker guarantees such as snapshot isolation. The developers, therefore, are still burdened with the anomalies that could arise due to the lack of serializability. There have been recent attempts to enrich large-scale data stores, such as HBase and BigTable, with transactional support. Not surprisingly, inspired by traditional database management systems, serializability is usually compromised for the benefit of efficiency. For example, Google Percolator, implements lock-based snapshot isolation on top of BigTable. We show in this paper that this compromise is not necessary in lock-free implementations of transactional support. We introduce write-snapshot isolation, a novel isolation level that has a performance comparable with that of snapshot isolation, and yet provides serializability. The main insight in write-snapshot isolation is to prevent read-write conflicts in contrast to write-write conflicts that are prevented by snapshot isolation.
Is the human operator in a teleoperation system passive?

Conventional approaches for stability analysis of bilateral teleoperation systems assume that the human operator does not inject energy into the system and behaves in a passive manner. Does this assumption hold for various tasks the human operator may execute in a teleoperation context? To answer this question, in this paper we measure the endpoint impedance (inertia, viscosity, and stiffness) of the human arm during two tasks: (1) relaxed grasping of a haptic device while the device imposes position perturbations, and (2) rigid grasping of a haptic device (posture maintenance) while the device imposes force perturbations. The human arm impedance is identified as a 2 × 2 transfer function matrix and assessed for passivity over the frequency range characteristic of human motion. Our results agree with previous findings that the relaxed human arm behaves as a passive system. However, whether the rigid arm behaves as an active or passive system is found to depend on the magnitude of the force perturbations. We discuss why the passivity of the human operator is task dependent.
Communication Patterns in High and Low Consensus Discussions: A Descriptive Analysis.

The goal of the investigation was to compare high and low consensus discussions and to identify and describe patterns of communication which differentiated the two levels of agreement. The study differed from previous attempts to explicate consensus formation by employing a larger unit of analysis and by using a descriptive methodology which allowed the investigation to be grounded in systematic observation of group interaction. The analysis revealed interactional differences which included the variety of integration methods employed, the method and distribution of generating possible solutions to the problem, and the manner in which groups terminated episodes.
Psychotherapy Versus Second-Generation Antidepressants in the Treatment of Depression: A Meta-Analysis

Most meta-analyses have concluded that psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy yield roughly similar efficacy in the short-term treatment of depression, with psychotherapy showing some advantage at long-term follow-up. However, a recent meta-analysis found that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors medications were superior to psychotherapy in the short-term treatment of depression. To incorporate results of several recent trials into the meta-analytic literature, we conducted a meta-analysis of trials which directly compared psychotherapy to second-generation antidepressants (SGAs). Variables potentially moderating the quality of psychotherapy or medication delivery were also examined, to allow the highest quality comparison of both types of intervention. Bona fide psychotherapies showed equivalent efficacy in the short-term and slightly better efficacy on depression rating scales at follow-up relative to SGA. Non-bona fide therapies had significantly worse short-term outcomes than medication (d = 0.58). No significant differences emerged between treatments in terms of response or remission rates, but non-bona fide therapies had significantly lower rates of study completion than medication (odds ratio = 0.55). Bona fide psychotherapy appears as effective as SGAs in the short-term treatment of depression, and likely somewhat more effective than SGAs in the longer-term management of depressive symptoms.
Relation between fractures and mortality: results from the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study

