Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Errors in SABER kinetic temperature caused by non-LTE model parameters

The vast set of near global and continuous atmospheric measurements made by the SABER instrument since 2002, including daytime and nighttime kinetic temperature (Tk ) from 20 to 105 km, is available to the scientific community. The temperature is retrieved from SABER measurements of the atmospheric 15 pm CO2 limb emission. This emission separates from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) conditions in the rarefied mesosphere and thermosphere, making it necessary to consider the CO 2 vibrational state non-LTE populations in the retrieval algorithm above 70 km. Those populations depend on kinetic parameters describing the rate at which energy exchange between atmospheric molecules take place, but some of these collisional rates are not well known. We consider current uncertainties in the rates of quenching of CO 2 (v2 ) by N2 , O2 and O, and the CO 2 (v2 ) vibrationalvibrational exchange to estimate their impact on SABER Tk for different atmospheric conditions. The Tk is more sensitive to the uncertainty in the latter two and their effects depend on altitude. The Tk combined systematic error due to non-LTE kinetic parameters does not exceed X 1.5 K below 95 km and X4-5 K at 100 km for most latitudes and seasons (except for polar summer) if the Tk profile does not have pronounced vertical structure. The error is X3 K at 80 km, X6 K at 84 km and X 18 K at 100 km under the less favourable polar summer conditions. For strong temperature inversion layers, the errors reach X3 K at 82 km and X8 K at 90 km. This particularly affects tide amplitude estimates, with errors of up to X3 K. D R A F T September 18, 2008, 9:40am D R A F T GARCÍA-COMAS ET AL.: SABER TK ERROR DUE TO NON-LTE PARAMETERS X 3
Effect of substrate temperature on the resistance to wear for Nitec coatings deposited via thermal flame-spraying technique

Results for the deposition of nickel-based coatings on iron substrates using the thermal flame-spraying technique, with surface preparation by sand blasting, are presented. Basically, we studied the influence of the temperature of the substrate on the structural, morphological, and wear resistance properties. The coatings were structurally characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the surface morphology was characterized through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and confocal laser microscopy (MLC). The chemical composition was determined by means of Xray fluorescence (XRF), and wear was evaluated by testing three-body abrasive wear, ball-on-disk and scratch tester. Through XRD results, it was established that the coatings are polycrystalline and have a bodycentered cubic (BCC) crystal structure at all deposition temperatures. SEM analysis determined that the surfaces of the films decrease their porosity as the deposit temperature increases, and wear tests showed that the coatings are more resistant to this test than is the substrate.
NORC at the University of Chicago The University of Chicago Exploring Differences in Employment between Household and Establishment Data

Exploring Differences in Employment between Household and Establishment Data Author(s): Katharine G. Abraham, John Haltiwanger, Kristin Sandusky, and James R. Spletzer Source: Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 31, No. 2, The Princeton Data Improvement Initiative (Part 2, April 2013), pp. S129-S172 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Society of Labor Economists and the NORC at the University of Chicago Stable URL: http://www.jstor. org/stable/10.1086/669062 . Accessed: 06/11/2013 11:13
Spectropolarimetry of the Type IIb Supernova 2001ig

We present spectropolarimetric observations of the Type IIb SN 2001ig in NGC 7424; conducted with the ESO VLT FORS1 on 2001 December 16, 2002 January 3, and 2002 August 16, or 13, 31, and 256 days postexplosion. These observations are at three different stages of the SN evolution: (1) the hydrogen-rich photospheric phase, (2) the Type II to Type Ib transitional phase, and (3) the nebular phase. At each of these stages, the observations show remarkably different polarization properties as a function of wavelength. We show that the degree of interstellar polarization is 0.17%. The low intrinsic polarization (~0.2%) at the first epoch is consistent with an almost spherical (<10% deviation from spherical symmetry) hydrogen-dominated ejecta. Similar to SN 1987A and to Type IIP SNe, a sharp increase in the degree of the polarization (~1%) is observed when the outer hydrogen layer becomes optically thin by day 31; only at this epoch is the polarization well described by a “dominant axis. ” The polarization angle of the data shows a rotation through ~40° between the first and second epochs, indicating that the asymmetries of the first epoch were not directly coupled with those observed at the second epoch. For the most polarized lines, we observe wavelength-dependent loop structures in addition to the dominant axis on the Q-U plane. We show that the polarization properties of Type IIb SNe are roughly similar to one another, but with significant differences arising due to line blending effects especially with the high velocities observed for SN 2001ig. This suggests that the geometry of SN 2001ig is related to SN 1993J and that these events may have arisen from a similar binary progenitor system.
The Rise in Autism and the Role of Age at Diagnosis

