Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microphysical effects determine macrophysical response for aerosol impacts on deep convective clouds

Significance Deep convective clouds (DCCs) play a key role in atmospheric circulation and the hydrological and energy cycle. How aerosol particles affect DCCs is poorly understood, making it difficult to understand current and future weather and climate. Our work showed that in addition to the invigoration of convection, which has been unanimously cited for explaining the observed results, the microphysical effects induced by aerosols are a fundamental reason for the observed increases in cloud fraction, cloud top height, and cloud thickness in the polluted environment, even when invigoration is absent. The finding calls for an augmented focus on understanding the changes in stratiform/anvils associated with convective life cycle. Deep convective clouds (DCCs) play a crucial role in the general circulation, energy, and hydrological cycle of our climate system. Aerosol particles can influence DCCs by altering cloud properties, precipitation regimes, and radiation balance. Previous studies reported both invigoration and suppression of DCCs by aerosols, but few were concerned with the whole life cycle of DCC. By conducting multiple monthlong cloud-resolving simulations with spectral-bin cloud microphysics that capture the observed macrophysical and microphysical properties of summer convective clouds and precipitation in the tropics and midlatitudes, this study provides a comprehensive view of how aerosols affect cloud cover, cloud top height, and radiative forcing. We found that although the widely accepted theory of DCC invigoration due to aerosol’s thermodynamic effect (additional latent heat release from freezing of greater amount of cloud water) may work during the growing stage, it is microphysical effect influenced by aerosols that drives the dramatic increase in cloud cover, cloud top height, and cloud thickness at the mature and dissipation stages by inducing larger amounts of smaller but longer-lasting ice particles in the stratiform/anvils of DCCs, even when thermodynamic invigoration of convection is absent. The thermodynamic invigoration effect contributes up to ∼27% of total increase in cloud cover. The overall aerosol indirect effect is an atmospheric radiative warming (3–5 W⋅m−2) and a surface cooling (−5 to −8 W⋅m−2). The modeling findings are confirmed by the analyses of ample measurements made at three sites of distinctly different environments.
Some Gabidulin Codes Cannot Be List Decoded Efficiently at any Radius

Gabidulin codes can be seen as the rank-metric equivalent of Reed-Solomon codes. It was recently proved, using subspace polynomials, that Gabidulin codes cannot be list decoded beyond the so-called Johnson radius. In another result, cyclic subspace codes were constructed by inspecting the connection between subspaces and their subspace polynomials. In this paper, these subspace codes are used to prove two bounds on the list size in decoding certain Gabidulin codes. The first bound is an existential one, showing that exponentially sized lists exist for codes with specific parameters. The second bound presents exponentially sized lists explicitly for a different set of parameters. Both bounds rule out the possibility of efficiently list decoding several families of Gabidulin codes for any radius beyond half the minimum distance. Such a result was known so far only for non-linear rank-metric codes, and not for Gabidulin codes. Using a standard operation called lifting, identical results also follow for an important class of constant dimension subspace codes.
Variable stiffness element by granular jamming (Stiffness enhancement by a wrinkle-free outer membrane)

A flexible bag containing particles becomes rigid when the air inside the element is evacuated. Variable stiffness elements using granular jamming have been used for haptic displays and robotic orthoses helped by the soft and lightweight body. However, deforming variable stiffness elements causes wrinkles on the membrane, which decrease and destabilize the stiffness of the element. The wrinkles on variable stiffness elements are due to the non-stretchability of the outer membrane. A stretched membrane reduces wrinkles but decreases the stiffness of the element dramatically. This study suggests a wrinkle-free variable stiffness element with an outer membrane that is stretchable but rigid only when the air inside the element is evacuated. The amount of particles inside conventional elements limits the deformable range of the elements. On the other hand, the novel stiffness element can hold more particles without any loss of the deformable range, which increases the stiffness of the element. The stretchable outer membrane also reduces undesirable deformations of the element caused by wrinkles when the air inside the element is evacuated. The experimental results of this study confirm that the stiffness of the wrinkle-free variable stiffness element is greater and more stable than a conventional stiffness element.
.nto faces: Resurrecting a dimensional-contextual perspective

