Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chandra Survey of Radio-quiet, High-Redshift Quasars

We observed 17 optically selected, radio-quiet, high-redshift quasars with the Chandra ACIS and detected 16 of them. The quasars have redshifts between 3.70 and 6.28 and include the highest-redshift quasars known. When compared with low-redshift quasars observed with ROSAT, these high-redshift quasars are significantly more X-ray-quiet. We also find that the X-ray spectral index of the high-redshift objects is flatter than the average at lower redshift. These trends confirm the predictions of models in which the accretion flow is described by a cold, optically thick accretion disk surrounded by a hot, optically thin corona, provided the viscosity parameter α ≥ 0.02. The high-redshift quasars have supermassive black holes, with masses of ~1010 M☉, and are accreting material at ~0.1 times the Eddington limit. We detect 10 X-ray photons from the z = 6.28 quasar SDSS 1030+0524, which might have a Gunn-Peterson trough and be near the redshift of reionization of the intergalactic medium. The X-ray data place an upper limit on the optical depth of the intergalactic medium, τ(IGM) < 106, compared to the lower limit from the spectrum of Lyα and Lyβ, which implies τ(IGM) > 20.
A Direct Proof of the Equivalence between Brouwer's Fan Theorem and König's Lemma with a Uniqueness Hypothesis

From results of Ishihara it is known that the weak (that is, binary) form of Konig’s lemma (WKL) implies Brouwer’s fan theorem (Fan). Moreover, Berger and Ishihara [MLQ 2005] have shown that a weakened form WKL! of WKL, where as an additional hypothesis it is required that in an effective sense infinite paths are unique, is equivalent to Fan. The proof that WKL! implies Fan is done explicitely. The other direction (Fan implies WKL! ) is far less directly proved; the emphasis is rather to provide a fair number of equivalents to Fan, and to do the proofs economically by giving a circle of implications. Here we give a direct construction. Moreover, we go one step further and formalize the equivalence proof (in the Minlog proof assistant). Since the statements of both Fan and WKL! have computational content, we can automatically extract terms from the two proofs. It turns out that these terms express in a rather perspicuous way the informal constructions.
ITOMP: Incremental Trajectory Optimization for Real-Time Replanning in Dynamic Environments

We present a novel optimization-based algorithm for motion planning in dynamic environments. Our approach uses a stochastic trajectory optimization framework to avoid collisions and satisfy smoothness and dynamics constraints. Our algorithm does not require a priori knowledge about global motion or trajectories of dynamic obstacles. Rather, we compute a conservative local bound on the position or trajectory of each obstacle over a short time and use the bound to compute a collision-free trajectory for the robot in an incremental manner. Moreover, we interleave planning and execution of the robot in an adaptive manner to balance between the planning horizon and responsiveness to obstacle. We highlight the performance of our planner in a simulated dynamic environment with the 7-DOF PR2 robot arm and dynamic obstacles.
Tolerance to Sheep Red Cells: Breakage with Thymocytes and Horse Red Cells

Mice rendered tolerant to sheep red cells and then given normal thymocytes, made no antibody when immunized with these cells. When immunized with horse red blood cells, however, they made significant amounts of noncross-reacting antibody to sheep red blood cells. This suggests that antibody-making precursor cells (B cells) which are nontolerant but nonactivatable by specific antigen, may exist in tolerant hosts.
Self-Advocacy During the Medical Encounter: Use of Health Information and Racial/Ethnic Differences