Background: Autism prevalence in California, based on individuals eligible for state-funded services, rose throughout the 1990s. The extent to which this trend is explained by changes in age at diagnosis or inclusion of milder cases has not been previously evaluated. Methods: Autism cases were identified from 1990 through 2006 in databases of the California Department of Developmental Services, which coordinates services for individuals with specific developmental disorders. The main outcomes were population incident cases younger than age 10 years for each quarter, cumulative incidence by age and birth year, age-specific incidence rates stratified by birth year, and proportions of diagnoses by age across birth years. Results: Autism incidence in children rose throughout the period. Cumulative incidence to 5 years of age per 10,000 births rose consistently from 6.2 for 1990 births to 42.5 for 2001 births. Age-specific incidence rates increased most steeply for 2- and 3-year olds. The proportion diagnosed by age 5 years increased only slightly, from 54% for 1990 births to 61% for 1996 births. Changing age at diagnosis can explain a 12% increase, and inclusion of milder cases, a 56% increase. Conclusions: Autism incidence in California shows no sign yet of plateauing. Younger ages at diagnosis, differential migration, changes in diagnostic criteria, and inclusion of milder cases do not fully explain the observed increases. Other artifacts have yet to be quantified, and as a result, the extent to which the continued rise represents a true increase in the occurrence of autism remains unclear.
An ERP Study of Good Production vis-à-vis Poor Perception of Tones in Cantonese: Implications for Top-Down Speech Processing

This study investigated a theoretically challenging dissociation between good production and poor perception of tones among neurologically unimpaired native speakers of Cantonese. The dissociation is referred to as the near-merger phenomenon in sociolinguistic studies of sound change. In a passive oddball paradigm, lexical and nonlexical syllables of the T1/T6 and T4/T6 contrasts were presented to elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a from two groups of participants, those who could produce and distinguish all tones in the language (Control) and those who could produce all tones but specifically failed to distinguish between T4 and T6 in perception (Dissociation). The presence of MMN to T1/T6 and null response to T4/T6 of lexical syllables in the dissociation group confirmed the near-merger phenomenon. The observation that the control participants exhibited a statistically reliable MMN to lexical syllables of T1/T6, weaker responses to nonlexical syllables of T1/T6 and lexical syllables of T4/T6, and finally null response to nonlexical syllables of T4/T6, suggests the involvement of top-down processing in speech perception. Furthermore, the stronger P3a response of the control group, compared with the dissociation group in the same experimental conditions, may be taken to indicate higher cognitive capability in attention switching, auditory attention or memory in the control participants. This cognitive difference, together with our speculation that constant top-down predictions without complete bottom-up analysis of acoustic signals in speech recognition may reduce one’s sensitivity to small acoustic contrasts, account for the occurrence of dissociation in some individuals but not others.
A Regularization Study for Policy Gradient Methods

Regularization is an important concept in the context of supervised machine learning. Especially with neural networks it is necessary to restrict their capacity and expressivity in order to avoid overfitting to given train data. While there are several well-known and widely used regularization techniques for supervised machine learning such as L2-Normalization, Dropout or BatchNormalization, their effect in the context of reinforcement learning is not yet investigated. In this thesis we give an overview of regularization in combination with policy gradient methods, a subclass of reinforcement learning algorithms relying on neural networks. We compare different state-of-the-art algorithms together with regularization methods for supervised learning to get a better understanding on how we can improve generalization in reinforcement learning. The main motivation for exploring this line of research is our current work on score following, where we try to train reinforcement learning agents to listen to and read music. These agents should learn from given musical training pieces to follow music they have never heard and seen before. Thus, the agents have to generalize which is why this scenario is a suitable test bed for investigating generalization in the context of reinforcement learning. The empirical results found in this thesis should primarily serve as a guideline for our future work in this field. Although we have a rather limited set of experiments due to hardware limitations, we see that regularization in reinforcement learning is not working in the same way as for supervised learning. Most notable is the effect of Batch-Normalization. While this technique did not work for one of the tested algorithms, it yields promising but very instable results for another. We further observe that one algorithm is robust and not affected at all by regularization. In our opinion it is necessary to further explore this field and also perform a more in depth and thorough study in the future.
Risk Sharing within Geographically Spread Extended Families: Evidence from rural Tanzania

Theoretical models of risk sharing predict higher levels of risk sharing among close-knit groups, such as families. I analyse risk sharing agreements within geographically spread extended families in rural Tanzania. While others have established the extent to which risk is shared within this setting, this paper focuses on gifts and the motives behind gift giving. The analysis shows two clear patterns of risk sharing. Firstly, when non-migrated household experience an aggregate shock, the migrated extended family helps out by increasing the amount of gifts given. Secondly, in case migrated households experience an idiosyncratic shock, the non-migrated extended family insures them by increasing the amount of gifts. In order to understand the underlying motives behind risk sharing I look at heterogenous e ects across wealth and distance. I nd that non-migrated households respond in a reciprocal way to both idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks of the migrated network, while migrated households behave altruistically when the non-migrated network experiences idiosyncratic shocks.
Spirometra (Pseudophyllidea, Diphyllobothriidae) Severely Infecting Wild-Caught Snakes from Food Markets in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Guangdong, China: Implications for Public Health

