Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Length-weight relations and growth rates of dominant fishes of the Salton Sea: implications for predation by fish-eating birds

Abstract The Salton Sea is the largest lake in California. Inflows are primarily from agricultural runoff, which render it eutrophic and able to support extensive fisheries. The lake and its surrounding wetlands are critical links for the Pacific Flyway, providing refuge and food for an extensive and diverse avifauna. We document fish size distributions, body shapes and growth rates and consider how they determine availability of fish to birds. Tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus x O. urolepis hornorum) is the most important resource for fish-eating birds. Tilapia grow fast to a size that is readily handled by large birds and are the most abundant fish in the lake. Bairdiella (Bairdiella icistia) grow to a smaller size over a longer period. Corvina (Cynoscion xanthulus), sargo (Anisotremus davidsoni), and shad (Dorosoma cepedianum) are less important for fish-eating birds because they quickly grow to sizes outside bird handling capabilities (corvina) or are not readily catchable and currently of low abundance (shad and sargo). Shape, in particular girth, determines the weight of the largest individual fish that a bird can handle; a slender 1,000 g corvina, for example, being more easily ingested than a deeper-bodied 1,000 g tilapia. Shape, however, is of secondary importance to growth rate in determining importance of a fish species in a bird's diet. Predation by corvina on tilapia and other smaller species may have historically played a large role in determining availability of fish to fish-eating birds.
The Time Delay of the Quadruple Quasar RX J0911.4+0551

We present optical light curves of the gravitationally lensed components A (≡A1+A2+A3) and B of the quadruple quasar RX J0911.4+0551 (z = 2.80). The observations were primarily obtained at the Nordic Optical Telescope between 1997 March and 2001 April and consist of 74 I-band data points for each component. The data allow the measurement of a time delay of 146 ± 8 days (2 σ) between A and B, with B as the leading component. This value is significantly shorter than that predicted from simple models and indicates a very large external shear. Mass models including the main lens galaxy and the surrounding massive cluster of galaxies at z = 0.77, responsible for the external shear, yield H0 = 71 ± 4 (random, 2 σ) ± 8 (systematic) km s-1 Mpc-1. The systematic model uncertainty is governed by the surface-mass density (convergence) at the location of the multiple images.
DSP implementation of source location using microphone arrays

The design, implementation, and performance of a low-cost, real-time DSP system for source location is discussed. The system consists of an 8-element electret microphone array connected to a Signalogic DSP daughterboard hosted by a PC. The system determines the location of a speaker in the audience in an irregularly shaped auditorium. The auditorium presents a non-ideal acoustical environment; some of the walls are acoustically treated, but there still exists significant reverberation and a large amount of low frequency noise from fans in the ceiling. The source location algorithm is implemented in a two step process. The first step determines time delay of arrival (TDOA) for select microphone pairs. A modified version of the Cross- Power Spectrum Phase Method is used to compute TDOAs and is implemented on the DSP daughterboard. The second step uses the computed TDOAs in a least mean squares gradient descent search algorithm implemented on the PC to compute a location estimate.
Vegetation productivity patterns at high northern latitudes: a multi-sensor satellite data assessment

