Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oxide chemistry and local structure of PbZrxTi1-xO3 studied by density-functional theory supercell calculations

The PbZr x Ti 1 - x O 3 (PZT) disordered solid solution is widely used in piezoelectric applications due to its excellent electromechanical properties. The disorder is caused by the random arrangement of B cations. To understand the relationship between properties of constituent atoms, local structure, and compositional phase transitions, we examine the response of the individual Pb atoms, B cations, and oxygen cages to the variation in the Zr/Ti arrangement and composition through first-principles density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations on a variety of PZT supercells. We use a statistical analysis of the relaxed DFT structures to identify crystal chemical structural motifs present in the Zr-rich rhombohedral, 50/50 monoclinic, and Ti-rich tetragonal phases of PZT and to examine the influence of composition variation on the motifs. We find that the distortions of the structure away from the ideal perovskite structure are governed by an interplay of bonding, electrostatic, and short-range repulsive interactions that depends on the B-cation arrangement. For Pb-atom displacements, there is a competition between electrostatic and bonding interactions that favor ordered collinear displacements, and local repulsive interactions that favor disorder. This competition is strongly affected by the changes in Zr/Ti composition and leads to compositional phase boundaries in PZT.
The nose tells it to the eyes: Crossmodal associations between olfaction and vision

1 IntroductionHuman olfaction has been much less explored than the other sensory systems inpsychological research. Early studies on human olfactory cognition have first con-sidered smell in isolation from the other senses, showing well-functioning detection,discrimination, and identification from infancy into old age, peaking in early adulthood(Doty et al 1984; Richardson and Zucco 1989; Schaal 1988). Over the last two decades,olfaction has been increasingly considered for its impact on cognitive functioning(eg Jellinek 1997). Odorants have been shown to influence behavioural performancethrough their intrinsic stimulatory or sedative properties on attention and arousal(eg Ilmberger et al 2001; Ludvigson and Rottman 1989). They may modify mood andemotional states, and hence affect information processing (Michael et al 2003, 2005). Odours are also characterised by associative properties (Engen 1982, 1987). They arenaturally or incidentally associated with specific objects, contexts, or memories (Herzand von Clef 2001; Herz et al 2004), leading to the emergence of abilities to identify,name, and categorise odours. Marketing research has shown that odors can have amarked impact on consumers’ evaluation and decisions when they are congruent witha product (Bone and Jantrania 1992; Mitchell et al 1995). Such associations are basedon crossmodal processing of multimodal information afforded by source objects,highlighting the potential role of odours in crossmodal interaction through associativeprocesses.During the last decades, crossmodal integration has undergone burgeoning interest,mostly focusing on the links between audition and vision (eg Frens et al 1995; Perrottet al 1990; Stein et al 1989). This research has raised several mechanistic principlesand functions. According to Calvert (2001), crossmodal integration would bear two majorfunctions: the facilitation of identification and the facilitation of localisation. Local-isation denotes here that when stimuli mediated by distinct modalities are presentedin a close temporal and spatial window, they will more likely be considered as coming
Toward a More Complete, Flexible, and Safer Speed Planning for Autonomous Driving via Convex Optimization

In this paper, we present a complete, flexible and safe convex-optimization-based method to solve speed planning problems over a fixed path for autonomous driving in both static and dynamic environments. Our contributions are five fold. First, we summarize the most common constraints raised in various autonomous driving scenarios as the requirements for speed planner developments and metrics to measure the capacity of existing speed planners roughly for autonomous driving. Second, we introduce a more general, flexible and complete speed planning mathematical model including all the summarized constraints compared to the state-of-the-art speed planners, which addresses limitations of existing methods and is able to provide smooth, safety-guaranteed, dynamic-feasible, and time-efficient speed profiles. Third, we emphasize comfort while guaranteeing fundamental motion safety without sacrificing the mobility of cars by treating the comfort box constraint as a semi-hard constraint in optimization via slack variables and penalty functions, which distinguishes our method from existing ones. Fourth, we demonstrate that our problem preserves convexity with the added constraints, thus global optimality of solutions is guaranteed. Fifth, we showcase how our formulation can be used in various autonomous driving scenarios by providing several challenging case studies in both static and dynamic environments. A range of numerical experiments and challenging realistic speed planning case studies have depicted that the proposed method outperforms existing speed planners for autonomous driving in terms of constraint type covered, optimality, safety, mobility and flexibility.
‘A guided walk in the woods’: boundary crossing in a collaborative action research project

