Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sensitivity of the simulated East Asian summer monsoon climatology to four convective parameterization schemes

[1] This study attempts to clarify the effects of parameterized convection on a simulated East Asian summer monsoon climatology from 1997 to 2006 within a regional climate model (RCM) framework. Four different convective parameterized schemes (CPSs) were chosen in the National Centers for the Environmental Prediction regional spectral model, the Simplified Arakawa-Schubert (SAS), Relaxed Arakawa-Schubert (RAS), NCAR Community Climate Model version 3 (CCM), and new Kain-Fritsch (KF2) schemes. On the whole, there is no single scheme that outperforms the other in all aspects of the simulated climatology. The results show that the SAS and KF2 schemes are capable of reproducing the 10-year June–July–August climatology with a certain wet bias over land and dry bias over the oceans. The SAS scheme is capable of resolving the interannual variations of the monsoon precipitation, and the KF2 is able to capture the intraseasonal variation. The RAS scheme significantly reduces precipitation over land compared to other schemes, but interannual variabilities are reasonably reproduced. On the contrary, the CCM scheme significantly overestimates the precipitation over land as well as ocean. Discernable differences among four CPSs are found in the distribution of the spatial spectrum, in which the KF2 scheme is the most effective in adding regional details to an external large-scale forcing. The feasibility of a physics ensemble using different convection schemes and the impacts of domain size are also discussed.
Acceleration of Bone Repair in NOD/SCID Mice by Human Monoosteophils, Novel LL-37-Activated Monocytes

Background An incomplete understanding of bone forming cells during wound healing and ectopic calcification has led to a search for circulating cells that may fulfill this function. Previously, we showed that monoosteophils, a novel lineage of calcifying/bone-forming cells generated by treatment of monocytes with the natural peptide LL-37, are candidates. In this study, we have analyzed their gene expression profile and bone repair function. Methods and Findings Human monoosteophils can be distinguished from monocytes, macrophages and osteoclasts by their unique up-regulation of integrin α3 and down-regulation of CD14 and CD16. Monoosteophils express high mRNA and protein levels of SPP1 (osteopontin), GPNMB (osteoactivin), CHI3L1 (cartilage glycoprotein-39), CHIT1 (Chitinase 1), MMP-7, CCL22 and MAPK13 (p38MAPKδ). Monocytes from wild type, but not MAPK13 KO mice are also capable of monoosteophil differentiation, suggesting that MAPK13 regulates this process. When human monoosteophils were implanted in a freshly drilled hole in mid-diaphyseal femurs of NOD/SCID mice, significant bone repair required only 14 days compared to at least 24 days in control treated injuries. Conclusion Human derived monoosteophils, characterized as CD45+α3+α3β+CD34−CD14−BAP (bone alkaline phosphatase)− cells, can function in an animal model of bone injury.
Weighted SGD for ℓp Regression with Randomized Preconditioning

In recent years, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) methods and randomized linear algebra (RLA) algorithms have been applied to many large-scale problems in machine learning and data analysis. SGD methods are easy to implement and applicable to a wide range of convex optimization problems. In contrast, RLA algorithms provide much stronger performance guarantees but are applicable to a narrower class of problems. We aim to bridge the gap between these two methods in solving constrained overdetermined linear regression problems-e.g., ℓ2 and ℓ1 regression problems. We propose a hybrid algorithm named pwSGD that uses RLA techniques for preconditioning and constructing an importance sampling distribution, and then performs an SGD-like iterative process with weighted sampling on the preconditioned system.By rewriting a deterministic ℓ p regression problem as a stochastic optimization problem, we connect pwSGD to several existing ℓ p solvers including RLA methods with algorithmic leveraging (RLA for short). We prove that pwSGD inherits faster convergence rates that only depend on the lower dimension of the linear system, while maintaining low computation complexity. Such SGD convergence rates are superior to other related SGD algorithm such as the weighted randomized Kaczmarz algorithm.Particularly, when solving ℓ1 regression with size n by d, pwSGD returns an approximate solution with ε relative error in the objective value in 𝒪(log n·nnz(A)+poly(d)/ε2) time. This complexity is uniformly better than that of RLA methods in terms of both ε and d when the problem is unconstrained. In the presence of constraints, pwSGD only has to solve a sequence of much simpler and smaller optimization problem over the same constraints. In general this is more efficient than solving the constrained subproblem required in RLA.For ℓ2 regression, pwSGD returns an approximate solution with ε relative error in the objective value and the solution vector measured in prediction norm in 𝒪(log n·nnz(A)+poly(d) log(1/ε)/ε) time. We show that for unconstrained ℓ2 regression, this complexity is comparable to that of RLA and is asymptotically better over several state-of-the-art solvers in the regime where the desired accuracy ε, high dimension n and low dimension d satisfy d ≥ 1/ε and n ≥ d2/ε. We also provide lower bounds on the coreset complexity for more general regression problems, indicating that still new ideas will be needed to extend similar RLA preconditioning ideas to weighted SGD algorithms for more general regression problems. Finally, the effectiveness of such algorithms is illustrated numerically on both synthetic and real datasets, and the results are consistent with our theoretical findings and demonstrate that pwSGD converges to a medium-precision solution, e.g., ε = 10-3, more quickly.
Arabian sea surface winds and ocean transports determined from ERS-1 scatterometer

