Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extension Complexity, MSO Logic, and Treewidth

We consider the convex hull $P_{\varphi}(G)$ of all satisfying assignments of a given MSO formula $\varphi$ on a given graph $G$. We show that there exists an extended formulation of the polytope $P_{\varphi}(G)$ that can be described by $f(|\varphi|,\tau)\cdot n$ inequalities, where $n$ is the number of vertices in $G$, $\tau$ is the treewidth of $G$ and $f$ is a computable function depending only on $\varphi$ and $\tau. $ In other words, we prove that the extension complexity of $P_{\varphi}(G)$ is linear in the size of the graph $G$, with a constant depending on the treewidth of $G$ and the formula $\varphi$. This provides a very general yet very simple meta-theorem about the extension complexity of polytopes related to a wide class of problems and graphs. As a corollary of our main result, we obtain an analogous result % for the weaker MSO$_1$ logic on the wider class of graphs of bounded cliquewidth. Furthermore, we study our main geometric tool which we term the glued product of polytopes. While the glued product of polytopes has been known since the '90s, we are the first to show that it preserves decomposability and boundedness of treewidth of the constraint matrix. This implies that our extension of $P_\varphi(G)$ is decomposable and has a constraint matrix of bounded treewidth; so far only few classes of polytopes are known to be decomposable. These properties make our extension useful in the construction of algorithms.
Difficult tracheal intubation in obstetrics

Difficult intubation has been classified into four grades, according to the view obtainable at laryngoscopy. Frequency analysis suggests that, in obstetrics, the main cause of trouble is grade 3, in which the epiglottis can be seen, but not the cords. This group is fairly rare so that a proportion of anaesthetists will not meet the problem in their first few years and may thus be unprepared for it in obstetrics. However the problem can be simulated in routine anaesthesia, so that a drill for managing it can be practised. Laryngoscopy is carried out as usual, then the blade is lowered so that the epiglottis descends and hides the cords. Intubation has to be done blind, using the Macintosh method. This can be helpful as part of the training before starting in the maternity department, supplementing the Aberdeen drill.
Alpharetroviral Vectors: From a Cancer-Causing Agent to a Useful Tool for Human Gene Therapy

Gene therapy using integrating retroviral vectors has proven its effectiveness in several clinical trials for the treatment of inherited diseases and cancer. However, vector-mediated adverse events related to insertional mutagenesis were also observed, emphasizing the need for safer therapeutic vectors. Paradoxically, alpharetroviruses, originally discovered as cancer-causing agents, have a more random and potentially safer integration pattern compared to gammaretro- and lentiviruses. In this review, we provide a short overview of the history of alpharetroviruses and explain how they can be converted into state-of-the-art gene delivery tools with improved safety features. We discuss development of alpharetroviral vectors in compliance with regulatory requirements for clinical translation, and provide an outlook on possible future gene therapy applications. Taken together, this review is a broad overview of alpharetroviral vectors spanning the bridge from their parental virus discovery to their potential applicability in clinical settings.
ESOM-Maps : tools for clustering , visualization , and classification with Emergent SOM

An overview on the usage of emergent self organizing maps is given. U-Maps visualize the distance structures of high dimensional data sets. P-Maps show their density structures and U*-Maps combine the advantages of the mentioned maps to a visualization suitable to detect nontrivial cluster structures. A concise summary on the usage of Emergent Self-organizing Maps (ESOM) for data mining is given. The tasks of visualization, clustering, and classification as they can be performed with the Databionics ESOM Tools are described.
Age-Related Decrements in Heat Dissipation during Physical Activity Occur as Early as the Age of 40

Older adults typically experience greater levels of thermal strain during physical efforts in the heat compared to young individuals. While this may be related to an age-dependent reduction in whole-body sweating, no study has clearly delineated at what age this occurs. In the present study, we report direct measurements of human heat dissipation during physical activity in the heat in males ranging in age from 20–70 years. Eighty-five males performed four 15-min bouts of cycling separated by 15-min rest periods, in a calorimeter regulated to 35°C and 20% relative humidity. Direct calorimetry was used to measure total heat loss (whole-body evaporative heat loss and dry heat exchange). We also used indirect calorimetry as a continuous measure of metabolic heat production. Body heat storage was calculated as the temporal summation of heat production and total heat loss over the experimental session. Whole-body sweat rate (WBSR) was calculated from measurements of evaporative heat loss. Males were divided into five age categories for the analysis of WBSR and body heat storage: 20–31 years (n = 18), 40–44 years (n = 15), 45–49 years (n = 15), 50–55 years (n = 21) and 56–70 years (n = 16). Relative to young males, WBSR was reduced in males aged 56–70 during each exercise (all P<0.05), in males aged 50–55 during the second (P = 0.031) and third exercises (P = 0.028) and in males aged 45–49 during the final exercise bout (P = 0.046). Although not significantly different, 40–44 years old males also had a lower rate of heat loss compared to younger males. Over the sum of two hours, the change in body heat content was greater in males 40–70 years compared to young males (all P<0.05). Our findings suggest that middle-aged and older adults have impairments in heat dissipation when doing physical activity in the heat, thus possibly increasing their risk of heat-related illness under such conditions.
Solar water purifiers for small rural African homesteads: Evaluation of alternative designs

