Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Velocity analysis and imaging in transversely isotropic media: Methodology and a case study

Physicists and mathematicians, for many years, have studied the intricacies and complexities of how elastic waves propagate in anisotropic media (media in which velocity varies with direction of propagation). Moveover, over the years, a select few visionary exploration geophysicists (e.g., G. Postma, F. Levin, and K. Helbig) have been telling us that the earth’s subsurface is not isotropic, so processing that fails to take anisotropy into account should yield biased estimates of depth and subsurface velocity. Nevertheless, it is only in this past decade that the anisotropic character of the earth’s subsurface has been seriously studied and treated. During that time, most emphasis has been focused on the influence of anisotropy on the behavior of shear waves (e.g. Crampin 1985), a common belief being that departures of medium properties from isotropic waves were of second order for P-waves.
Evaluation of the Relationship between Circadian Blood Pressure Variation and Left Atrial Function Using Strain Imaging

Background Non-dippers were reported as showing different left atrial function, compared to dippers, but no study to date investigated the changes in the left atrial function according to the diurnal blood pressure pattern, using tissue Doppler and strain imaging. Methods Forty never treated hypertensive patients between 30 and 80 years of age were enrolled in this study. Patients were classified as non-dippers when, during night time, they had a blood pressure decrease of less than 10%. Strain of the left atrium was measured during late systole, and peak strain rates of the left atrium were measured during systole, early and late diastolic periods. Results The left atrial expansion index, left atrial active emptying volume and left atrial active emptying fraction were all significantly increased in non-dippers. They also had increased values of mean peak left atrial strain (dippers = 21.26 ± 4.23% vs. non-dippers = 24.91 ± 5.20%, p = 0.02), strain rate during reservoir (dippers = 1.29 ± 0.23 s-1 vs. non-dippers =1.52 ± 0.27 s-1, p = 0.01) and contractile period (dippers = -1.38 ± 0.24 s-1 vs. non-dippers = -1.68 ± 0.32 s-1, p < 0.01). Conclusion Strain and strain rate acquired from color Doppler tissue imaging demonstrate exaggerated reservoir and booster pump function in never-treated, non-dipper hypertensive patients. These methods are simple and sensitive for the early detection of subtle changes in the left atrial function.
Introducing Mushroom Fruiting Patterns from the Swiss National Poisons Information Centre

Changes in the ecology of macrofungi are poorly understood, not only because much of their life cycle is hidden belowground, but also because experiments often miss real-world complexity and most fruitbody inventories are limited in space and time. The National Poisons Information Centre ‘Tox Info Suisse’ provides countrywide 24hours/7days medical advice in case of poisonings since 1966. Here, we introduce a total of 12,126 mushroom-related phone calls that were received by Tox Info Suisse between 1966 and 2014. This indirect source of mycological information is dominated by the families of Boletaceae (11%), Agaricaceae (10%) and Amanitaceae (8%), which account for ~30% of all cases. Mushroom fruiting patterns revealed by the Poisons Centre inventory statistically resemble changes in fungal phenology, productivity and diversity as reflected by the Swiss National Data Centre ‘SwissFungi’. Although the newly developed Tox Info Suisse dataset provides an innovative basis for timely environmental research, caution is advised when interpreting some of the observed long-term changes and autumnal extremes. Uncertainty of the new record relates to possible data incompleteness, imprecise species description and/or identification, as well as the inclusion of cultivated and non-indigenous mushrooms. Nevertheless, we hope that the Tox Info Suisse inventory will stimulate and enable a variety of ecological-oriented follow-up studies.
Adoption of Personalisation Mobile Services: Evidence from Young Australians

The adoption of mobile services is often studied at a generic level and limited research has addressed personalisation service adoption. This paper proposes a framework for assessing the likely success or failure of personalisation mobile services. It was found that enjoyment and usefulness are the most important factors in attracting users to adopt personalisation services. Comparing these findings with those of similar studies in the literature we suggest that predictors of mobile service adoption may vary depending on the type of services. Furthermore, explanations and predictions based on rational and intuitive models of consumer behaviour in the mobile space may be insufficient and inadequate for determining investments in novel mobile services.
Defective peripheral nerve myelination and neuromuscular junction formation in fukutin‐deficient chimeric mice