Background:Research indicates that patients who self-advocate during the medical encounter gain maximum benefit. However, little is known about racial/ethnic differences in self-advocacy. Objective:We sought to examine whether race/ethnicity and obtaining health information are associated with self-advocacy (mentioned health information to physician and physician ordered tests based on health information). Methods:Study data were drawn from the 2000–2001 Household Component of the Community Tracking Study, a nationally representative survey. The study sample included 7419 women ages 45 to 64 who had at least 1 physician visit in the previous year. Binomial logit models were used to assess self-advocacy. Probability adjustments were applied to results. Results:In the full sample (n = 7419), women who obtained health information were almost 5 times more likely to mention that information to their physician (odds ration [OR] = 4.76, 95% confidence interval [CI] 4.05–5.60) than women who did not obtain information. Black women were less likely to mention health information to their physician (OR = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.37–0.73) than white women. Among women who obtained health information (n = 3690), black women also were less likely to mention health information to their physician (OR = 0.57, 95% CI = 0.40–0.83) than white women. Among those who mentioned health information to the physician, Hispanic women were more likely than white women to have a test/procedure/prescription prescribed (OR = 2.15, 95% CI = 1.10–4.20). However, after adjusting probability, this difference was not statistically significant. Conclusions:Although health information was associated with self-advocacy, black women were less likely to self-advocate. Further research is needed to better understand factors that impede black women from self-advocating.
Discrimination between the Enantiomers of Carvone and of Terpinen-4-ol Odorants in Normal Rats and Those with Lesions of the Olfactory Bulbs

We assessed (1) whether the enantiomers of terpinen-4-ol, odorants that activate nearly identical areas of the olfactory bulb, are more difficult to discriminate than those of carvone, odorants that activate different areas of the olfactory bulb, and (2) whether olfactory bulb lesions that disrupt the pattern of bulbar activation produced by these enantiomers degraded the ability of rats to discriminate between them. In psychophysical tests, normal rats discriminated between the enantiomers of terpinen-4-ol and of carvone equally well. Surgical lesions that removed the majority of bulbar glomeruli activated by these odorants (as demonstrated in previous olfactory bulb studies using intrinsic optical imaging and 2-deoxyglucose) resulted in increased detection thresholds but few or no deficits in discriminating between suprathreshold concentrations of the enantiomers. These results fail to confirm predictions based on 2-deoxyglucose maps of bulbar activity that enantiomers of terpinen-4-ol should be more difficult to discriminate than those of carvone and that the ability to discriminate between enantiomers of an odorant are based on differences in patterns of bulbar activation revealed in such maps.
Correcting for missing data in information cascades

Transmission of infectious diseases, propagation of information, and spread of ideas and influence through social networks are all examples of diffusion. In such cases we say that a contagion spreads through the network, a process that can be modeled by a cascade graph. Studying cascades and network diffusion is challenging due to missing data. Even a single missing observation in a sequence of propagation events can significantly alter our inferences about the diffusion process. We address the problem of missing data in information cascades. Specifically, given only a fraction C' of the complete cascade C, our goal is to estimate the properties of the complete cascade C, such as its size or depth. To estimate the properties of C, we first formulate k-tree model of cascades and analytically study its properties in the face of missing data. We then propose a numerical method that given a cascade model and observed cascade C' can estimate properties of the complete cascade C. We evaluate our methodology using information propagation cascades in the Twitter network (70 million nodes and 2 billion edges), as well as information cascades arising in the blogosphere. Our experiments show that the k-tree model is an effective tool to study the effects of missing data in cascades. Most importantly, we show that our method (and the k-tree model) can accurately estimate properties of the complete cascade C even when 90% of the data is missing.
IQGAP1 Functions as a Modulator of Dishevelled Nuclear Localization in Wnt Signaling

Dishevelled (DVL) is a central factor in the Wnt signaling pathway, which is highly conserved among various organisms. DVL plays important roles in transcriptional activation in the nucleus, but the molecular mechanisms underlying their nuclear localization remain unclear. In the present study, we identified IQGAP1 as a regulator of DVL function. In Xenopus embryos, depletion of IQGAP1 reduced Wnt-induced nuclear accumulation of DVL, and expression of Wnt target genes during early embryogenesis. The domains in DVL and IQGAP1 that mediated their interaction are also required for their nuclear localization. Endogenous expression of Wnt target genes was reduced by depletion of IQGAP1 during early embryogenesis, but notably not by depletion of other IQGAP family genes. Moreover, expression of Wnt target genes caused by depletion of endogenous IQGAP1 could be rescued by expression of wild-type IQGAP1, but not IQGAP1 deleting DVL binding region. These results provide the first evidence that IQGAP1 functions as a modulator in the canonical Wnt signaling pathway.
New Algorithms for Learning Incoherent and Overcomplete Dictionaries