This paper presents five different designs of single slope solar water stills. These still designs would probably be useful in small homes wishing to purify water for their daily drinking needs. Models of the stills ranging between 1 m2 and 1.5 m2 glazing area are manufactured and tested in real outdoor conditions. Two of the stills are double glazed and have external condensers, with one of them using forced steam extraction. A third still is mounted on a sun tracking pillar. The remaining two are simple collapsible and portable units but of different slopes. A method of evaluating the designs is illustrated. It relies on a focus on the purpose of a solar still and what scarce resources are required to get outputs from it. Thus, the stills are evaluated based on function, quality, productivity and cost. It is found that the tracking unit out performs the others on function and quality criteria but it is outcompeted on efficiencies and cost criteria. Condensate drip-back was found to be an issue that necessitates use of slopes that do not necessarily yield maximum energy incidence on the stills. It was also found that double glazing and external condensation did not help improve performance on any of the criteria. It is concluded and recommended that an ideal single slope solar water purifier operating in weather similar to Cape Town’s summer season, would need to have a thin single glazing, sloped towards 45°, portable and sun tracking.
Eurographics/siggraph Symposium on Computer Animation (2003) Dynapack: Space-time Compression of the 3d Animations of Triangle Meshes with Fixed Connectivity

Figure 1: The top 3D frames were taken from the Chicken Crossing animation (produced at Microsoft, courtesy of Jed Lengyel) contains 400 frames of the same connectivity, each having 41 components with a total of 5664 triangles and 3030 vertices. Dynapack quantizes the floating point coordinates of the vertices to 13 (respectively 11, and 7) bits, shown in rows 2 (respectively 3, and 5). It compresses them down to 2.91 (respectively 2.35, and 1.37) bits, resulting in a worst-case geometric error of 0.0061 (respectively 0.024, and 0.3) percent of the size of the minimum axis-aligned bounding box of the animation sequence. Note that the result of the 13-bit quantization is undistinguishable from the original and yields an 11-to-1 compression ratio over the floating-point representation with a 42.1 dB signal-to-noise ratio. 1. Abstract Dynapack exploits space-time coherence to compress the consecutive frames of the 3D animations of triangle meshes of constant connectivity. Instead of compressing each frame independently (space-only compression) or compressing the trajectory of each vertex independently (time-only compression), we predict the position of each vertex v of frame f from three of its neighbors in frame f and from the positions of v and of these neighbors in the previous frame (space-time compression). We introduce here two extrapolating space-time predictors: the ELP extension of the Lorenzo predictor, developed originally for compressing regularly sampled 4D data sets, and the Replica predictor. ELP may be computed using only additions and subtractions of points and is a perfect predictor for portions of the animation undergoing pure translations. The Replica predictor is slightly more expensive to compute, but is a perfect predictor for arbitrary combinations of translations, rotations, and uniform scaling. For the typical 3D animations that we have compressed, the corrections between the actual and predicted value of the vertex coordinates may be compressed using entropy coding down to an average ranging between 1.37 and 2.91 bits, when the quantization used ranges between 7 and 13 bits. In comparison , space-only compression yields a range of 1.90 to 7.19 bits per coordinate and time-only compressions yields a range of 1.77 to 6.91 bits per coordinate. The implementation of the Dynapack compression and decompression is trivial and extremely fast. It perform a sweep through the animation, only accessing two consecutive frames at a time. Therefore, it is particularly well suited for realtime and out-of-core compression, and for streaming decompression. Although animated 3D models …
Institute for Mathematical Physics the Extension Theorem the Extension Theorem

To Ludwig Danzer on the occasion of his 70th birthday Abstract Given a compact convex polyhedron, can it tile space in a transitive (or in a regular) way? We discuss in the paper the so-called extension theorem giving conditions under which there is unique extension of a nite polyhedral complex, which consists of replicas of the given polyhedron, to a global isohedral tiling. The extension theorem gives a way to get all possible regular tilings with the given polyhedron. The well-known results on fundamental domains in the case of a translational group or of a Coxeter group generated by mirrors follow from the extension theorem too. The extension theorem gives a method of describing which nite point sets can admit extension to a regular point orbits with respect to crystallographic groups.
Slicing, sampling, and distance-dependent effects affect network measures in simulated cortical circuit structures

