Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mathematical Modelling of Electromagnetic Sounding for Groundwater

Abstract : In this paper, the integral equation techniques are used to estimatethe conductivity proﬂle of the ground which is indicated the location of groundwater where the conductivity of the ground is assumed to be a function of depthonly. Numerical techniques of Quasi-Newton are performed to give an optimalsolution rapidly. The iterative procedure is found to be robust with respect tostarting model for both of synthesis and real data.Keywords : Groundwater, electromagnetic.2000 Mathematics Subject Classiﬂcation : ||{ 1 Introduction The frequency sounding controlled-source electromagnetic method (CSEM) isa useful tool for exploring the ground water. The electromagnetic ﬂeld obtainedfrom a horizontal loop source constitute a data set which can be inverted to providesome knowledge of the ground water. Many techniques have been conducted forexploring the subsurface of the earth.The objective of this paper is to present a technique whereby the electro-magnetic observations obtained from a horizontal loop source above the groundsurface can be inverted to determine the conductivity model which is a continuousfunction of depth. The integral equation method has been used and the iterativetechnique for Quasi-Newton is conducted for constructing the conductivity modelwhose calculated responses are close to the observed values. A conductivity pro-ﬂle satisfying the data is constructed iteratively via successive perturbation of astarting model.
Laridae: A neglected reservoir that could play a major role in avian influenza virus epidemiological dynamics

Abstract Avian influenza viruses (AIVs) are of great concern worldwide due to their economic impact and the threat they represent to human health. As wild birds are the natural reservoirs of AIVs, understanding AIV dynamics in different avian taxa is essential for deciphering the epidemiological links between wildlife, poultry and humans. To date, only the Anatidae (ducks, geese and swans) have been widely studied. Here, we aim to shed light on the current state of knowledge on AIVs in Laridae (gulls, terns and kittiwakes) versus that in Anatidae by setting forth four fundamental questions: how, when, where and to which host species are AIVs transmitted? First, we describe ecological differences between Laridae and Anatidae and discuss how they may explain observed contrasts in preferential transmission routes and the evolution of specific AIV subtypes. Second, we highlight the dissimilarities in the temporal patterns of AIV shedding between Laridae and Anatidae and address the role that immunity likely plays in shaping these patterns. Third, we underscore that Laridae may be key in promoting intercontinental exchanges of AIVs. Finally, we emphasize the crucial epidemiological position that Laridae occupy between wildlife, domestic birds and humans.
Effect of Coadministration of Vancomycin and BMP-2 on Cocultured Staphylococcus aureus and W-20-17 Mouse Bone Marrow Stromal Cells In Vitro

ABSTRACT In this study, we aimed to establish an in vitro bacterium/bone cell coculture model system and to use this model for dose dependence studies of dual administration of antibiotics and growth factors in vitro. We examined the effect of single or dual administration of the antibiotic vancomycin (VAN) at 0 to 16 μg/ml and bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) at 0 or 100 ng/ml on both methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus and mouse bone marrow stromal cells (W-20-17) under both mono- and coculture conditions. Cell metabolic activity, Live/Dead staining, double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) amounts, and alkaline phosphatase activity were measured to assess cell viability, proliferation, and differentiation. An interleukin-6 (IL-6) enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit was used to test the bone cell inflammation response in the presence of bacteria. Our results suggest that, when delivered together in coculture, VAN and BMP-2 maintain their primary functions as an antibiotic and a growth factor, respectively. Most interestingly, this dual-delivery type of approach has shown itself to be effective at lower concentrations of VAN than those required for an approach relying strictly on the antibiotic. It may be that BMP-2 enhances cell proliferation and differentiation before the cells become infected. In coculture, a dosage of VAN higher than that used for treatment in monoculture may be necessary to effectively inhibit growth of Staphylococcus aureus. This could mean that the coculture environment may be limiting the efficacy of VAN, possibly by way of bacterial invasion of the bone cells. This report of a coculture study demonstrates a potential beneficial effect of the coadministration of antibiotics and growth factors compared to treatment with antibiotic alone.
Embryonic Fate Map of First Pharyngeal Arch Structures in the sox10: kaede Zebrafish Transgenic Model

