Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing middle school and college students' conceptions about tornadoes and other weather phenomena

Weather impacts society on a fundamental level. Many people inquire about the weather conditions in their region every day. When the weather is extreme, it dominates the local and sometimes the national news media. Although people care about the weather, they may not understand the concepts involved in weather processes. In schools, meteorological content is weaved throughout K-12 educational standards and curricula, and in general education (GE) courses at the college level. After exposure to meteorological content, it would be useful to know: (1) What conceptual understanding of weather does a student possess? (2) Do these concepts align with scientific understanding, or are they part of an alternative framework? (3) How do students’ conceptual understandings change across multiple cognitive levels? The aim of this research is to explore the question: what are students conceptions of tornadoes, wind, and fog, and how do they compare across multiple cognitive levels—middle school, university non-meteorology major, and meteorology major level? This paper will present an overview of the methodology of my study, and will present some preliminary results.
The Use of Direct Susceptibility Tests from BACTEC 9240 to Microscan Walkaway

Summary Using a straight-from-the-bottle into-the-instrument technique, a series of direct susceptibility tests were performed with the BACTEC 9240 and Microscan Walkaway systems. Although rapid, unacceptably high error rates were obtained when compared with a standardized method. This procedure is not sufficiently accurate for clinical use.
Architectural and Representational Requirements for Seeing Processes, Proto-affordances and Affordances

This paper, combining the standpoints of philosophy and Artificial Intelligence with theoretical psychology, summarises several decades of investigation by the author of the variety of functions of vision in humans and other animals, pointing out that biological evolution has solved many more problems than are normally noticed. For example, the biological functions of human and animal vision are closely related to the ability of humans to do mathematics, including discovering and proving theorems in geometry, topology and arithmetic. Many of the phenomena discovered by psychologists and neuroscientists require sophisticated controlled laboratory settings and specialised measuring equipment, whereas the functions of vision reported here mostly require only careful attention to a wide range of everyday competences that easily go unnoticed. Currently available computer models and neural theories are very far from explaining those functions, so progress in explaining how vision works is more in need of new proposals for explanatory mechanisms than new laboratory data. Systematically formulating the requirements for such mechanisms is not easy. If we start by analysing familiar competences, that can suggest new experiments to clarify precise forms of these competences, how they develop within individuals, which other species have them, and how performance varies according to conditions. This will help to constrain requirements for models purporting to explain how the competences work. For example, GibsonA¢â‚¬â„¢s theory of affordances needs a number of extensions, including allowing affordances to be composed in several ways from lower level proto-affordances. The paper ends with speculations regarding the need for new kinds of information-processing machinery to account for the phenomena.
Tumor budding as a useful prognostic marker in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

4199 Background: Tumor budding along the invasive margin was reported to be associated with greater malignant potential in colorectal adenocarcinoma. We examined the prognostic significance of tumor budding in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), particularly in comparison to other routine pathological findings. METHODS Fifty-six cases who underwent an esophagectomy were reviewed. We defined tumor budding as an isolated single cancer cell or a cluster composed of fewer than five cancer cells and divided these into two grades; low-grade (<5 budding foci) and high-grade (≥5 budding foci) within a microscopic field of x200. RESULTS There were 22 (39.3%) and 34 (60.7%) cases with low- and high-grade budding, respectively. There were significant differences in the patients with low- and high-grade budding in relation to tumor size, pT stage, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion, circumferential resection margin involvement, and AJCC stage (p<0.05). The 3-year survivals of the patients with low- and high-grade budding were 72.3% and 30.7%, respectively (p=0.04). CONCLUSIONS We propose that tumor budding may be a pathological marker suggesting high malignant potential and decreased postoperative survival in patients with ESCC. No significant financial relationships to disclose.
Mass Mortality of Cultured Sevenband Grouper, Epinephelus septemfasciatus, Associated with Viral Nervous Necrosis