Sparganosis is a zoonotic disease caused by the spargana of Spirometra, and snake is one of the important intermediate hosts of spargana. In some areas of China, snake is regarded as popular delicious food, and such a food habit potentially increases the prevalence of human sparganosis. To understand the prevalence of Spirometra in snakes in food markets, we conducted a study in two representative cities (Guangzhou and Shenzhen), during January–August 2013. A total of 456 snakes of 13 species were examined and 251 individuals of 10 species were infected by Spirometra, accounting for 55.0% of the total samples. The worm burden per infected snake ranged from 1 to 213, and the prevalence in the 13 species was 0∼96.2%. More than half (58.1%) of the spargana were located in muscular tissue, 25.6% in subcutaneous tissue, and 16.3% in coelomic cavity. The results indicated that Spirometra severely infected snakes in food markets in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, implying that eating snakes has great health risk and improper cooking methods may increase the risk of Spirometra infection in humans in China. Additional steps should be considered by the governments and public health agencies to prevent the risk of snake-associated Spirometra infections in humans.
Can Hysterectomy Be Considered a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease?

In this issue of Circulation , Howard and colleagues1 present a study on the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by hysterectomy status using data from the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The purpose of this editorial is to put their work and its findings into context by reviewing the literature both on the epidemiology of hysterectomy, as well as on menopause, sex hormones, and blood loss, and their impact on the risk of CVD. Hysterectomy is the most common nonobstetrical surgical procedure performed on women in the United States.2 In 2001, an estimated 649 000 hysterectomies were performed in the United States. Because most of the patients undergoing this procedure are between 25 and 54 years old, they live with the potential consequences of the procedure for many years.3 Thus, if hysterectomy is an independent risk factor for disease, then its attributable risk could be large even if the relative risk is small. This is especially true for CVD risk, a major cause of death among women. See p 1462 Women who undergo hysterectomies have been shown to differ from women in the general population. Low socioeconomic status, measured either by education or income, has been demonstrated to be associated with hysterectomy in the United States among non-Hispanic women.4,5 Women with higher parity and younger age at first child also appear to be more likely to have hysterectomies.4 Howard and colleagues’ study, however, is one of the few epidemiological studies to have examined the relationship between hysterectomy and risk factors specific to CVD. Howard et al1 state, as part of the rationale for their study, that hysterectomy reduces a woman’s exposure to endogenous hormones that are produced by the uterus and ovaries, especially when hysterectomy is performed significantly before the age at which natural …
Irritable bowel syndrome - An inflammatory disease involving mast cells

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is traditionally defined as a functional disorder - that is the presence of symptoms in the absence of demonstrable pathological abnormalities. In recent times, low grade inflammatory infiltrates in both the small and large bowel of some patients with IBS - often rich in mast cells, along with serological markers of low grade inflammation have focussed attention on IBS as an inflammatory disease. The observation that mast cells often lie in close association to enteric neurons, and in-vitro and in-vivo animal studies demonstrating that mast cell mediators may influence enteric motility provides a biologically plausible causal mechanism in IBS. Pilot studies on patients with IBS using the mast cell stabiliser sodium cromoglycate ('proof of concept') have been encouraging. The essential question remains why mast cells infiltrate the bowel of IBS patients. A disturbance of the 'brain-gut axis' is the current favoured hypothesis, whereby childhood stress or psychiatric comorbidity act via neuro-immune mechanisms to modulate low grade inflammation. An alternative hypothesis is that food allergy may be responsible. Serum specific IgE, and skin prick tests are not elevated in IBS patients, suggesting type 1 IgE mediated food allergy is not the cause. However questionnaire based studies indicate IBS patients have higher rates of atopic disease, and increased bronchial reactivity to methacholine has been demonstrated. In this review, we highlight the potential role of mast cells in IBS, and current and future research directions into this intriguing condition.
Improvement in Cerebral and Ocular Hemodynamics Early after Carotid Endarterectomy in Patients of Severe Carotid Artery Stenosis with or without Contralateral Carotid Occlusion

