Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations

These notes are concerned with initial value problems for systems of ordinary differential equations. Here our emphasis will be on nonlinear phenomena and properties, particularly those with physical relevance. Finding a solution to a differential equation may not be so important if that solution never appears in the physical model represented by the system, or is only realized in exceptional circumstances. Thus, equilibrium solutions, which correspond to configurations in which the physical system does not move, only occur in everyday situations if they are stable. An unstable equilibrium will not appear in practice, since slight perturbations in the system or its physical surroundings will immediately dislodge the system far away from equilibrium. Of course, very few nonlinear systems can be solved explicitly, and so one must typically rely on a numerical scheme to accurately approximate the solution. Basic methods for initial value problems, beginning with the simple Euler scheme, and working up to the extremely popular Runge–Kutta fourth order method, will be the subject of the final section of the chapter. However, numerical schemes do not always give accurate results, and we briefly discuss the class of stiff differential equations, which present a more serious challenge to numerical analysts. Without some basic theoretical understanding of the nature of solutions, equilibrium points, and stability properties, one would not be able to understand when numerical solutions (even those provided by standard well-used packages) are to be trusted. Moreover, when testing a numerical scheme, it helps to have already assembled a repertoire of nonlinear problems in which one already knows one or more explicit analytic solutions. Further tests and theoretical results can be based on first integrals (also known as conservation laws) or, more generally, Lyapunov functions. Although we have only space to touch on these topics briefly, but, we hope, this will whet the reader’s appetite for delving into this subject in more depth. The references [2, 9, 13, 15, 17] can be profitably consulted.
Infrared Spectroscopy of Pollen Identifies Plant Species and Genus as Well as Environmental Conditions

Background It is imperative to have reliable and timely methodologies for analysis and monitoring of seed plants in order to determine climate-related plant processes. Moreover, impact of environment on plant fitness is predominantly based on studies of female functions, while the contribution of male gametophytes is mostly ignored due to missing data on pollen quality. We explored the use of infrared spectroscopy of pollen for an inexpensive and rapid characterization of plants. Methodology The study was based on measurement of pollen samples by two Fourier transform infrared techniques: single reflectance attenuated total reflectance and transmission measurement of sample pellets. The experimental set, with a total of 813 samples, included five pollination seasons and 300 different plant species belonging to all principal spermatophyte clades (conifers, monocotyledons, eudicots, and magnoliids). Results The spectroscopic-based methodology enables detection of phylogenetic variations, including the separation of confamiliar and congeneric species. Furthermore, the methodology enables measurement of phenotypic plasticity by the detection of inter-annual variations within the populations. The spectral differences related to environment and taxonomy are interpreted biochemically, specifically variations of pollen lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and sporopollenins. The study shows large variations of absolute content of nutrients for congenital species pollinating in the same environmental conditions. Moreover, clear correlation between carbohydrate-to-protein ratio and pollination strategy has been detected. Infrared spectral database with respect to biochemical variation among the range of species, climate and biogeography will significantly improve comprehension of plant-environment interactions, including impact of global climate change on plant communities.
Iterative joint probabilistic data association for avoiding track coalescence and track swap in multi-target tracking

The iterative technique developed in this paper achieves simultaneous reduction of track coalescence and track swap by computing a better prior for the joint association event used in estimating target states. This prior is computed using expectation maximization (EM). Using the computed prior the iterative method avoids track coalescence and track swap while preserving the robustness of JPDA towards clutter and missed detection. Compared to other coalescence avoidance schemes, the proposed method avoids coalescence and swap without pruning the joint association events. Monte Carlo simulations verify the advantage of the proposed method over other approaches in a cluttered multi-target environment.
Reproductive and developmental effects of phthalate diesters in females

Abstract Phthalate diesters, widely used in flexible plastics and consumer products, have become prevalent contaminants in the environment. Human exposure is ubiquitous and higher phthalate metabolite concentrations documented in patients using medications with phthalate-containing slow release capsules raises concerns for potential health effects. Furthermore, animal studies suggest that phthalate exposure can modulate circulating hormone concentrations and thus may be able to adversely affect reproductive physiology and the development of estrogen sensitive target tissues. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of the epidemiological and experimental animal literature examining the relationship between phthalate exposure and adverse female reproductive health outcomes. The epidemiological literature is sparse for most outcomes studied and plagued by small sample size, methodological weaknesses, and thus fails to support a conclusion of an adverse effect of phthalate exposure. Despite a paucity of experimental animal studies for several phthalates, we conclude that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that phthalates are reproductive toxicants. However, we note that the concentrations needed to induce adverse health effects are high compared to the concentrations measured in contemporary human biomonitoring studies. We propose that the current patchwork of studies, potential for additive effects and evidence of adverse effects of phthalate exposure in subsequent generations and at lower concentrations than in the parental generation support the need for further study.
Nonlinear Least Squares Methods for Joint DOA and Pitch Estimation