Mass mortalities of sevenband grouper Epinephelus septemfasciatus reared in Oita Prefecture were investigated. The outbreaks of the disease occurred in summer seasons (July to October; water temperature 25-28°C) of 1993 and 1994. Affected fish ranging 170 to 1, 850 g in body weight were characterized by upside down swimming and inflation of swimbladder. Histopathologically, necrosis and vacuolation in the central nervous tissues and retina were observed. Although bacteria or parasites associated with the disease were not detected from affected fish and no CPE was observed on RTG-2, BF-2, and EPC cell lines, spherical virus particles, 28 nm in diameter, were found abundantly in the cytoplasm of affected nerve cells of most of the affected fish. The virus was identified as a fish nodavirus (nervous necrosis virus), based on the results of fluorescent antibody technique test with anti-SJNNV rabbit serum and polymerase chain reaction test with primers for amplification of SJNNV coat protein gene. These results suggest that the mortalities of sevenband grouper were at least partly due to viral nervous necrosis (VNN). This is the first report describing VNN of sevenband grouper and the first case of VNN in the adult fish.
Modafinil for daytime somnolence in Parkinson’s disease: double blind, placebo controlled parallel trial

Background: Excessive daytime somnolence (EDS) commonly complicates Parkinson’s disease (PD). The aetiology of EDS is probably multifactorial but is probably exacerbated by dopaminergic medications. Modafinil is a wake-promoting agent approved for use in narcolepsy, but it is often used to treat a variety of somnolent conditions. Method: A double blind, placebo controlled parallel design trial was conducted to assess the efficacy of modafinil (200–400 mg/day) for the treatment of EDS in PD. The primary efficacy measure was the Epworth Sleepiness (ES) scale score. Secondary efficacy points included the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), the Fatigue Severity Scale, the Hamilton Depression Scale, and the multiple sleep latency test (MSLT). Results: Of a total of 40 subjects (29 men, mean (SD) age 64.8 (11.3) years), randomised to modafinil or placebo, 37 completed the study. Modafinil failed to significantly improve ES scores compared with placebo (2.7 v 1.5 points improvement, respectively, p = 0.28). MSLT failed to improve with modafinil relative to placebo (−0.16 v −0.70, respectively, p = 0.14). UPDRS, global impressions, Fatigue Severity Scale, and Hamilton Depression Scale scores were unchanged. Adverse events were minimal. Conclusion: Modafinil failed to significantly improve EDS in PD compared with placebo. The drug did not alter motor symptoms in PD and was well tolerated.
Hello Edge: Keyword Spotting on Microcontrollers

Keyword spotting (KWS) is a critical component for enabling speech based user interactions on smart devices. It requires real-time response and high accuracy for good user experience. Recently, neural networks have become an attractive choice for KWS architecture because of their superior accuracy compared to traditional speech processing algorithms. Due to its always-on nature, KWS application has highly constrained power budget and typically runs on tiny microcontrollers with limited memory and compute capability. The design of neural network architecture for KWS must consider these constraints. In this work, we perform neural network architecture evaluation and exploration for running KWS on resource-constrained microcontrollers. We train various neural network architectures for keyword spotting published in literature to compare their accuracy and memory/compute requirements. We show that it is possible to optimize these neural network architectures to fit within the memory and compute constraints of microcontrollers without sacrificing accuracy. We further explore the depthwise separable convolutional neural network (DS-CNN) and compare it against other neural network architectures. DS-CNN achieves an accuracy of 95.4%, which is ~10% higher than the DNN model with similar number of parameters.
Secret Key Agreement From Vector Gaussian Sources by Rate Limited Public Communication

We investigate the secret key agreement from correlated vector Gaussian sources in which legitimate parties can use public communication with limited rate. For the class of protocols with one-way public communication, we show that the optimal trade-off between the rate of key generation and the rate of the public communication is characterized as an optimization problem of a Gaussian random variable. The characterization is derived by using the enhancement technique introduced by Weingarten for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channel.
Plasmatocyte-spreading peptide (PSP) plays a central role in insect cellular immune defenses against bacterial infection