In sparse recovery we are given a matrix $A$ (the dictionary) and a vector of the form $A X$ where $X$ is sparse, and the goal is to recover $X$. This is a central notion in signal processing, statistics and machine learning. But in applications such as sparse coding, edge detection, compression and super resolution, the dictionary $A$ is unknown and has to be learned from random examples of the form $Y = AX$ where $X$ is drawn from an appropriate distribution --- this is the dictionary learning problem. In most settings, $A$ is overcomplete: it has more columns than rows. This paper presents a polynomial-time algorithm for learning overcomplete dictionaries; the only previously known algorithm with provable guarantees is the recent work of Spielman, Wang and Wright who gave an algorithm for the full-rank case, which is rarely the case in applications. Our algorithm applies to incoherent dictionaries which have been a central object of study since they were introduced in seminal work of Donoho and Huo. In particular, a dictionary is $\mu$-incoherent if each pair of columns has inner product at most $\mu / \sqrt{n}$. The algorithm makes natural stochastic assumptions about the unknown sparse vector $X$, which can contain $k \leq c \min(\sqrt{n}/\mu \log n, m^{1/2 -\eta})$ non-zero entries (for any $\eta > 0$). This is close to the best $k$ allowable by the best sparse recovery algorithms even if one knows the dictionary $A$ exactly. Moreover, both the running time and sample complexity depend on $\log 1/\epsilon$, where $\epsilon$ is the target accuracy, and so our algorithms converge very quickly to the true dictionary. Our algorithm can also tolerate substantial amounts of noise provided it is incoherent with respect to the dictionary (e.g., Gaussian). In the noisy setting, our running time and sample complexity depend polynomially on $1/\epsilon$, and this is necessary.
Does growth under elevated CO₂ moderate photoacclimation in rice?

Acclimation of plant photosynthesis to light irradiance (photoacclimation) involves adjustments in levels of pigments and proteins and larger scale changes in leaf morphology. To investigate the impact of rising atmospheric CO₂ on crop physiology, we hypothesize that elevated CO₂ interacts with photoacclimation in rice (Oryza sativa). Rice was grown under high light (HL: 700 µmol m⁻² s⁻¹), low light (LL: 200 µmol m⁻² s⁻¹), ambient CO₂ (400 µl l⁻¹) and elevated CO₂ (1000 µl l⁻¹). Leaf six was measured throughout. Obscuring meristem tissue during development did not alter leaf thickness indicating that mature leaves are responsible for sensing light during photoacclimation. Elevated CO₂ raised growth chamber photosynthesis and increased tiller formation at both light levels, while it increased leaf length under LL but not under HL. Elevated CO₂ always resulted in increased leaf growth rate and tiller production. Changes in leaf thickness, leaf area, Rubisco content, stem and leaf starch, sucrose and fructose content were all dominated by irradiance and unaffected by CO₂. However, stomata responded differently; they were significantly smaller in LL grown plants compared to HL but this effect was significantly suppressed under elevated CO₂. Stomatal density was lower under LL, but this required elevated CO₂ and the magnitude was adaxial or abaxial surface-dependent. We conclude that photoacclimation in rice involves a systemic signal. Furthermore, extra carbohydrate produced under elevated CO₂ is utilized in enhancing leaf and tiller growth and does not enhance or inhibit any feature of photoacclimation with the exception of stomatal morphology.
Privacy risk assessment and users' awareness for mobile apps permissions

Mobile applications have access to users' data. This raises a potential privacy concern since users' personal information is collected and revealed to third parties without their consent. In this paper we propose a proactive user-oriented approach towards users' awareness of the privacy risk involved with granting permissions to Android applications. We present a dynamic privacy scoring model that assesses the risk to users' privacy associated to an application which requires a set of permissions. The parameters of this model are the severity and the relative importance of permissions and their interactions. Severity is evaluated according to a standard severity assessment method. The relative importance is estimated according to an analytic method. An experimental study on a set of 64 applications has been conducted. Association rules between permissions have been identified by using a data mining algorithm.
Teacher’s Performance as a Function of Occupational Stress and Coping with Reference to CBSE Affiliated School Teachers in and around Hyderabad: A Multinomial Regression Approach

