Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Diffuse Gamma-Ray Background from Supernovae

The diffuse extragalactic γ-ray background in the MeV region is believed to be due to photons from radioactivity produced in supernovae throughout the history of galaxies in the universe. In particular, γ-ray line emission from the decay chain 56Ni→56Co→56Fe provides the dominant photon source (Clayton & Silk). Although iron synthesis occurs in all types of supernovae, the contribution to the background is dominated by Type Ia events due to their higher photon escape probabilities. Estimates of the star formation history in the universe suggest a rapid increase by a factor ~10 from the present to a redshift zp ~1.5, beyond which it either remains constant or decreases slowly. Little is known about the cosmological star formation history for redshift exceeding z ~5. We integrate the observed star formation history to determine the cosmic γ-ray background (CGB) from the corresponding supernova rate history. In addition to γ-rays from short-lived radioactivity in Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia's) and Type II, Ib, and Ic supernovae (SN II's, SN Ib's, SN Ic's) we also calculate the minor contributions from long-lived radioactivities (26Al, 44Ti, 60Co, and electron-positron pair annihilation). The time-integrated γ-ray spectrum of model W10HMM (Pinto & Woosley) was used as a template for Type II supernovae, and for SN Ia's we employ model W7 (Nomoto et al.). Although progenitor evolution for Type Ia supernovae is not yet fully understood, various arguments suggest delays of order 1-2 Gyr between star formation and the production of SN Ia's. The effect of this delay on the CGB is discussed. We emphasize the value of γ-ray observations of the CGB in the MeV range as an independent tool for studies of the cosmic star formation history. If the delay between star formation and SN Ia activity exceeds 1 Gyr substantially and/or the peak of the cosmic star formation rate occurs at a redshift much larger than unity, the γ-ray production of SN Ia's would be insufficient to explain the observed CGB and a so far undiscovered source population would be implied. Alternatively, the cosmic star formation rate would have to be higher (by a factor 2-3) than commonly assumed, which is in accord with several upward revisions reported in the recent literature.
Colour pattern evolution in butterflies: a phylogenetic analysis of structural ultraviolet and melanic markings in North American sulphurs

The males of many butterflies are more brightly coloured than conspecific females and this sexual dichromatism often extends into ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths. Sexual selection, acting either in the context of intra- or intersexual interactions, is thought responsible for the relative brightness of the male visage; however, this hypothesis has been difficult to test experimentally. In this study, we undertake an indirect evaluation of this idea by analysing the phylogenetic distribution of two elements of male colour pattern – UV reflectance and melanic markings – in North American sulphur butterflies. Only the UV element, which derives from nanometre-scale surface structures and is extremely bright and spectrally pure, is expected to be of sexually selected origin. We therefore predicted, based upon prior theoretical treatments, that UV colour pattern should exhibit a polyphyletic distribution typical of a sexually selected trait, whereas melanic patterns should not. We charted the distribution of each colour element across the dorsal hind- and fore-wing surfaces of 26 species (spanning four genera), and summarized the resulting intraspecific variation in colour pattern using principal components analysis. Analysis of among- versus within-sister species group variance confirmed, as predicted, a largely polyphyletic distribution for UV but not melanic patterns. We also found that variation in fore-wing UV patterning could be considered orthogonal of hind-wing variation. These findings shed interesting light on the evolution of structural coloration in this group and add strength to the idea that brilliant male coloration is principally of sexually selected origin.
The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Are the Dorsa Argentea on Mars eskers ?

The Dorsa Argentea are an extensive assemblage of ridges in the southern high latitudes of Mars. They have previously been interpreted as eskers formed by deposition of sediment in subglacial meltwater conduits, implying a formerly more extensive south polar ice sheet. In this study, we undertake the first large-scale statistical analysis of aspects of the geometry and morphology of the Dorsa Argentea in comparison with terrestrial eskers in order to evaluate this hypothesis. The ridges are re-mapped using integrated topographic (MOLA) and image (CTX/HRSC) data, and their planar geometries compared to recent characterisations of terrestrial eskers. Quantitative tests for esker-like relationships between ridge height, crest morphology and topography are then completed for four major Dorsa Argentea ridges. The following key conclusions are reached: (1) Statistical distributions of lengths and sinuosities of the Dorsa Argentea are similar to those of terrestrial eskers in Canada. (2) Planar geometries across the Dorsa Argentea support formation of ridges in conduits extending towards the interior of an ice sheet that thinned towards its northern margin, perhaps terminating in a proglacial lake. (3) Variations in ridge crest morphology are consistent with observations of terrestrial eskers. (4) Statistical tests of previously observed relationships between ridge height and longitudinal bed slope, similar to those explained by the physics of meltwater flow through subglacial meltwater conduits for terrestrial eskers, confirm the strength of these relationships for three of four major Dorsa Argentea ridges. (5) The new quantitative characterisations of the Dorsa Argentea may provide useful constraints for parameters in modelling studies of a putative former ice sheet in the south polar regions of Mars, its hydrology, and mechanisms that drove its eventual re-
Approaching Throughput-Optimality in Distributed CSMA Scheduling Algorithms With Collisions