Abstract This article discusses the ideal and practice of collaboration in a collaborative action research project in which university researchers work together with staff from the field of primary education. A qualitative case study was conducted using the theory of boundary crossing to make sense of the ways collaboration took place within the project team. The main theme, also a major dilemma in the project, referred to the transition from a democratic towards a more directive approach within the project design after the first year. The members of the project team took shifting and ambivalent positions within the project as they were trying to cross boundaries between the different goals of the project. Also, boundary objects on different levels contributed to the collaboration. We conclude that clear boundaries between groups or a strong shared identity, as proposed by an insider–outsider model of action research and the notion of first-order democracy, are not helpful in complex collaborative action research projects. Instead, we need the development of second-order democracy means in order to cross boundaries and sustain a critical dialogue about differences.
Detecting Bipolar Depression From Geographic Location Data

<italic>Objective:</italic> This paper aims to identify periods of depression using geolocation movements recorded from mobile phones in a prospective community study of individuals with bipolar disorder (BD). <italic>M</italic>ethods: Anonymized geographic location recordings from 22 BD participants and 14 healthy controls (HC) were collected over 3 months. Participants reported their depressive symptomatology using a weekly questionnaire (QIDS-SR<sub>16</sub>). Recorded location data were preprocessed by detecting and removing imprecise data points and features were extracted to assess the level and regularity of geographic movements of the participant. A subset of features were selected using a wrapper feature selection method and presented to 1) a linear regression model and a quadratic generalized linear model with a logistic link function for questionnaire score estimation; and 2) a quadratic discriminant analysis classifier for depression detection in BD participants based on their questionnaire responses. <italic>R </italic>esults: HC participants did not report depressive symptoms and their features showed similar distributions to nondepressed BD participants. Questionnaire score estimation using geolocation-derived features from BD participants demonstrated an optimal mean absolute error rate of 3.73, while depression detection demonstrated an optimal (median <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> IQR) <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{F}_{1}$</tex-math></inline-formula> score of 0.857 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0.022 using five features (classification accuracy: 0.849 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0.016; sensitivity: 0.839 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0.014; specificity: 0.872 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 0.047). <italic>C</italic>onclusion: These results demonstrate a strong link between geographic movements and depression in bipolar disorder. <italic>S</italic> ignificance: To our knowledge, this is the first community study of passively recorded objective markers of depression in bipolar disorder of this scale. The techniques could help individuals monitor their depression and enable healthcare providers to detect those in need of care or treatment.
Enhanced thermal performance of garments embedded with encapsulated phase change material

The thermal storage and insulation properties of garments enhanced with phase change material (PCM) will be investigated using a finite difference procedure. A diver dry suit embedded with micro-encapsulated PCM will be shown to enhance thermal protection under extreme temperature conditions. Under conditions of high body heat production a garment embedded with Macro-encapsulated PCM is shown to absorb excess heat while maintaining a relatively constant temperature.
Social network analysis of stakeholder networks from two community-based obesity prevention interventions

Introduction Studies of community-based obesity prevention interventions have hypothesized that stakeholder networks are a critical element of effective implementation. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of the interpersonal network structures within a sub-sample of stakeholders from two past successful childhood obesity prevention interventions. Methods Participants were recruited from the stakeholder groups (steering committees) of two completed community-based intervention studies, Romp & Chomp (R&C), Australia (2004-2008) and Shape Up Somerville (SUS), USA (2003-2005). Both studies demonstrated significant reductions of overweight and obesity among children. Members of the steering committees were asked to complete a retrospective social network questionnaire using a roster of other committee members and free recall. Each participant was asked to recall the people with whom they discussed issues related to childhood obesity throughout the intervention period, along with providing the closeness and level of influence of each relationship. Results Networks were reported by 13 participants from the SUS steering committee and 8 participants from the R&C steering committee. On average, participants nominated 16 contacts with whom they discussed issues related to childhood obesity through the intervention, with approximately half of the relationships described as ‘close’ and 30% as ‘influential’. The ‘discussion’ and ‘close’ networks had high clustering and reciprocity, with ties directed to other steering committee members, and to individuals external to the committee. In contrast, influential ties were more prominently directed internal to the steering committee, with higher network centralization, lower reciprocity and lower clustering. Discussion and conclusion Social network analysis provides a method to evaluate the ties within steering committees of community-based obesity prevention interventions. In this study, the network characteristics between a sub-set of stakeholders appeared to be supportive of diffused communication. Future work should prospectively examine stakeholder network structures in a heterogeneous sample of community-based interventions to identify elements most strongly associated with intervention effectiveness.
Pharynx mitochondrial [Ca2+] dynamics in live C. elegans worms during aging

