Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative maps of geomagnetic perturbation vectors during substorm onset and recovery

We have produced the first series of spherical harmonic, numerical maps of the time‐dependent surface perturbations in the Earth's magnetic field following the onset of substorms. Data from 124 ground magnetometer stations in the Northern Hemisphere at geomagnetic latitudes above 33° were used. Ground station data averaged over 5 min intervals covering 8 years (1998–2005) were used to construct pseudo auroral upper, auroral lower, and auroral electrojet (AU*, AL*, and AE*) indices. These indices were used to generate a list of substorms that extended from 1998 to 2005, through a combination of automated processing and visual checks. Events were sorted by interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation (at the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite), dipole tilt angle, and substorm magnitude. Within each category, the events were aligned on substorm onset. A spherical cap harmonic analysis was used to obtain a least error fit of the substorm disturbance patterns at 5 min intervals up to 90 min after onset. The fits obtained at onset time were subtracted from all subsequent fits, for each group of substorm events. Maps of the three vector components of the averaged magnetic perturbations were constructed to show the effects of substorm currents. These maps are produced for several specific ranges of values for the peak |AL*| index, IMF orientation, and dipole tilt angle. We demonstrate an influence of the dipole tilt angle on the response to substorms. Our results indicate that there are downward currents poleward and upward currents just equatorward of the peak in the substorms' westward electrojet.
Towards a full integration of vertically aligned silicon nanowires in MEMS using silane as a precursor

Silicon nanowires present outstanding properties for electronics, energy, and environmental monitoring applications. However, their integration into microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is a major issue so far due to low compatibility with mainstream technology, which complicates patterning and controlled morphology. This work addresses the growth of 〈111〉 aligned silicon nanowire arrays fully integrated into standard MEMS processing by means of the chemical vapor deposition–vapor liquid solid method (CVD–VLS) using silane as a precursor. A reinterpretation of the galvanic displacement method is presented for selectively depositing gold nanoparticles of controlled size and shape. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis of the effects of synthesis temperature and pressure on the growth rate and alignment of nanowires is presented for the most common silicon precursor, i.e., silane. Compared with previously reported protocols, the redefined galvanic displacement together with a silane-based CVD–VLS growth methodology provides a more standard and low-temperature (<650 °C) synthesis scheme and a compatible route to reliably grow Si nanowires in MEMS for advanced applications.
Cognitive coordination and its neurobiological bases: A new continent to explore

Abstract The additional arguments and evidence supplied by the commentaries strengthen the hypothesis that underactivity of NMDA receptors produces impaired cognitive coordination in schizophrenia. This encourages the hope that though the distance from molecules to mind is great, it can nevertheless be traversed. We therefore predict that in this decade or the next molecular psychology will be seen to be as fundamental to our understanding of mind as molecular biology is to our understanding of life.
A Noisy-Channel Model of Human Sentence Comprehension under Uncertain Input

Language comprehension, as with all other cases of the extraction of meaningful structure from perceptual input, takes places under noisy conditions. If human language comprehension is a rational process in the sense of making use of all available information sources, then we might expect uncertainty at the level of word-level input to affect sentence-level comprehension. However, nearly all contemporary models of sentence comprehension assume clean input---that is, that the input to the sentence-level comprehension mechanism is a perfectly-formed, completely certain sequence of input tokens (words). This article presents a simple model of rational human sentence comprehension under noisy input, and uses the model to investigate some outstanding problems in the psycholinguistic literature for theories of rational human sentence comprehension. We argue that by explicitly accounting for input-level noise in sentence processing, our model provides solutions for these outstanding problems and broadens the scope of theories of human sentence comprehension as rational probabilistic inference.
Acute pancreatitis

Purpose of review To summarize recent data on classification systems, cause, risk factors, severity prediction, nutrition, and drug treatment of acute pancreatitis. Recent findings Comparison of the Revised Atlanta Classification and Determinant Based Classification has shown heterogeneous results. Simvastatin has a protective effect against acute pancreatitis. Young black male, alcohol, smoldering symptoms, and subsequent diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis are risk factors associated with readmissions after acute pancreatitis. A reliable clinical or laboratory marker or a scoring system to predict severity is lacking. The PYTHON trial has shown that oral feeding with on demand nasoenteric tube feeding after 72 h is as good as nasoenteric tube feeding within 24 h in preventing infections in predicted severe acute pancreatitis. Male sex, multiple organ failure, extent of pancreatic necrosis, and heterogeneous collection are factors associated with failure of percutaneous drainage of pancreatic collections. Summary The newly proposed classification systems of acute pancreatitis need to be evaluated more critically. New biomarkers are needed for severity prediction. Further well designed studies are required to assess the type of enteral nutritional formulations for acute pancreatitis. The optimal minimally invasive method or combination to debride the necrotic collections is evolving. There is a great need for a drug to treat the disease early on to prevent morbidity and mortality.
A conceptual framework for understanding and analyzing attitudes towards environmental behaviour