Satellite scatterometer wind velocity measurements are a new source of data for studies of seasonal-to-interannual ocean-atmosphere interactions in the Arabian Sea, where the largest and steadiest wind speeds occur in northern summer. Three satellite wind velocity data products (named CMOD4, FD, and IFR2), all created from radar backscatter measured by the first European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1), were compared to moored-buoy wind measurements recorded in the central Arabian Sea during October 1994 to October 1995. Orthogonal regression analysis of 74 collocations indicated IFR2 winds were more representative of buoy winds compared to CMOD4 and FD. IFR2 winds during 1995 are described, including the time of monsoon onset and the path of the Somali Jet. Monthly mean vertical transport across the bottom of the Ekman layer of the Arabian Sea north of 8°N, meridional Ekman transport along 8.5°N, and Sverdrup transport along 8.5°N were computed with IFR2 data from May 1992 to May 1996. During the 1992–1995 June–September southwest monsoon, upwelling into the Ekman layer of the Arabian Sea occurred at a mean rate of 3.4 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3 s−1), which was one-third smaller than the volume transport exiting within the Ekman layer across the southern boundary of the Arabian Sea, and the southward Sverdrup transport was 15 Sv. During the 1992–1996 December–March northeast monsoon, nearly 5 Sv sank below the bottom of the Ekman layer, 4 Sv entered the Arabian Sea in the Ekman layer, and the Sverdrup transport was negligible. Year-to-year transport variations were small.
Importance of serum hemoglobin in hormone refractory prostate cancer.

OBJECTIVES In the search for an early measure of response in hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC), most have targeted changes in serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Up to this point, no one has targeted changes in serum hemoglobin during treatment. If dynamic changes in hemoglobin after treatment provide additive prognostic information to dynamic changes in PSA, then we should consider and test ways to incorporate serum hemoglobin into measures of response in HRPC. METHODS Our patients consisted of 321 men who were studied on Cancer and Leukemia Group B protocols 9181 and 9182. We fit serial values of PSA and hemoglobin with an exponential model: y = exp(alpha + beta*t + gamma*t(2)) with y symbolizing either PSA or hemoglobin and t denoting time. We then used the Cox proportional hazard model to relate the parameters of the model (alpha, beta, and gamma) to subsequent survival. RESULTS We found that the exponential model fit serial measurements of both PSA and serum hemoglobin well, and all three of the parameters for both markers related closely to subsequent survival (P < or = 0.003). The Cox model suggested a composite hazard score (HS) as a way to consolidate the information from serial measurements of both serum markers, and we observed that those with HS < 0 enjoyed a longer survival. CONCLUSION Because serial measurements of serum hemoglobin during treatment of HRPC add prognostic information to serial measurements of PSA, we hypothesize that combining the dynamic changes in serum hemoglobin with those of PSA could lead to an improved measure of response in HRPC.
A methodology to study rain splash and wash processes under natural rainfall

The complex interactions between rainfall‐driven erosion processes and rainfall characteristics, slope gradient, soil treatment and soil surface processes are not very well understood. A combination of experiments under natural rainfall and a consistent physical theory for their interpretation is needed to shed more light on the underlying processes. The present study demonstrates such a methodology. An experimental device employed earlier in laboratory studies was used to measure downslope rain splash and ‘splash‐creep’, lateral splash, upslope splash and rainfall‐driven runoff transport (wash) from a highly aggregated clay‐rich oxisol exposed to natural rainfall in West Java, Indonesia. Two series of measurements were made: the first with the soil surface at angles of 0°, 5°, 15° and 40°; and the second all at an angle of 5° but with different tillage and mulching treatments. A number of rainfall erosivity indices were calculated from rainfall intensity measurements and compared with measured transport components. Overall storm kinetic energy correlated reasonably well with sediment transport, but much better agreement was obtained when a threshold rainfall intensity (20 mm h−1) was introduced. Rain splash transport measurements were interpreted using a recently developed theory relating detachment to sediment transport. Furthermore, a conceptually sound yet simple wash transport model is advanced that satisfactorily predicted observed washed sediment concentrations. The lack of replication precluded rigorous assessment of the effect of slope and soil treatment on erosion processes, but some general conclusions could still be drawn. The results stress the importance of experiments under conditions of natural rainfall. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Controlled dropout: A different approach to using dropout on deep neural network

