Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Miocene Fossils and the History of Penguins in Australia

Australia has a fossil record of penguins reaching back to the Eocene, yet today is inhabited by just one breeding species, the little penguin Eudyptula minor. The description of recently collected penguin fossils from the re-dated upper Miocene Port Campbell Limestone of Portland (Victoria), in addition to reanalysis of previously described material, has allowed the Cenozoic history of penguins in Australia to be placed into a global context for the first time. Australian pre-Quaternary fossil penguins represent stem taxa phylogenetically disparate from each other and E. minor, implying multiple dispersals and extinctions. Late Eocene penguins from Australia are closest to contemporaneous taxa in Antarctica, New Zealand and South America. Given current material, the Miocene Australian fossil penguin fauna is apparently unique in harbouring ‘giant penguins’ after they went extinct elsewhere; and including stem taxa until at least 6 Ma, by which time crown penguins dominated elsewhere in the southern hemisphere. Separation of Australia from Antarctica during the Palaeogene, and its subsequent drift north, appears to have been a major event in Australian penguin biogeography. Increasing isolation through the Cenozoic may have limited penguin dispersal to Australia from outside the Australasian region, until intensification of the eastwards-flowing Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the mid-Miocene established a potential new dispersal vector to Australia.
On multiple‐delay output feedback stabilization of LTI plants

We develop a control methodology for linear time‐invariant plants that uses multiple delayed observations in feedback. Using the special coordinate basis, we show that multiple‐delay controllers can always be designed to stabilize minimum‐phase plants, and identify a class of non‐minimum‐phase plants that can be stabilized using these controllers. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Non-kin ties as a source of support amongst older adults ‘left behind’ in Poland: a quantitative study on the role of geographic distance

ABSTRACT In the transition to democracy and a market economy, the Central and Eastern European countries experienced rapid and fundamental changes. Large-scale emigration flows and pronounced reductions in previously universal welfare systems increased the phenomenon of ‘left behind’ older adults. We examine this phenomenon in the case of Poland, a rather family-oriented society which in recent years sent most emigrants to Western Europe in absolute terms. Employing a support system framework and representative survey data, we enquire into older adults’ support patterns. Our results suggest that older adults in Poland rely predominantly on family support, although this varies greatly across living arrangements. We also find a positive association between distance separating parents and their closest child, and support from at least one non-kin. Yet, our findings reveal differences between practical and emotional support, with the latter being more likely to be provided by non-kin, but with distance mattering to a lesser degree. Parents with very distant child(ren) are few and differ only from parents with very proximate child(ren), a finding prompting the question as to what is the difference between being ‘left behind’ by international and by internal migration. We conclude that the phenomenon of ‘left behind’ in Poland, at least in terms of support, is less a matter of children's migration and more an issue of household and regional context.
Dollarization of Liabilities, Net Worth Effects, and Optimal Monetary Policy

We consider optimal interest rate policies in an open economy model with balance sheet effects à la Bernanke-Gertler (1989) and overlapping wage contracts à la Calvo (1983). The optimal “flexible inflation targeting” policy under discretion involves a floating exchange rate and partial reaction of home interest rates to external shocks. This policy yields higher welfare than a policy of strictly fixed nominal exchange rates. Other optimal inflation targeting policies under discretion also dominate fixing. These results hold in spite of the credibility advantage of fixing and the presence of dollar liabilities and balance sheet effects. ∗This paper was prepared for the NBER conference on Crisis Prevention, Islamorada, Florida, January 2001. We are grateful to Nouriel Roubini and conference participants for useful comments and discussion, and to Paul Söderlind and Lars Svensson for Gauss programs. Of course, any errors or shortcomings are ours alone.
Can Teacher Quality Be Effectively Assessed