Abstract Encouraging environmental action by citizens in developed nations has become a major priority for governments who are seeking to reach environmental targets by exhorting individuals to participate in a range of behaviours to ameliorate the negative impact of their lifestyles. Such activities conventionally include energy saving, water conservation, waste management and forms of ‘green’ consumption. Current policy discourses are focused around a linear model of behaviour, which assumes that an awareness of environmental problems and knowledge of how to tackle them will lead to individual ameliorative actions. This paper explores these assumptions by applying a previously developed conceptual framework (Barr et al. 2001) to a range of environmental actions, to show how a variety of different factors influence environmental action. Using data from a major (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research project in Devon, United Kingdom, data on environmental actions collected during the project are interrogated to uncover the relationships between environmental actions and how these are influenced by values, personal situations and attitudes. The research demonstrates that environmental action is structured around people's everyday lifestyles (rather than a compartmentalized notion of behaviour) and that these have radically different antecedents.
Activity in the Lateral Intraparietal Area Predicts the Goal and Latency of Saccades in a Free-Viewing Visual Search Task

The purpose of saccadic eye movements is to facilitate vision, by placing the fovea on interesting objects in the environment. Eye movements are not made for reward, and they are rarely restricted. Despite this, most of our knowledge about the neural genesis of eye movements comes from experiments in which specific eye movements are rewarded or restricted. Such experiments have demonstrated that activity in the lateral intraparietal (LIP) area of the monkey correlates with the monkey's planning of a memory-guided saccade or deciding where, on the basis of motion information, to make a saccade. However, other experiments have shown that neural activity in LIP can easily be dissociated from the generation of saccadic eye movements, especially when sophisticated behavioral paradigms dissociate the monkey's locus of attention from the goal of an intended saccade. In this study, we trained monkeys to report the results of a visual search task by making a nontargeting hand movement. Once the task began, the monkeys were entirely free to move their eyes, and rewards were not contingent on the monkeys making specific eye movements. We found that neural activity in LIP predicted not only the goal of the monkey's saccades but also their saccadic latencies.
Making Believe: Institutional and Discursive Barriers to Sustainable Transport in Two Australian Cities

The main focus of this paper is the complex of 'storylines' justifying transport infrastructure policy. We use the term 'discourse network' to describe the specific set of storylines and arguments that coordinate action in a particular policy domain. The 'knots' in the network are the related discursive threads of argument, the 'nodes' are institutional structures binding people together, sometimes in particular places, for close communication. Our empirical frame compares the transport policy domains of Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, in the past four decades. We find that transport storylines in both cities--whilst hardly conducive to sustainability--have by no means constituted a unified ideology. The evidence is that discourse networks in both contexts have been loosely woven nets comprised of strands of part truth, part fiction and quasi-arguments generated from different professional sources with different and in some ways conflicting ideologies. There are significant variations in the knots of storylines found in Sydney and Melbourne, particularly as they confront the opposing discourse of sustainability.
Debt Capacity, Cost of Debt and Corporate Insurance

Using a unique insurance dataset for a sample of Chinese publicly listed companies for the period 1997 through 2003, this study tests the simultaneous linkages between debt capacity, cost of debt, and corporate property insurance. Our results suggest that, on the one hand, a higher cost of debt appears to motivate the use of more property insurance, but high leverage alone does not lead to the purchase of more property insurance. The latter finding might reflect the unique institutional setting of China, for example, where there is a low chanceof legally enforced company liquidation. Also, there is evidence that leverage can interact with tangible assets intensity and exert a positive conjoint effect on the corporate purchase ofproperty insurance. On the other hand, we find evidence that supports that property insurance helps expand insuring firms' debt capacity and helps lower their borrowing costs. However, themoderate evidence on the cost reduction effect suggests that lowering the borrowing cost is likely to be a concern secondary to facilitating corporate borrowing and thereby expanding debt capacity in corporate property insurance decisions in China. Overall, we conclude that debt capacity, cost of debt, and corporate insurance appear to be simultaneously related.
Hemodynamic Traveling Waves in Human Visual Cortex