In this paper, we consider the problem of joint direction-of-arrival (DOA) and fundamental frequency estimation. Joint estimation enables robust estimation of these parameters in multi-source scenarios where separate estimators may fail. First, we derive the exact and asymptotic Cramér-Rao bounds for the joint estimation problem. Then, we propose a nonlinear least squares (NLS) and an approximate NLS (aNLS) estimator for joint DOA and fundamental frequency estimation. The proposed estimators are maximum likelihood estimators when: 1) the noise is white Gaussian, 2) the environment is anechoic, and 3) the source of interest is in the far-field. Otherwise, the methods still approximately yield maximum likelihood estimates. Simulations on synthetic data show that the proposed methods have similar or better performance than state-of-the-art methods for DOA and fundamental frequency estimation. Moreover, simulations on real-life data indicate that the NLS and aNLS methods are applicable even when reverberation is present and the noise is not white Gaussian.
A comprehensive modelling way for assessing real-time mixings of mineral and anthropogenic pollutants in East Asia

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. A comprehensive modelling way for assessing real-time mixings of mineral and anthropogenic pollutants in East Asia F. Lasserre, G. Cautenet, Christel Bouet, X. Dong, Y. J. Kim, N. Sugimoto, I. Matsui, A. Shimizu
Mitophagy promotes replication of oncolytic Newcastle disease virus by blocking intrinsic apoptosis in lung cancer cells

Apoptosis contributes to antitumor effect of Newcastle disease virus (NDV). Autophagy is a protective response under cellular stress including viral infection. How autophagy interferes with oncolysis of NDV remains unclear. In this study, we found that NDV La Sota strain induced autophagy and preserved autophagic flux in non-small cell lung cancer cells. NDV-induced autophagy promoted viral replication by blocking cancer cells from caspase-dependent apoptosis. Moreover, we found that NDV recruited SQSTM1-mediated mitophagy to control cytochrome c release, and thus blocked intrinsic pro-apoptotic signaling. Finally, we observed an enhanced oncolysis in NSCLC cells treated with NDV in the presence of an autophagy inhibitor 3-methyladenine (3-MA). Interestingly, a more profound antitumor effect could be achieved when administration of 3-MA was postponed to 24 h after NDV infection. Our findings unveil a novel way that NDV subverts mitophagy to favor its replication by blocking apoptosis, and provide rationale for systemic therapeutic cohort combining NDV with autophagy inhibitors in cancer therapy.
Streamforce: outsourcing access control enforcement for stream data to the clouds

In this paper, we focus on the problem of data privacy on the cloud, particularly on access controls over stream data. The nature of stream data and the complexity of sharing data make access control a more challenging issue than in traditional archival databases. We present Streamforce -- a system allowing data owners to securely outsource their data to an untrusted (curious-but-honest) cloud. The owner specifies fine-grained policies which are enforced by the cloud. The latter performs most of the heavy computations, while learning nothing about the data content. To this end, we employ a number of encryption schemes, including deterministic encryption, proxy-based attribute based encryption and sliding-window encryption. In Streamforce, access control policies are modeled as secure continuous queries, which entails minimal changes to existing stream processing engines, and allows for easy expression of a wide-range of policies. In particular, Streamforce comes with a number of secure query operators including Map, Filter, Join and Aggregate. Finally, we implement Streamforce over an open-source stream processing engine (Esper) and evaluate its performance on a cloud platform. The results demonstrate practical performance for many real-world applications, and although the security overhead is visible, Streamforce is highly scalable.
TGF-β Inhibition Restores Terminal Osteoblast Differentiation to Suppress Myeloma Growth

Background Multiple myeloma (MM) expands almost exclusively in the bone marrow and generates devastating bone lesions, in which bone formation is impaired and osteoclastic bone resorption is enhanced. TGF-β, a potent inhibitor of terminal osteoblast (OB) differentiation, is abundantly deposited in the bone matrix, and released and activated by the enhanced bone resorption in MM. The present study was therefore undertaken to clarify the role of TGF-β and its inhibition in bone formation and tumor growth in MM. Methodology/Principal Findings TGF-β suppressed OB differentiation from bone marrow stromal cells and MC3T3-E1 preosteoblastic cells, and also inhibited adipogenesis from C3H10T1/2 immature mesenchymal cells, suggesting differentiation arrest by TGF-β. Inhibitors for a TGF-β type I receptor kinase, SB431542 and Ki26894, potently enhanced OB differentiation from bone marrow stromal cells as well as MC3T3-E1 cells. The TGF-β inhibition was able to restore OB differentiation suppressed by MM cell conditioned medium as well as bone marrow plasma from MM patients. Interestingly, TGF-β inhibition expedited OB differentiation in parallel with suppression of MM cell growth. The anti-MM activity was elaborated exclusively by terminally differentiated OBs, which potentiated the cytotoxic effects of melphalan and dexamethasone on MM cells. Furthermore, TGF-β inhibition was able to suppress MM cell growth within the bone marrow while preventing bone destruction in MM-bearing animal models. Conclusions/Significance The present study demonstrates that TGF-β inhibition releases stromal cells from their differentiation arrest by MM and facilitates the formation of terminally differentiated OBs, and that terminally differentiated OBs inhibit MM cell growth and survival and enhance the susceptibility of MM cells to anti-MM agents to overcome the drug resistance mediated by stromal cells. Therefore, TGF-β appears to be an important therapeutic target in MM bone lesions.
Music Perception 3. Grouping of Musical Sounds

