Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tropical cyclogenesis and vertical shear in a moist Boussinesq model

Abstract Tropical cyclogenesis is studied in the context of idealized three-dimensional Boussinesq dynamics with perhaps the simplest possible model for bulk cloud physics. With low-altitude input of water vapour on realistic length and time scales, numerical simulations capture the formation of vortical hot towers. From measurements of water vapour, vertical velocity, vertical vorticity and rain, it is demonstrated that the structure, strength and lifetime of the hot towers are similar to results from models including more detailed cloud microphysics. The effects of low-altitude vertical shear are investigated by varying the initial zonal velocity profile. In the presence of weak low-level vertical shear, the hot towers retain the low-altitude monopole cyclonic structure characteristic of the zero-shear case (starting from zero velocity). Some initial velocity profiles with small vertical shear can have the effect of increasing cyclonic predominance of individual hot towers in a statistical sense, as measured by the skewness of vertical vorticity. Convergence of horizontal winds in the atmospheric boundary layer is mimicked by increasing the frequency of the moisture forcing in a horizontal subdomain. When the moisture forcing is turned off, and again for zero shear or weak low-level shear, merger of cyclonic activity results in the formation of a larger-scale cyclonic vortex. An effect of the shear is to limit the vertical extent of the resulting emergent moist vortex. For stronger low-altitude vertical shear, the individual hot towers have a low-altitude vorticity dipole rather than a cyclonic monopole. The dipoles are not conducive to the formation of larger-scale vortices, and thus sufficiently strong low-level shear prevents the vortical-hot-tower route to cyclogenesis. The results indicate that the simplest condensation and evaporation schemes are useful for exploratory numerical simulations aimed at better understanding of competing effects such as low-level moisture and vertical shear.
Beyond physical harm: how preference for consequentialism and primary psychopathy relate to decisions on a monetary trolley dilemma

Abstract When is it appropriate to harm a single person to help multiple others? Psychologists have investigated this question through the study of hypothetical “trolley” dilemmas involving extreme physical harm life-or-death situations that contrast outcome-focussed, consequentialist moral reasoning with principle-focussed, deontological moral reasoning. The present studies investigate whether participants’ preference for consequentialism generalises across domains. We administered traditional physical harm dilemmas as well as a trolley-type dilemma involving monetary harm. Across four studies (N = 809), an internal meta-analysis demonstrated that participants’ responses to the traditional dilemmas predicted their responses to the monetary dilemma. Additionally, previous research has uncovered that primary psychopathy predicts consequentialist responses on physical harm dilemmas. The current work uncovers that this association does not generalise to monetary harm dilemmas, suggesting that the association between primary psychopathy and consequentialist reasoning is not related to consequentialist reasoning per se, but to the idiosyncrasies of traditional harm-centric trolley dilemmas instead.
A Prospective Study of Marine Phytoplankton and Reported Illness Among Recreational Beachgoers in Puerto Rico, 2009

Background: Blooms of marine phytoplankton may adversely affect human health. The potential public health impact of low-level exposures is not well established, and few prospective cohort studies of recreational exposures to marine phytoplankton have been conducted. Objective: We evaluated the association between phytoplankton cell counts and subsequent illness among recreational beachgoers. Methods: We recruited beachgoers at Boquerón Beach, Puerto Rico, during the summer of 2009. We conducted interviews at three time points to assess baseline health, water activities, and subsequent illness. Daily water samples were quantitatively assayed for phytoplankton cell count. Logistic regression models, adjusted for age and sex, were used to assess the association between exposure to three categories of phytoplankton concentration and subsequent illness. Results: During 26 study days, 15,726 individuals successfully completed all three interviews. Daily total phytoplankton cell counts ranged from 346 to 2,012 cells/mL (median, 712 cells/mL). The category with the highest (≥ 75th percentile) total phytoplankton cell count was associated with eye irritation [adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 1.30; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01, 1.66], rash (OR = 1.27; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.57), and earache (OR = 1.25; 95% CI: 0.88, 1.77). In phytoplankton group-specific analyses, the category with the highest Cyanobacteria counts was associated with respiratory illness (OR = 1.37; 95% CI: 1.12, 1.67), rash (OR = 1.32; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.66), eye irritation (OR = 1.25; 95% CI: 0.97, 1.62), and earache (OR = 1.35; 95% CI: 0.95, 1.93). Conclusions: We found associations between recreational exposure to marine phytoplankton and reports of eye irritation, respiratory illness, and rash. We also found that associations varied by phytoplankton group, with Cyanobacteria having the strongest and most consistent associations. Citation: Lin CJ, Wade TJ, Sams EA, Dufour AP, Chapman AD, Hilborn ED. 2016. A prospective study of marine phytoplankton and reported illness among recreational beachgoers in Puerto Rico, 2009. Environ Health Perspect 124:477–483; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1409558
The effects of the histone deacetylase inhibitor 4-phenylbutyrate on gap junction conductance and permeability