Dystroglycan is a central component of the dystrophin–glycoprotein complex that links the extracellular matrix with cytoskeleton. Recently, mutations of the genes encoding putative glycosyltransferases were identified in several forms of congenital muscular dystrophies accompanied by brain anomalies and eye abnormalities, and aberrant glycosylation of α‐dystroglycan has been implicated in their pathogeneses. These diseases are now collectively called α‐dystroglycanopathy. In this study, we demonstrate that peripheral nerve myelination is defective in the fukutin‐deficient chimeric mice, a mouse model of Fukuyama‐type congenital muscular dystrophy, which is the most common α‐dystroglycanopathy in Japan. In the peripheral nerve of these mice, the density of myelinated nerve fibers was significantly decreased and clusters of abnormally large non‐myelinated axons were ensheathed by a single Schwann cell, indicating a defect of the radial sorting mechanism. The sugar chain moiety and laminin‐binding activity of α‐dystroglycan were severely reduced, while the expression of β1‐integrin was not altered in the peripheral nerve of the chimeric mice. We also show that the clustering of acetylcholine receptor is defective and neuromuscular junctions are fragmented in appearance in these mice. Expression of agrin and laminin as well as the binding activity of α‐dystroglycan to these ligands was severely reduced at the neuromuscular junction. These results demonstrate that fukutin plays crucial roles in the myelination of peripheral nerve and formation of neuromuscular junction. They also suggest that defective glycosylation of α‐dystroglycan may play a role in the impairment of these processes in the deficiency of fukutin.
Effect of training set size on SVM and Naive Bayes for Twitter sentiment analysis

Twitter sentiment analysis has become an effective way in measuring public sentiment about a certain topic or product. Thus, researchers have worked extensively in recent years to build efficient models for sentiment classification. In this paper, we will measure the effect of varying the training set size on the classification accuracy and F-score of SVM and Naive Bayes classifiers. We will expand our study even further by forming two ensembles: Ensemble 1 and Ensemble 2. Both ensembles include a single Naive Bayes and SVM classifier, but the ensembles differ in terms of the decision fusion technique utilized. Ensemble 1 uses `AND-type' fusion while Ensemble 2 uses `OR-type' fusion. In this paper, we measure the effect of training set size on each ensemble configuration type by measuring their F-scores and classification accuracies while varying the training set size.
Poverty and Knowing: Exploring Epistemological Development in Welfare-to-Work Community College Students

Abstract:Through a one year-long, qualitative study of welfare-to-work students, this study investigates the developing epistemologies of women enrolled in a community college CalWORKs program. We investigate how poverty as a macro-environment and the community college as a micro-environment influence participants’ epistemological development. Findings demonstrate poverty suppresses epistemological development through socialization, as experiences with disenfranchisement impede participants’ beliefs in self as knower, and reify the value of absolute submission to authority. Additionally, we find that poverty impacts the types of epistemologies used and normalizes these epistemologies through the experience of intergenerational poverty. Theoretical, practical, and policy implications are discussed.
Monitoring cancer stem cells: insights into clinical oncology

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a small, characteristically distinctive subset of tumor cells responsible for tumor initiation and progression. Several treatment modalities, such as surgery, glycolytic inhibition, driving CSC proliferation, immunotherapy, and hypofractionated radiotherapy, may have the potential to eradicate CSCs. We propose that monitoring CSCs is important in clinical oncology as CSC populations may reflect true treatment response and assist with managing treatment strategies, such as defining optimal chemotherapy cycles, permitting pretreatment cancer surveillance, conducting a comprehensive treatment plan, modifying radiation treatment, and deploying rechallenge chemotherapy. Then, we describe methods for monitoring CSCs.
Get Semantic With Me! The Usefulness of Different Feature Types for Short-Answer Grading

Automated short-answer grading is key to help close the automation loop for large-scale, computerised testing in education. A wide range of features on different levels of linguistic processing has been proposed so far. We investigate the relative importance of the different types of features across a range of standard corpora (both from a language skill and content assessment context, in English and in German). We find that features on the lexical, text similarity and dependency level often suffice to approximate full-model performance. Features derived from semantic processing particularly benefit the linguistically more varied answers in content assessment corpora.
Materials and Methods Susceptibility of Aspergillus Strains from Culture Collections to Amphotericin B and Itraconazole Results and Discussion