1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. Grouping of musical sounds 3.1. Perceptual fusion and separation of spectral components 3.1. 1. Harmonicity 3.1. 2. Onset and time-varying synchronicity 3.2. Auditory continuity effects 3.3. Grouping of rapid sequences of tones 3.3.1. Grouping by pitch proximity 3.3.2. Grouping by timbre 3.3.3. Grouping by temporal proximity 4. Grouping of tone sequences from different spatial locations 4.1. The scale illusion 4.2. The glissando illusion 4.3. Grouping of nonsimultaneous sounds from different spatial locations 5. Ambiguities of musical pitch 5.1. Pitch circularity effects 5.2. The tritone paradox 6. Conclusion 7. References
The Effects of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction on Emotional Regulation and Psychological Well-being of Iranian Veteran's Homemakers with Secondary Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Background: Problems of emotional regulation and lack of social skills in veterans' families are very common and like psychological complications have unpleasant consequences for them. Therefore, effective and helpful interventions and therapies are highly important. Objectives: The current study aimed at evaluating the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the improvement of emotional regulation and psychological well-being in veterans' homemakers with secondary posttraumatic stress disorder. Patients and Methods: In the current study, the permuted blocked randomization method was used. Participants were selected from veterans' homemakers referred to the counseling center of veterans in Kashan city (Iran) in 2015. They were randomly assigned into two groups (30 controls and 31 cases). The case group underwent the MBSR treatment. Results: Results showed no significant difference between the two groups at the baseline (P < 0.05). No significant difference was observed in the total score of MBSR on emotional regulation between the groups. However, the difference between pre- and post-test of rejection of emotional response subscale was significant. In addition, the total score in the psychological well-being at pre- and post-test was significant. Conclusions: It seems that MBSR significantly affects the psychological well-being, but it has no effect on the emotional regulation except the subscale of emotional response rejection.
Estimation of regression parameters in missing data problems

Let Y be a response variable, possibly multivariate, with a density function f (y|x, v; β) conditional on vectors x and v of covariates and a vector β of unknown parameters. The authors consider the problem of estimating β when the values taken by the covariate vector v are available for all observations while some of those taken by the covariate x are missing at random. They compare the profile estimator to several alternatives, both in terms of bias and standard deviation, when the response and covariates are discrete or continuous.
Clinical Outcomes for Systemic Corticosteroids Versus Vincristine in Treating Kaposiform Hemangioendothelioma and Tufted Angioma

Abstract A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of systemic corticosteroids versus those of vincristine in the treatment of kaposiform hemangioendothelioma (KHE) and tufted angioma (TA). A literature search of PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science was performed for clinical studies on systemic corticosteroid versus vincristine therapies in treating KHE/TA. Pooled relative risks (RRs) and response rate with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to measure outcomes. Heterogeneity, subgroup analysis, sensitivity analysis, and publication bias analysis were performed for result evaluation. Thirteen studies, comprising 344 participants, were used in the analysis. Vincristine therapy was found to be relatively more effective than systemic corticosteroids (RRs = 0.45, 95%CI: 0.35–0.58). The result of pooled adverse reactions response rate for systemic corticosteroids was 0.31 (95%CI, 0.18–0.43), significantly higher than that for vincristine, which was 0.12 (95%CI, 0.06–0.19). In subgroup analyses, factors including mean age and race of patients, and period of follow-up were examined as possible sources of heterogeneity. This is the first meta-analysis estimating the clinical outcomes of systemic corticosteroids in comparison with those of vincristine in the treatment of KHE/TA. The results showed that vincristine was considerably more effective with lower complication rates than systemic corticosteroids; thus, vincristine could be suggested as the first-line therapy for KHE/TA.
Bioconversion of Styrene to Poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) by the New Bacterial Strain Pseudomonas putida NBUS12

