Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanism of Magnetic Flux Loss in Molecular Clouds

We investigate the detailed processes at work in the drift of magnetic fields in molecular clouds. To the frictional force, whereby the magnetic force is transmitted to neutral molecules, ions contribute more than half only at cloud densities nH ≲ 104 cm-3, and charged grains contribute more than about 90% at nH ≳ 106 cm-3. Thus, grains play a decisive role in the process of magnetic flux loss. Approximating the flux loss time tB by a power law tB ∝ B-γ, where B is the mean field strength in the cloud, we find γ ≈ 2, characteristic of ambipolar diffusion, only at nH ≲ 107 cm-3, at which ions and the smallest grains are pretty well frozen to the magnetic fields. At nH > 107 cm-3, γ decreases steeply with nH, and finally at nH ≈ ndec ≈ a few × 1011 cm-3, at which the magnetic fields effectively decouple from the gas, γ ≪ 1 is attained, reminiscent of Ohmic dissipation, although flux loss occurs about 10 times faster than by pure Ohmic dissipation. Because even ions are not very well frozen at nH > 107 cm-3, ions and grains drift slower than the magnetic fields. This insufficient freezing makes tB more and more insensitive to B as nH increases. Ohmic dissipation is dominant only at nH ≳ 1 × 1012 cm-3. While ions and electrons drift in the direction of the magnetic force at all densities, grains of opposite charges drift in opposite directions at high densities, at which grains are major contributors to the frictional force. Although magnetic flux loss occurs significantly faster than by Ohmic dissipation even at very high densities, such as nH ≈ ndec, the process going on at high densities is quite different from ambipolar diffusion, in which particles of opposite charges are supposed to drift as one unit.
Fear-Potentiated Startle in Rats Is Mediated by Neurons in the Deep Layers of the Superior Colliculus/Deep Mesencephalic Nucleus of the Rostral Midbrain through the Glutamate Non-NMDA Receptors

The amygdala sends heavy and broad projections to the rostral midbrain including the periaqueductal gray (PAG), the deep layers of the superior colliculus/deep mesencephalic nucleus (deep SC/DpMe), and the lateral mesencephalic reticular formation (MRF) that in turn project to the nucleus reticularis pontis caudalis (PnC), an obligatory relay in the primary acoustic startle circuit. Chemical lesions or inactivation of these areas blocked fear-potentiated startle, suggesting that these areas serve as a relay between the amygdala and the PnC. In the present study, we tried to determine more precisely which of these sites were critical for fear-potentiated startle and the role of glutamate receptors in this site in mediating fear-potentiated startle. Local infusion of the non-NMDA receptor antagonist 2,3-dihydroxy-6-nitro-7-sulfamoylbenzo(F)-quinoxaline (NBQX) dose-dependently blocked fear-potentiated startle when infused into the deep SC/DpMe before testing but had no effect on baseline startle amplitude. NBQX did not block fear-potentiated startle when infused before training. The same dose of NBQX infused into the dorsal/lateral PAG, the lateral MRF, or the superficial layers of the SC did not affect fear-potentiated startle. However, NBQX tended to reduce contextual freezing when infused into the dorsal/lateral PAG. These findings suggest that the deep SC/DpMe is the site that serves as a critical output relay between the amygdala and the PnC in mediating fear-potentiated startle and that glutamatergic transmission is required for this action.
Towards Network-level Efficiency for Cloud Storage Services

Cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive provide users with a convenient and reliable way to store and share data from anywhere, on any device, and at any time. The cornerstone of these services is the data synchronization (sync) operation which automatically maps the changes in users' local filesystems to the cloud via a series of network communications in a timely manner. If not designed properly, however, the tremendous amount of data sync traffic can potentially cause (financial) pains to both service providers and users. This paper addresses a simple yet critical question: Is the current data sync traffic of cloud storage services efficiently used? We first define a novel metric named TUE to quantify the Traffic Usage Efficiency} of data synchronization. Based on both real-world traces and comprehensive experiments, we study and characterize the TUE of six widely used cloud storage services. Our results demonstrate that a considerable portion of the data sync traffic is in a sense wasteful, and can be effectively avoided or significantly reduced via carefully designed data sync mechanisms. All in all, our study of TUE of cloud storage services not only provides guidance for service providers to develop more efficient, traffic-economic services, but also helps users pick appropriate services that best fit their needs and budgets.
Media Storms and Policy Expertise: How Environmental Beat Journalists Gained Influence During a Shale Gas Controversy