Satellite‐derived indices of photosynthetic activity are the primary data source used to study changes in global vegetation productivity over recent decades. Creating coherent, long‐term records of vegetation activity from legacy satellite data sets requires addressing many factors that introduce uncertainties into vegetation index time series. We compared long‐term changes in vegetation productivity at high northern latitudes (>50°N), estimated as trends in growing season NDVI derived from the most widely used global NDVI data sets. The comparison included the AVHRR‐based GIMMS‐NDVI version G (GIMMSg) series, and its recent successor version 3g (GIMMS3g), as well as the shorter NDVI records generated from the more modern sensors, SeaWiFS, SPOT‐VGT, and MODIS. The data sets from the latter two sensors were provided in a form that reduces the effects of surface reflectance associated with solar and view angles. Our analysis revealed large geographic areas, totaling 40% of the study area, where all data sets indicated similar changes in vegetation productivity over their common temporal record, as well as areas where data sets showed conflicting patterns. The newer, GIMMS3g data set showed statistically significant (α = 0.05) increases in vegetation productivity (greening) in over 15% of the study area, not seen in its predecessor (GIMMSg), whereas the reverse was rare (<3%). The latter has implications for earlier reports on changes in vegetation activity based on GIMMSg, particularly in Eurasia where greening is especially pronounced in the GIMMS3g data. Our findings highlight both critical uncertainties and areas of confidence in the assessment of ecosystem‐response to climate change using satellite‐derived indices of photosynthetic activity. Broader efforts are required to evaluate NDVI time series against field measurements of vegetation growth, primary productivity, recruitment, mortality, and other biological processes in order to better understand ecosystem responses to environmental change over large areas.
The depolarization properties of powerful radio sources: breaking the radio power versus redshift degeneracy

We define three samples of extragalactic radio sources of Fanaroff-Riley type II, containing 26 objects in total. The control sample consists of 6C and 7C sources with radio powers of around 10 27 W Hz -1 at 151 MHz and redshifts of z ∼ 1. The other samples contain 3CRR sources either with comparable redshifts but radio powers about a decade larger or with comparable radio powers but redshifts around z ∼ 0.4. We use these samples to investigate the possible evolution of their depolarization and rotation measure properties with redshift and radio power independently. We used VLA data for all sources at ∼4800 MHz and two frequencies within the 1400-MHz band, either from our own observations or from the archive. We present maps of the total intensity flux, polarized flux, depolarization, spectral index, rotation measure and magnetic field direction where not previously published. Radio cores were detected in 12 of the 26 radio sources. Of the sources, 14 show a strong Laing-Garrington effect, but almost all of the sources show some depolarization asymmetry. All sources show evidence for an external Faraday screen being responsible for the observed depolarization. We find that sources at higher redshift are more strongly depolarized. Rotation measure shows no trend with either redshift or radio power. However, variations in the rotation measure across individual sources increase with the redshift of the sources but do not depend on their radio power.
The Effect of Foreign Investments on European Regional Productivity

Differences in productivity among regions have been mainly attributed to agglomeration economies, technology and human capital, while almost no evidence has been provided on the role of internationalization. In this paper we build unique measures of outward and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) counts at the NUTS 2 level and we assess the relationship between regional productivity and foreign investments in the Enlarged Europe. Regions with larger flows of foreign investment projects show higher productivity levels, but this correlation fades down as we control for a set of relevant regional characteristics. However, inward and outward FDIs exert a positive and significant effect on regional productivity growth. We also find that the type of investment matters. In particular, inward and outward investments in R&D have a positive effect on regional productivity, while incoming investments in Sales activities are detrimental for productivity growth.
Discriminative training of language model classifiers

A new button type chrysanthemum cultivar distinguished by its profuse production of small, pom pom shaped flowers of a light bronze color, its capability for year around production with an eight-week response, in small 4 to 41/2 inch pots, and its adaptability as an excellent garden mum capable of a beautiful display of color in the Fall.
Query optimization for differentially private data management systems

Differential privacy (DP) enables publishing statistical query results over sensitive data, with rigorous privacy guarantees, and very conservative assumptions about the adversary's background knowledge. This paper focuses on the interactive DP framework, which processes incoming queries on the fly, each of which consumes a portion of the user-specified privacy budget. Existing systems process each query independently, which often leads to considerable privacy budget waste. Motivated by this, we propose Pioneer, a query optimizer for an interactive, DP-compliant DBMS. For each new query, Pioneer creates an execution plan that combines past query results and new results from the underlying data. When a query has multiple semantically equivalent plans, Pioneer automatically selects one with minimal privacy budget consumption. Extensive experiments confirm that Pioneer achieves significant savings of the privacy budget, and can answer many more queries than existing systems for a fixed total budget, with comparable result accuracy.
Blocking measures for asymmetric exclusion processes via coupling