Abstract Cranial neural crest cells follow stereotypic patterns of migration to form craniofacial structures. The zebrafish is a powerful vertebrate genetic model where transgenics with reporter proteins under the transcriptional regulation of lineage-specific promoters can be generated. Numerous studies demonstrate that the zebrafish ethmoid plate is embryologically analogous to the mammalian palate. A fate map correlating embryonic cranial neural crest to defined jaw structures would provide a useful context for the morphogenetic analysis of craniofacial development. To that end, the sox10:kaede transgenic was generated, where sox10 provides lineage restriction to the neural crest. Specific regions of neural crest were labeled at the 10-somite stage by photoconversion of the kaede reporter protein. Lineage analysis was carried out during pharyngeal development in wild-type animals, after miR140 injection, and after estradiol treatment. At the 10-somite stage, cranial neural crest cells anterior of the eye contributed to the median ethmoid plate, whereas cells medial to the eye formed the lateral ethmoid plate and trabeculae and a posterior population formed the mandible. miR-140 overexpression and estradiol inhibition of Hedgehog signaling resulted in cleft development, with failed migration of the anterior cell population to form the median ethmoid plate. The sox10:kaede transgenic line provides a useful tool for neural crest lineage analysis. These studies illustrate the advantages of the zebrafish model for application in morphogenetic studies of vertebrate craniofacial development.
Which ASR should I choose for my dialogue system?

We present an analysis of several publicly available automatic speech recognizers (ASRs) in terms of their suitability for use in different types of dialogue systems. We focus in particular on cloud based ASRs that recently have become available to the community. We include features of ASR systems and desiderata and requirements for different dialogue systems, taking into account the dialogue genre, type of user, and other features. We then present speech recognition results for six different dialogue systems. The most interesting result is that different ASR systems perform best on the data sets. We also show that there is an improvement over a previous generation of recognizers on some of these data sets. We also investigate language understanding (NLU) on the ASR output, and explore the relationship between ASR and NLU performance.
On the Scalability of P2P-Based Push-Driven Live Streaming Systems

Television transmitted over IP (IPTV) presents numerous opportunities for users as well as service providers, and has attracted significant interest from business and research communities in recent years. Among the emerging IPTV delivery architectures, the peer-to-peer based delivery mechanism is considered attractive due to the relative ease of service deployment. However, the question of how well P2PTV applications would support a growing number of users has not been fully investigated so far. In this paper, we try to address this question by studying scalability and efficiency factors in a typical P2P based live streaming network. Through the use of the data provided by a production P2PTV system, we carry out simulations whose results show that there are still hurdles to overcome before P2P based live streaming could become widely used.
Damped Newton algorithms for matrix factorization with missing data

The problem of low-rank matrix factorization in the presence of missing data has seen significant attention in recent computer vision research. The approach that dominates the literature is EM-like alternation of closed-form solutions for the two factors of the matrix. An obvious alternative is nonlinear optimization of both factors simultaneously, a strategy which has seen little published research. This paper provides a comprehensive comparison of the two strategies by evaluating previously published factorization algorithms as well as some second order methods not previously presented for this problem. We conclude that, although alternation approaches can be very quick, their propensity to glacial convergence in narrow valleys of the cost function means that average-case performance is worse than second-order strategies. Further, we demonstrate the importance of two main observations: one, that schemes based on closed-form solutions alone are not suitable and that non-linear optimization strategies are faster, more accurate and provide more flexible frameworks for continued progress; and two, that basic objective functions are not adequate and that regularization priors must be incorporated, a process that is easier with nonlinear methods.
A unified framework for semantics and feature based relevance feedback in image retrieval systems

