Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of sparse-view reconstruction from flat-panel-detector cone-beam CT

Flat-panel-detector x-ray cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is used in a rapidly increasing host of imaging applications, including image-guided surgery and radiotherapy. The purpose of the work is to investigate and evaluate image reconstruction from data collected at projection views significantly fewer than what is used in current CBCT imaging. Specifically, we carried out imaging experiments using a bench-top CBCT system that was designed to mimic imaging conditions in image-guided surgery and radiotherapy; we applied an image reconstruction algorithm based on constrained total-variation (TV)-minimization to data acquired with sparsely sampled view-angles and conducted extensive evaluation of algorithm performance. Results of the evaluation studies demonstrate that, depending upon scanning conditions and imaging tasks, algorithms based on constrained TV-minimization can reconstruct images of potential utility from a small fraction of the data used in typical, current CBCT applications. A practical implication of the study is that the optimization of algorithm design and implementation can be exploited for considerably reducing imaging effort and radiation dose in CBCT.
Rupture history of September 30, 1999 intraplate earthquake of Oaxaca, Mexico (MW=7.5) from inversion of strong‐motion data

Near‐source strong motions are inverted to estimate the rupture history of intraslab, normal‐faulting September 30, 1999, Oaxaca, Mexico earthquake. Two focal mechanisms (Harvard and NEIC CMT solutions) are tested for the source geometry. The inversion with the NE dipping fault plane of the Harvard solution best matches the data (strike=295°, dip=50°, rake=−82°). We estimated the slip distribution on the fault and the associated rupture front propagation, as well as the rise time. The inversion results show that the rupture mainly propagated from ESE to WNW and slightly downdip, with an average rupture velocity of about 3 km/s. The rise time ranges between 1 and 2 s. The slip distribution on the fault is mainly concentrated in two interconnected patches with a maximum slip of 2.5 m located about 20 km and 40 km WNW of the hypocenter. Most of the slip is released at an average depth of 45 km. A smaller area with a maximum slip of 1.5 m is also observed close to the hypocenter. The total co‐seismic moment released is equal to 1.8 × 1020 Nm.
A History of System R and SQL/Data System (Invited Paper)

System R is an experimental database system constructed at IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose to demonstrate that the usability advantages of the relational data model can be realized in a system with the complete function and high performance required for everyday production usage. SQL/Data System is a relational database management system offered by IBM in the DOS/VSE operating system environment. SQL/DS interfaces with the CICS data communication subsystem, and can be used in conjunction with the DL/I data base product. This paper traces the development of System R as a research prototype and its evolution into the SQL/DS product.
Gene Regulation at the Single-Cell Level

The quantitative relation between transcription factor concentrations and the rate of protein production from downstream genes is central to the function of genetic networks. Here we show that this relation, which we call the gene regulation function (GRF), fluctuates dynamically in individual living cells, thereby limiting the accuracy with which transcriptional genetic circuits can transfer signals. Using fluorescent reporter genes and fusion proteins, we characterized the bacteriophage lambda promoter PR in Escherichia coli. A novel technique based on binomial errors in protein partitioning enabled calibration of in vivo biochemical parameters in molecular units. We found that protein production rates fluctuate over a time scale of about one cell cycle, while intrinsic noise decays rapidly. Thus, biochemical parameters, noise, and slowly varying cellular states together determine the effective single-cell GRF. These results can form a basis for quantitative modeling of natural gene circuits and for design of synthetic ones.
Derivation of Voltage Source Multilevel Converter Topologies

Multilevel converters have gained popularity in both medium voltage and low voltage applications. To find out the connections between various multilevel voltage-source converter topologies and to reveal how to obtain new topologies, this paper has presented four methods to derive multilevel converter topologies. Many existing topologies as well as new topologies can be derived with the methods presented in this paper. The fundamental characteristics of the multilevel converters which determine their usability such as dc-link neutral point voltage balancing and flying capacitor voltage control are also investigated in this paper with a mathematical model and an example. It is expected that more new topologies will be invented based on the work in this paper for emerging applications.
Multisensor analysis of integrated atmospheric water vapor over Canada and Alaska