Deep neural networks (DNNs), which show outstanding performance in various areas, consume considerable amounts of memory and time during training. Our research led us to propose a controlled dropout technique with the potential of reducing the memory space and training time of DNNs. Dropout is a popular algorithm that solves the overfitting problem of DNNs by randomly dropping units in the training process. The proposed controlled dropout intentionally chooses which units to drop compared to conventional dropout, thereby possibly facilitating a reduction in training time and memory usage. In this paper, we focus on validating whether controlled dropout can replace the traditional dropout technique to enable us to further our research aimed at improving the training speed and memory efficiency. A performance comparison between controlled dropout and traditional dropout is carried out by implementing an image classification experiment on data comprising handwritten digits from the MNIST dataset (Mixed National Institute of Standards and Technology dataset). The experimental results show that the proposed controlled dropout is as effective as traditional dropout. Furthermore, the experimental result implies that controlled dropout is more efficient when an appropriate dropout rate and number of hidden layers are used.
A Thorough Examination of the CNN/Daily Mail Reading Comprehension Task

Enabling a computer to understand a document so that it can answer comprehension questions is a central, yet unsolved goal of NLP. A key factor impeding its solution by machine learned systems is the limited availability of human-annotated data. Hermann et al. (2015) seek to solve this problem by creating over a million training examples by pairing CNN and Daily Mail news articles with their summarized bullet points, and show that a neural network can then be trained to give good performance on this task. In this paper, we conduct a thorough examination of this new reading comprehension task. Our primary aim is to understand what depth of language understanding is required to do well on this task. We approach this from one side by doing a careful hand-analysis of a small subset of the problems and from the other by showing that simple, carefully designed systems can obtain accuracies of 73.6% and 76.6% on these two datasets, exceeding current state-of-the-art results by 7-10% and approaching what we believe is the ceiling for performance on this task.
Pleistocene Rhine gravel: deposits of a braided river system with dominant pool preservation

Abstract An example of a gravelly braided river deposit is described which exhibits a rather low structural diversity as compared to other ancient and modern braided river sediments. The presented model is based on a study of the Rhine gravel, formed in front of the Würm stage extension of the Rhine glacier (northern part of Switzerland). The observations in the Rhine gravel suggest that only processes which operate generally at a low topographic level of the braided river system generate a response in the geological record, i.e. (1) pool deposits produced at the junction of two channels (cross-bedded trough fills); (2) channel sediments which reflect thin bedload sheets deposited by moderate-magnitude flow stages with low suspension concentrations; (3) sheet flow deposits produced by extraordinary high-magnitude flow stages with high suspension concentrations, probably due to outbursts from glacial lakes. Therefore, we postulate that in the Rhine gravel system only a limited number of braided river structures have a significant preservation potential: any deposit generated at an elevated geometric level, such as flood plain deposits or bars, are successively destroyed by channel formation and are replaced by channel deposits, which in turn may be reworked by pools which operate at the lowest geometric level. It is suggested that similar preservational hierarchies could eventually exist also in other braided river deposits.
Reliability of Microprocessor-Based Relay Protection Devices: Myths and Reality

The article examines four basic theses about the ostensibly extremely high reliability of microprocessor-based relay protection (MP) touted by supporters of MP. Through detailed analysis based on many references it is shown that the basis of these theses are widespread myths, and actually MP reliability is lower than the reliability of electromechanical and electronic protective relays on discrete components.
Psychiatric complications in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) during the acute treatment phase: a series of 10 cases

Summary In February 2003, Hong Kong was hit by a community-wide outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). During the period of the outbreak, 10 patients with SARS with psychiatric complications were referred to our Consultation and Liaison Psychiatry Team for assessment and management. We found that both the direct and indirect effects of SARS such as symptom severity total isolation during treatment and administration of steroid were probable causes of psychiatric complications. In this paper, we report on the nature of their psychiatric problems, challenges to management and psychiatric treatment strategies used during the acute phase.
Nongenetic inheritance and the evolution of costly female preference

In species where males provide neither direct benefits nor paternal care, it is typically assumed that female preferences are maintained by indirect selection reflecting genetic benefits to offspring of preferred males. However, it remains unclear whether populations harbour sufficient genetic variation in fitness to support costly female preferences – a problem called the ‘lek paradox’. Here, we ask whether indirect selection on female preferences can be maintained by nongenetic inheritance. We construct a general model that can be used to represent either genetic or nongenetic inheritance, depending on the choice of parameter values. Interestingly, we find that costly preference is most likely to evolve and persist when fitness depends on an environmentally induced factor that can be transmitted over a single generation only, such as an environment‐dependent paternal effect. Costly preference can also be supported when fitness depends on a highly mutable factor that can persist over multiple generations, such as an epigenetic mark, but the necessary conditions are more restrictive. Our findings show that nongenetic inheritance provides a plausible hypothesis for the maintenance of costly female preferences in species where males provide no direct benefits to females. Nongenetic paternal inheritance of fitness can occur in species lacking conventional forms of paternal care. Indeed, transmission of paternal condition via sperm‐borne nongenetic factors may be more likely to evolve than conventional forms of paternal investment because sperm‐borne effects are protected from cuckoldry. Our results furnish a novel example of an interaction between genetic and nongenetic inheritance that can lead to otherwise unexpected evolutionary outcomes.
A System for Controllable Magnetic Measurements of Hysteresis and Barkhausen Noise