The relevance feedback approach to image retrieval is a powerful technique and has been an active research direction for the past few years. Various ad hoc parameter estimation techniques have been proposed for relevance feedback. In addition, methods that perform optimization on multi-level image content model have been formulated. However, these methods only perform relevance feedback on the low-level image features and fail to address the images' semantic content. In this paper, we propose a relevance feedback technique, iFind, to take advantage of the semantic contents of the images in addition to the low-level features. By forming a semantic network on top of the keyword association on the images, we are able to accurately deduce and utilize the images' semantic contents for retrieval purposes. The accuracy and effectiveness of our method is demonstrated with experimental results on real-world image collections.
Southern Hemisphere Humpback Whale Song in Pacific Central America

While on their low-latitude breeding grounds, male humpback whales will sing presumably to advertise to females and (or) males. Individual males sing a series of units in a predictable order, and while their songs composition progressively changes over time, ultimately all males in a breeding population end up singing the same version of a song. This provides the means to understand humpback whale movement patterns and connectivity among populations. Here, I study the temporal changes in song structure of humpback whales from the Southern Hemisphere that winter off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and Panama. Songs were collected in Costa Rica from a fixed station (September-November 2016) and opportunistically in Panama (August 20072015, 2017) using a variety of recordings systems. The results indicate that the pace of whale song change in Panamanian whales is gradual, reaching a new song in 2015. Interestingly, this new song (or any theme) was not present in 2017. To fill up the gap between 2015 and 2017 in Panama we analyzed whale songs recorded in 2016 in Costa Rica, because of the relatively short distance between breeding grounds we assumed connectivity. However, the song recorded in Costa Rica was very different from 2015 and shared only one theme in 2017 with the Panamanian whales, indicating low connectivity at least within a single breeding season. The rapid change in song from 2015 to 2017 in Panama could be due to a high influx of migrant males from other areas. Alternatively, males could have learned a new song during their migration to their breeding ground or even at their feeding grounds. We still do not know where these whales feed nor if they share these areas with other breeding stocks. While this study provides the first documentation of pace of song change for this area, there is a need for long-term acoustic monitoring to better understand the pace at which their songs change to fully understand their dispersal behavior Emma Chereskin Honors Thesis 33
Massive But Few Active MIMO

In this paper, an emerging wireless communication concept, which is termed as spatial modulation (SM) for large-scale multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), is considered. The results show that from the information-theoretic perspective, SM achieves capacity comparable to the open-loop MIMO capacity, although a subset of transmit antennas is activated in every channel use because both the channel coefficients and the input symbols carry information in SM. As a result, SM compensates the loss of information capacity due to a subset of antennas being activated by modulating information in the antenna index; therefore, the total information rate remains high. In particular, an upper bound for the capacity of SM is derived in closed form, and it is shown analytically that this upper bound is almost certainly achievable in the massive MIMO regime. Moreover, it is shown that the upper bound is achievable with no channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) but with channel distribution information (CDI) at the transmitter (CDIT). The optimum transmission strategy should adapt the channel input distribution to fading using CDI such as the K factor in Rician fading or the shape parameter m in Nakagami-m fading.
Liquid chromatographic method for determination of citreoviridin in corn and rice.