Longitudinal resistance is a key factor in determining cardiac action potential propagation. Action potential conduction velocity has been shown to be proportional to the square root of longitudinal resistance. A major determinant of longitudinal resistance in myocardium is the gap junction channel, comprised connexin proteins. Within the ventricular myocardium connexin43 (Cx43) is the dominantly expressed connexin. Reduced numbers of gap junction channels will result in an increase in longitudinal resistance creating the possibility of slowed conduction velocity while increased numbers of channels would potentially result in an increase in conduction velocity. We sought to determine if inhibition of histone deacetylase (HDAC) by 4-phenylbutyrate (4-PB), a known inhibitor of HDAC resulted in an increase in junctional conductance and permeability, which is not the result of changes in single channel unitary conductance. These experiments were performed using HEK-293 cells and HeLa cells stably transfected with Cx43. Following treatment with increasing concentrations of 4-PB up-regulation of Cx43 was observed via Western blot analysis. Junctional (gj) conductance and unitary single channel conductance were measured via whole-cell patch clamp. In addition intercellular transfer of lucifer yellow (LY) was determined by fluorescence microscopy. The data in this study indicate that 4-PB is able to enhance functional Cx43 gap junction coupling as indicated by LY dye transfer and multichannel and single channel data along with Western blot analysis. As a corollary, pharmacological agents such as 4-PB have the potential, by increasing intercellular coupling, to reduce the effect of ischemia. It remains to be seen whether drugs like 4-PB will be effective in preventing cardiac maladies.
Bringing animals within political communities: the citizens/swans association that fractured Chile’s environmental framework

Abstract Overflows that interrupt the ‘normal state of affairs’ are generative events that make visible the agential force of nonhumans. Practitioners of posthumanist disciplines – such as STS, ANT, economic performativity and animal studies – have exposed how nonhumans take part in the making of ‘the social. ’ Due to their predominantly small-scale perspective, these efforts have left broader sociopolitical effects mainly unattended. Here I explore how the political agency of nonhumans can provoke sociopolitical consequences when approached through political ontological lenses. I argue that by conceiving reality as the precarious effect of struggles between competing ways of performing the world, human/nonhuman associations can be understood as part of non-dominant ontologies, revealing the world’s multiplicity and expanding the borders of political communities. To do so, I study a citizen/swans association that emerged in Valdivia, Chile, in response to a disaster that since 2004 has affected the Río Cruces wetland and its colony of swans, following the installation of a new pulp mill by Arauco. This unprecedented mobilization provoked the breakdown of Chile’s environmental framework and forced reform. I find that the suffering of the swans was ‘the’ most agentive force within the struggle, leading all sorts of actors to act in response. Based on an ontological reading of Rancière’s understanding of ‘the properly political’ and on Critchley’s notion of the ethical call that drives political action, I show how, through their ‘doings,’ the swans – previously unaccounted – became overtly political actors, ontologically reconfiguring the political community
COPD in England: a comparison of expected, model-based prevalence and observed prevalence from general practice data.

BACKGROUND Primary care data show that 765 000 people in England have a general practice (GP) diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We hypothesized that this underestimates actual prevalence, and compared expected prevalence of COPD for English local authority areas with prevalence of diagnosed COPD. METHODS Cross-sectional comparison of GP observed and model-based prevalence estimates (using spirometry data without clinical diagnosis) from the Health Survey for England. Local underdiagnosis of COPD was estimated as the ratio of observed to expected cases. We investigated geographical patterns using classical and geographically weighted regression analysis. RESULTS Both observed and expected prevalence of COPD varied widely between areas. There was evidence of a 'north-south' divide, with both observed and modelled prevalence higher in the north. The ratio of diagnosed to expected prevalence varied from 0.20 to 0.95, with a mean of 0.52. Underdiagnosis was more pronounced in urban areas, and is particularly severe in London. The inclusion of GP numbers in the analysis yielded a stronger regression relationship, suggesting primary care supply affects diagnosis. CONCLUSION Both observed and modelled COPD prevalence varies considerably across England. Cost-effective case-finding strategies should be evaluated, especially in areas where the ratio of observed to expected cases is low.
Segmentation of Fingerprint Images

An important step in an automatic fingerprint recognition system is the segmentation of fingerprint images. The task of a fingerprint segmentation algorithm is to decide which part of the image belongs to the foreground, originating from the contact of a fingertip with the sensor, and which part to the background, which is the noisy area at the borders of the image. In this paper, an algorithm for the segmentation of fingerprints is presented. The method uses three pixel features, being the coherence, the mean and the variance. An optimal linear classifier is trained for the classification per pixel, while morphology is applied as postprocessing to obtain compact clusters and to reduce the number of classification errors. Manual inspection shows that the proposed method provides accurate high-resolution segmentation results. Only 6.8% of the pixels is misclassified while the postprocessing further reduces this ratio. Experiments show that the proposed segmentation method and manual segmentation perform equally well in rejecting false fingerprint features from the noisy background. Keywords— Image processing, fingerprint image segmentation, pixel features, coherence, linear classification, neural network.
On Hardware Implementation of Flexray Bus Guardian Module