Progressive decline in mitochondrial function is generally considered one of the hallmarks of aging. We have expressed a Ca2+ sensor in the mitochondrial matrix of C. elegans pharynx cells and we have measured for the first time mitochondrial [Ca2+] ([Ca2+]M) dynamics in the pharynx of live C. elegans worms during aging. Our results show that worms stimulated with serotonin display a pharynx [Ca2+]M oscillatory kinetics that includes both high frequency oscillations (up to about 1Hz) and very prolonged “square-wave” [Ca2+]M increases, indicative of energy depletion of the pharynx cells. Mitochondrial [Ca2+] is therefore able to follow “beat-to-beat” the fast oscillations of cytosolic [Ca2+]. The fast [Ca2+]M oscillations kept steady frequency values during the whole worm life, from 2 to 12 days old, but the height and width of the peaks was progressively reduced. [Ca2+]M oscillations were also present with similar kinetics in respiratory chain complex I nuo-6 mutant worms, although with smaller height and frequency than in the controls, and larger width. In summary, Ca2+ fluxes in and out of the mitochondria are relatively well preserved during the C. elegans life, but there is a clear progressive decrease in their magnitude during aging. Moreover, mitochondrial Ca2+ fluxes were smaller in nuo-6 mutants with respect to the controls at every age and decreased similarly during aging.
New Insights into EDTA In Vitro Effects on Endothelial Cells and on In Vivo Labeled EDTA Biodistribution

EDTA chelation therapy has recently been proposed for the treatment of patients affected by neurodegenerative (ND) or cardiovascular (CVD) diseases due to its efficacy in removing toxic metals that affect the functions of neurons and endothelial cells. We examined the effects of EDTA in modulating human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) activation induced by tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα). Moreover, we studied the biodistribution of technetium [99 mTc] EDTA injected intravenously into healthy adult rats. Our results show that EDTA treatment reverses the HUVEC activation induced by TNFα, as highlighted by normal tubulin distribution, in keeping with a well spread, quiescent endothelial phenotype. In addition, the biodistribution of labeled EDTA reaches the central nervous system (CNS), as assessed by scintigraphy (5853.6 cpm/pixel measured at 1 hour following intravenous labeled EDTA injection) and autopsy data (3.67% at 3 hours following labeled EDTA intravenous injection). Such evidence highlights new insights into the usefulness of EDTA chelation therapy in the treatment of ND and CVD.
Evaluation of the Elecsys Chagas Assay for Detection of Trypanosoma cruzi-Specific Antibodies in a Multicenter Study in Europe and Latin America

ABSTRACT Serology is the preferred method to confirm a Chagas disease diagnosis and to screen blood donors. A battery of assays is often required due to the limited accuracy of single assays. The Elecsys Chagas assay is a newly developed, double-antigen sandwich assay for use on the Elecsys and cobas e immunoassay analyzers, intended to identify individuals infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, for diagnosis and screening. The performance of the Elecsys Chagas assay was evaluated in comparison with those of other widely used T. cruzi antibody assays, at multiple sites (Europe/Latin America). Relative sensitivity and specificity were assessed by using samples from blood donors, pregnant women, and hospitalized patients from regions where Chagas disease is endemic and from regions of nonendemicity. The Elecsys Chagas assay had an overall relative sensitivity of 100% (n = 674). Overall relative specificities were 99.90% (n = 14,681), 100% (n = 313), and 100% (n = 517) for samples from blood donors, pregnant women, and hospitalized patients, respectively. The analytical specificity was 99.83% (n = 594). The Elecsys Chagas assay detected T. cruzi antibodies in two World Health Organization (WHO) standard T. cruzi reference panels (panels 09/188 and 09/186) at a 1:512 dilution, corresponding to a cutoff sensitivity of approximately 1 mIU/ml. The Elecsys Chagas assay demonstrated robust performance under routine conditions at multiple sites in Europe and Latin America. In contrast to other available Chagas assays, the Elecsys assay uses a reduced number of recombinant T. cruzi antigens, resulting in a significantly smaller number of cross-reactions and improved analytical specificity while being highly sensitive.
‘Come in with an open mind’: changing attitudes towards mathematics in primary teacher education

Abstract Background: The relationship between attitudes and behaviour has led to a focus on the role played by attitudes in the teaching and learning of mathematics. Purpose: This paper reports on an investigation into student teachers’ self-reported attitudes towards mathematics in the context of a mathematics education programme. The programme had been developed by the authors in response to a new, reformed four-year undergraduate initial teacher education (ITE) for primary teachers in Ireland. The authors aimed to use the feedback to evaluate and develop the course further. Sample: We report on the attitudes of 345 pre-service primary teachers enrolled in a four-year undergraduate ITE programme. 281 of these participants had matched survey data before and after participating in the mathematics education programme. Method and Design: Four evaluation criteria were used as a conceptual framework for the evaluation of the mathematics education programme. A multi-method approach was taken in investigating the students’ attitudes to mathematics by using a scale as a quantitative measure of attitude alongside open-ended survey items that provided qualitative insights into changes in attitudes. Results and conclusions: Results from the survey data suggested overall that the participants’ attitudes towards mathematics were more positive after they had experienced the mathematics education programme. Overall, the written responses suggested that according to self-reportage, participants perceived that participation in the mathematics education programme had affected their attitudes towards mathematics positively. Comments indicated that the ‘small group’ tutorial structure was particularly well received and was associated with opportunities to actively engage, explore, interact and reflect. Suggestions offered by the participants will be used to inform planning and development of the mathematics programme.
The effect of short-term hypoxic exposure on metabolic gene expression.