It was shown recently that carrier sense multiple access (CSMA)-like distributed algorithms can achieve the maximal throughput in wireless networks (and task processing networks) under certain assumptions. One important but idealized assumption is that the sensing time is negligible, so that there is no collision. In this paper, we study more practical CSMA-based scheduling algorithms with collisions. First, we provide a Markov chain model and give an explicit throughput formula that takes into account the cost of collisions and overhead. The formula has a simple form since the Markov chain is “almost” time-reversible. Second, we propose transmission-length control algorithms to approach throughput-optimality in this case. Sufficient conditions are given to ensure the convergence and stability of the proposed algorithms. Finally, we characterize the relationship between the CSMA parameters (such as the maximum packet lengths) and the achievable capacity region.
Variability of Practice and the Transfer of Training of Motor Skills

Abstract : The Training and Simulation Technical Area of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) maintains a program of research in support of the systems approach to training. A major focus of this program is the development of fundamental data and technology in the areas of skill acquisition, retention and transfer necessary for fielding training systems that improve individual job performance. Typically, soldiers are trained in service schools on only a portion of those tasks required for effective job performance. The remaining tasks are trained on the job once soldiers arrive in their operational units. Because unit training resources are limited, a primary goal of school training is to promote effective positive transfer of school- taught tasks to those additional tasks required on the job. Such transfer would reduce unit training demands and promote better on-the-job performance and associated combat readiness. This basic research report examines the effects of amount and variability of practice on the transfer of training of motor skills. The findings indicate that transfer improves with increased initial task training but that the effects of variety are task specific.
CARCASS COMPOSITION AND PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND SENSORY PROPERTIES OF MEAT FROM BROILER CHICKENS OF DIFFERENT ORIGIN

Three commercial lines of broiler chickens, Ross 308, Hubbard Flex and Hubbard F15 were investigated. Preslaughter weight, weight of eviscerated carcass with neck and dressing percentage were the highest in Hubbard Flex and the lowest in Ross 308 chickens. Analysis of carcass composition showed statistically significant differences in the content of neck, wings, breast muscles, skin with subcutaneous fat, abdominal fat and remainders of the carcass. The highest muscle content (total proportion of breast and leg muscles in carcass) was found in Hubbard Flex chickens, and the lowest body fat content (total proportion of skin with subcutaneous fat and abdominal fat) in Ross 308 birds. Chicken origin had a significant effect on pH15, water holding capacity, colour lightness (L*), yellowness (b*) and aroma and juiciness of breast muscles.
Assessment of hail damage to crops using satellite imagery and hand held hyperspectral data

The project focused on a remote sensing data acquisition strategy that will respond to the requirements for assessment of broadacre hail damage in a timely manner within appropriate spatial and economic limitations. Current field based hail damage assessment practices are both time and labour intensive. Integrating remote sensing with a GIS database provides an economically viable alternative technique for the recording, correlation, analysis and judicious evaluation of hail damage and information for interactive administration system. This paper will report on the remote sensing strategies, specifically hyperspectral simulation trials and hail damage assessment using both hyperspectral acquisitions and remotely sensed (Landsat TM and Spot Xi) imagery. Preliminary findings have identified a good correlation (r=-0.866) between the damage levels and defoliation with r=0.86 for both Landsat 5 TM and Spot 4 Xi sensors.
A Unified and Discriminative Soft Syntactic Constraint Model for Hierarchical Phrase-based Translation

In the last decade, there have been a countless number of researches in soft syntactic features many of which have led to the improved performance for Hiero. However, it seems that all the syntactic constituent features cannot efficiently work together in the Hiero optimized by MERT. In this paper, we propose a more general soft syntactic constraint model based on discriminative classifiers for each constituent type and integrate all of them into the translation model with a unified form. The experimental results show that our method significantly improves the performance on the NIST05 Chinese-toEnglish translation task.
Perirhinal cortex and anterior thalamic lesions: comparative effects on learning and memory.