Introduction Moulds of the genus Aspergillus are opportunistic pathogens, especially in immunologically compromised patients. 1 Currently, amphotericin B is recommended as the drug of choice for the treatment of systemic infections. Itraconazole might be an alternative. 1 Most studies on in-vitro susceptibility have focused on Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillus flavus, the leading pathogens of the genus in humans. Technical procedures for susceptibility testing of moulds are currently not standardized and there was until now no established correlation between in-vitro results and in-vivo outcome. 6 Furthermore, the results of studies on susceptibility testing are difficult to compare since in most studies only clinical isolates were tested without using reference strains from culture collections. Only the parallel testing of a number of reference strains enables laboratories to standardize technical procedures and to evaluate new techniques. Therefore, susceptibility testing of 27 strains of five different Aspergillus spp. against amphotericin B and itraconazole was performed. Additionally, the widely used test media yeast nitrogen broth and RPMI-1640 were compared. Twenty-seven Aspergillus strains were purchased from three different sources: (i) Centralbureau voor Schimmel-Eleven strains were isolated from human infections, eight strains were isolated from animals, and eight strains were isolated from the environment (Table). The strains were subcultured on Sabouraud-dextrose agar (Unipath, Basingstoke, UK) at 35°C for 3 days. Conidia, harvested by swabbing, were suspended in test media (see below). Amphotericin B was purchased from Squibb-von Heyden (Munich, Germany) in a formulation with 49% deoxycholate. The powder was dissolved in distilled water to an amphotericin B concentration of 320 mg/L. A further dilution step was performed in test media to a concentration of 128 mg/L. Itraconazole (R 51211 AS) was purchased from Janssen Biotech NV (Olen, Belgium). Ten milligrams of the substance was dissolved in a mixture of 2 mL of 2 N HCl and 8 mL of dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO, Sigma-Aldrich Chemie, Deisenhofen, Germany). Ninety millilitres of distilled water was added, and 32 mL of the solution was made up to 100 mL with the appropriate test medium. This procedure resulted in an itraconazole concentration of 32 mg/L. Each well of sterile 96-well microtitre plates was filled with 100 L of either YNB (yeast nitrogen broth, 6.7 g of yeast-nitrogen base medium (Difco, Detroit, MI, USA) in 0.01 M phosphate buffer, pH 7.0, 1% D-glucose, 0.15% asparagine) or RPMI-1640 (with L-glutamine, without sodium bicarbonate Susceptibility testing of 27 Aspergillus reference strains belonging to five species was …
A Simple Enzyme Histochemical Method for the Simultaneous Demonstration of Acetylcholinesterase and Monoamine Oxidase in Fixed-Frozen Sections

We describe an enzyme histochemical technique for the simultaneous demonstration of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and monoamine oxidase (MAO) (Types A, B, or A+B) in fixed-frozen sections. Several regions in the mesencephalon and brainstem were examined for both somatic and neuropil labeling. The results obtained are equivalent or superior to those obtained using previous methods for the individual localization of these enzymes. The simultaneous visualization of AChE and MAO in the same section allows the relationship of the two enzymes to be easily assessed with brightfield microscopy.
A Linear Stochastic Dynamical Model of ENSO. Part II: Analysis.

In this study the behavior of a linear, intermediate model of ENSO is examined under stochastic forcing. The model was developed in a companion paper (Part I) and is derived from the Zebiak‐Cane ENSO model. Four variants of the model are used whose stabilities range from slightly damped to moderately damped. Each model is run as a simulation while being perturbed by noise that is uncorrelated (white) in space and time. The statistics of the model output show the moderately damped models to be more realistic than the slightly damped models. The moderately damped models have power spectra that are quantitatively quite similar to observations, and a seasonal pattern of variance that is qualitatively similar to observations. All models produce ENSOs that are phase locked to the annual cycle, and all display the ‘‘spring barrier’’ characteristic in their autocorrelation patterns, though in the models this ‘‘barrier’’ occurs during the summer and is less intense than in the observations (inclusion of nonlinear effects is shown to partially remedy this deficiency). The more realistic models also show a decadal variability in the lagged autocorrelation pattern that is qualitatively similar to observations. Analysis of the models shows that the greatest part of the variability comes from perturbations that project onto the first singular vector, which then grow rapidly into the ENSO mode. Essentially, the model output represents many instances of the ENSO mode, with random phase and amplitude, stimulated by the noise through the optimal transient growth of the singular vectors. The limit of predictability for each model is calculated and it is shown that the more realistic (moderately damped) models have worse potential predictability (9‐15 months) than the deterministic chaotic models that have been studied widely in the literature. The predictability limits are strongly correlated with the stability of the models’ ENSO mode—the more highly damped models having much shorter limits of predictability. A comparison of the two most realistic models shows that even though these models have similar statistics, they have very different predictability limits. The models have a strong seasonal dependence to their predictability limits. The results of this study (with the companion paper) suggest that the linear, stable dynamical model of ENSO is indeed a plausible hypothesis for the observed ENSO. With very reasonable levels of stochastic forcing, the model produces realistic levels of variance, has a realistic spectrum, and qualitatively reproduces the observed seasonal pattern of variance, the autocorrelation pattern, and the ENSO-like decadal variability.
Particle propagators on discrete spacetime