We give sufficient conditions on the rates of two asymmetric exclusion processes such that the existence of a blocking invariant measure for the first implies the existence of such a measure for the second. The main tool is a coupling between the two processes under which the first dominates the second in an appropriate sense. In an appendix we construct a class of processes for which the existence of a blocking measure can be proven directly; these are candidates for comparison processes in applications of the main result.
The organization of endoplasmic reticulum export complexes

Export of cargo from the ER occurs through the formation of 60-70nm COPII-coated vesicular carriers. We have applied serial-thin sectioning and stereology to quantitatively characterize the three-dimensional organization of ER export sites in vivo and in vitro. We find that ER buds in vivo are nonrandomly distributed, being concentrated in regional foci we refer to as export complexes. The basic organization of an export complex can be divided into an active COPII-containing budding zone on a single ER cisterna, which is adjacent to budding zones found on distantly connected ER cisternae. These budding foci surround and face a central cluster of morphologically independent vesicular-tubular elements that contain COPI coats involved in retrograde transport. Vesicles within these export complexes contain concentrated cargo molecules. The structure of vesicular-tubular clusters in export complexes is particularly striking in replicas generated using a quick-freeze, deep-etch approach to visualize for the first time their three-dimensional organization and cargo composition. We conclude that budding from the ER through recruitment of COPII is confined to highly specialized export complexes that topologically restrict anterograde transport to regional foci to facilitate efficient coupling to retrograde recycling by COPI.
In vivo treatment with epigenetic modulating agents induces transcriptional alterations associated with prognosis and immunomodulation in multiple myeloma

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) and DNA methyltransferase inhibitors (DNMTi) are in early clinical development for multiple myeloma (MM) therapy. Despite all encouraging pre-clinical data, clinical activity of HDACi and DNMTi is mostly lacking. To optimize the trials, characterization of the in vivo response towards HDACi and DNMTi will be crucial. Therefore, we investigated the transcriptional response after in vivo treatment with the HDACi quisinostat or DNMTi decitabine using the murine 5T33MM model. We identified 504 and 154 genes deregulated by quisinostat and decitabine, respectively. Of interest, MM patients' gene expression levels of 62 quisinostat- and 25 decitabine-deregulated genes were predictive for overall survival of patients. This prognostic information was implemented in a DNA methylation and histone acetylation score. A high score was related to a high proliferative and immature phenotype of MM cells. Furthermore, highly scored MM patients had an adverse overall survival. Interestingly, bio-informatic prediction tools revealed an association of quisinostat-deregulated genes with lymphocyte activation, proliferation, immune-effector mechanisms and T-helper-1 development. Overall, treatment of 5T33MM mice with epigenetic modulating agents led to the translation of gene signatures to predict overall survival of MM patients. HDACi mainly deregulated tumoral immunomodulatory pathways, supporting the rationale to combine HDACi with immunomodulatory therapies.
Blind deconvolution using a nondimensional Gaussianity measure

Blind image deconvolution (BID) is a severely ill-posed problem which requires prior information on the latent image to estimate the blur kernel. In this paper, a new observation that blurring always pushes the gradient of a local image region toward its mean value is introduced. And we formulate a novel function to measure the distance between the local gradient and its mean value. A novel regularizer associated with local gradient means is proposed. As it requires to segment the whole image into small regions, we propose an approximate method without any segmentation. Thanks to its simplicity the algorithm is fast and robust. Numerous experimental results on synthetic and real data demonstrate that our method is capable of removing various uniform blurs such as motion blur, atmospheric blur and out-of-focus blur.
Excretion and tissue distribution of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin in the rat.

