Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rayleigh‐Taylor instability, lithospheric dynamics, surface topography at convergent mountain belts, and gravity anomalies

Surface topography and associated gravity anomalies above a layer resembling continental lithosphere, whose mantle part is gravitationally unstable, depend strongly on the ratio of viscosities of the lower‐density crustal part to that of the mantle part. For linear stability analysis, growth rates of Rayleigh‐Taylor instabilities depend largely on the wave number, or wavelength, of the perturbation to the base of the lithosphere and weakly on this viscosity ratio, on plausible density differences among crust, mantle lithosphere, and asthenosphere, and on ratios of crustal to total lithospheric thicknesses. For all likely densities, viscosities, and thicknesses, the Moho is drawn down (pushed up) where the base of the lithosphere subsides (rises). For large viscosities of crust compared to mantle lithosphere (ratios > ~30), a sinking and thickening mantle lithosphere also pulls the surface down. For smaller viscosity ratios, crustal thickening overwhelms the descent of the Moho, and the surface rises (subsides) above regions where mantle lithosphere thickens and descends (thins and rises). Ignoring vertical variations of viscosity within the crust and mantle lithosphere, we find that the maximum surface height occurs for approximately equal viscosities of crust and mantle lithosphere. For large crust/mantle lithosphere viscosity ratios, gravity anomalies follow those of surface topography, with negative (positive) free‐air anomalies over regions of descent (ascent). In this case, topography anomalies are smaller than those that would occur if the lithosphere were in isostatic equilibrium. Hence, flow‐induced stresses—dynamic pressure and deviatoric stress—create smaller topography than that expected for an isostatic state. For small crust/mantle viscosity ratios (< ~10), however, calculated surface topography at long wavelengths is greater than it would be if the lithospheric column were in isostatic equilibrium, and at short wavelengths local isostasy predicts surface deflections of the wrong sign. For the range of wavelengths appropriate for convergent mountain belts (~150–600 km), calculated gravity anomalies are negative over regions of lithospheric thickening, especially when allowance for flexural rigidity of a surface layer is included. Correspondingly, calculated values of admittance, the ratio of Fourier transforms of surface topography and free‐air gravity anomalies, are also negative for wave numbers relevant to mountain belts. For essentially all mountain belts, however, measured free‐air anomalies and admittance are positive. Whether gravitational instability of the lithosphere affects the structure of convergent belts or not, its contribution to the topography of mountain belts seems to be small compared to that predicted for isostatic balance of crustal thickness variations.
Multiple Helminth Infection of the Skin Causes Lymphocyte Hypo-Responsiveness Mediated by Th2 Conditioning of Dermal Myeloid Cells

Infection of the mammalian host by schistosome larvae occurs via the skin, although nothing is known about the development of immune responses to multiple exposures of schistosome larvae, and/or their excretory/secretory (E/S) products. Here, we show that multiple (4x) exposures, prior to the onset of egg laying by adult worms, modulate the skin immune response and induce CD4+ cell hypo-responsiveness in the draining lymph node, and even modulate the formation of hepatic egg-induced granulomas. Compared to mice exposed to a single infection (1x), dermal cells from multiply infected mice (4x), were less able to support lymph node cell proliferation. Analysis of dermal cells showed that the most abundant in 4x mice were eosinophils (F4/80+MHC-II−), but they did not impact the ability of antigen presenting cells (APC) to support lymphocyte proliferation to parasite antigen in vitro. However, two other cell populations from the dermal site of infection appear to have a critical role. The first comprises arginase-1+, Ym-1+ alternatively activated macrophage-like cells, and the second are functionally compromised MHC-IIhi cells. Through the administration of exogenous IL-12 to multiply infected mice, we show that these suppressive myeloid cell phenotypes form as a consequence of events in the skin, most notably an enrichment of IL-4 and IL-13, likely resulting from an influx of RELMα-expressing eosinophils. We further illustrate that the development of these suppressive dermal cells is dependent upon IL-4Rα signalling. The development of immune hypo-responsiveness to schistosome larvae and their effect on the subsequent response to the immunopathogenic egg is important in appreciating how immune responses to helminth infections are modulated by repeated exposure to the infective early stages of development.
Accurate Design of High-Efficiency LLC Resonant Converter With Wide Output Voltage