Three learning and memory tasks were used to compare the effects of neurotoxic anterior thalamic nuclei (ATN) and perirhinal cortex (PRC) lesions in rats. Rats with ATN lesions showed impaired spatial memory in a 12-arm radial maze, whereas rats with PRC lesions showed intact spatial memory, despite the use of minimal pretraining and extensive within-session delays (to 40 rain). PRC, but not ATN, lesions produced impairments on a configural learning task using complex visual-tactile cues in the radial maze. Neither ATN nor PRC lesions consistently affected spontaneous object recognition across extended sample-test delays (to 40 min). These findings confirm the differential involvement of the ATN and PRC in learning and memory.
Identical Consensus Sequence and Conserved Genomic Polymorphism of Hepatitis E Virus during Controlled Interspecies Transmission

ABSTRACT High-throughput sequencing of bile and feces from two pigs experimentally infected with human hepatitis E virus (HEV) of genotype 3f revealed the same full-length consensus sequence as in the human sample. Twenty-nine percent of polymorphic sites found in HEV from the human sample were conserved throughout the infection of the heterologous host. The interspecies transmission of HEV quasispecies is the result of a genomic negative-selection pressure on random mutations which can be deleterious to the viral population. HEV intrahost nucleotide diversity was found to be in the lower range of other human RNA viruses but correlated with values found for zoonotic viruses. HEV transmission between humans and pigs does not seem to be modulated by host-specific mutations, suggesting that adaptation is mainly regulated by ecological drivers.
CONCUSSION IN PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL: MORPHOLOGY OF BRAIN INJURIES IN THE NFL CONCUSSION MODEL—PART 16

OBJECTIVEAn animal model of concussions in National Football League players has been described in a previous study. It involves a freely moving 300-g Wistar rat impacted on the side of the head at velocities of 7.4 to 11.2 m/s with a 50-g impactor. The impact causes a 6% to 28% incidence of meningeal hemorrhages and 0.1- to 0.3-mm focal petechiae depending on the impact velocity. This study addresses the immunohistochemical responses of the brain. METHODSTwenty-seven tests were conducted with a 50-g impactor and velocities of 7.4, 9.3, or 11.2 m/s. The left temporal region of the helmet-protected head was hit 1 or 3 times. Thirty-one additional tests were conducted with a 100-g impactor. Diffuse axonal injury in distant regions of the brain was assessed with immunohistochemistry for NF-200, the heaviest neurofilament subunit, and glial fibrillary acidic protein, an intermediate filament protein in astrocytes. Hemorrhages were analyzed by unspecific peroxidase. There were 10 controls. RESULTSA single impact at 7.4 and 9.3 m/s velocity with the 50-g impactor causes minimal neuronal injury and astrocytosis. Repeat impacts with 11.2 m/s velocity and more than 9.3-m/s impacts with 100 g cause diffuse axonal injury and distant injury bilaterally in the cerebral cortex, the subcortical, the white matter, the hippocampus CA1, the corpus callosum, and the striatum, as indicated by NF-200 accumulation in neuronal perikarya 10 days after impact. It also causes reactive astrocytosis in the midline regions of the cerebral cortex and periventricularly. Regions with erythrocyte-loaded blood capillaries indicated brain edema in regions of the cerebral cortex, the brainstem, and the cerebellum. CONCLUSIONWhen the immunohistochemical results are extrapolated to professional football players, concussions result in no or minimal brain injury. Repeat impacts at higher velocity or with a heavier mass impactor cause extensive and distant diffuse axonal injury. Based on this model, the threshold for diffuse axonal injury is above even the most severe conditions for National Football League concussion.
Efficient Assessment of Available Bandwidth During DSR Route Discovery

The on-demand nature inherent to mobile ad-hoc networking systems requires mechanisms that allow for spontaneous access to remote services. Many of those services require a minimum bandwidth to operate conveniently. Therefore, not only service provider information, but also bandwidth characteristics of the corresponding communication routes should be available on demand. In this paper we propose a modification to the DSR routing protocol that allows for practical assessment of available bandwidth during the route discovery phase. This integration of routing and bandwidth assessment mechanisms not only decreases network traffic, but also provides the possibility to explicitly discover network routes that fulfill a given bandwidth requirement. This gives expedient means to applications and services that benefit from this bandwidth information i.a. for provider selection, admission control and service adaption.
Community-Acquired Pneumonia and Empyema Caused by Citrobacter koseri in an Immunocompetent Patient