In this paper, we describe the results of the first large-scale study, based on a unique data set from North Carolina, assessing the relationship between the certification of teachers by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and elementary- level student achievement. Our findings indicate that NBPTS is successfully identifying the more effective teachers among applicants, and that NBPTS-certified teachers, prior to becoming certified, were more effective than their non-certified counterparts at increasing student achievement. The statistical significance and magnitude of the NBPTS effect, however, differs significantly by grade level and student type. (Publication updated on web 4/7/05)
Angiotensin II, From Vasoconstrictor to Growth Factor: A Paradigm Shift

Angiotensin II (Ang II) is today considered as one of the essential factors in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease, producing acute hemodynamic and chronic pleiotropic effects. Although now it is widely accepted that these chronic effects are important, Ang II was initially considered only a short-acting, vasoactive hormone. This view was modified a quarter of a century ago when Dr Owens and his group published an article in Circulation Research with initial evidence that Ang II can act as a growth factor that regulates cell hypertrophy. They showed in a series of elegant experiments that Ang II promotes hypertrophy and hyperploidy of cultured rat aortic smooth muscle cells. However, Ang II had no effect on hyperplasia. These findings led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the roles of growth factors and vasoactive substances in cardiovascular pathology and helped to redirect basic and clinical renin–angiotensin system research during the next 25 years. Ang II is now known to be a pleiotropic hormone that uses multiple signaling pathways to influence most processes that contribute to the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases, ranging from hypertrophy, endothelial dysfunction, cardiac remodeling, fibrosis, and inflammation to oxidative stress. The renin–angiotensin system (RAS) is now considered one of the essential factors in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease. The main effector of the RAS, angiotensin II (Ang II), contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease as both an endocrine and a local autocrine/paracrine hormone, producing acute (vasoconstriction, water/salt retention) and more importantly chronic (hypertrophy, hyperplasia, oxidative stress, fibrosis, and inflammation) effects. Today, it is widely accepted that these chronic effects have a critical role in the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, and heart failure. Initially, Ang II was considered predominantly as a short-acting, vasoactive hormone, and its role in the …
European Judo Championships: impact of the new rule changes on points and penalties

In 2013 the International Judo Federation started to test new rules to judo competitions with the objective of make judo more attractive for the general public and to promote which has been denominated “positive judo”, i.e., a more combative style. The aim of the present investigation was to compare two consecutive European Judo Championships (2012 and 2013, i.e., before and after the rule changes, respectively) in terms of scores and penalties. Statistics involved chi-square, analysis for linear trends in proportions and odds-ratio (OR), using 5% as significance level. The rules changes resulted in the increase of penalties and in the decrease of waza-ari (males, χ2=8.76, P=0.003, OR=0.55; females, χ2=3.79, P=0.050, OR=0.61) and yuko (males, χ2=38.93, P<0.001, OR=0.31; females, χ2=6.84, P=0.009, OR=0.56) scores for both males and females, while increasing ippon only for males (χ2=5.03, P=0.025). The total number of shido also increased for both groups (males, χ2=14.21, P<0.001, OR=1.53; females, χ2=6.63, P=0.010, OR=1.43), while the prevalence of hansoku-make increased only for males (χ2=5.78, P=0.016, OR=8.43). Thus, the rules change did not achieve the goal established of increasing scores and decreasing penalties.
Investigating Boolean Matrix Factorization

Matrix factorization or factor analysis is an important task helpful in the analysis of high dimensional real world data. There are several well known methods and algorithms for factorization of real data but many application areas including information retrieval, pattern recognition and data mining often require processing of binary rather than real data. Unfortunately, the methods used for real matrix factorization fail in the latter case. In this paper we focus on the Boolean Matrix Factorization (BMF), introduce the task and present neural network, genetic algorithm and nonnegative matrix facrotization based BMF solvers. The algorithms are tested on several data sets and their results are compared.
Stability of a Resonant System of Conservation Laws Modeling Polymer Flow with Gravitation