The research study reports the results of our investigation on causes of occupational stress, coping strategies adopted and their relationship with the teachers’ performance in CBSE affiliated school teachers in and around Hyderabad. A survey of 300 CBSE affiliated school teachers consisting of 200 women and 100 men from in and around Hyderabad carried out to assess the eight independent stress causing factors—workload, role overload, role ambiguity, students behaviour, co-workers, school environment, school policies & ethics and social support—and effect of approach and avoidance coping strategies on employees’ performance a dependent factor. To measure the reliability of the scale used in this study, and internal consistencies of the survey questionnaire, the reliability statistics Cronbach’s alpha (C-Alpha) was measured. The overall C-Alpha value was 0.82 whereas the C-Alpha values ranged from 0.70 to 0.82, for all the 10 independent factors, and one dependent factor. The bivariate logistic analysis was carried out on dichotomous variables to measure the association of demographic variables with occupational stress. The multinomial logistic regression analysis was performed to estimate the likelihood odds ratios (ORs) to explain the factors associated with occupational stress, coping strategies and their relationship with the performance. Healthwise, some teachers developed chronic leg pains due to mild varicose vein disorders, maybe because of long standing teachings and there were no statistically significant differences with relation to gender on occupational stress and effect on performance.
An efficient algorithm for the physical mapping of clustered task graphs onto multiprocessor architectures

The most important issue in sequential program parallelisation is the efficient assignment of computations into different processing elements. In the past, too many approaches were devoted in efficient program parallelization considering various models for the parallel programs and the target architectures. The most widely used parallelism description model is the task graph model with precedence constraints. Nevertheless, as far as physical mapping of tasks onto parallel architectures is concerned little research has given practical results. It is well known that the physical mapping problem is NP-hard in the strong sense, thus allowing only for heuristic approaches. Most researchers or tool programmers use exhaustive algorithms, or the classical method of simulated annealing. This paper presents an alternative approach onto the mapping problem. Given the graph of clustered tasks, and the graph of the target distributed architecture, our heuristic finds a mapping by first placing the highly communicative tasks on adjacent nodes of the processor network. Once these "backbone" tasks are mapped there is no backtracking, thus achieving low complexity. Therefore, the remaining tasks are placed beginning from those close to the "backbone" tasks. The paper concludes with performance and comparison results which reveal the method's efficiency.
Obesogenic neighbourhoods: the impact of neighbourhood restaurants and convenience stores on adolescents’ food consumption behaviours

Abstract Objective To examine the relationship between the neighbourhood food environment and dietary intake among adolescents. Design Cross-sectional design using: (i) a geographic information system to assess characteristics of the neighbourhood food environment and neighbourhood socio-economic status; (ii) the modified Healthy Eating Index (HEI) to assess participants’ overall diet quality; and (iii) generalized linear models to examine associations between HEI and home and school food environmental correlates. Setting Mid-sized Canadian city in Ontario, Canada. Participants Grade 7 and 8 students (n 810) at twenty-one elementary schools. Results Students living in neighbourhoods with a lower diversity of land-use types, compared with their higher diversity counterparts, had higher HEI scores (P < 0·05). Students with more than 1 km between their home and the nearest convenience store had higher HEI scores than those living within 1 km (P < 0·01). Students attending schools with a distance further than 1 km from the nearest convenience store (P < 0·01) and fast-food outlet (P < 0·05) had higher HEI scores than those within 1 km. Those attending schools with three or more fast-food outlets within 1 km had lower HEI scores than those attending schools with no fast-food outlet in the school surroundings (P < 0·05). Conclusions Close proximity to convenience stores in adolescents’ home environments is associated with low HEI scores. Within adolescents’ school environments, close proximity to convenience and fast-food outlets and a high density of fast-food outlets are associated with low HEI scores.
Edge-Directed Error Concealment