A quantum mechanical description of particle propagation on the discrete spacetime of a causal set is presented. The model involves a discrete path integral in which trajectories within the causal set are summed over to obtain a particle propagator. The sum-over-trajectories is achieved by a matrix geometric series. For causal sets generated by sprinkling points into 1+1 and 3+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime the propagator calculated on the causal set is shown to agree, in a suitable sense, with the causal retarded propagator for the Klein–Gordon equation. The particle propagator described here is a step towards quantum field theory on causal set spacetime.
Genistein Improves Neuropathology and Corrects Behaviour in a Mouse Model of Neurodegenerative Metabolic Disease

Background Neurodegenerative metabolic disorders such as mucopolysaccharidosis IIIB (MPSIIIB or Sanfilippo disease) accumulate undegraded substrates in the brain and are often unresponsive to enzyme replacement treatments due to the impermeability of the blood brain barrier to enzyme. MPSIIIB is characterised by behavioural difficulties, cognitive and later motor decline, with death in the second decade of life. Most of these neurodegenerative lysosomal storage diseases lack effective treatments. We recently described significant reductions of accumulated heparan sulphate substrate in liver of a mouse model of MPSIIIB using the tyrosine kinase inhibitor genistein. Methodology/Principal Findings We report here that high doses of genistein aglycone, given continuously over a 9 month period to MPSIIIB mice, significantly reduce lysosomal storage, heparan sulphate substrate and neuroinflammation in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, resulting in correction of the behavioural defects observed. Improvements in synaptic vesicle protein expression and secondary storage in the cerebral cortex were also observed. Conclusions/Significance Genistein may prove useful as a substrate reduction agent to delay clinical onset of MPSIIIB and, due to its multimodal action, may provide a treatment adjunct for several other neurodegenerative metabolic diseases.
A Jacksonian and Biopsychosocial Hypothesis Concerning Borderline and Related Phenomena

Objective: The aim of this paper is to develop an aetiological model for borderline personality disorder. Method: The postulates of Hughlings Jackson are used to provide a preliminary explanatory framework for borderline phenomena. As a necessary background to this discussion, the findings concerning abuse in the early history of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other conditions, notably somatisation disorder and dissociative states, are briefly reviewed. Other data, including family studies, which might have significance in the aetiology of BPD are also reviewed. Results: The hypothesis is put forward that the symptoms of BPD are due to the failure of ‘experience-dependent’ maturation of a cascade of neural networks, with prefrontal connections, which become active relatively late in development and which coordinate disparate elements of central nervous system function. These networks subserve higher psychological functions, including attentional focus and affect regulation. They also underpin the reflective function necessary to the emergence of self as the stream of consciousness, which appears at about the age of 4 years. Conclusion: Adverse developmental circumstances may produce an interrelated set of symptom clusters, with associated neural network disturbances that are amenable to investigation with psychometric and brain imaging techniques. Since these disturbances are seen as ‘experience-dependent’, they are considered reversible, at least in part.
Goal-oriented visualizations of activity tracking: a case study with engineering students

Increasing motivation of students and helping them to reflect on their learning processes is an important driver for learning analytics research. This paper presents our research on the development of a dashboard that enables self-reflection on activities and comparison with peers. We describe evaluation results of four iterations of a design based research methodology that assess the usability, use and usefulness of different visualizations. Lessons learned from the different evaluations performed during each iteration are described. In addition, these evaluations illustrate that the dashboard is a useful tool for students. However, further research is needed to assess the impact on the learning process.
Underwater Electromagnetic Sensor Networks, Part II: Localization and Network Simulations

In the first part of the paper, we modeled and characterized the underwater radio channel in shallow waters. In the second part, we analyze the application requirements for an underwater wireless sensor network (U-WSN) operating in the same environment and perform detailed simulations. We consider two localization applications, namely self-localization and navigation aid, and propose algorithms that work well under the specific constraints associated with U-WSN, namely low connectivity, low data rates and high packet loss probability. We propose an algorithm where the sensor nodes collaboratively estimate their unknown positions in the network using a low number of anchor nodes and distance measurements from the underwater channel. Once the network has been self-located, we consider a node estimating its position for underwater navigation communicating with neighboring nodes. We also propose a communication system and simulate the whole electromagnetic U-WSN in the Castalia simulator to evaluate the network performance, including propagation impairments (e.g., noise, interference), radio parameters (e.g., modulation scheme, bandwidth, transmit power), hardware limitations (e.g., clock drift, transmission buffer) and complete MAC and routing protocols. We also explain the changes that have to be done to Castalia in order to perform the simulations. In addition, we propose a parametric model of the communication channel that matches well with the results from the first part of this paper. Finally, we provide simulation results for some illustrative scenarios.