ABSTRACT This article examines the conditions under which environmental beat journalists can gain credibility as expert informants. It shows that media storms foster a particular dynamic that can add to this credibility. Comparing a media storm over shale gas development in Quebec with regular coverage of the same issue in British Columbia, this article shows that the coverage space given to environmental beat journalists during a media storm can render their alliance with protest groups mutually beneficial. Beat journalists can benefit from the willingness of these groups to participate in their stories, while the groups benefit from increased visibility. Beat journalists also benefit by being perceived as expert informants in policy networks, a role that they use to encourage policy-makers to take the concerns of protest groups seriously. This dynamic also increases the negativity of the news coverage. The article makes a contribution to knowledge on the role of environmental journalists in policy-making processes.
Fast and reliable unknown tag detection in large-scale RFID systems

One of the most important applications of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is to detect unknown tags brought by new tagged items moved in, misplacement, or counterfeit tags. While unknown tag identification is able to pinpoint all the unknown tags, probabilistic unknown tag detection is preferred in large-scale RFID systems that need to be frequently checked up, e.g., real-time inventory monitoring. Nonetheless, we find that the efficiency of most previous works is not well optimized due to the transmission of unhelpful data. In this paper, we propose a fast and reliable method for probabilistic unknown tag detection, White Paper (WP) protocol. The key novelty of WP is to build a composite message data structure that consists of all the informative data from several independent detection synopses, i.e., excluding the useless data from communication. Hence, this design allows us to optimize the detection and communication efficiency at the same time. In particular, the compact detection synopsis is designed and tuned to minimize the failure probability for detection and the detection message is compositely constructed to reduce the transmission overhead, achieving the optimal detection and communication efficiency, respectively. We implement a prototype system using USRP software-defined radio and WISP tags to show the feasibility of this design. We also conduct extensive simulations and comparisons to show that WP achieves more than 2x performance gain compared to the state-of-the-art protocols.
Distribution Approximations for Cointegration Tests with Stationary Exogenous Regressors

The distribution of a functional of two correlated vector-Brownian motions is approximated by a Gamma distribution. This functional represents the limiting distribution for cointegration tests with stationary exogenous regressors, but also for cointegration tests based on a non-Gaussian likelihood. The approximation is accurate, fast and easy to use in comparison with both tabulated critical values and simulated p-values. The proposed procedure is applied to a UK model investigating purchasing power parity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Disability in Postsecondary STEM Learning Environments: What Faculty Focus Groups Reveal about Definitions and Obstacles to Effective Support.

Students with disabilities lag behind their peers without disabilities in success outcomes related to access to, persistence within, and completion of postsecondary degree programs (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2017). Faculty play a key role in shaping student success. To date, however, most of the work exploring faculty attitudes and behaviors has drawn from a broad sample (e.g., Buchanan, Charles, Rigler, & Hart, 2010; Kraska, 2003; Jensen, McCray, Krampe, & Cooper, 2004; Rao & Gartin, 2003), with only limited exploration of the attitudes and behaviors of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM] faculty (e.g., Milligan, 2010; Moon, Utschig, Todd, & Bozzorg, 2011). This study seeks to understand how STEM faculty think about and respond to students with disabilities in order to shape effective interventions. Data were collected through a series of four focus groups with 27 participants across 17 STEM majors including lecturers, preand post-tenure, and academic administrators. Key findings from the focus groups illuminated the impact of a formal accommodations process, individual approaches to providing support, and perceptions of the STEM climate towards students with disabilities. Recommendations for research and practice include strengthening support and training for faculty in STEM disciplines while continuing to explore these themes across institutional types.
Internet of Medical Things for cardiac monitoring: Paving the way to 5G mobile networks

Health and medical care are considered as one of the most fascinating applications that can fully benefit from the IoT deployment. In this work, we built a prototype of the Internet of Medical Things (IMedT) for monitoring cardiac activity in the form of phonocardiograph (PCG) signal. The prototype comprises of an agent and a manager. An agent runs a special task to collect heart sound signals and conditioning the signals. A manager, on the other hand, performs some tasks including: (i) gathering signal from some an agent or sensor node, (ii) operated as a web server to make the data available online locally and globally for doctors in order that the data can be accessed anywhere with certain authorization schemes, (iii) it is equipped with ability to do data mirroring to a data center in the cloud system in such a way that the most updated file can be copied to the targeted location to ensure the authorized healthcare providers and doctors anywhere around the globe to get the latest heart sound data for cardiac monitoring and diagnosing. Some issues regarding future development of the IMedT system were presented including smart diagnosis capability, security issues, and extension to the 6LoPAN as well as its compliance to the emerging 5G mobile networks.
The level of vitamin C reserves required in man: towards a solution to the controversy