Functional MRI (fMRI) experiments rely on precise characterization of the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal. As the spatial resolution of fMRI reaches the sub-millimeter range, the need for quantitative modelling of spatiotemporal properties of this hemodynamic signal has become pressing. Here, we find that a detailed physiologically-based model of spatiotemporal BOLD responses predicts traveling waves with velocities and spatial ranges in empirically observable ranges. Two measurable parameters, related to physiology, characterize these waves: wave velocity and damping rate. To test these predictions, high-resolution fMRI data are acquired from subjects viewing discrete visual stimuli. Predictions and experiment show strong agreement, in particular confirming BOLD waves propagating for at least 5–10 mm across the cortical surface at speeds of 2–12 mm s-1. These observations enable fundamentally new approaches to fMRI analysis, crucial for fMRI data acquired at high spatial resolution.
Sterols in a unicellular relative of the metazoans

Molecular clocks suggest that animals originated well before they first appear as macroscopic fossils, but geologic tests of these hypotheses have been elusive. A rare steroid hydrocarbon, 24-isopropylcholestane, has been hypothesized to be a biomarker for sponges or their immediate ancestors because of its relatively high abundance in pre-Ediacaran to Early Cambrian sedimentary rocks and oils. Biolipid precursors of this sterane have been reported to be prominent in several demosponges. Whether 24-isopropylcholestane can be interpreted as a sponge (and, hence, animal) biomarker, and so provide clues about early metazoan history, depends on an understanding of the distribution of sterol biosynthesis among animals and their protistan relatives. Accordingly, we characterized the sterol profile of the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis, a representative of the unicellular sister group of animals. M. brevicollis does not produce a candidate sterol precursor for 24-isopropylcholestane under our experimental growth conditions. It does, however, produce a number of other sterols, and comparative genomics confirms its biosynthetic potential to produce the full suite of compounds recovered. Consistent with the phylogenetic position of choanoflagellates, the sterol profile and biosynthetic pathway of M. brevicollis display characteristics of both fungal and poriferan sterol biosynthesis. This is an example in which genomic and biochemical information have been used together to investigate the taxonomic specificity of a fossil biomarker.
Long-Term Survivors of the "Locked-In" Syndrome: Patterns of Recovery and Potential for Rehabilitation

We studied four men, each of whom survived over 3 years after being "locked-in" owing to pontine infarction. Their pontine lesions were evident with magnetic resonance imaging, but not with computed tomography. All showed a characteristic pattern of recovery from the motor deficit with rapid return of eye-hand control and slow but sustained limb improvement. Despite pseudobulbar affect, all made an emotion adjustment to their severe deficits and showed a strong desire to live. Physicians should be aware of the special needs and methods for rehabilitation of patients who are clinically "locked-in. "
The Need for a Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory for Assessing Innovations in Introductory Astronomy Survey Courses

In this era of dramatically increased astronomy education research efforts, there is a growing need for standardized evaluation protocols and a strategy to assess both student comprehension of fundamental concepts and the success of innovative instructional interventions. Of the many topics that could be taught in an introductory astronomy course, the nature of light and the electromagnetic spectrum is by far the most universally covered topic. Yet, to the surprise and disappointment of instructors, many students struggle to understand underlying fundamental concepts related to light, such as blackbody radiation, Wien’s law, the Stefan-Boltzmann law, and the nature and causes of emission and absorption line spectra. Motivated by predecessor instruments such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), the Astronomy Diagnostic Test (ADT), and the Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (LPCI), we call for, and are working on, the development and validation of a Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory. This assessment instrument should measure students’ conceptual understanding of light and spectroscopy and gauge the effectiveness of classroom instruction in promoting student learning in the introductory astronomy survey course.
RECAP: A region-based cure for the common cold (cache)

Virtualization has become a magic bullet to increase utilization, improve security, lower costs, and reduce management overheads. In many scenarios, the number of virtual machines consolidated onto a single processor has grown even faster than the number of hardware threads. This results in multiprogrammed virtualization where many virtual machines time-share a single processor core. Such fine-grain sharing comes at a cost; each time a virtual machine gets scheduled by the hypervisor, it effectively begins with a “cold” cache, since any cache blocks it accessed in the past have likely been evicted by other virtual machines. Recently, cache restoration prefetchers have been shown to reduce the cold cache effects caused by multiprogrammed virtualization. However, these prefetchers waste large amounts of bandwidth prefetching many useless blocks and writing and reading metadata to and from memory. Using block reuse based filtering, we enhance two existing cache restoration prefetchers and reduce their bandwidth overheads by 16% and 32%, with slowdowns of only 0.5% and 0.6%. We also propose a Region-Based Cache Restoration Prefetcher (RECAP), which groups cache blocks into coarse-grain regions of memory, and predicts which regions contain useful blocks to prefetch the next time the current virtual machine executes. Based on these predictions, and using a simple compression technique that exploits spatial locality, RECAP provides a robust prefetcher that improves performance by up to 42% for some applications and only uses 14% more bandwidth and 3.5% more power than a stride prefetcher, on average. Compared to other prefetchers designed for multiprogrammed virtualization, RECAP provides comparable performance while using an average of 12% to 27% less bandwidth, and reducing the energy-delay product of the L2 cache and main memory by 12% to 13% on average.
On postmodern liberal conservatism