Citreoviridin, a neurotoxic mycotoxin, has been found as a natural contaminant in corn left unharvested in the southeastern United States and in rice of several Asian countries, including Japan. A reliable analytical method for the quantitative determination of citreoviridin in corn and rice is described. Corn or rice is extracted with dichloromethane, and the extract is partially purified on silica and amino solid-phase extraction (SPE) columns. The extract is analyzed for citreoviridin by normal-phase liquid chromatography, using a mobile phase of ethyl acetate-hexane (75 + 25) at 1.5 mL/min and a fluorescence detector to measure the yellow fluorescence (388 nm excitation, 480 nm emission). With a 100 microL injection loop, the relationship between concentration and injection volume is linear for 20-60 microL injections. Recoveries of citreoviridin added to yellow corn at 10-50 ng/g were 91.0-96.9%; recoveries from white corn (10-50 ng/g added) were 96.8-102.8%. Recoveries of 5000 ng/g added to white corn were 89.0%, indicating that heavily contaminated samples can be assayed by the method. Minimum detection limits were 10 ng for citreoviridin standard and 2 ng/g for citreoviridin added to corn. White rice fermented with Penicillium citreo-viride (1524 ppm) was mixed with and serially diluted with uncontaminated ground corn to obtain citreoviridin-contaminated corn (ca 25 ppb). When the samples were assayed by the method, a mean level of 24.4 +/- 1.65 ppb (6.5% coefficient of variation) was obtained. Four fermented rice food samples and 3 commercial rice samples were investigated. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The Arabidopsis Mediator Subunit MED25 Differentially Regulates Jasmonate and Abscisic Acid Signaling through Interacting with the MYC2 and ABI5 Transcription Factors[C][W][OA]

This work describes that the MED25 subunit of the Arabidopsis thaliana Mediator complex positively regulates JA-mediated gene expression through interacting with the transcription factor MYC2. It also describes that MED25 negatively regulates ABA-mediated gene expression through interacting with the transcription factor ABI5. Transcriptional regulation plays a central role in plant hormone signaling. At the core of transcriptional regulation is the Mediator, an evolutionarily conserved, multisubunit complex that serves as a bridge between gene-specific transcription factors and the RNA polymerase machinery to regulate transcription. Here, we report the action mechanisms of the MEDIATOR25 (MED25) subunit of the Arabidopsis thaliana Mediator in regulating jasmonate- and abscisic acid (ABA)–triggered gene transcription. We show that during jasmonate signaling, MED25 physically associates with the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor MYC2 in promoter regions of MYC2 target genes and exerts a positive effect on MYC2-regulated gene transcription. We also show that MED25 physically associates with the basic Leu zipper transcription factor ABA-INSENSITIVE5 (ABI5) in promoter regions of ABI5 target genes and shows a negative effect on ABI5-regulated gene transcription. Our results reveal that underlying the distinct effects of MED25 on jasmonate and ABA signaling, the interaction mechanisms of MED25 with MYC2 and ABI5 are different. These results highlight that the MED25 subunit of the Arabidopsis Mediator regulates a wide range of signaling pathways through selectively interacting with specific transcription factors.
Metabolically Healthy Obesity and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in the Elderly Population

Background Whether being metabolically healthy obese (MHO)—defined by the presence of obesity in the absence of metabolic syndrome—is associated with subsequent cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains unclear and may depend on the participants’ age. We examined the association of being MHO with CVD risk in the elderly. Methods and Findings This study included 5,314 individuals (mean age 68 years) from the prospective population-based Rotterdam Study. We categorized our population in groups according to body mass index (BMI) and presence and absence of metabolic syndrome, and estimated the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI) for every group by using Cox proportional hazard models. Among 1048 (19.7%) obese individuals we identified 260 (24.8%) MHO subjects. Over 14 years of follow-up there were 861 incident CVD cases. In the multivariable adjusted analysis, we did not observe an increased CVD risk in MHO individuals (HR 1.07, 95%CI 0.75–1.53), compared to normal weight individuals without metabolic syndrome. CVD risk was increased by the presence of metabolic syndrome in normal weight (HR 1.35, 95%CI 1.02–1.80), overweight (HR 1.32, 95%CI 1.09–1.60) and obese (HR 1.33, 95%CI 1.07–1.66) individuals, compared to those with normal weight without metabolic syndrome. In a mediation analysis, 71.3% of the association between BMI and CVD was explained by the presence of metabolic syndrome. Conclusions In our elderly population, we found that the presence of obesity without metabolic syndrome did not confer a higher CVD risk. However, metabolic syndrome was strongly associated with CVD risk, and was associated with an increased risk in all BMI categories. Therefore, preventive interventions targeting cardiometabolic risk factors could be considered in elderly, regardless of weight status.
An abrupt drop in the coherence of the lower kHz quasi-periodic oscillations in 4U 1636-536