[1] Atmospheric water vapor is a key parameter for the analysis of climatic systems (greenhouse gas effect), in particular over high latitudes where water vapor displays an important seasonal variability. The sparse spatial and temporal sampling of atmospheric water vapor observations across Canada needs to be improved. A series of instruments and methods including a 940-nm solar absorption band radiometer (R) and radiosonde (S) analysis from a numerical weather prediction model and a ground-based bi-frequency Global Positioning System (GPS) were used to evaluate the integrated atmospheric water vapor (IWV) at various sites in Canada and Alaska from a multiyear database. The IWV-R measurements were collected within the framework of the North American Sun Radiometry network (AERONET/AEROCAN). Intercomparisons between [IWV-GPS and IWV-S], [IWV-R and IWV-GPS], and [IWV-R and IWV-S] show root mean square (RMS) differences of 1.8, 1.9, and 2.2 kg m � 2 , respectively. GPS meteorology appears to be the easiest approach to calibrate the solar radiometer water vapor band owing to its flexibility, and it allows us to overcome the Sun radiometry limitation in high-latitude areas like the Arctic. The sensitivity of the GPS retrieval to various parameters like GPS satellite constellation and meteorological data are discussed. The classical linear relationship between the surface temperature and the integrated weighted mean temperature profile needed for IWV-GPS retrieval may be significantly different for Arctic air masses compared with midlatitude air masses in the case of tropospheric temperature profile inversion. An ever-expanding multiyear (1994–2001) North American summer water vapor climatology, derived from AERONET/Canadian Sun Radiometer Network, is presented and analyzed, showing a mean value of 19.8 ± 6.1 kg m � 2 and variations from 17 kg m � 2 in Alaska to 23 kg m � 2 in southeastern Canada. The results in Bonanza Creek, Alaska, show significant interannual variations with a peak in 1997, which may
Morphometrics and Allometry in Fishes

Nowadays, the most commonly used relationships, that have been established for the majority of fishes (Binohlan & Pauly 2000, FishBase: www.fishbase.org: Froese & Pauly 2011), are those relating weight to body length (in the majority of cases, total body length (TL)), and different types of length (i.e., standard (SL) and fork (FL) length) to TL. Weight (W)-length (TL) relationships are of power type, i.e., W=a TLb. In this equation, a is the coefficient of body shape (Lleonart et al. 2000, Froese 2006, www.fishbase.org), and it gets values around 0.1 for fishes which are small sized and with a rounded body shape, 0.01 for streamlined-shaped fishes and 0.001 for eel-like shaped fishes. In contrast, b is the coefficient balancing the dimensions of the equation and its values can be smaller, larger or equal to 3 (Lleonart et al. 2000, Froese 2006, www.fishbase.org). In the first two cases (i.e., b 3) fish growth is allometric (i.e., when b 3 the fish grows faster in weigth than in length), whereas when b=3 growth is isometric. Froese (2006) analyze 3929 weight-length relationships for 1773 species, and reports that b ranges between 1.96 and 3.94, with 90% of the cases falling inside the 2.7-3.4 range. The lowest values have been recorded for Cepola macropthalma, whereas the highest for Chaenocephalus aceratus. In principle, these types of relationships are allometric (82%), with a trend towards positive allometry (Froese 2006). Weight-length relationships are of high importance for fisheries science and can be used in a wide range of applications, such as: (a) estimation of biomass from length data; (b) estimation of a species condition factor; and (c) comparisons among life history and morphologic differentiations of the same species in different areas (e.g., Pauly 1993, Petrakis & Stergiou 1995, Binohlan & Pauly 2000).
Spectral responses of pot-grown plants to displacement of soil oxygen

Detection of leaking gas pipelines is important for safety, economic and environmental reasons, and remote sensing of vegetation offers the potential to identify gas leakage through spectral responses in the plants growing above. Pot-scale investigations were carried out to determine the effects of soil-oxygen displacement using natural gas, argon, nitrogen and waterlogging on the overlying vegetation and to determine whether changes in spectral characteristics were specific to natural gas or were a generic response to soil-oxygen displacement. Leaves responded to soil-oxygen displacement by increased reflectance in the visible wavelengths and changes in the position and shape of the red edge. The red edge of control plants shifted towards longer wavelengths as they matured, while the red edge of treated plants remained stationary, indicating an inhibition of maturing. Bean and barley exhibited different shapes in the peaks at the red edge. Argon and waterlogging produced greater responses than natural gas, which was administered non-continuously. These results suggest that the response to natural gas is generic to soil-oxygen deficiency rather than specific to this agent. Hence, although it might be possible to detect leaking gas by remote sensing of vegetation, ancillary information such as pipeline maps would be required to discriminate natural gas responses from those due to other stresses.
Brain Correlates of Self-Evaluation Deficits in Schizophrenia: A Combined Functional and Structural MRI Study

Self-evaluation plays an important role in adaptive functioning and is a process that is typically impaired in patients with schizophrenia. Underlying neural mechanisms for this dysfunction may be associated with manifested psychosis. However, the brain substrates underlying this deficit are not well known. The present study used brain blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and gray matter voxel-based morphometry to explore the functional and structural brain correlates of self-evaluation deficits in schizophrenia. Eighteen patients with schizophrenia and 17 healthy controls were recruited and asked to judge whether a set of personality-trait adjectives were appropriate for describing themselves, a familiar other, or whether the adjectives were of positive or negative valence. Patients had slower response times for negative trait attributions than controls did; responses to positive trait attributions were faster than those for negative traits among the patient group, while no differences were observed in the control group. Control subjects showed greater activation within the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) than the patient group during the self-evaluation > semantic positivity-evaluation contrast. Patients showed greater activation mainly within the posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC) as compared to controls for the other-evaluation > semantic positivity-evaluation contrast. Furthermore, gray matter volume was reduced in the MPFC, temporal lobe, cuneus, and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) among the patient group when compared to controls. The present study adds to previous findings regarding self- and other-referential processing in schizophrenia, providing support for neurobiological models of self-reflection impairment.
Eutrophication and macroalgal blooms in temperate and tropical coastal waters: nutrient enrichment experiments with Ulva spp.