SUMMARY Insect hemocytes (blood cells) are a central part of the insect's cellular response to bacterial pathogens, and these specialist cells can both recognize and engulf bacteria. During this process, hemocytes undergo poorly characterized changes in adhesiveness. Previously, a peptide termed plasmatocyte-spreading peptide (PSP), which induces the adhesion and spreading of plasmatocytes on foreign surfaces, has been identified in lepidopteran insects. Here, we investigate the function of this peptide in the moth Manduca sexta using RNA interference (RNAi) to prevent expression of the precursor protein proPSP. We show that infection with the insect-specific bacterial pathogen Photorhabdus luminescens and non-pathogenic Escherichia coli induces proPSP mRNA transcription in the insect fat body but not in hemocytes; subsequently, proPSP protein can be detected in cell-free hemolymph. We used RNAi to silence this upregulation of proPSP and found that the knock-down insects succumbed faster to infection with P. luminescens, but not E. coli. RNAi-treated insects infected with E. coli showed a reduction in the number of circulating hemocytes and higher bacterial growth in hemolymph as well as a reduction in overall cellular immune function compared with infected controls. Interestingly, RNAi-mediated depletion of proPSP adversely affected the formation of melanotic nodules but had no additional effect on other cellular responses when insects were infected with P. luminescens, indicating that this pathogen employs mechanisms that suppress key cellular immune functions in M. sexta. Our results provide evidence for the central role of PSP in M. sexta cellular defenses against bacterial infections.
Schrodinger Maps and Their Associated Frame Systems

In this paper we establish the equivalence of solutions bet ween Schrodinger maps intoS 2 orH 2 and their associated gauge invariant Schrodinger equations. We also establish the existence of global weak solutions intoH 2 in two space dimensions. We extend these ideas for maps into compact hermitian symmetric manifolds with trivial first cohomology.
Reproductive Healthcare Needs and Desires in a Cohort of HIV-Positive Women

Background. The aim of this study was to determine current contraceptive use, contraceptive desires and knowledge, future fertility desires, and sterilization regret in a cohort of HIV-positive women. Study Design. 127 HIV-positive women receiving care at an urban infectious disease clinic completed a survey addressing their contraceptive and reproductive histories as well as their future contraceptive and fertility desires. Results. The most common forms of contraception used were sterilization (44.4%) and condoms (41.3%). Less than 1% used a long-term reversible method of contraception (LARC) despite these being the methods that best fit their desired attributes of a contraceptive method. Overall, 29.4% desired future fertility. Only 50.6% of those sexually active had spoken with a provider within the last year regarding their contraceptive plans. There was a high degree of sterilization regret (36.4%), and 18.2% of sterilized women desired future fertility. Multivariate analysis found women in a monogamous relationship had a statistically increased rate of regret compared to women who were not sexually active (OR 13.8, 95% CI 1.6–119, P = 0.17). Conclusion. Given the diversity in contraceptive and fertility desires, coupled with a higher rate of sterilization regret than is seen in the general population, integration of comprehensive family planning services into HIV care via increased contraceptive education and access is imperative.
GYNOGENETIC REPRODUCTION IN HYBRID MOLE SALAMANDERS (GENUS AMBYSTOMA)