FlexRay is a new standard of communication between electronic devices installed in a vehicle. The protocol is based on mechanisms known from telecommunication networks coupled with real time requirements. Paper describes a creative study of the new concept, consisting in implementation of selected mechanisms and devices in dedicated digital circuit. Bus guardian block, responsible for enabling/disabling the access to media and error detection was selected. The architecture, containing a series of finite state machines, watchdogs, and other logic, controlled by the programmable registers, accessible via the serial interface, was proposed. The design was implemented in VHDL and verified. The rough synthesis for a programmable circuit (FPGA) was successfully performed. FlexRay protocol is still in the development phase. The authors referred to the preliminary version of the specification.
Malicious content filtering based on semantic features

This paper proposes a method to filtering malicious contents using semantic features. In conventional content based approach, low-level features such as color and texture are used to filter malicious contents. But, it is difficult to detect them because of semantic gaps between the low-level features and global concepts. In this paper, global concepts are divided into several semantic features. These semantic features are used to classify the global concept of malicious contents. We design semantic features and construct semantic classifier. In experiment, we evaluate the performance to filter malicious contents by comparing low-level features and semantic features. Results show that our proposed method has better performance than the method using only low-level features.
Exploring Content Knowledge: Country Profile of Science Strengths and Weaknesses in TIMSS. Possible Implications for Educational Professionals and Science Research

ABSTRACT This study offers curriculum developers, teachers, and science education researchers a fine-grained profile on strengths and weaknesses in specific science domains and topics. The study involved a representative sample of 3844 Norwegian pupils in grade 8. Their responses on 216 TIMSS items in 18 topics from 4 science domains were modelled in a hierarchical item response model. An internal comparison identified topics that were relatively harder or easier compared to other topics for Norwegian pupils, and an external comparison identified topics that were relatively harder or easier for the Norwegian pupils compared with the average of TIMSS participating countries. Interpretation of the profile necessitates contextualisation; hence, these strengths and weaknesses, as well as their plausible explanations and possible implications, are discussed from the perspectives of curriculum development, teacher training, and science education research.
VEHICLE SCHEDULING ON A TREE TO MINIMIZE MAXIMUM LATENESS

In this paper we deal with a single-vehicle scheduling problem on a tree-shaped road network. Let T = (V, E) be a tree, where V is a set of n vertices and E is a set of edges. A task is located at each vertex v E V, which is also denoted as v. Each task v has its due date d(v) and processing time p(v). The travel times w(u, v) and w(v, U,) are associated with each edge (U, v) E E. The vehicle starts from an initial vertex VQ E V, visits all tasks v E V for their processing (no preemption is allowed) and returns to VQ. The problem asks to find a routing schedule of the vehicle that minimizes the maximum lateness from the due dates of tasks. This problem is called TREE-VSP(Lmax). We prove that TREE-VSP(Lmax) is strongly NP-hard in general, but show that it can be solved in polynomial time if only depth-first routing is allowed for the vehicle.
The Effectiveness of Somatization in Communicating Distress in Korean and American Cultural Contexts

Previous research has documented that Asians tend to somatize negative experiences to a greater degree than Westerners. It is posited that somatization may be a more functional communication strategy in Korean than American context. We examined the effects of somatization in communications of distress among participants from the US and Korea. We predicted that the communicative benefits of somatic words used in distress narratives would depend on the cultural contexts. In Study 1, we found that Korean participants used more somatic words to communicate distress than US participants. Among Korean participants, but not US participants, use of somatic words predicted perceived effectiveness of the communication and expectations of positive reactions (e.g., empathy) from others. In Study 2, we found that when presented with distress narratives of others, Koreans (but not Americans) showed more sympathy in response to narratives using somatic words than narratives using emotional words. These findings suggest that cultural differences in use of somatization may reflect differential effectiveness of somatization in communicating distress across cultural contexts.
Reconstructing Tumor Genome Architectures