Students of film study an experiment conducted in the great Russian director Lev Ku leshov' s experimental workshop just after the 19] 7 rev­ olution (Cook, 198]). With students including Eisenstein Clnd Pudovk.in, Kuleshov created three silent film strips each ending with the same foot­ age of a deliberately deadpan face of the actor Ivan Mozhukhin. In one strip Mozhukhin's face was preceded by a bowl of hot soup, in the sec­ ond by a dead woman lying in a coffin, and in the third by CI young girl playing with a teddy bear. The result was an illusion: Audiences saw emotions expressed in Mozhukhin's expressionless face. Pudovk.in (1929/1970) recalled, "The public raved Jbout the acting of the artist. They pointed out the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead woman, and admired thk' light, happy smile with which he surveyed the girl at play. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same" (p. 168). Students of psychology study an experiment conducted by Paul Ek­ man and Wallace Friesen (1971) in the highlands of Papua New Guinea among the Fore tribe, then liVing in Stone Age isolation. Members of the tribe were shown still photographs of Americans posing various theo­ rized facial signals of emotion. They were also told storics suggesting specific emotions and asked to select the most appropriate photograph for each story protagonist. Ekman (1975) recalled, "IsolatcJ (rom West­ ern culture, the New Guinea fore were able to match the photographs with the appropriate stMies" (p.38). "The subtle creases of a grimace tell the same story around the world, to preliterate New Guinea tribes­ men, Japanese and American college students alike" (p. 35). The impli­ cation? "If you meet a native in New Guinea or your old boss in a Manhattan bar, you will be able to interpret their facial expressions eas­ ily, knowing how they feel or how they want you to think they feel.
The predictive value of serum S100A9 and response to etanercept is not confirmed in a large UK rheumatoid arthritis cohort

Abstract Objective. The aim was to correlate protein concentrations of S100A9 in pretreatment serum samples with response to the tumour-necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor drugs etanercept in a large UK replication cohort. Methods. Pretreatment serum samples from patients with RA (n = 236) about to commence treatment with etanercept had S100A9 serum concentration measured using an ELISA. Following the experimental procedure, S100A9 concentrations were analysed with respect to EULAR response. Results. No evidence of association between S100A9 concentration and EULAR response to the TNF-inhibitor biologic drug etanercept was observed following multinomial logistic regression analysis (non-responder vs moderate responder, P = 0.957; and non-responder vs good responder, P = 0.316). Furthermore, no significant associations were observed when correlating pretreatment S100A9 concentrations with clinical parameters of disease activity (P > 0.05). Conclusion. In the largest replication cohort conducted to date, no evidence for association was observed to support the use of S100A9 as a clinical biomarker predictive of response to the TNF-inhibitor biologic drug etanercept.
Gaussian mixture models with covariances or precisions in shared multiple subspaces

We introduce a class of Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) in which the covariances or the precisions (inverse covariances) are restricted to lie in subspaces spanned by rank-one symmetric matrices. The rank-one basis are shared between the Gaussians according to a sharing structure. We describe an algorithm for estimating the parameters of the GMM in a maximum likelihood framework given a sharing structure. We employ these models for modeling the observations in the hidden-states of a hidden Markov model based speech recognition system. We show that this class of models provide improvement in accuracy and computational efficiency over well-known covariance modeling techniques such as classical factor analysis, shared factor analysis and maximum likelihood linear transformation based models which are special instances of this class of models. We also investigate different sharing mechanisms. We show that for the same number of parameters, modeling precisions leads to better performance when compared to modeling covariances. Modeling precisions also gives a distinct advantage in computational and memory requirements
The magnitude of, and factors associated with, loss to follow-up among patients treated for sexually transmitted infections: a multilevel analysis

Objectives The loss to follow-up (LTFU) among patients attending care for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Sub-Saharan Africa is a major barrier to achieving the goals of the STI prevention and control programme. The objective of this study was to investigate individual- and facility-level factors associated with LTFU among patients treated for STIs in Ethiopia. Methods A prospective cohort study was conducted among patients attending care for STIs in selected facilities from January to June 2015 in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. LTFU was ascertained if a patient did not present in person to the same facility within 7 days of the initial contact. Multilevel logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with LTFU. Results Out of 1082 patients, 59.80% (647) were LTFU. The individual-level factors associated with LTFU included having multiple partners (adjusted OR (AOR) 2.89, 95% CI 1.74 to 4.80), being male (AOR 2.23, 95% CI 1.63 to 3.04), having poor knowledge about the means of STI transmission (AOR 2.08, 95% CI 1.53 to 2.82), having college level education (AOR 0.38, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.65), and low perceived stigma (AOR 0.60, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.82). High patient flow (AOR 3.06, 95% CI 1.30 to 7.18) and medium health index score (AOR 2.80, 95% CI 1.28 to 6.13) were facility-level factors associated with LTFU. Conclusions Improving patient retention in STI follow-up care requires focused interventions targeting those who are more likely to be LTFU, particularly patients with multiple partners, male index cases and patients attending facilities with high patient flow.
Openness and Human Capital as Sources of Productivity Growth: An Empirical Investigation