Receiving coastal waters and estuaries are among the most nutrient‐enriched environments on earth, and one of the symptoms of the resulting eutrophication is the proliferation of opportunistic, fast‐growing marine seaweeds. Here, we used a widespread macroalga often involved in blooms, Ulva spp. , to investigate how supply of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), the two main potential growth‐limiting nutrients, influence macroalgal growth in temperate and tropical coastal waters ranging from low‐ to high‐nutrient supplies. We carried out N and P enrichment field experiments on Ulva spp. in seven coastal systems, with one of these systems represented by three different subestuaries, for a total of nine sites. We showed that rate of growth of Ulva spp. was directly correlated to annual dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations, where growth increased with increasing DIN concentration. Internal N pools of macroalgal fronds were also linked to increased DIN supply, and algal growth rates were tightly coupled to these internal N pools. The increases in DIN appeared to be related to greater inputs of wastewater to these coastal waters as indicated by high δ15N signatures of the algae as DIN increased. N and P enrichment experiments showed that rate of macroalgal growth was controlled by supply of DIN where ambient DIN concentrations were low, and by P where DIN concentrations were higher, regardless of latitude or geographic setting. These results suggest that understanding the basis for macroalgal blooms, and management of these harmful phenomena, will require information as to nutrient sources, and actions to reduce supply of N and P in coastal waters concerned.
Induction of dedifferentiation, genomewide transcriptional programming, and epigenetic reprogramming by extracts of carcinoma and embryonic stem cells.

Functional reprogramming of a differentiated cell toward pluripotency may have long-term applications in regenerative medicine. We report the induction of dedifferentiation, associated with genomewide programming of gene expression and epigenetic reprogramming of an embryonic gene, in epithelial 293T cells treated with an extract of undifferentiated human NCCIT carcinoma cells. 293T cells exposed for 1 h to extract of NCCIT cells, but not of 293T or Jurkat T-cells, form defined colonies that are maintained for at least 23 passages in culture. Microarray and quantitative analyses of gene expression reveal that the transition from a 293T to a pluripotent cell phenotype involves a dynamic up-regulation of hundreds of NCCIT genes, concomitant with down-regulation of 293T genes and of indicators of differentiation such as A-type lamins. Up-regulated genes encompass embryonic and stem cell markers, including OCT4, SOX2, NANOG, and Oct4-responsive genes. OCT4 activation is associated with DNA demethylation in the OCT4 promoter and nuclear targeting of Oct4 protein. In fibroblasts exposed to extract of mouse embryonic stem cells, Oct4 activation is biphasic and RNA-PolII dependent, with the first transient rise of Oct4 up-regulation being necessary for the second, long-term activation of Oct4. Genes characteristic of multilineage differentiation potential are also up-regulated in NCCIT extract-treated cells, suggesting the establishment of "multilineage priming. " Retinoic acid triggers Oct4 down-regulation, de novo activation of A-type lamins, and nestin. Furthermore, the cells can be induced to differentiate toward neurogenic, adipogenic, osteogenic, and endothelial lineages. The data provide a proof-of-concept that an extract of undifferentiated carcinoma cells can elicit differentiation plasticity in an otherwise more developmentally restricted cell type.
The importance of interocean exchange south of Africa in a numerical model

A fine resolution numerical model of the Southern Ocean (the Fine Resolution Antarctic Model (FRAM)) has been used to investigate the way in which heat is supplied to the South Atlantic. The heat budget in the model is compared with other estimates and is found to be broadly realistic. The temperature structure in the Atlantic, and therefore the meridional heat transport, depend heavily on the input of heat from the Indian Ocean via the Agulhas Retroflection region. FRAM is compared with three models which do not exhibit a significant input of heat from the Indian Ocean. These models also have a lower equatorward heat transport in the South Atlantic. Horizontal resolution affects the amount of Agulhas transfer with coarser resolution leading to lower heat transport in the Atlantic, a result which has implications for ocean models used in climate simulations.
Estimation of Subsurface Temperatures in the Tattapani Geothermal Field, Central India, from Limited Volume of Magnetotelluric Data and Borehole Thermograms Using a Constructive Back-Propagation Neural Network