Background: Fractures have largely been assessed by their impact on quality of life or health care costs. We conducted this study to evaluate the relation between fractures and mortality. Methods: A total of 7753 randomly selected people (2187 men and 5566 women) aged 50 years and older from across Canada participated in a 5-year observational cohort study. Incident fractures were identified on the basis of validated self-report and were classified by type (vertebral, pelvic, forearm or wrist, rib, hip and “other”). We subdivided fracture groups by the year in which the fracture occurred during follow-up; those occurring in the fourth and fifth years were grouped together. We examined the relation between the time of the incident fracture and death. Results: Compared with participants who had no fracture during follow-up, those who had a vertebral fracture in the second year were at increased risk of death (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 2.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1–6.6); also at risk were those who had a hip fracture during the first year (adjusted HR 3.2, 95% CI 1.4–7.4). Among women, the risk of death was increased for those with a vertebral fracture during the first year (adjusted HR 3.7, 95% CI 1.1–12.8) or the second year of follow-up (adjusted HR 3.2, 95% CI 1.2–8.1). The risk of death was also increased among women with hip fracture during the first year of follow-up (adjusted HR 3.0, 95% CI 1.0–8.7). Interpretation: Vertebral and hip fractures are associated with an increased risk of death. Interventions that reduce the incidence of these fractures need to be implemented to improve survival.
Influence of copper doping on the performance of optically controlled GaAs switches

The influence of the copper concentration in silicon‐doped gallium arsenide on the photoionization and photoquenching of charge carriers was studied both experimentally and theoretically. The studies indicate that the compensation ratio (NCu/NSi) is an important parameter for the GaAs:Si:Cu switch systems with regard to the turn‐on and turn‐off performance. The optimum copper concentration for the use of GaAs:Si:Cu as an optically controlled closing and opening switch is determined.
PERCH: Perception via search for multi-object recognition and localization

In many robotic domains such as flexible automated manufacturing or personal assistance, a fundamental perception task is that of identifying and localizing objects whose 3D models are known. Canonical approaches to this problem include discriminative methods that find correspondences between feature descriptors computed over the model and observed data. While these methods have been employed successfully, they can be unreliable when the feature descriptors fail to capture variations in observed data; a classic cause being occlusion. As a step towards deliberative reasoning, we present PERCH: PErception via SeaRCH, an algorithm that seeks to find the best explanation of the observed sensor data by hypothesizing possible scenes in a generative fashion. Our contributions are: i) formulating the multi-object recognition and localization task as an optimization problem over the space of hypothesized scenes, ii) exploiting structure in the optimization to cast it as a combinatorial search problem on what we call the Monotone Scene Generation Tree, and iii) leveraging parallelization and recent advances in multi-heuristic search in making combinatorial search tractable. We prove that our system can guaranteedly produce the best explanation of the scene under the chosen cost function, and validate our claims on real world RGB-D test data. Our experimental results show that we can identify and localize objects under heavy occlusion- cases where state-of-the-art methods struggle.
Changes in bone marrow blood flow with aging

We investigated changes in bone marrow blood flow and histology with aging in rabbits. Bone marrow blood flow was measured by the hydrogen washout method, which was performed in the proximal tibia of Japanese white rabbits, 3–42 months of age. Bone marrow blood flow was found to decrease with age. Histological observations of the proximal tibia identified a decrease in the number of osteoblasts and hematopoietic cells, an increase of the number of empty lacunae, a reduction in bone formation rate, and a degeneration of marrow fat with aging. These results suggest that the decrease of bone marrow blood flow is related to histological changes found with aging.
Dependency Treelet Translation: Syntactically Informed Phrasal SMT

We describe a novel approach to statistical machine translation that combines syntactic information in the source language with recent advances in phrasal translation. This method requires a source-language dependency parser, target language word segmentation and an unsupervised word alignment component. We align a parallel corpus, project the source dependency parse onto the target sentence, extract dependency treelet translation pairs, and train a tree-based ordering model. We describe an efficient decoder and show that using these tree-based models in combination with conventional SMT models provides a promising approach that incorporates the power of phrasal SMT with the linguistic generality available in a parser.
Perfluorooctanoic acid induces human Ishikawa endometrial cancer cell migration and invasion through activation of ERK/mTOR signaling

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a common environmental pollutant that has been associated with various diseases, including cancer. We explored the molecular mechanisms underlying PFOA-induced endometrial cancer cell invasion and migration. PFOA treatment enhanced migration and invasion by human Ishikawa endometrial cancer cells, which correlated with decreased E-cadherin expression, a marker of epithelial-mesenchymal transition. PFOA also induced activation of ERK1/2/mTOR signaling. Treatment with rapamycin, an mTOR inhibitor, antagonized the effects of PFOA and reversed the effects of PFOA activation in a xenograft mouse model of endometrial cancer. Consistent with these results, pre-treatment with rapamycin abolished PFOA-induced down-regulation of E-cadherin expression. These results indicate that PFOA is a carcinogen that promotes endometrial cancer cell migration and invasion through activation of ERK/mTOR signaling.
Racial variation in physique and body composition.