Abstract We prove L 1 uniqueness and stability for a resonant 2×2 system of conservation laws that arise as a model for two phase polymer flow in porous media. The analysis uses the equivalence of the Eulerian and Lagrangian formulation of this system, and the results are first established for an auxiliary scalar equation. Our methods are based on front tracking approximations for the auxiliary equation, and the Kružkov entropy condition for scalar conservation laws.
Relationships between the Prefrontal Cortex and the Basal Ganglia in the Rat: Physiology of the Corticosubthalamic Circuits

The prelimbic–medial orbital areas (PL/MO) of the prefrontal cortex are connected to the medial part of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) through a direct projection and an indirect circuit that involves the core of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the ventral pallidum (VP). In the present study, the influence of the PL/MO on the discharge of STN cells has been characterized. The major pattern of the responses observed after stimulation of PL/MO consisted of two excitatory peaks often separated by a brief inhibitory period. The early excitation was most likely to be caused by the activation of direct cortical inputs because its latency matches the conduction time of the prefrontal STN projections. The late excitation resulted from the activation of the indirect PL/MO–STN pathway that operates through a disinhibitory process. Indeed, the late excitation was no longer observed after acute blockade of the glutamatergic corticostriatal transmission by CNQX application into the NAcc. A similar effect was obtained after the blockade of the GABAergic striatopallidal transmission by bicuculline application into the VP. Finally, the brief inhibition that followed the early excitation was likely to result from the activation of a feedback inhibitory loop through VP because this inhibition was no longer observed after the blockade of STN inputs by CNQX application into the VP. This study further indicates the implication of STN in prefrontal basal ganglia circuits and underlines that in addition to a direct excitatory input, medial STN receives an indirect excitatory influence from PL/MO through an NAcc–VP–STN disinhibitory circuit.
Information Economics

When George Stigler published “The Economics of Information” in this journal a little over 50 years ago (1961), he was justified in his complaints about the absence of research on the topic. Yet, this complaint was soon to become obsolete. Figure 1 reports the incidence of the phrases “information economics” and “economics of information” normalized by the use of the word “economics” in books published from 1900 to 2008. The figure clearly shows that Stigler’s article was a harbinger of a new field of inquiry. The field grew quickly for the next 25 years, reached a plateau that lasted from themid-1980s until the late 1990s, and then experienced another growth spurt. During the last decade, 13 percent of the articles published in the JPE had the word “information” in their abstract.
Integrality and Separability of Multitouch Interaction Techniques in 3D Manipulation Tasks

Multitouch displays represent a promising technology for the display and manipulation of data. While the manipulation of 2D data has been widely explored, 3D manipulation with multitouch displays remains largely unexplored. Based on an analysis of the integration and separation of degrees of freedom, we propose a taxonomy for 3D manipulation techniques with multitouch displays. Using that taxonomy, we introduce Depth-Separated Screen-Space (DS3), a new 3D manipulation technique based on the separation of translation and rotation. In a controlled experiment, we compared DS3 with Sticky Tools and Screen-Space. Results show that separating the control of translation and rotation significantly affects performance for 3D manipulation, with DS3 performing faster than the two other techniques.
Full-Capacity Unitary Recurrent Neural Networks

Recurrent neural networks are powerful models for processing sequential data, but they are generally plagued by vanishing and exploding gradient problems. Unitary recurrent neural networks (uRNNs), which use unitary recurrence matrices, have recently been proposed as a means to avoid these issues. However, in previous experiments, the recurrence matrices were restricted to be a product of parameterized unitary matrices, and an open question remains: when does such a parameterization fail to represent all unitary matrices, and how does this restricted representational capacity limit what can be learned? To address this question, we propose full-capacity uRNNs that optimize their recurrence matrix over all unitary matrices, leading to significantly improved performance over uRNNs that use a restricted-capacity recurrence matrix. Our contribution consists of two main components. First, we provide a theoretical argument to determine if a unitary parameterization has restricted capacity. Using this argument, we show that a recently proposed unitary parameterization has restricted capacity for hidden state dimension greater than 7. Second, we show how a complete, full-capacity unitary recurrence matrix can be optimized over the differentiable manifold of unitary matrices. The resulting multiplicative gradient step is very simple and does not require gradient clipping or learning rate adaptation. We confirm the utility of our claims by empirically evaluating our new full-capacity uRNNs on both synthetic and natural data, achieving superior performance compared to both LSTMs and the original restricted-capacity uRNNs.
An Achievable Region for a General Multi-terminal Network and its Chain Graph Representation