In this paper we propose an edge-directed error concealment (EDEC) algorithm, to recover lost slices in video sequences encoded by flexible macroblock ordering. First, the strong edges in a corrupted frame are estimated based on the edges in the neighboring frames and the received area of the current frame. Next, the lost regions along these estimated edges are recovered using both spatial and temporal neighboring pixels. Finally, the remaining parts of the lost regions are estimated. Simulation results show that compared to the existing boundary matching algorithm [1] and the exemplar-based inpainting approach [2] , the proposed EDEC algorithm can reconstruct the corrupted frame with both a better visual quality and a higher decoder peak signal-to-noise ratio.
Cardio-Metabolic Disease Risks and Their Associations with Circulating 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and Omega-3 Levels in South Asian and White Canadians

Objectives This study compared cardio-metabolic disease risk factors and their associations with serum vitamin D and omega-3 status in South Asian (SAC) and White Canadians (WC) living in Canada’s capital region. Methods Fasting blood samples were taken from 235 SAC and 279 WC aged 20 to 79 years in Ottawa, and 22 risk factors were measured. Results SAC men and women had significantly higher fasting glucose, insulin, homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), apolipoprotein B (ApoB), ratios of total (TC) to HDL cholesterol (HDLC) and ApoB to ApoA1, leptin, E-selectin, P-selectin, ICAM-1 and omega-3 (p < 0.05), but lower HDLC, ApoA1, vitamin D levels than WC (p < 0.05). SAC women had higher CRP and VEGF than WC women. Adequate (50–74.9 nmol/L) or optimal (≥ 75 nmol/L) levels of 25(OH)D were associated with lower BMI, glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR, TG, TC, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLC), ApoB/ApoA1 ratio, CRP, leptin, and higher HDLC, ApoA1, omega-3 index, L-selectin levels in WC, but not in SAC. Intermediate (>4%-<8%) or high (≥ 8%) levels of omega-3 indices were related to lower E-selectin, P-selectin, ICAM-1 and higher HDLC, 25(OH)D levels in WC, but not in SAC. The BMIs of ≤ 25 kg/m2 were related to lower LDLC, ApoB, VEGF, creatinine and higher 25(OH)D in WC, but not in SAC. Conclusions The associations of vitamin D, omega-3 status, BMI and risk factors were more profound in the WC than SAC. Compared to WC, vitamin D status and omega-3 index may not be good predictive risk factors for the prevalence of CVD and diabetes in SAC.
Longitudinal Assessment of Optical Quality and Intraocular Scattering Using the Double-Pass Instrument in Normal Eyes and Eyes with Short Tear Breakup Time

Purpose To assess the longitudinal changes in optical quality including intraocular scattering in normal eyes and eyes with short tear breakup time (TBUT). Methods We prospectively examined twenty eyes of 20 healthy subjects, and age-matched twenty eyes of 20 short TBUT subjects. The modulation transfer function (MTF) cutoff frequency, the Strehl ratio, and the objective scattering index (OSI) were quantitatively assessed using an Optical Quality Analysis System. We investigated the changes in these variables measured consecutively at the initial examination, 5, and 10 seconds without blinking. We also compared these variables in eyes with short TBUT with those in normal eyes. Results No significant differences in the MTF cutoff frequency, Strehl ratio, or OSI were detected over a 10-second period in normal eyes. These variables also became significantly degraded even over a 5-second period in eyes with short TBUT (p<0.01). We found significant differences in these variables at 5 and 10 seconds (p<0.05), but none immediately after the blink between normal and short TBUT eyes. Conclusions Optical quality including intraocular scattering deteriorated significantly with time in eyes with short TBUT, whereas we found significant differences over a 10-second period in normal eyes. Eyes with short TBUT showed greater deterioration in optical quality after the blink than normal eyes. The longitudinal assessment of optical quality may be effective in distinguishing eyes with short TBUT from normal eyes.