Abstract Racial variation in physique and body composition are of interest to sport scientists because these characteristics may be related to athletic performance, fitness, strength and injury. There is clearly variation among groups in mean somatotypes and the sitting height-stature relationship. Although differences are often emphasized, racial group distributions of variables describing physique often overlap to a considerable extent. Environment may be a factor in group differences in physique. Consistent Black-White differences are found in mean levels of variables related to bone mineralization, with Blacks exceeding Whites. It may be that the lean body mass of Blacks is of greater density than that of Whites. Gross morphological variation among groups is probably only a concomitant of variation in performance rather than a determinant of performance.
Synthesis of optically active amino acids from alpha-keto acids with Escherichia coli cells expressing heterologous genes

We describe a simple method for enzymatic synthesis of L and D amino acids from alpha-keto acids with Escherichia coli cells which express heterologous genes. L-amino acids were produced with thermostable L-amino acid dehydrogenase and formate dehydrogenase (FDH) from alpha-keto acids and ammonium formate with only an intracellular pool of NAD+ for the regeneration of NADH. We constructed plasmids containing, in addition to the FDH gene, the genes for amino acid dehydrogenases, including i.e., leucine dehydrogenase, alanine dehydrogenase, and phenylalanine dehydrogenase. L-Leucine, L-valine, L-norvaline, L-methionine, L-phenylalanine, and L-tyrosine were synthesized with the recombinant E. coli cells with high chemical yields (> 80%) and high optical yields (up to 100% enantiomeric excess). Stereospecific conversion of various alpha-keto acids to D amino acids was also examined with recombinant E. coli cells containing a plasmid coding for the four heterologous genes of the thermostable enzymes D-amino acid aminotransferase, alanine racemase, L-alanine dehydrogenase, and FDH. Optically pure D enantiomers of glutamate and leucine were obtained.
A Review of Sensing and Distributed Detection Algorithms for Cognitive Radio Systems

Abstract Optimized spectrum sensing using distributed detection techniques for secondary user spectrum access is becoming important in Cognitive Radio (CR) systems, which have been proposed to utilize the available frequency spectrum more efficiently. For achieving best performance and ensuring minimal acceptable interference to spectrum owners, it is important to accurately sense and detect the presence or absence of primary licensed users. For this purpose, the solutions learned within the framework of distributed detection in wireless sensor networks have been considered. In this paper, we review sensing algorithms and approaches of distributed detection and their relevance to CR systems.
Globalized Values and Postcolonial Responses

Globalization has had a far-reaching effect on media technologies worldwide. Concomitant with this global spread of media forms, liberal views of the media’s role in a democracy have been exported to countries outside the West. In scholarly debates, attempts are increasingly made to globalize media ethics on the basis of a search for universal ethics. However, reactions against western, liberal-democratic views of the media’s role in society in postcolonial African countries have indicated that the dominant liberal framework is not universally applicable. Against the background of attempts to globalize media ethics and in the light of African responses against liberal-democratic frameworks, this article provides an illustration of the tension between different normative frameworks in a postcolonial context. It takes the South African media environment as an example of how different normative media frameworks may collide. An overview is given of the development of normative media ethical frameworks during the first decade of democracy in South Africa, as part of the shift towards self-regulation that the media underwent after the era of oppressive state regulation. Against the background of the conflicts that have marked the media’s relationship with government during the first decade after apartheid, as well as critical debates about the media’s roles and responsibilities in a new democratic society marked by continued social polarization and material inequalities, the article argues that the current normative frameworks within which the media operate are in need of revision. The article suggests that such a revisionary project could draw on postcolonial theory in order to renegotiate the orthodox media ethical frameworks inherited from western societies and contextualize it within the current historical, (geo)political and cultural juncture in South Africa. In the debate about global media ethics, this revision of South African normative media frameworks may then serve as an example of how western media ethics should be adapted to local contexts.
Using Delayed Toxicities to Re-evaluate Tolerability in Phase 2 Trials: A Case Example using Bortezomib