Many years have passed since vitamin C (ascorbic acid) was first isolated and shown to be the substance in fruit juice that would prevent scurvy (Szent-Gyorgi, 1928). It is considerably longer since scurvy was a common condition. The introduction of root crops into Europe in the middle ages and the demonstration that fruit juice could be used to treat scurvy (Wilson, 1975) have contributed to making a disease familiar to the ancients, a rare clinical finding today. Yet interest in the vitamin persists. Controversy rages about the dietary requirement for vitamin C in both health and disease. Some researchers believe that daily intakes of up to 10 g are required in some conditions (Lewin, 1976), whilst in contrast it is clear that individuals are able to survive on intakes that are only a fraction of this (Eddy, 1968). The actual role of the vitamin in intermediary metabolism is also in doubt. One essential function has been elucidated, the hydroxylation of proline and lysine during collagen synthesis (Barnes, 1975), but many others have been suggested (Table I ) and although these findings as yet remain inconclusive, many indicate fundamental roles for the vitamin in maintaining health.
Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine Injury Severity and Serum Amyloid a Correlate with Plasma Oxidation-reduction Potential in Multi-trauma Patients: a Retrospective Analysis

Background: In critical injury, the occurrence of increased oxidative stress or a reduced antioxidant status has been observed. The purpose of this study was to correlate the degree of oxidative stress, by measuring the oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) of plasma in the critically injured, with injury severity and serum amyloid A (SAA) levels.
Framing secondary teachers’ perspectives on the inclusion of students with autism spectrum disorder using critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT Research on the role of teachers in supporting students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in schools in the Republic of Ireland has largely focused on primary and special schools rather than secondary school settings. This study examined the theoretical and practical knowledge base of Irish secondary teachers regarding the inclusion of learners with ASD using an ecological critical discursive perspective. Findings revealed teachers’ strong desires to include students with ASD in their classrooms. Teachers’ discourses exposed their sense of low self-efficacy in relation to pedagogical skills required to meet the needs of learners with ASD. At a school level, teachers positioned themselves outside the dominant school discourse on special education needs. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), teachers’ narratives re-focus the spotlight on issues such as ineffective legislation and inadequate policies at national level, and identified the impact that these have at a micro-analytical level on teachers’ practices in relation to inclusion.
SINR and Throughput Scaling in Ultradense Urban Cellular Networks

We consider a dense urban cellular network where the base stations (BSs) are stacked vertically as well as extending infinitely in the horizontal plane, resulting in a greater than two dimensional (2D) deployment. We use a dual-slope path loss model that is well supported empirically, wherein a “close-in” pathloss exponent α<sub>0</sub> is used for distances less than a corner distance R<sub>c</sub>, and then changes to α<sub>1</sub> > α<sub>0</sub> outside R<sub>c</sub>. We extend recent 2D coverage probability and potential throughput results to d dimensions, and prove that if the close-in path loss exponent α<sub>0</sub> <; d, then the SINR eventually decays to zero. For example, α<sub>0</sub> ≤ 3 results in an eventual SINR of 0 for all users in a 3D network, which is a troubling fact. We also show that the potential (i.e. best case) aggregate throughput decays to zero for α<sub>0</sub> <; d/2. Both of these scaling results also hold for the more realistic case that we term 3D<sup>+</sup>, where there are no BSs below the user, as in a dense urban network with the user on or near the ground.
Biological Calcifications and Acid Proteoglycans : a New Solution to an Old Problem

The mechanism of biological calcifications is one of the most elusive problems in biology. In spite of a large number of investigations on the calcification of vertebrate and invertebrate mineralised tissues (for a review see Bonucci 1), the established facts are very few. Among them, it has been definitively proved that biological calcifications do not take place through a precipitation mechanism, as it could occur in test tubes containing adequate amounts of calcium and phosphate or carbonate ions. The concentrations of these molecules in calcifying organic matrices are not, in fact, high enough to induce their spontaneous precipitation. Phosphate ions could be increased through the hydrolysis of phosphate esters catalysed by alkaline phosphatase, or indirectly through the production of ATP by glycolysis, but it has been shown that the inhibition of both these processes does not inhibit in vitro calcification. Actually, the biological calcifications are very complex processes that are regulated on one side by cells, which are indispensable for the exchange of electrolytes and the synthesis of the organic matrix, on the other by components of the organic matrix itself, one or several of which may have catalytic activity. On the basis of these concepts it has been suggested that the collagen fibrils, which are the most abundant components of the bone matrix, may be the structures that catalyse the calcification process in bone 2. As a matter of fact, transmission electron microscope (TEM) studies on this tissue show a very close relationship between the early inorganic crystals and the period of the collagen fibrils, to such a point that the latter seem to be negatively stained by the former. The inorganic substance, which is visible under the TEM because of its intrinsic electron density, behaves, in fact, as a negative dye: in the areas of early calcification, it localizes according to the periodic banding of the collagen fibrils and, more precisely, accumulates in their 'hole' zones. This observation has led to assume that atomic groups, located just in these zones, have the same spatial arrangement as that of the reticulum of the apatite crystals. This matching of lattice dimensions, which does not need to be necessarily perfect, induces the formation of early apatite inorganic nanoparticles – or nuclei – by epitaxy or by heterogeneous nucleation. The addition of further calcium and phosphate ions to the nuclei leads them to grow in size and to acquire the typical rod-or …
The metaphysics of laws: dispositionalism vs. primitivism