The compound, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzop-dioxin (TCDD), is highly toxic. The LD50 for male and female rats given a single oral dose is 23 and 45 pg/kg, respectively (1). Adverse effects have been observed in a teratology study in which pregnant rats were given oral doses of 0.125-2.0 pg/kg-day TCDD from day 6 through day 15 of gestation (2). The adverse effects were increased fetal mortality, early and late resorptions and intestinal hemorrhage in the fetuses. No adverse effects were noted at the 0.03 ptg/kgday level. In humans and rabbits, contamination of the skin with TCDD produces chloracnelike lesions (3, 4)1. This disease is characterized by the appearance of hyperkeratosis, papules, comedones and cysts. There is no available information on the absorption, excretion or tissue distribution of TCDD in animals. Therefore, this study was done to determine the excretion and tissue distribution of radioactivity derived from TCDD-14C following a single oral dose of the labeled compound.
Intrusion Detection and Attack Classification Using Feed-Forward Neural Network

Fast Internet growth and increase in number of users make network security essential in recent decades. Lately one of the most hot research topics in network security is intrusion detection systems (IDSs) which try to keep security at the highest level. This paper addresses a IDS using a 2-layered feed-forward neural network. In training phase, “early stopping” strategy is used to overcome the “over-fitting” problem in neural networks. The proposed system is evaluated by DARPA dataset. The connections selected from DARPA is preprocessed and feature range is converted into [-1, 1]. These modifications affect final detection results notably. Experimental results show that the system, with simplicity in comparison with similar cases, has suitable performance with high precision.
A Novel Drug Binding Site on Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels in Rat Brain

The effectiveness of several antiepileptic, analgesic, and neuroprotective drugs is attributable to state-dependent inhibition of voltage-gated sodium channels. To help characterize their site and mode of action on sodium channels, a member of the lamotrigine family, R-(-)-2,4-diamino-6-(fluromethyl)-5-(2,3,5-trichlorophenyl)-pyrimidine (BW202W92), was radiolabeled and used as a binding ligand in rat forebrain synaptosomes. Although the level of specific [3H]BW202W92 binding in a standard incubation medium was relatively poor, low concentrations of tetrodotoxin (EC50 = 2-3 nM) greatly enhanced the binding, apparently by increasing the affinity of the binding sites. Tetrodotoxin-dependent binding was stereoselective (the less active enantiomer, S-(-)-2,4-diamino-6-(fluromethyl)-5-(2,3,5-trichlorophenyl)-pyrimidine (BW203W92), was up to 30-fold less potent, depending on conditions) and was extremely sensitive to inhibition by raised K+ concentration (IC50 = 5.9 mM), an effect that was ascribed to changes in membrane potential. In addition, the binding was inhibited by sodium channel neurotoxins acting on sites 3 and 4, but it was resistant to batrachotoxin (site 2) and brevetoxin (site 5). Several drugs acting on sodium channels displaced tetrodotoxin-dependent [3H]BW202W92 binding, and most of those tested showed different affinities under depolarized (100 mM K+) and polarized (1 mM K+) conditions. In a subset of compounds for which data were available, binding affinity in depolarized synaptosomes correlated well with apparent affinity for the inactivated state of sodium channels. The [3H]BW202W92 binding site is novel and is likely to represent a pharmacologically important site of action of drugs on voltage-gated sodium channels in the brain.
Learning agents in an artificial power exchange : Tacit collusion , Market power and efficiency of two double-auction mechanisms