Citrobacter species, belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae, are environmental organisms commonly found in soil, water, and the intestinal tracts of animals and humans. Citrobacter koseri is known to be an uncommon but serious cause of both sporadic and epidemic septicemia and meningitis in neonates and young infants. Most cases reported have occurred in immunocompromised hosts. The infections caused by Citrobacter are difficult to treat with usual broad spectrum antibiotics owing to rapid generation of mutants and have been associated with high death rates in the past. We believe this is the first case described in the literature of a community-acquired pneumonia and empyema caused by Citrobacter koseri in an immunocompetent adult patient.
Crucial Role of Selenium in the Virucidal Activity of Benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-ones and Related Diselenides

Various N-substituted benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-ones and their non-selenium-containing analogues have been synthesized and tested against selected viruses (HHV-1, EMCV and VSV) to determine the extent to which selenium plays a role in antiviral activity. The data presented here show that the presence of selenium is crucial for the antiviral properties of benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-ones since their isostructural analogues having different groups but lacking selenium either did not show any antiviral activity or their activity was substantially lower. The open-chain analogues of benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-ones—diselenides also exhibited high antiviral activity while selenides and disulfides were completely inactive towards model viruses.
Exploring empathy and attachment in Borderline Personality Disorder

Aim: The aim of the present literature review was to explore whether empathy can be reliably measured in adults. After a review of current empathy measures, the focus was on the strengths and weaknesses of two empathy measures in particular; the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Empathy Quotient (EQ). They were analysed in regards to validity, reliability, and clinical administration. Method A literature search was conducted focusing on measures of empathy, specifically the use of the IRI and the EQ, within adult populations. Additional literature limitations included a focus on articles from the years 1980 to 2014, within peer-reviewed journals, and focusing on tests and measures. Results An initial 198 references were identified. After an abstract search, 29 references were considered possible candidates for review. After a quality appraisal of the articles, 14 references were finalised for review. Conclusions The analyses of the psychometrics of the EQ and IRI were explored, and both have evidence of good validity, reliability and ease of utility. The IRI has less evidence of validity within clinical populations, whereas the EQ was designed for this purpose and shows strong construct, discriminant and convergent validity, and strong test-retest reliability among various cultures and clinical populations.
Education of the next generation of plant breeders for horticultural crop improvement

Crop improvement powered through plant breeding is critical for sustainable production of horticultural crops that contribute to healthful diets and enhance quality of life for people around the world. Currently there are too few breeders to satisfy global demands and opportunities in the public and private sectors of developing and developed countries. In order to meet future needs, it is important that educational programs incorporate rapidly changing new technologies along with classical content and methods in order to meet professional needs for cultivar developers, researchers, teachers and support scientists. Information from a broad based study at the University of California, Davis that sought input from expert stakeholders about breeding knowledge, experiences and skills can be used by educators, employers and students to provide diverse training opportunities to support ongoing professional development for future success in horticultural crop improvement.
The Motivational Function of Private Speech: An Experimental Approach.

Recently, some works have been published exploring the role of private speech as a tool for motivation, reaching beyond the classical research on its regulatory function for cognitive processes such as attention or executive function. In fact, the authors' own previous research has shown that a moderate account of spontaneous private speech of children aged between 4 and 8 has motivational content. To obtain more conclusive data on a hypothetical motivational function of this kind of utterances, a study used a factorial design, with private speech and task difficulty manipulated as independent factors, and task performance and persistence observed as dependent variables. Subjects were 83 preschool, second-grade, or fourthgrade children from a school in Madrid, Spain. The results show that the participants persist more in the free private speech condition. In addition, the number of utterances is greater in this condition. It can be also observed that the increase in persistence is related to the relative frequency of private speech with motivational content. Finally, implications of these results for the development of a socio-historical approach to motivation are discussed. The codification system is presented in an appendix. (Contains 17 references and 4 figures.) (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. The Motivational Function of Private Speech The Motivational Function of Private Speech: An Experimental Approach M. J. de Dios & I. Montero. Universidad Auninoma de Madrid
Analysis of Different Types of Attentional Interference Compared to Working Memory

Previous studies have shown a relationship between working memory (WM) and the Color-Word Stroop Task (CWS). Newer Stroop-like tasks such as the Color-Block Stroop-like Task (CBS) have been shown to cause interference but the nature of the interference is unclear. This study attempted to compare CWS and CBS to tests of working memory, specifically the Digits Span Backward task (DB) and an Operation Span (OSP AN) task. The first experiment involved no auditory stimuli. No significant correlation was found between WM and CWS. This led to a second experiment with the digit span administered auditorily. Again, no significant correlation between CWS and WM was found. Inadequate "attentional load" is believed to be the most probable cause for the lack of correlation. Results of other fmdings are discussed in light of these results and suggestions for future research are put forth. Attentional Interference vs. Memory iv