ABSTRACT In advanced stage patients enrolled in dose-finding trials, it is difficult to assess delayed toxicities because frequently patients discontinue after one or two cycles of treatment. Patients enrolled in phase 2 trials are typically followed longer to assess efficacy. Thus, their data may be useful for evaluating long-term tolerability. We illustrate this using as example two phase 2 bortezomib trials (total N = 172) conducted by SWOG. While treatment-related severe toxicity rates based on cycle 1 were acceptable (23% and 31%), they were notably higher over extended administration (37% and 70%). This additional information should be considered when designing subsequent trials.
Exploration of high-level prosodic patterns for continuous mandarin speech

In this paper, the high-level prosodic patterns of prosodic word (PW), prosodic phrase (PPh) and breath group/prosodic phrase group (BQ/PQ) for syllable pitch-level and duration are explored using an automatic joint prosody labeling and modeling method. Experimental results on a treebank speech corpus showed that the explored high-level prosodic patterns not only matched well with our a priori knowledge about Mandarin prosody, but also conformed well to other previous studies. They can therefore be integrated to form a meaningful Mandarin prosody hierarchy.
Effect of Mg on the Microstructure and Corrosion Resistance of the Continuously Hot-Dip Galvanizing Zn-Mg Coating

The microstructure of continuously hot-dip galvanizing Zn-Mg coating was investigated in order to obtain the mechanism of the effects of Mg on the corrosion resistance. In this paper, the vertical section of the Zn-0.20 wt % Al-Mg ternary phase diagram near the Al-low corner was calculated. The results indicates that the phase composition of the Zn-0.20 wt % Al-Mg ternary phase diagram near the Al-low corner is the same as Zn-Mg binary phase diagram, suggesting Al in the Zn-Mg (ZM) coatings mainly concentrates on the interfacial layer between the coating and steel substrate. The microstructure of continuously hot-dip galvanizing ZM coatings with 0.20 wt % Al containing 1.0–3.0 wt % Mg was investigated using tunneling electron microscopy (TEM). The morphology of Zn in the coating changes from bulk to strip and finally to mesh-like, and the MgZn2 changes from rod-like to mesh-like with the Mg content increasing. Al in the ZM coatings mainly segregates at the Fe2Al5 inhibition layer and the Mg added to the Zn bath makes this inhibition layer thinner and uneven. Compared to GI coating, the time of the first red rust appears increases by more than two-fold and expansion rate of red rust reduces by more than four-fold in terms of salt spray experiment. The ZM coating containing 2.0 wt % Mg has the best corrosion resistance. The enhanced corrosion resistance of ZM coatings mainly depends on different corrosion products.
‘It [HIV] is part of the relationship’: exploring communication among HIV-serodiscordant couples in South Africa and Tanzania

In many sub-Saharan African countries, a high proportion of people living with HIV are in long-term serodiscordant relationships. This paper explores how HIV serodiscordance shapes communication among couples in long-term HIV-serodiscordant relationships. A total of 36 couples were purposively recruited through healthcare providers and civil society organisations in South Africa (26) and Tanzania (10). We explored couples' portrayal of living in a serodiscordant relationship by conducting semi-structured interviews with each partner separately, followed by a joint interview with both partners. Using an adaptation of Persson's model on sero-silence and sero-sharing, we categorised coping style as ‘sero-silent’ if partners reported that they did not talk much with each other about issues related to their serodiscordant status or as ‘sero-sharing’ if they portrayed HIV as being an issue which they dealt with together. Some couples exhibited features of both coping styles and, at times, partners differed in their ways of coping.