Ambystoma platineum, a unisexual clonal triploid taxon of mole salamander, originated by hybridization between the Mendelian species A. jeffersonianum and A. laterale. Studies of lampbrush chromosomes indicated that A. platineum reproduces gynogenetically, that is, sperm from a sexual host species is required to activate egg development but makes no genetic contribution to the developing embryo. Nevertheless, electrophoretic diversity in populations of some hybrid Ambystoma suggested continual in situ recreation of unisexual hybrids and bidirectional gene exchange between the parental species and the hybrids. A. platineum usually lives with, and is sexually dependent on, one of its parental species, A. jeffersonianum. In central Indiana, however, A. platineum populations have shifted their host dependency to A. texanum. Such A. texanum‐dependent populations of A. platineum provide an almost ideal system for studying reproductive mode in A. platineum, because both replacement of a jeffersonianum or laterale genome of A. platineum by a texanum genome, and movement of genes from A. platineum to the host species, A. texanum, would be readily detected by electrophoretic markers. Our samples of A. texanum provided no evidence for the transfer of jeffersonianum or laterale genes into A. texanum. Similarly, among 32 A. platineum sampled from six localities in east‐central Illinois and central Indiana, we find no texanum alleles, and thus no evidence for genome replacement. The one diploid hybrid individual contained only a jeffersonianum and a laterale genome; because of the absence of either parental species from these populations, this hybrid could only have come from a diploid ovum produced by A. platineum. Both morphometric and electrophoretic results for the two tetraploid individuals indicate that they resulted from fertilization of triploid oocytes of A. platineum by sperm of A. texanum. Because genome replacement in A. texanum‐dependent populations of A. platineum is irreversible, the persistence of A. platineum in A. texanum‐dependent populations demonstrates conclusively that the major mode of reproduction in A. platineum populations is clonal: A. platineum produces mainly triploid eggs that develop gynogenetically.
Measuring the in situ carbon isotopic composition of distinct marine plankton populations sorted by flow cytometry

The carbon isotope ratio (δ13C value) of marine particulates is a potentially useful tracer for elucidating pathways of carbon flow in the marine environment. Different species of phytoplankton vary in fractionation vs. CO2 by up to 24‰ in laboratory cultures under varying nutrient and growth conditions, a signal that should propagate through the microbial food web. However, such contrasts have been difficult to confirm in field measurements due to analytical limitations. Here, we combine fluorescence‐activated cell sorting (FACS) with a specialized micro‐combustion interface and isotope‐ratio mass spectrometry (SWiM‐IRMS) to provide some of the first direct measurements of whole‐cell δ13C values for specific phytoplankton populations in the wild. For three samples collected off Scripps Pier in 2010–2011, Synechococcus averages δ13C values of −25.7 ± 2.0‰, Prochlorococcus averages −23.0 ± 1.3, and diatoms average −20.8 ± 1.7‰. Diatoms were ∼3‰ enriched in 13C when measured during a bloom (March 2011) as compared with mid‐summer (July 2010). Sorted particles thought to represent living heterotrophic bacteria averaged −25.4 ± 2.5‰, whereas total filterable particles averaged −19.6 ± 1.0‰, indicating a strong similarity to diatom biomass. These variations demonstrate that in situ differences in δ13C among different populations of particles can be exploited to follow carbon flow through successive trophic levels, and throughout organic matter remineralization, sinking, and preservation.
Microimaging spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy of Northwest Africa 8657 shergottite: Interpretation of future in situ Martian data

Microimaging spectroscopy is going to be the new frontier for validating reflectance remote sensed data from missions to solar system bodies. In this field, microimaging spectroscopy of Martian meteorites can provide important and new contributions to interpret data that will be collected by next instruments onboard rover missions to Mars, such as for example Exomars‐2020/Ma_MISS spectrometer. In this paper, a slab from the Northwest Africa (NWA) 8657 shergottite was studied using the SPectral IMager (SPIM) microimaging spectrometer, in the visible‐infrared (VIS‐IR) range, with the aim to subsequently validate the spectral data by means of different independent techniques. The validation was thus carried out, for the first time, comparing SPIM spectral images, characterized by high spatial and spectral resolution, with mineralogical–petrological analyses, obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The suitability of the SPIM resolution to detect and map augite, pigeonite, maskelynite, and other minor phases as calcite, Ca‐phosphates, and troilite/pyrrhotite with no loss of information about mineral distribution on the slab surface, was ascertained. The good agreement found between spectral and mineralogical data suggests that spectral‐petrography of meteorites may be useful to support in situ investigations on Martian rocks carried out by MaMiss spectrometer during Exomars2020 mission. Moreover, micro spectral images could be also useful to characterize, in a nondestructive way, Martian meteorites and other rare minerals occurring in meteorites. The results obtained in this work represent not only a methodological contribution to the study of meteorites but furnish also elements to reconstruct the history of this sample. The finding of zoned pyroxene, symplectitic texture, amorphous phases as maskelynite, and Fe‐merrillite permits us to hypothesize four stages, i.e., (1) igneous formation of rimmed pyroxenes and other minerals, (2) retrograde metamorphism, (3) shock by impact, and (4) secondary minerals by terrestrial contamination.
Case Report of Undifferentiated Endometrial Sarcoma in Association with Osteoclast-Like Giant Cells