Random coding, along with various standard techniques such as coded time-sharing, rate-splitting, superposition coding, and binning, are traditionally used in obtaining achievable rate regions for multi-terminal networks. The error analysis of such an achievable scheme relies heavily on the properties of strongly joint typical sequences and on bounds of the cardinality of typical sets. In this work, we obtain an achievable rate region for a general (i.e. an arbitrary set of messages shared amongst encoding nodes, which transmit to arbitrary decoding nodes) memoryless, single-hop, multi-terminal network without feedback or cooperation by introducing a general framework and notation, and carefully generalizing the derivation of the error analysis. We show that this general inner bound may be obtained from a graph representation that captures the statistical relationship among codewords and allows one to readily obtain the rate bounds that define the achievable rate region. The proposed graph representation naturally leads to the derivation of all the achievable schemes that can be generated by combining classic random coding techniques for any memoryless network used without feedback or cooperation.
Facultative Hyperparasitism: Extreme Survival Behaviour of the Primary Solitary Ectoparasitoid, Dinarmus basalis

Abstract This study investigated the egg-laying behaviour of ectoparsitoid, Dinarmus basalis Rondani (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), females when faced with a prolonged deprivation of suitable hosts leading to extreme ‘oviposition pressure’. The egg-laying behaviour of virgin D. basalis females was tested with Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) (Coleoptera: Bruchidae) hosts previously parasitized by the conspecific females in which the developing larvae had reached the last larval instar (L5) or pupae. The hyperparasitism did not prevent the occurrence of superparasitism, but only one D. basalis egg from a hyperparasitized D. basalis L5 larvae reached the adult stage due to the solitary behaviour of the D. basalis larvae. Under these experimental conditions, 60.78% of the D. basalis adults emerging from larvae were miniaturized due to the depletion of host resources.
Pneumocystis jiroveci Dihydropteroate Synthase Genotypes in Immunocompetent Infants and Immunosuppressed Adults, Amiens, France

To date, investigations of Pneumocystis jiroveci circulation in the human reservoir through the dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) locus analysis have only been conducted by examining P. jirovecii isolates from immunosuppressed patients with Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP). Our study identifies P. jirovecii genotypes at this locus in 33 immunocompetent infants colonized with P. jirovecii contemporaneously with a bronchiolitis episode and in 13 adults with PCP; both groups of patients were monitored in Amiens, France. The results have pointed out identical features of P. jirovecii DHPS genotypes in the two groups, suggesting that in these two groups, transmission cycles of P. jirovecii infections are linked. If these two groups represent sentinel populations for P. jirovecii infections, our results suggest that all persons parasitized by P. jirovecii, whatever their risk factor for infection and the form of parasitism they have, act as interwoven circulation networks of P. jirovecii.
Synthesis of Time-to-Amplitude Converter by Mean CoeVolution with Adaptive Parameters

The challenging task to synthesize automatically a time-to-amplitude converter, which unites by its functionality several digital circuits, has been successfully solved with the help of a novel methodology. The proposed approach is based on a paradigm according to which the substructures are regarded as additional mutation types and when ranged with other mutations form a new adaptive individual-level mutation technique. This mutation approach led to the discovery of an original coevolution strategy that is characterized by very low selection rates. Parallel island-model evolution has been running in a hybrid competitive-cooperative interaction throughout two incremental stages. The adaptive population size is applied for synchronization of the parallel evolutions.
Modelling of Twin Rotor MIMO system