This paper addresses the widely debated issue of comparing the relative efficiency of two doubleauction mechanisms for power exchanges. An agent-based modeling approach is adopted to simulate a double-auction power exchange. Two standard pricing rules are considered and compared: “discriminatory” and “uniform”. Computational experiments, characterized by different inelastic demand level, reproduce oligopolistic competitions on both quantity and price between learning sellers/producers. Two reinforcement learning algorithms are considered “Marimon and McGrattan” and “Q-learning” in an attempt to simulate different behavioral assumptions. In particular, with the former algorithm greedy sellers optimizing their instantaneous rewards on a tick by tick basis are simulated, while with the latter inter-temporal optimizing sellers which exhibit tacit collusive behavior are modeled. Results have been interpreted by means of game-theoretical solutions and performance metrics. Nash equilibria in pure strategies are considered for monitoring the correct learning of competitive solutions and sellers’ joint profit maximizing for monitoring the emergence of tacit collusion among the sellers. Furthermore, the difference between payments to suppliers and total generation costs have been estimated for measuring the degree of market inefficiency. Results show that tacit collusive behaviors are penalized by the discriminatory auction mechanism in a low demand scenario. Lower profits for sellers/producers are determined compared to the uniform mechanism. Conversely, in a high demand scenario the differences result negligible.
Chronic neuropathic pain severity is determined by lesion level in aquaporin 4-antibody-positive myelitis

Importance Chronic, intractable neuropathic pain is a common and debilitating consequence of neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) myelitis, with no satisfactory treatment; few studies have yet to explore its aetiology. Objective To establish if myelitis-associated chronic pain in NMOSD is related to the craniocaudal location of spinal cord lesions. Method (1) Retrospective cohort of 76 aquaporin 4-antibody (AQP4-Ab)-positive patients from Oxford and Liverpool's national NMOSD clinics, assessing current pain and craniocaudal location of cord lesion contemporary to pain onset. (2) Focused prospective study of 26 AQP4-Ab-positive Oxford patients, a subset of the retrospective cohort, assessing current craniocaudal lesion location and current pain. Results Patients with isolated thoracic cord myelitis at the time of pain onset were significantly more disabled and suffered more pain. Cervical and thoracic lesions that persisted from pain onset to ‘out of relapse’ follow-up (current MRI) had highly significant (p<0.01) opposing effects on pain scores (std. β=−0.46 and 0.48, respectively). Lesion length, total lesion burden and number of transverse myelitis relapses did not correlate with pain. Conclusions Persistent, caudally located (ie, thoracic) cord lesions in AQP4-Ab-positive patients associate with high postmyelitis chronic pain scores, irrespective of number of myelitis relapses, lesion length and lesion burden. Although disability correlated with pain in isolation, it became an insignificant predictor of pain when analysed alongside craniocaudal location of lesions.
Exploring the Efficacy of Distance Treatment for Anxiety and Anxiety Sensitivity

Background: Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based treatment for anxiety disorders; however, many people have difficulty accessing treatment due to a variety of obstacles. As such, researchers have explored the possibility of using technology, such as the telephone or Internet, to deliver CBT. As interest in this type of treatment increases, it is important to ensure that the decision to promote such treatment is grounded in high quality evidence. Objectives: This review examined the efficacy of therapist-supported distance CBT for the treatment of anxiety disorders in adults. Search Methods: We searched the Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Group clinical registers (including randomized controlled trials from EMBASE, MEDLINE, and PsycINFO) up to October 2012 to identify relevant studies. We also searched online clinical trial registries and the reference lists of included studies. We contacted authors in the field to locate further relevant trials. Selection Criteria: Each identified study was assessed for inclusion independently by two authors. To be included, studies had to be randomized controlled trials of therapist-supported distance CBT compared to any of the following treatments: waiting list, treatment as usual, non-therapist-supported distance CBT, therapist-supported or non-therapist-supported distance interventions that were not CBT, or face-to-face CBT. We included studies that treated adults with an anxiety disorder defined according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1 The protocol for this review is outlined in ‘Olthuis, J. V. , Watt, M. C. , & Stewart, S. H. (2011). Therapistdelivered distance cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders in adults [Protocol]. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 3, CD009028. ’ This manuscript is currently under review. As first author of this article, I formulated the review protocol, conducted the literature search, study selection, data extraction, and data analysis, and wrote most of the manuscript with suggestions from my coauthors (K. M. Bailey and J. A. Hayden were also involved in this project), peer reviewers, and Cochrane editors.