We describe the clinical, gross and microscopic features of undifferentiated uterine stromal sarcoma associated with osteoclast-like giant cells. A case of low-grade endometrial stromal sarcoma is already described in association with osteoclast-like giant cells; however, the current case differs in that the tumor was a high grade and did not show any evidence of smooth muscle or epithelioid differentiation and was shown to be strongly positive for CD10 and focally for WT-1 and Inhibin supporting an endometrial stromal origin. The associated osteoclast-like giant cells were abundant, evenly distributed within the tumor and showed strong positivity for CD68. Interestingly, rare (less than 2%) giant cells also showed weak cytoplasmic positivity for b-hCG. The tumor infiltrated deep into the myometrium and had marked lymphovascular invasion. Although the regional lymph nodes and peritoneal washings were negative, the lesion showed a highly aggressive clinical course. Despite treatment, the tumor disseminated within the abdominal cavity and lungs and ultimately led to the patient's demise within 9 months of the diagnosis.
Modeling Lane Keeping by a Hybrid Open-Closed-Loop Pulse Control Scheme

This paper presents a novel methodology for modeling human lane keeping control by characterizing a unique concept of elementary steering pulses, which are motor primitives in man-vehicle systems. The novelty of the paper is the introduction of elementary steering pulses that have been evidently extracted from naturalistic driving data through machine learning techniques (data-driven modeling), and are incorporated into an alternative steering control scheme. This newly proposed hybrid-open-closed-loop control scheme starts an elementary steering pulse with an open-loop steering actuation, representing real human's reflex responses triggered by human lane keeping errors, and adjusts it back with the traditional closed-loop control. This shows a significant improvement on both the stability and the matching performance to real driving events. Online measurement of the key metrics in the steering process provides a new tool for monitoring driver states, and the biofidelic steering model may provide human-like qualities for future automated lane keeping systems. Both will add to the array of tools available for achieving autonomous and semiautonomous driving systems, which greatly benefits the current vehicle industry.
A fast heuristic for the minimum weight vertex cover problem

Given a vertex-weighted undirected graph, to find the vertex cover of minimum weight is called minimum weight vertex cover problem (MWVCP). It is known as an NP-hard problem. In this paper, a fast heuristic for MWVCP is proposed. Our algorithm is based on a simple algorithm called “list-heuristic. ” Experimenal results show that our algorithm calculates better solutions in shorter time than approximation algorithms for MWVCP.
Isolation and Identification of Duck Adenovirus 1 in Ducklings with Proliferative Tracheitis in Ontario

Abstract Increased mortality was reported in two flocks of Muscovy ducklings from two consecutive hatches originating from the same breeder flock. Coughing, dyspnea, and gasping were observed in some ducklings between 6 and 11 days of age. Opaque white plugs of exudate were seen in the tracheas with some ducklings having multiple tracheal plugs. Tracheal and bronchial epithelium was hyperplastic and superficial epithelial cells contained eosinophilic intranuclear viral inclusions. Virus particles compatible with adenovirus morphology were observed in tracheal epithelial cells by electron microscopy and in the supernatant from cell cultures inoculated with filtered tracheal homogenates. The isolated virus was genetically indistinguishable from duck adenovirus 1 (DAdV-1). Our report confirms for the first time the presence of DAdV-1 in Canada and also reports for the first time adenovirus-associated respiratory disease in ducklings and supports previous findings that some DAdV-1 can be pathogenic even in waterfowl.