This paper presents an approach to model Twin Rotor MIMO System (TRMS). For simplicity, the model is separated into three channels: vertical, horizontal, and cross-coupling channels. A hybrid method, a cooperation between first principle method and optimal algorithm, is used to analyse and model the system. Unknown parameters of the model are estimated by physical experiments and Genetic Algorithm. The pith and yaw outputs of the identified model in simulation and the real system with the same several types of inputs are compared with each other.
Supplementary Methods

Western blot experiments Citrullination of human recombinant vimentin was performed as previously described. [7] Carbamylation of human recombinant vimentin was achieved by incubation at 37˚C with 100 mM potassium cyanate for 2 hours, followed by dialysis against phosphate-buffered saline at pH 7.4 at 4˚C to remove excess cyanate. Conjugation of the synthesized acetylated vimentin peptide to carrier albumin was achieved via an N-terminal cysteine or C-terminal cysteine amide residue added to the peptide's sequence. Crosslinking between the peptide and the carrier was performed by an MBS-mediated (Maleimidobenzoyl-N-hydroxysuccinimide ester) optimized coupling procedure according to the JPT Peptide Technologies (Berlin, Germany) protocol. Mass spectrometry of the purified sample confirmed the most abundant protein product corresponded to a 4:1 covalent complex of albumin with the acetylated vimentin peptide, and reverse phase HPLC analysis of purified sample confirmed the removal of essentially all unbound (free) maleimido derivative. Samples of each modified vimentin protein containing 5 μg of protein were mixed with an equal volume of 2× laemmli sample buffer, boiled and separated by SDS-PAGE (4-12% NuPAGE, Invitrogen). Proteins were transferred to nitrocellulose membranes. Blots were blocked in blocking buffer (PBS containing 5% non-fat dried milk and 0.1% NP-40) for one hour at room temperature and incubated overnight at 4°C with the antibody of interest diluted in blocking buffer. Sera from RA patients (diluted 1:1000) were left untreated or preincubated with 10 µg/ml of the indicated peptide for 2 hours at room temperature, followed by incubation for at least 8 hours at 4°C with nitrocellulose membrane. After washing with blocking buffer, bound antibodies were detected by incubation with Horseradish-peroxidase conjugated secondary anti-human IgG antibody (Dianova, Germany) and the blots were developed using the ECL system (GE Healthcare, Germany). Vimentin-peptide ELISA The 12mer peptides were synthesized, in accordance with Fmoc-chemistry at the Peptide Specialty of JPT PeptideTechnologies (Berlin, Germany). An N-terminal extension of the peptides (Biotin-SGSG) was designed for a defined flexibility and to incorporate an affinity tag. Crude fractions after peptide synthesis were purified using high-performance liquid chromatography. Quality and purity of the peptide was assessed by mass spectrometry and analytical high-performance liquid chromatography in according to the manufacture procedure (JPT Peptide Technology; Berlin Germany). Microtiter plates (Maxisorb, Nunc, Denmark) were precoated with 2 µg/ml streptavidin (Perbio Science Deutschland GmbH, Bonn, Germany) in phosphate-buffered saline (pH7.6). After a 2 hour incubation at 25°C, the plates were blocked with 1% bovine serum albumin in phosphate-buffered saline …
Excitation spectrum of mesoscopic proximity structures

We investigate one aspect of the proximity effect, viz., the local density of states of a superconductor-normal metal sandwich. In contrast to earlier work, we allow for the presence of an arbitrary concetration of impurities in the structure. The superconductor induces a gap in the normal metal spectrum that is proportional to the inverse of the elastic mean free path l for rather clean systems. For a mean free path much shorter than the thickness of the normal metal, we find a gap size proportional to l that approaches the behavior predicted by the Usadel equation (diffusive limit). We also discuss the influence of interface and surface roughness, the conseqeunces of a non-ideal transmittivity of the interface, and the dependence of our results on the choice of the model of impurity scattering.