Purpose. To investigate the alternation in cerebral and ocular blood flow velocity (BFV) in patients of carotid stenosis (CS) with or without contralateral carotid occlusion (CO) early after carotid endarterectomy (CEA). Patients and Methods. Nineteen patients underwent CEA for ≥50% CS. Fourteen patients had the unilateral CS, and five patients had the ipsilateral CS and the contralateral CO. Transcranial Doppler (TCD) and Color Doppler Imaging (CDI) were performed before and early after CEA. Results. In patients with unilateral CS, significant improvements in BFV were observed in anterior cerebral artery (ACA) and middle cerebral artery (MCA) on the ipsilateral side after CEA. In patients of ipsilateral CS and contralateral CO, significant improvements in BFV were observed in the ACA and MCA not only on the ipsilateral side but also on the contralateral side postoperatively. The ipsilateral ophthalmic artery (OA) retrograde flows in two patients were recovered to anterograde direction following CEA. The BFV in short posterior ciliary artery (SPCA) of the ipsilateral side significantly increased postoperatively irrespective of the presence of contralateral CO. Conclusions. CEA improved cerebral anterior circulation hemodynamics especially in patients of unilateral CS and contralateral CO, normalized the OA reverse flow, and increased the blood perfusion of SPCA.
Water stress and water use efficiency of ten white clover cultivars

Ten cultivars of white clover were grown in a glasshouse at three levels of soil moisture. Leaf productivity was greatly reduced by moisture stress. The productivity of cultivars was found to be significantly different under well-watered conditions. Larger-leaved cultivars tended to be more productive than those with smaller leaves, but this difference was lost at high moisture stress creating a significant cultivar by moisture treatment interaction. Water use efficiency (WUE) increased with increasing moisture stress, but within any one moisture level there were no significant differences between the cultivars. An integrated measure of WUE is captured by the level of discrimination against 13C in plants tissue (∆). Over the range of moisture levels used, a strong negative correlation was found between ∆ and WUE. A strong positive correlation was found between productivity and ∆ over the range of moisture treatments, however, within any one moisture level no significant relationship was established.
Short-Term Load Forecasting for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Based on Deep Learning Approaches

Short-term load forecasting is a key task to maintain the stable and effective operation of power systems, providing reasonable future load curve feeding to the unit commitment and economic load dispatch. In recent years, the boost of internal combustion engine (ICE) based vehicles leads to the fossil fuel shortage and environmental pollution, bringing significant contributions to the greenhouse gas emissions. One of the effective ways to solve problems is to use electric vehicles (EVs) to replace the ICE based vehicles. However, the mass rollout of EVs may cause severe problems to the power system due to the huge charging power and stochastic charging behaviors of the EVs drivers. The accurate model of EV charging load forecasting is, therefore, an emerging topic. In this paper, four featured deep learning approaches are employed and compared in forecasting the EVs charging load from the charging station perspective. Numerical results show that the gated recurrent units (GRU) model obtains the best performance on the hourly based historical data charging scenarios, and it, therefore, provides a useful tool of higher accuracy in terms of the hourly based short-term EVs load forecasting.
Asymptotic giant branch evolution and its impact on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds

The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase of stellar evolution is common to most stars of low and intermediate mass. Most of the carbon and nitrogen in the Universe is produced by AGB stars. The final fate of the AGB envelopes are represented by planetary nebulae (PN). By studying PN abundances and compare them with the yields of stellar evolution is possible to quantify carbon and nitrogen production, and to study cosmic recycling in galactic and Magellanic Cloud populations. In this paper we present the latest results in PN chemical abundance analysis and their implication to the chemical evolution of the galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, with particular attention to carbon abundance, available only thanks to ultraviolet spectroscopy.
Determining the Source of Coronal Helicity through Measurements of Braiding and Spin Helicity Fluxes in Active Regions

Magnetic helicity has become a valuable tool for understanding the energetics and dynamics of coronal magnetic fields. Recently, long time sequences of magnetograms have been used to measure the flux of helicity into active region coronae. We demonstrate how this helicity flux can be usefully decomposed into contributions of differing origin, called "spin" helicity and "braiding" helicity. These contributions could be envisioned to come at the expense of twist and writhe helicity, respectively, of a subphotospheric flux tube anchored to the regions. In order to effect this decomposition, each magnetogram is partitioned into a set of unipolar regions. We present a method of defining such regions so that they persist through the sequences and track the photospheric flow. The spin helicity of a given region quantifies the mean rotation rate of motions internal to that region, while braiding helicity is injected by the motions of whole regions about one another. Applying the method to six active regions shows cases where either spin or braiding dominates, and where they have the same signs and opposite signs. Thus, it would seem that no general statement can be made regarding the dominance of twist or writhe in supplying helicity to the corona. In one particular case, spin and braiding helicity follow different time histories but inject equal and opposite net helicities. This suggests that the spinning and braiding are driven by a kink instability in the submerged flux tube.