The long-term effect of hypoxia is to decrease both the production and use of ATP and thus decrease the reliance on mitochondrial oxidative energy production. Yet, recent studies include more immediate affects of hypoxia on gene expression and these data suggest the maintenance of mitochondrial function. To better understand the short-term physiological response to hypoxia, we quantified metabolic mRNA expression in the heart ventricles and livers of the teleost fish Fundulus grandis exposed to partial oxygen pressure of 2.8 kPa (-13.5% air saturation). Twenty-eight individuals from a single population were exposed to hypoxia for 0, 4, 8, 12, 24, 48, and 96 hr. Liver and cardiac tissues were sampled from the same individuals at 0-48 hr. At 96 hr, only cardiac tissue was assayed. Gene expression was significantly different (ANOVA, P < 0.05) for 17 of 226 metabolic genes (7.5%) in cardiac tissue and for 20 of 256 (7.8%) metabolic genes in hepatic tissue. For the two tissues examined in this study, the maximum response occurred at different times. For cardiac tissue, using Dunnett's post hoc test, most of these significant differences occurred at 96 hr of exposure. For liver, all but one significant difference occurred at 4 hr. Surprisingly, too many (relative to random expectations) of the genes with significant increase in mRNA are involved in the oxidative phosphorylation pathway: 44% of the significant genes at 96 hr in the heart and 33% of the significant genes at 4 hr in the liver are involved in the oxidative phosphorylation pathway. These data indicate that there are tissue-specific differences in the timing of the response to hypoxia, yet both cardiac and hepatic tissues have increases in mRNA that code for enzyme in the oxidative phosphorylation pathway. If these changes in mRNA produce a similar change in protein, then these data suggest that the initial response to hypoxia involves an increase in the oxidative pathway potentially as a mechanism to maintain ATP production.
Selectively diversifying web search results

Search result diversification is a natural approach for tackling ambiguous queries. Nevertheless, not all queries are equally ambiguous, and hence different queries could benefit from different diversification strategies. A more lenient or more aggressive diversification strategy is typically encoded by existing approaches as a trade-off between promoting relevance or diversity in the search results. In this paper, we propose to learn such a trade-off on a per-query basis. In particular, we examine how the need for diversification can be learnt for each query - given a diversification approach and an unseen query, we predict an effective trade-off between relevance and diversity based on similar previously seen queries. Thorough experiments using the TREC ClueWeb09 collection show that our selective approach can significantly outperform a uniform diversification for both classical and state-of-the-art diversification approaches.
MCMDA: Matrix completion for MiRNA-disease association prediction

Nowadays, researchers have realized that microRNAs (miRNAs) are playing a significant role in many important biological processes and they are closely connected with various complex human diseases. However, since there are too many possible miRNA-disease associations to analyze, it remains difficult to predict the potential miRNAs related to human diseases without a systematic and effective method. In this study, we developed a Matrix Completion for MiRNA-Disease Association prediction model (MCMDA) based on the known miRNA-disease associations in HMDD database. MCMDA model utilized the matrix completion algorithm to update the adjacency matrix of known miRNA-disease associations and furthermore predict the potential associations. To evaluate the performance of MCMDA, we performed leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) and 5-fold cross validation to compare MCMDA with three previous classical computational models (RLSMDA, HDMP, and WBSMDA). As a result, MCMDA achieved AUCs of 0.8749 in global LOOCV, 0.7718 in local LOOCV and average AUC of 0.8767+/−0.0011 in 5-fold cross validation. Moreover, the prediction results associated with colon neoplasms, kidney neoplasms, lymphoma and prostate neoplasms were verified. As a consequence, 84%, 86%, 78% and 90% of the top 50 potential miRNAs for these four diseases were respectively confirmed by recent experimental discoveries. Therefore, MCMDA model is superior to the previous models in that it improves the prediction performance although it only depends on the known miRNA-disease associations.
Peter Hall, functional data analysis and random objects

Functional data analysis has become a major branch of nonparametric statistics and is a fast evolving field. Peter Hall has made fundamental contributions to this area and its theoretical underpinnings. He wrote more than 25 papers in functional data analysis between 1998 and 2016 and from 2005 on was a tenured faculty member with a 25% appointment in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Davis. This article describes aspects of his appointment and academic life in Davis and also some of his major results in functional data analysis, along with a brief history of this area. It concludes with an outlook on new types of functional data and an emerging field of “random objects” that subsumes functional data analysis as it deals with more complex data structures.