Using archival data from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), we study in a systematic way the variation of the quality factor (Q = ν/�ν , �ν , full width at half maximum) and amplitude of the lower and upper kHz quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the low-mass X-ray binary 4U 1636−536, over a frequency range from ∼550 to ∼1200 Hz. When represented in a quality factor versus frequency diagram, the upper and lower QPOs follow two different tracks, suggesting that they are distinct phenomena, although not completely independent because the frequency difference of the two QPOs, when detected simultaneously, remains within ∼60 Hz of half the neutron star spin frequency (at ν spin = 581 Hz). The quality factor of the lower kHz QPO increases with frequency up to a maximum of Q ≈ 200 at ν lower ≈ 850 Hz, then drops precipitously to Q ≈ 50 at the highest detected frequencies ν lower ≈ 920 Hz. A ceiling of the lower QPO frequencies at 920 Hz is also clearly seen in a frequency versus count rate diagram. At the same time, the quality factor of the upper kHz QPO increases steadily from Q ∼ 5t o∼15 all the way to ν upper ≈ 1150 Hz, which is the highest detectable QPO frequency. The rms amplitudes of both the upper and lower kHz QPOs decrease steadily towards higher frequencies. The quality factor provides a measure of the coherence of the underlying oscillator. For exponentially damped sinusoidal shots, the highest Q observed corresponds to an oscillator coherence time of 1/π�ν ∼ 0.1 s. All existing QPO models face challenges in explaining such a long coherence time and the significantly different behaviours of the quality factors of the upper and lower QPOs reported here. It is therefore difficult to be certain of the implications of the abrupt change in the lower QPO at ∼850 Hz. We discuss various possible causes, including that the drop in coherence is ultimately caused by effects related to the innermost stable circular orbit.
Helicobacter pullorum Outbreak in C57BL/6NTac and C3H/HeNTac Barrier-Maintained Mice

ABSTRACT Helicobacter pullorum is a bacterial pathogen in humans. By using microaerobic culture techniques, H. pullorum was isolated from the feces of barrier-maintained mice and identified, on the basis of biochemical, restriction fragment length polymorphism, and 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses. This finding presents an opportunity to study H. pullorum pathogenesis in mice.
Semiparametric estimation in copula models for bivariate sequential survival times

Sequentially observed survival times are of interest in many studies but there are difficulties in analyzing such data using nonparametric or semiparametric methods. First, when the duration of followup is limited and the times for a given individual are not independent, induced dependent censoring arises for the second and subsequent survival times. Non‐identifiability of the marginal survival distributions for second and later times is another issue, since they are observable only if preceding survival times for an individual are uncensored. In addition, in some studies a significant proportion of individuals may never have the first event. Fully parametric models can deal with these features, but robustness is a concern. We introduce a new approach to address these issues. We model the joint distribution of the successive survival times by using copula functions, and provide semiparametric estimation procedures in which copula parameters are estimated without parametric assumptions on the marginal distributions. This provides more robust estimates and checks on the fit of parametric models. The methodology is applied to a motivating example involving relapse and survival following colon cancer treatment.
Model and Protocol for Energy-Efficient Routing over Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Many minimum energy (energy-efficient) routing protocols have been proposed in recent years. However, very limited effort has been made in studying routing overhead, route setup time, and route maintenance issues associated with these protocols. Without a careful design, an energy-efficient routing protocol can perform much worse than a normal routing protocol. In this paper, we first show that the minimum energy routing schemes in the literature could fail without considering the routing overhead involved and node mobility. We then propose a more accurate analytical model to track the energy consumptions due to various factors, and a simple energy-efficient routing scheme PEER to improve the performance during path discovery and in mobility scenarios. Our simulation results indicate that compared to a conventional energy-efficient routing protocol, PEER protocol can reduce up to 2/3 path discovery overhead and delay, and 50 percent transmission energy consumption.