The neuroanatomical connectivity of cortical circuits is believed to follow certain rules, the exact origins of which are still poorly understood. In particular, numerous nonrandom features, such as common neighbor clustering, overrepresentation of reciprocal connectivity, and overrepresentation of certain triadic graph motifs have been experimentally observed in cortical slice data. Some of these data, particularly regarding bidirectional connectivity are seemingly contradictory, and the reasons for this are unclear. Here we present a simple static geometric network model with distance-dependent connectivity on a realistic scale that naturally gives rise to certain elements of these observed behaviors, and may provide plausible explanations for some of the conflicting findings. Specifically, investigation of the model shows that experimentally measured nonrandom effects, especially bidirectional connectivity, may depend sensitively on experimental parameters such as slice thickness and sampling area, suggesting potential explanations for the seemingly conflicting experimental results.
Lumbar Intraspinal Synovial and Ganglion Cysts (Facet Cysts): Ten‐Year Experience in Evaluation and Treatment

Study Design. This study analyzed the clinical history, physical examination, diagnostic studies, and operative and histologic findings in 19 patints with lumbar intraspinal synovial and ganglion facet cysts evaluated and treated over a 10-year period. Objectives. The results were correlated to provide a greater understanding of lumbar facet cysts and rationale for conservative or surgical treatments. Summary of Background Data. The 19 patients included 13 women and 6 men ranging in age from 38 to 79 years. 84.4% of the patients presented with radicular pain. 26.3% had significant motor deficit. 68.4% of the facet cysts were found at L4–L5, 21.1% at L5–S1, 5.2% at L1–L2, and 5.2% at L2–L3. Methods. The clinical history and findings on physical examination, standard radiography, myelography, computed tomography-myelography, facet arthrography, post-facet arthrograph computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging with and without contrast, and computed tomography scans were reviwed. Results. Bilobed cysts were found on both dorsal and ventral aspects of the involved facet joints within and outside of the spinal canal on facet arthrography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and at the time of surgery in more than 60% of the patients. Significant facet degeneration was found in 75% of stadard radiographs, and on all of the magenetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scans. In six patients, symptoms improved with rest, medication, and bracing. Epidural corticosteriod injections provided short-term relief in three out of fout patients. Facet corticosteroid injections provided good relief in one, partial relief in one, and no relief in one patient. Surgical decompression in eight patients resulted in three excellent, four good, and one fair outcome. Conclusions. Most of the lumbar intraspinal facet cysts were associated with significantly degenerated facet joints. Patients with intraspinal facet cysts may respond to conservative treatments if there is no significant neurologic deficit. Surgical decompression and removal of large facet cysts usually are successful in relieving symptoms.
Co-production schemes in biomass gasification

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Evaluation of Radiation and Clouds From Five Reanalysis Products in the Northeast Pacific Ocean

Atmospheric reanalyses are valuable tools for studying the atmosphere, as they provide temporally and spatially complete coverage of atmospheric variables. However, some regions are susceptible to large biases in reanalysis products due to the scarce data available to assimilate into the reanalyses. Consequently, evaluation of reanalyses using available measurements is essential for quantifying regional errors. Here we use NASA's CERES satellite estimates to evaluate surface radiative fluxes and total cloud fraction in the Northeast Pacific from five reanalysis products—ERA‐Interim, MERRA2, JRA‐55, NCEP2, and CFSR—from years 2001 to 2015. Results show that biases of surface incident shortwave radiative flux in reanalyses compared to satellite estimates range from 3.8 (CFSR) to 21.2 Wm‐2 (NCEP2), with significant biases in JRA‐55 and NCEP2. Mean surface downward longwave radiative flux in the reanalysis products is biased by −8.9 (MERRA2) to 3.9 Wm−2 (JRA‐55), with significant biases in MERRA2 and NCEP2. Errors in the surface radiative fluxes are partially linked to differences in total cloud fraction in the satellite estimates and reanalyses, which show significant negative biases ranging from −8% (CFSR) to −21.7% (NCEP2). There is not one reanalysis that outperforms the rest in the NE Pacific. The most appropriate data set depends on the variables of interest, subregion of the NE Pacific being studied, time period of interest, and whether the reanalysis data will be used to study long‐term or short‐term climate processes. Using the errors presented for each reanalysis data set can help guide appropriate use and bound uncertainty for the five reanalysis products analyzed.
Characterization of the 3-O-Methylgallate Dioxygenase Gene and Evidence of Multiple 3-O-Methylgallate Catabolic Pathways in Sphingomonas paucimobilis SYK-6