Styrene is a toxic pollutant commonly found in waste effluents from plastic processing industries. We herein identified and characterized microorganisms for bioconversion of the organic eco-pollutant styrene into a valuable biopolymer medium-chain-length poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (mcl-PHA). Twelve newly-isolated styrene-degrading Pseudomonads were obtained and partial phaC genes were detected by PCR in these isolates. These isolates assimilated styrene to produce mcl-PHA, forming PHA contents between 0.05±0.00 and 23.10±3.25% cell dry mass (% CDM). The best-performing isolate was identified as Pseudomonas putida NBUS12. A genetic analysis of 16S rDNA and phaZ genes revealed P. putida NBUS12 as a genetically-distinct strain from existing phenotypically-similar bacterial strains. This bacterium achieved a final biomass of 1.28±0.10 g L−1 and PHA content of 32.49±2.40% CDM. The extracted polymer was mainly comprised of 3-hydroxyhexanoate (C6 ), 3-hydroxyoctanoate (C8 ), 3-hydroxydecanoate (C10 ), 3-hydroxydodecanoate (C12 ), and 3-hydroxytetradecanoate (C14 ) monomers at a ratio of 2:42:1257:17:1. These results collectively suggested that P. putida NBUS12 is a promising candidate for the biotechnological conversion of styrene into mcl-PHA.
Heisenberg-Euler Effective Lagrangians : Basics and Extensions

I present a pedagogical review of Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangians, beginning with the original work of Heisenberg and Euler, and Weisskopf, for the one loop effective action of quantum electrodynamics in a constant electromagnetic background field, and then summarizing some of the important applications and generalizations to inhomogeneous background fields, nonabelian backgrounds, and higher loop effective Lagrangians.
Changes in white matter as determinant of global functional decline in older independent outpatients: three year follow-up of LADIS (leukoaraiosis and disability) study cohort

Objective To assess the impairment in daily living activities in older people with age related changes in white matter according to the severity of these changes. Design Observational data collection and follow-up of a cohort of older people undergoing brain magnetic resonance imaging after non-disabling complaints. Setting 11 European centres. Participants 639 non-disabled older patients (mean age 74.1 (SD 5.0), 45.1% men) in whom brain magnetic resonance imaging showed mild, moderate, or severe age related changes in white matter (Fazekas scale). Magnetic resonance imaging assessment also included cerebral infarcts and atrophy. Main outcome measure Transition from no disability (defined as a score of 0 or 1 on the instrumental activities of daily living scale) to disability (score ≥2) or death over three year follow-up. Secondary outcomes were incident dementia and stroke. Results Over a mean follow-up period of 2.42 years (SD 0.97, median 2.94 years), information on the main outcome was available for 633 patients. The annual rate of transition or death was 10.5%, 15.1%, and 29.5%, respectively, for patients with mild, moderate, or severe age related changes in white matter (Kaplan-Meier log rank test P<0.001). In a Cox model comparing severe with mild changes and adjusted for clinical factors of functional decline, the risk of transition to disability or death was more than twofold higher (hazard ratio 2.36, 95% confidence interval 1.65 to 3.81). The other predictors were age group, history of atrial fibrillation, and complaint of gait disturbances. The effect of severe changes remained significant independently of baseline degree of atrophy and number of infarcts. Incident stroke and dementia only slightly modified this effect. Conclusion The three year results of the LADIS study suggest that in older adults who seek medical attention for non-disabling complaints, severe age related changes in white matter independently and strongly predict rapid global functional decline.
The Effect of Tobacco Smoking on Salivation.

AIM The purpose of this study was to examine the detrimental effect of smoking on the function of the salivary glands. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study was conducted on 60 patients who were divided into two groups: a test group which included smokers and control group represented by non-smokers. Each group included 30 patients. General information was collected from all the respondents via a questionnaire as well as the data on the duration of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per day. Saliva was collected by spitting method in a graduated tube and the amount of unstimulated and stimulated saliva was measured and recorded in ml per minute. Stimulated saliva was collected immediately after rinsing the mouth with a 2% aqueous solution of citric acid which is carried salivary stimulation. The presence of pigmentation on the teeth and coated tongue were recorded during clinical examination. The degree of oral hygiene was determined by plaque index. All the obtained data were statistically analyzed with significance level p <0.05. RESULTS The results showed no significant differences in the amount of saliva between smokers and non-smokers, however, the amount of saliva decreases significantly with the duration of smoking and increasing age of smokers. Also proven was the difference in the quality of saliva: smokers have thick saliva and nonsmokers predominantly serous. In addition, smokers have poorer oral hygiene status than non-smokers, and demonstrated a positive correlation between the level of oral hygiene and length of smoking tobacco. CONCLUSION This study has proven that smoking adversely affects salivation: long-term smoking reduces the secretion of saliva and changes its quality.