AbstractA constructive back-propagation code that was designed to run as a single-hidden-layer, feed-forward neural network (SLFFNN) has been adapted and used to estimate subsurface temperature from a small volume of magnetotelluric (MT)-derived electrical resistivity data and borehole thermograms. The code was adapted to use a looping procedure in searching for better initialization conditions that can optimally solve nonlinear problems using the random weight initialization approach. Available one-dimensional (1D) MT-derived resistivity data and borehole temperature records from the Tattapani geothermal field, central India, were collated and digitized at 10-m intervals. The two datasets were paired to form a set of input–output pairs. The paired data were randomized, standardized, and partitioned into three mutually exclusive subsets. The various subsets had 52% (later increased to 61%), 30%, and 18% (later reduced to 9%) for training, validation, and testing, respectively, in the first and second trai.
On the Performance of the Relay–ARQ Networks

This paper investigates the performance of relay networks in the presence of hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback and adaptive power allocation. The throughput and the outage probability of different hybrid ARQ protocols are studied for independent and spatially correlated fading channels. The results are obtained for the cases where there is a sum power constraint on the source and the relay or when each of the source and the relay are power-limited individually. With adaptive power allocation, the results demonstrate the efficiency of relay-ARQ techniques under different conditions.
Distribution ofPectinaria koreniLarvae (Annelida : Polychaeta) in Relation to the Seine River Plume Front (Eastern English Channel)

Abstract The distribution of Pectinaria koreni larvae in the Seine river plume was studied in June 1992 in the course of three inshore–offshore transects. Plume waters were characterized by a higher turbidity and a well-developed phytoplankton biomass. The hydrological structure varied greatly among surveys, principally due to lunar tidal cycle and wind events. Pectinaria koreni larval densities were consistently larger, by at least one order of magnitude, in plume waters than they were in ambient shelf waters. The frontal structure of the plume, acting as a physical boundary, may favour transport along a coastal band which offers rich trophic resources and limits offshore export. Nonetheless, some mixing processes were observed between water masses. Wind events were also able to break up the front and induce a large-scale dispersal of larvae. In frontal zones, larval and phytoplankton aggregation was quite variable and this cannot be explained by a calculated index of potential convergent velocities.
Patient-reported Needs, Non-motor Symptoms, and Quality of Life in Essential Tremor and Parkinson's Disease

Background Non-motor symptoms, quality of life, service needs, and barriers to care of individuals with movement disorders are not well explored. This study assessed these domains within a sample of individuals with essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods A survey exploring symptoms, needs, and barriers to care was disseminated to a convenience sample (N = 96) of individuals with a primary diagnosis of ET (N = 19) or PD (N = 77). Results Similarities in overall quality of life and impact on daily functioning were found across individuals with ET and PD. Noteworthy differences included endorsement of different types of service needs and utilization patterns and fewer non-motor symptoms reported among those with ET (M = 6.1, SD = 2.4) than those with PD (M = 10.4, SD = 3.4). Non-motor symptoms significantly impacted movement disorder-related quality of life for both diagnostic groups, but this relationship was stronger for individuals with ET, t(12) = 3.69, p = 0.003, β = 0.73 than with PD, t(56) = 4.00, p<0.001, β = 0.47. Individuals with ET also reported higher rates of stigma (31.6% vs. 7.8%) and greater impact of non-motor symptoms on emotional well-being, R2 = 0.37, F(1, 13) = 7.17, p = 0.020. Discussion This is the first study to describe and compare the needs, barriers to care, and impact on quality of life of two distinct movement disorder groups. Our results support the recent efforts of the field to identify interventions to address the non-motor symptoms of movement disorders and indicate need for greater appreciation of the specific differences in symptoms and quality of life experienced across movement disorder diagnoses.
DETERMINATION OF THE LEVELS OF LEAD IN THE ROADSIDE SOILS OF ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

Contamination of the roadside soils of Addis Ababa city by lead, most likely originationg from vehicular exhaust, has been investigated. To this end, soil samples were collected from 14 roadside sites; i.e., 2 samples for shorter and 5 samples for longer roads. Determination of lead was carried out on a total of 45 samples and a control sample collected from a relatively remote area of the city, Entoto Mountains, which was assumed to be free of anthropogenic lead sources. The levels of lead in all the samples were determined using flame atomic absorption spectrometer. The concentration of lead obtained from majority of the sample sites surpassed the maximum limit of the metal in soil recommended by WHO (100 μg/g). The average concentrations of lead in the roadside soils were found to be 418.6 ± 3.4 μg/g. Similarly, the concentration of lead in the control soil sample was 18.8 ± 0.5 μg/g. Although at present the lead content of the gasoline used in the country is 0.013 g/L, the use of leaded gasoline during the past decades is thought to be responsible for the high concentration of lead in the roadside soils of Addis Ababa.