The paper compares dispositionalism about laws of nature with primitivism. It argues that while the distinction between these two positions can be drawn in a clear-cut manner in classical mechanics, it is less clear in quantum mechanics, due to quantum non-locality. Nonetheless, the paper points out advantages for dispositionalism in comparison to primitivism also in the area of quantum mechanics, and of contemporary physics in general.
Modeling of the Fading Statistics of Wireless Sensor Network Channels in Industrial Environments

This paper presents an investigation of how to model the statistical properties of radio channels arising in industrial environments over long time horizons, e.g., hours and days. Based on extensive measurement campaigns, conducted at three different factory buildings, it is shown that for mobile transceivers the fading characteristics are Rayleigh or close to Rayleigh. However, for transceivers mounted at fixed locations, the use of conventional single fading distributions is not sufficient. It is shown that a suitable model structure for describing the fading properties of the radio channels, as measured by power, is a mixture of gamma and compound gamma-lognormal distributions. Furthermore, the complexity of the model generally increases with the observation interval. A model selection approach based on a connection between Kullback's mean discrimination information and the log-likelihood provides a robust choice of model structure. We show that while a (semi)-Markov chain constitute a suitable model for the channel dynamics the time dependence of the data can be neglected in the estimation of the parameters of the mixture distributions. Neglecting the time dependence in the data leads to a more efficient parametrization. Moreover, it is shown that the considered class of mixture distributions is identifiable for both continuous and quantized data under certain conditions and under those conditions a maximum likelihood under independence assumption estimator is shown to give consistent parameters also for data which are not independent. The parameter estimates are obtained by maximizing the log likelihood using a genetic and a local interior point algorithm.
Persistent Inflammation and Endothelial Activation in HIV-1 Infected Patients after 12 Years of Antiretroviral Therapy

Objective The study investigated markers of inflammation and endothelial activation in HIV infected patients after 12 years of successful combination antiretroviral treatment (cART). Methods Inflammation and endothelial activation were assessed by measuring levels of immunoglobulins, β2-microglobulin, interleukin (IL) 8, tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1), sE-Selectin, and sP-Selectin. Results HIV infected patients had higher levels of β2-microglobulin, IL-8, TNFα, and sICAM-1 than uninfected controls, and HIV infected patients lacked correlation between platelet counts and sP-Selectin levels found in uninfected controls. Conclusion Discrete signs of systemic and vascular inflammation persist even after very long term cART.
Performance Comparison of DSDV, DSR, AODV Protocol with IEEE 802.11 MAC for Chain Topology for Mobile Ad-hoc Network using NS-2

An Ad-hoc network is a collection of mobile nodes dynamically forming a temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralised administer. Because of limited communication range among mobile nodes in ad-hoc network, several network hopes may be needed to deliver a packet from one node to another node in the wireless network. In recent years, a variety of different routing protocols addressing multi-hop ad-hoc network have been presented and their performance issues are discussed. This paper is subjected to comprehensive analysis among DSR,DSDV,AODV routing protocols of ad-hoc network with IEEE 802.11 Mac protocol in chain topology using Network Simulator-2(NS-2). Various important performance metrics of MANET such as Generated Packet Vs. no. of nodes, Received Packet Vs. no. of nodes, Packet delivery ratio Vs. no. of nodes, Total dropped packets Vs. no. of nodes, Average end to end delay Vs. no. of nodes are investigated to confirm the best routing protocol in the simulation environment.
Rapid Processing of Both Reward Probability and Reward Uncertainty in the Human Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Reward probability and uncertainty are two fundamental parameters of decision making. Whereas reward probability indicates the prospect of winning, reward uncertainty, measured as the variance of probability, indicates the degree of risk. Several lines of evidence have suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays an important role in reward processing. What is lacking is a quantitative analysis of the encoding of reward probability and uncertainty in the human ACC. In this study, we addressed this issue by analyzing the feedback-related negativity (FRN), an event-related potential (ERP) component that reflects the ACC activity, in a simple gambling task in which reward probability and uncertainty were parametrically manipulated through predicting cues. Results showed that at the outcome evaluation phase, while both win and loss-related FRN amplitudes increased as the probability of win or loss decreased, only the win-related FRN was modulated by reward uncertainty. This study demonstrates the rapid encoding of reward probability and uncertainty in the human ACC and offers new insights into the functions of the ACC.