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as well as endogeneity, the results show a significant effect of openness on productivity growth. If the level of openness of an economy is doubled the underlying rate of technical progress will increase by 0.8 per cent per annum. We find an effect, significant at the ten per cent level, of the level of human capital on the level of income but no effect on underlying productivity growth. Our preferred estimator combines high and low frequency differences of the data. We discuss reasons why this estimator is well suited for empirical analysis of economic growth.
Empirically Adopted IEM for Retrieval of Soil Moisture From Radar Backscattering Coefficients

The integral equation model (IEM) is considered as a promising algorithm for soil moisture retrieval from active microwave data over bare soil and sparsely vegetated conditions. However, the soil dielectric constant is implicitly embedded in the complicated IEM; inversion of soil moisture is often accomplished through iteration and is thus computationally expensive, particularly when it is applied to retrieve soil moisture from active microwave data on a large scale. To simplify the inversion process of soil moisture directly from the active microwave data, basic math functions were adopted to fit the simulation results of the original IEM so that the radar backscattering coefficient becomes an explicit function of soil dielectric constant or the soil dielectric constant is an explicit function of radar backscattering coefficient. Soil moisture is then calculated directly from radar backscattering coefficient without iteration. We called this model empirically adopted IEM (EA-IEM). The accuracy of the EA-IEM to the original IEM and its applicability are analyzed through three processes: model intercomparison, sensitivity analysis, and model comparison with in situ measurements. The average differences of backscattering coefficients between the EA-IEM and the original IEM are 0.14 dB for HH-polarization and 0.12 dB (Gaussian correlation function) and 0.2 dB (exponential correlation function) for VV-polarization. The sensitivity of soil moisture variation is examined under the consideration of absolute and relative calibration errors. A comparison between the soil moisture estimated and the measurements is performed, and the root-mean-square (rms) error is found to be 3.4%, suggesting that the EA-IEM performs well in these real cases. All these analyses indicate that the EA-IEM is a good representative of the original IEM and can be used to retrieve soil moisture under the tested range of model parameters: incidence angles between 10deg and 60deg, soil dielectric constants between 4 and 42, surface rms height from 4 to 31 mm, and correlation length from 50 to 250 mm.
A‐factor as a microbial hormone that controls cellular differentiation and secondary metabolism in Streptomyces griseus

A‐factor, containing a γ‐butyrolactone in its structure, is an autoregulatory factor or a‘microbiai hormone’controlling secondary metabolism and cellular differentiation in Streptomyces griseus. A‐factor exerts its regulatory role by binding to a specific receptor protein which, in the absence of A‐factor, acts as a repressor‐type regulator for morphological and physiological differentiation, in the signal relay leading to streptomycin production in S. griseus, the A‐factor signal is transferred from the A‐factor receptor to the upstream activation sequence of a regulatory gene, strR, in the streptomycin biosynthetic gene cluster via an A‐factor‐dependent protein that serves as a transcription factor for strR. The StrR protein thus Induced appears to activate the transcription of other streptomycin‐production genes. The presence of A‐factor homologues in a wide variety of Streptomyces species and distantly related bacteria implies the generality of γ‐butyrolactones as chemical cellular signalling molecules in microorganisms.
Extracting Opinion Expressions and Their Polarities – Exploration of Pipelines and Joint Models

We investigate systems that identify opinion expressions and assigns polarities to the extracted expressions. In particular, we demonstrate the benefit of integrating opinion extraction and polarity classification into a joint model using features reflecting the global polarity structure. The model is trained using large-margin structured prediction methods. The system is evaluated on the MPQA opinion corpus, where we compare it to the only previously published end-to-end system for opinion expression extraction and polarity classification. The results show an improvement of between 10 and 15 absolute points in F-measure.
Interleukin (IL)-1 promotes allogeneic T cell intimal infiltration and IL-17 production in a model of human artery rejection

Interleukin (IL) 1α produced by human endothelial cells (ECs), in response to tumor necrosis factor (TNF) or to co-culture with allogeneic T cells in a TNF-dependent manner, can augment the release of cytokines from alloreactive memory T cells in vitro. In a human–mouse chimeric model of artery allograft rejection, ECs lining the transplanted human arteries express IL-1α, and blocking IL-1 reduces the extent of human T cell infiltration into the artery intima and selectively inhibits IL-17 production by infiltrating T cells. In human skin grafts implanted on immunodeficient mice, administration of IL-17 is sufficient to induce mild inflammation. In cultured cells, IL-17 acts preferentially on vascular smooth muscle cells rather than ECs to enhance production of proinflammatory mediators, including IL-6, CXCL8, and CCL20. Neutralization of IL-17 does not reduce T cell infiltration into allogeneic human artery grafts, but markedly reduces IL-6, CXCL8, and CCL20 expression and selectively inhibits CCR6+ T cell accumulation in rejecting arteries. We conclude that graft-derived IL-1 can promote T cell intimal recruitment and IL-17 production during human artery allograft rejection, and suggest that targeting IL-1 in the perioperative transplant period may modulate host alloreactivity.
Selective information seeking: can consumers' avoidance of evidence-based information on colorectal cancer screening be explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance?