ABSTRACT Sphingomonas paucimobilis SYK-6 is able to grow on various lignin-derived biaryls as the sole source of carbon and energy. These compounds are degraded to vanillate and syringate by the unique and specific enzymes in this strain. Vanillate and syringate are converted to protocatechuate (PCA) and 3-O-methylgallate (3MGA), respectively, by the tetrahydrofolate-dependent O-demethylases. Previous studies have suggested that these compounds are further degraded via the PCA 4,5-cleavage pathway. However, our subsequent analysis of the ligB insertion mutant, which encodes the β subunit of PCA 4,5-dioxygenase, suggested that at least one alternative route is involved in 3MGA degradation. In the present study, we isolated the desZ gene, which confers 3MGA degradation activity on Escherichia coli. The deduced amino acid sequence of desZ showed ca. 20 to 43% identity with the type II extradiol dioxygenases. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis suggested that DesZ catalyzes the 3,4-cleavage of 3MGA. Disruption of both desZ and ligB in SYK-6 resulted in loss of the dioxygen-dependent 3MGA transformation activity, but the resulting mutant retained the ability to grow on syringate. We found that the cell extract of the desZ ligB double mutant was able to convert 3MGA to gallate when tetrahydrofolate was added to the reaction mixture, and the cell extract of this mutant degraded gallate to the same degree as the wild type did. All these results suggest that syringate is degraded through multiple 3MGA degradation pathways in which ligAB, desZ, 3MGA O-demethylase, and gallate dioxygenase are participants.
Hormonal and behavioural correlates of male dominance and reproductive status in captive colonies of the naked mole–rat, Heterocephalus glaber

Naked mole–rat colonies are societies with a high reproductive skew, breeding being restricted to one dominant female (the ‘queen’) and 1 to 3 males. Other colony members of both sexes are reproductively suppressed. Experimental removal of breeding males allowed us to investigate the relationship between urinary testosterone and cortisol, dominance rank, and male reproductive status. Dominance rank was strongly correlated with body weight, age, and urinary testosterone titres in males. No relationship between urinary cortisol levels and male reproductive status or dominance was found. Breeding males were among the highest–ranking, heaviest and oldest males in their respective colonies, and were succeeded by other high–ranking, large, old colony males. In contrast to females, no evidence of competition over breeding status was observed among males. Male–male agonism was low both before and after removal of breeders and mate guarding was not observed. The lower reproductive skew for males compared with female skew or queen control over male reproduction may explain why males compete less strongly than females over breeding status after removal of same–sexed breeders.
Usefulness Evaluation of Simulation in Server System Testing

This paper evaluates the usefulness of different simulators developed in server system testing for a mobile application during 5 years, with the purpose of identifying the advantages and weaknesses of each simulation method in the given setup. The study found that simulation was used on almost every interface to external systems, and two factors that affected the usefulness of simulators over long term were the functionality supported and the applicable usage scenarios. Large-scale simulation did not keep yielding high returns. In the mobile application of server/client architecture, emulating external servers raised the testing capability, and emulating mobile clients led to higher efficiency. The findings in this study can be used as references for software teams to plan simulation in QA activities properly for faster QA cycles, deeper understanding of the system, more stable test results and lower resource costs.
In‐vitro analysis of early calcification in aortic valvular interstitial cells using Laser‐Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)

Calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is a major cardiovascular disorder caused by osteogenic differentiation of valvular interstitial cells (VICs) within aortic valves. Conventional methods like colorimetric assays and histology fail to detect small calcium depositions during in‐vitro VIC cultures. Laser‐induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a robust analytical tool used for inorganic materials characterizations, but relatively new to biomedical applications. We employ LIBS, for the first time, for quantitative in‐vitro detection of calcium depositions in VICs at various osteogenic differentiation stages. VICs isolated from porcine aortic valves were cultured in osteogenic media over various days. Colorimetric calcium assays based on arsenazo dye and Von Kossa staining measured the calcium depositions within VICs. Simultaneously, LIBS signatures for Ca I (422.67 nm) atomic emission lines were collected for estimating calcium depositions in lyophilized VIC samples. Our results indicate excellent linear correlation between the calcium assay and our LIBS measurements. Furthermore, unlike the assay results, the LIBS results could resolve calcium signals from cell samples with as early as 2 days of osteogenic culture. Quantitatively, the LIBS measurements establish the limit of detection for calcium content in VICs to be ∼0.17±0.04 μg which indicates a 5‐fold improvement over calcium assay. Picture: Quantitative LIBS enables in‐vitro analysis for early stage detection of calcium deposition within aortic valvular interstitial cells (VICs).