A specially developed setup for precise measurement of magnetic hysteresis and Barkhausen noise is presented in this paper. A novelty of the setup consists in a unique combination of two main features: an accurate local determination of the magnetic field and an improved feedback control of the magnetization process. First, the magnetic field is measured by two Hall sensors at different distances above the sample. The sample field is determined by a linear extrapolation of these measured profiles of the tangential fields to the sample surface. Second, a digital feedback loop for precise control of the ac magnetization process is proposed. The feedback algorithm combines two methods of magnetizing signal adjustment: linear corrections of the magnetizing voltage amplitude and phase. The presented system is able to adjust the waveform of the magnetic induction or field to the prescribed sinusoidal or triangular shape. This provides stable and physically accurate results, which are independent of a specific experimental configuration.
The effect of various veneering techniques on the marginal fit of zirconia copings

PURPOSE This study aimed to evaluate the fit of zirconia ceramics before and after veneering, using 3 different veneering processes (layering, press-over, and CAD-on techniques). MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty standardized zirconia CAD/CAM frameworks were constructed and divided into three groups of 10 each. The first group was veneered using the traditional layering technique. Press-over and CAD-on techniques were used to veneer second and third groups. The marginal gap of specimens was measured before and after veneering process at 18 sites on the master die using a digital microscope. Paired t-test was used to evaluate mean marginal gap changes. One-way ANOVA and post hoc tests were also employed for comparison among 3 groups (α=.05). RESULTS Marginal gap of 3 groups was increased after porcelain veneering. The mean marginal gap values after veneering in the layering group (63.06 µm) was higher than press-over (50.64 µm) and CAD-on (51.50 µm) veneered groups (P<.001). CONCLUSION Three veneering methods altered the marginal fit of zirconia copings. Conventional layering technique increased the marginal gap of zirconia framework more than pressing and CAD-on techniques. All ceramic crowns made through three different veneering methods revealed clinically acceptable marginal fit.
Low-temperature SCR of NOx by NH3 over MnOx/SAPO-34 prepared by two different methods: a comparative study

ABSTRACT The low-temperature selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NOx is a promising technology for removing NOx from flue gases. However, the vulnerability of Mn-based catalysts to SO2 and H2O poisoning makes them unsuitable for industrial application. Herein, catalysts based on the MnOx/SAPO-34 catalysts were prepared by conventional impregnation and an improved molecularly designed dispersion method for use in the low-temperature SCR. The improved molecularly designed catalyst containing 20 wt% of MnOx exhibited high low-temperature NH3-SCR activity. Nearly 90% of the NOx was converted exclusively to N2 at 160°C using this catalyst. The structure and morphological analyses of the catalyst showed that the amorphous MnOx was well dispersed on the surface of the support. The reasons for the high performance of the catalysts were ascertained using surface N2 adsorption, XPS, H2-TPR and NH3-TPD. The results of these analyses indicated that high specific surface area and the redox capability, of the abundant Mn4+ and Mn3+ species, coupled with the surface chemisorbed oxygen and strong acid sites had a significant effect on the SCR reaction. In addition, the effects of SO2 and H2O on activity of the catalysts were also investigated and it was found that the highly dispersed 20 wt% MnOx/SAPO-34 catalyst exhibited better SO2 poisoning resistance than the other impregnated catalysts.
Design for longevity: ongoing use of instruments from nime 2010-14

Every new edition of NIME brings dozens of new DMIs and the feeling that only a few of them will eventually break through. Previous work tried to address this issue with a deductive approach by formulating design frameworks; we addressed this issue with a inductive approach by elaborating on successes and failures of previous DMIs. We contacted 97 DMI makers that presented a new instrument at ﬁve successive editions of NIME (2010-2014); 70 answered. They were asked to indicate the original motivation for designing the DMI and to present information about its uptake. Results conﬁrmed that most of the instruments have diﬃculties establishing themselves. Also, they were asked to reﬂect on the speciﬁc factors that facilitated and those that hindered instrument longevity. By grounding these re-ﬂections on existing reserach on NIME and HCI, we propose a series of design considerations for future DMIs.