Background: Evidence-based patient information (EBPI) is a prerequisite for informed decision-making. However, presentation of EBPI may lead to irrational reactions causing avoidance, minimisation and devaluation of the information. Objective: To explore whether the theory of cognitive dissonance is applicable to medical decision-making and useful to explain these phenomena. Setting and participants: 261 volunteers from Hamburg (157 women), ≥50 years old without diagnosis of colorectal cancer. Design and variables: Within an experiment we simulated information seeking on colorectal cancer screening. Consumers’ attitudes towards screening were surveyed using a rating scale from -5 (participate in no way) to +5 (participate unconditionally) (independent variable). Using a cover story, participants were asked to sort 5 article headlines according to their reading preferences. The headlines simulated the pro to contra variety of contents to be found in print media about colorectal cancer screening. The dependent variable was the sequence of article headlines. Results: Participants were very much in favour of screening with scores for faecal occult blood test of 4.0 (0.1) and for colonoscopy 3.3 (0.1). According to our hypothesis we found statistically significant positive correlations between the stimuli in favour of screening and attitudes and significant negative correlations between the stimuli against screening and attitudes. Conclusion: The theory of cognitive dissonance is applicable to medical decision-making. It may explain some phenomena of irrational reactions to evidence-based patient information.
A best-first alignment algorithm for automatic extraction of transfer mappings from bilingual corpora

Translation systems that automatically extract transfer mappings (rules or examples) from bilingual corpora have been hampered by the difficulty of achieving accurate alignment and acquiring high quality mappings. We describe an algorithm that uses a best-first strategy and a small alignment grammar to significantly improve the quality of the mappings extracted. For each mapping, frequencies are computed and sufficient context is retained to distinguish competing mappings during translation. Variants of the algorithm are run against a corpus containing 200K sentence pairs and evaluated based on the quality of resulting translations.
How to Design an Advanced Pedestrian Navigation System: Field Trial Results

Location based services are more and more establishing themselves on the market. Various providers of navigation applications are trying to benefit from this development and promote their solutions with the option "suitable for pedestrian navigation". But still these systems use vocabulary and routing only appropriate to car navigation. A key feature of context-aware applications is the ability to connect the current user position to possible activities nearby. Particularly with regard to mobile tourist applications pedestrian navigation systems need to be 100% accurate. This paper describes a field study comparing four different navigational concepts for pedestrians currently available. All of these systems are based on recent state of the art approaches and have been evaluated by real users. At the end this paper will come up with a recommendation for designing mobile pedestrian navigation systems.
Chapter 5 Bead-rod chains in elongational flow 5 . 1

In this chapter we will investigate the behaviour of a bead-rod chain in elongational flow using the Brownian dynamics code described in the previous chapter. There are several reasons to look at this specific combination of flow type and polymer model. Firstly, elongational flow is important in a number of cases where dilute polymer solutions are industrially relevant; examples being fibre spinning, turbulent drag reduction and flow through a porous medium. Secondly, the behaviour of chains in elongational flow poses many questions to the validity of more coarse grained polymer models such as dumbbell models. Lastly, experimental techniques have recently become available by which properties in elongational flow can be measured accurately. Until about a decade ago the only kind of controlled extensional flow that was accessible experimentally (at least for polymer solutions) was stagnation-point flow. An example of apparatuses which create such a stagnation point are the four roll mill and the opposing jet device. In the stagnation point a perfect extensional flow is created. The flow field away from this stagnation point is not very well defined. It can not be prescribed a priori by means of e.g. Stokes flow because the polymer contributions to the stress influence the flow field. Therefore one would like to measure in the stagnation point only. A direct measurement of the stress over there is not possible. By means of optical techniques the average orientation of the polymer in the stagnation point can be measured. For solutions in strong flow there is however not a one-on-one relation between average orientation and stress (the so called stress-optical law is not valid). Luckily the last decade two experimental techniques have been introduced that are able to provide very useful extensional data. The first technique is monitoring single DNA molecules in a stagnation point. By looking at single molecules the mechanisms of unravelling in elongational flow can be tested in the most direct way. The second technique is the filament stretching device. A droplet of a polymeric solution is stretched by rapidly moving two discs apart. The force on the discs is measured. These techniques, especially the filament stretching device, produce data which can not be explained by the commonly used constitutive equations.