It has been observed that cancer genomes typically show not only an increased rate of single nucleotide mutations but also an increase in the number of genome rearrangements. As sequencing whole genomes is still a time-consuming task a method has been proposed for reconstructing the cancer genome from the known sequence of the human genome by finding the breakpoints alongside which the rearrangements occurred. The method involves end sequence profiling (ESP) of the cancer genome which is available in BAC library vectors. Mapping the end sequences to the human genome, the candidates for the breakpoints can be identified. For the reconstruction of the cancer genome G' the events have to be found that rearrange the human genome G into G'. This task is specified in the definition of the ESP Genome Reconstruction Problem [ESPGRP] and, additionally, a heuristic approach providing a solution will be given. Finally, the method is applied the MCF7 breast cancer genome resulting in a map of the rearranged cancer genome. This work is based in large parts on an article by Raphael et al. (2003), accompanied by supporting material and background information from other texts.
Pharmacokinetic and Maximum Tolerated Dose Study of Micafungin in Combination with Fluconazole versus Fluconazole Alone for Prophylaxis of Fungal Infections in Adult Patients Undergoing a Bone Marrow or Peripheral Stem Cell Transplant

ABSTRACT In this dose escalation study, 74 adult cancer patients undergoing bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell transplantation received fluconazole (400 mg/day) and either normal saline (control) (12 subjects) or micafungin (12.5 to 200 mg/day) (62 subjects) for up to 4 weeks. The maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of micafungin was not reached, based on the development of Southwest Oncology Group criteria for grade 3 toxicity; drug-related toxicities were rare. Commonly occurring adverse events considered related to micafungin were headache (6.8%), arthralgia (6.8%), hypophosphatemia (4.1%), insomnia (4.1%), maculopapular rash (4.1%), and rash (4.1%). Pharmacokinetic profiles for micafungin on days 1 and 7 were similar. The mean half-life was approximately 13 h, with little variance after repeated or increasing doses. Mean maximum concentrations of the drug in serum and areas under the concentration-time curve from 0 to 24 h were approximately proportional to dose. There was no clinical or kinetic evidence of interaction between micafungin and fluconazole. Five of 12 patients (42%) in the control group and 14 of 62 (23%) in the micafungin-plus-fluconazole groups had a suspected fungal infection during treatment which resulted in empirical treatment with amphotericin B. The combination of micafungin and fluconazole was found to be safe in this high-risk patient population. The MTD of micafungin was not reached even at doses up to 200 mg/day for 4 weeks. The pharmacokinetic profile of micafungin in adult cancer patients with blood or marrow transplants is consistent with the profile in healthy volunteers, and the area under the curve is proportional to dose.
A semi-continuous version of the Berger-Yeung problem

We present a continuous dual of multiterminal source encoding with one distortion criterion (the "Berger-Yeung (1989) problem"). A continuous source X is encoded with "high resolution" (D/sub x//spl rarr/0), with the aid of a "helper," i.e., a correlated discrete or continuous source Y, that is encoded separately subject to some arbitrary distortion criterion D/sub y/. We find the asymptotic form of the set of achievable coding rates R(D/sub x/, D/sub y/) of the X- and Y-encoders as D/sub x//spl rarr/0. Two extreme cases of our result provide high-resolution interpretations to the classical work of Wyner (1975, 1978), Ahlswede (1975), Korner (1975), and Ziv (1976) on source coding with side information.
BANKS AS A FIRM ` S BLOCKHOLDERS . A STUDY FOR SPAIN

This paper analyzes how a firm’s returns and the stake of the controlling blockholders are affected when a bank becomes a blockholder with one of the largest stakes. Compared to previous studies, we approach this issue by taking into consideration the type of blockholders building up coalitions with banks in order to control a firm. This allows us to reconcile different results, reported in relevant literature, on the impact of banks’ ownership of a firm on its returns. In short, we argue that this latter effect is negative only when a bank buys the largest stake or when it forms coalitions with other banks to control a firm. However, this does not apply when a bank buys the second largest stake of a firm with a non-bank as the largest blockholder. We prove empirically our theoretical contentions making use of a sample of Spanish firms for the period 1996-2000.
A greedy heuristic for a generalized set covering problem

The classical weighted set covering problem is generalized simultaneously in three directions. First, each numerical weight is replaced by a weighted set, which we call cost. Second, each element in the ground set is assigned a numerical weight. Third, the concept of a cover is relaxed to a partial cover that only needs to cover some percentage of the ground set, instead of the whole ground set. The last two generalizations have been studied in the literature, while the first is new. We propose a greedy algorithm to approximate this generalized problem and we establish an upper bound on the ratio of the greedy solution over the optimal solution. This bound is independent of the cost function, and it depends only on the total weight of the ground set. We prove that our bound is the best possible.
A spectral method for community detection in moderately sparse degree-corrected stochastic block models

Abstract We consider community detection in degree-corrected stochastic block models. We propose a spectral clustering algorithm based on a suitably normalized adjacency matrix. We show that this algorithm consistently recovers the block membership of all but a vanishing fraction of nodes, in the regime where the lowest degree is of order log(n) or higher. Recovery succeeds even for very heterogeneous degree distributions. The algorithm does not rely on parameters as input. In particular, it does not need to know the number of communities.