In his most recent works, John Gray attempts to achieve two things: to refute the universalist tendencies of modern liberalism and to propose an alternative in the form of postmodern liberal conservatism. While largely supportive of the first, this paper is critical of the second undertaking, which seems a dubious attempt to synthesize postmodern liberal anthropology with a conservative conception of the social order.
Disciplining the Professional: The Case of Project Management

Despite its rapid growth in recent years, Project Management has received very little critical attention, particularly when compared to the more 'hyped' managerial fashions such as TQM (cf. Wilkinson and Willmott, 1995) and BPR (cf. Grey and Mitev, 1995; Grint, 1994). My intention in this paper is to critically examine the ongoing construction of Project Management as a professional discipline in modern organizations. Drawing on an understanding of 'discipline' based in Foucauldian work, I will briefly trace the historical construction of Project Management as a form of managerial knowledge, outlining the key models and techniques which make up contemporary Project Management. Through an empirical study of the articulation and reproduction of Project Management within two Financial Services institutions, the everyday construction of Project Management as an 'objective' and 'abstract' body of knowledge will be described. I then contrast this with the embodied and power-laden operation of Project Management, with disciplinary effects not only on those employees whose work is restructured in line with Project Management principles but equally upon self-professed Project Management professionals themselves. Copyright 2002 Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Internal parasites of yak (Bos grunniens) of the Gannan, Gansu Province, P.R. China

Summary The internal parasites of yak have been studied in a number of different countries including Bhutan, India, Nepal and China. Parasites of the yak of Gannan, Gansu, P.R. China have not previously been published. Samples were collected from 38 yak in Gannan during June of 2004. Samples were analyzed using standard fecal flotation method at the Lanzhou Univeristy, China. Eimeria, Moniezia, Nematodirus, Trichuris and other strongyles were identified in the fecal samples. All of these parasites have previously been reported in yak in their range. More studies of yak parasites need to be undertaken in order to make better husbandry and public health recommendations to yak herders to increase productivity and decrease zoonotic disease.
Outcomes of Environmental Appraisal of Different Hospital Waiting Areas

This article evaluates the intuitively informed interior design changes made to a United Kingdom neurology outpatient waiting area following relocation to an alternative building. This nouveau environment is compared withthe more traditional waiting area used before the relocation. The two waiting areas are compared in terms of their effects on the environmental appraisals, self-reported stress and arousal, satisfaction ratings, and pulse readings of 145 outpatients. The equivalence of the outpatient samples attending each clinic is demonstrated in terms of their common demographic characteristics and their similar health profiles. The results provide convergent evidence that the nouveau waiting area is associated with more positive environmental appraisals, improved mood, altered physiological state, and greater reported satisfaction. These findings provide support for the concept of a therapeutic hospital environment.
Role of a New Cytokine, Interleukin‐10, in the Cross‐Regulation of T Helper Cells

During an immune response, a variety of different effector mechanisms can be induced to deal with different pathogens. For example, neutralization of a bacterial toxin requires the production of antibodies, whereas cytotoxic T cells are most effective against infections by viruses or other intracellular agents. The choice between these various modalities of the immune response is precisely regulated since the appropriate effector function is usually induced in a predictable manner. It is now clear that cytokines and the cells that produce them have a very important role in regulating the class of immune response. Two types of T helper cell (THI and TH2), defined by the patterns of cytokines that they secrete,' appear to be important in this immune class regulation. TH1-like cells may account for at least certain types of delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH), while TH2-like cells appear to favor strong antibody responses (reviewed in Ref. 2). Since antibody and DTH responses are often mutually exclusive, this suggests that THl and TH2 cells may be cross-inhibitory, and so the study of negative regulators of these two phenotypes is of considerable interest. Before discussing negative regulation between these types of T cell, I will briefly summarize the current state of knowledge of the heterogeneity of TH cells with respect to cytokine synthesis and function.