<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$LLC$ </tex-math></inline-formula> resonant converter is utilized for a 3.3-kW on-board charger (OBC), where high efficiency and wide output voltage are required. In this paper, the resonant frequency and the magnetizing inductor of the converter are first optimized based on the required efficiency. Then, the resonant inductor and the resonant capacitor are designed considering the required maximum output voltage. The energy equations and the KCL and KVL equations about the converter are established by the time domain method to find out the information about peak resonant current, peak magnetizing current, and minimum switching frequency. The above-mentioned information is used to accurately design the converter’s magnetic components. A 3.3-kW prototype applied for OBC is developed. Its output voltage ranges from 230 to 430 V. Its peak efficiency is higher than 97.6%. The experimental results verify that the proposed method can accurately design the efficiency, the voltage gain, and the magnetic components of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$LLC$ </tex-math></inline-formula> resonant converter in a wide output voltage range.
A conservative pattern of water use, rather than deep or profuse rooting, is critical for the terminal drought tolerance of chickpea

Chickpea is mostly grown on stored soil moisture, and deep/profuse rooting has been hypothesized for almost three decades to be critical for improving chickpea tolerance to terminal drought. However, temporal patterns of water use that leave water available for reproduction and grain filling could be equally critical. Therefore, variation in water use pattern and root depth/density were measured, and their relationships to yield tested under fully irrigated and terminal drought stress, using lysimeters that provided soil volumes equivalent to field conditions. Twenty chickpea genotypes having similar plant phenology but contrasting for a field-derived terminal drought-tolerance index based on yield were used. The pattern of water extraction clearly discriminated tolerant and sensitive genotypes. Tolerant genotypes had a lower water uptake and a lower index of stomatal conductance at the vegetative stage than sensitive ones, while tolerant genotypes extracted more water than sensitive genotypes after flowering. The magnitude of the variation in root growth components (depth, length density, RLD, dry weight, RDW) did not distinguish tolerant from sensitive genotypes. The seed yield was not significantly correlated with the root length density (RLD) in any soil layers, whereas seed yield was both negatively related to water uptake between 23–38 DAS, and positively related to water uptake between 48–61 DAS. Under these conditions of terminal drought, the most critical component of tolerance in chickpea was the conservative use of water early in the cropping cycle, explained partly by a lower canopy conductance, which resulted in more water available in the soil profile during reproduction leading to higher reproductive success.
T-Cell Responses to Autoantigens in IDDM: The Search for the Holy Grail

IDDM (type I diabetes) is generally believed to result from T-cell-mediated autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing β-cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. In the last few years, considerable progress has been made with regard to the identification and characterization of candidate autoantigens recognized by autoantibodies; several of these candidate autoantigens are recognized by T-cells, including insulin, GAD65 and GAD67, heat-shock protein 65 (hsp65), and islet-cell antigen 69 (ICA69). In addition to these, a number of unidentified β-cell antigens, including insulin-secretory granule membrane proteins and a 38-kDa protein, have been shown to stimulate T-cells of IDDM patients. However, T-cell autoreactivity to islet antigens is not specific for IDDM, and the T-cell target antigens are not specific for β-cells. Moreover, the autoantigens involved in the initiation of the insulitis must be defined, and the mechanism of the T-cell-dependent β-cell destruction remains to be unraveled. This review focuses on T-cell autoreactivity in IDDM in humans and the implications of the present knowledge for immunointervention and monitoring of immunotherapeutic trials.
Sensitivity of Calcification to Thermal Stress Varies among Genera of Massive Reef-Building Corals

Reductions in calcification in reef-building corals occur when thermal conditions are suboptimal, but it is unclear how they vary between genera in response to the same thermal stress event. Using densitometry techniques, we investigate reductions in the calcification rate of massive Porites spp. from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), and P. astreoides, Montastraea faveolata, and M. franksi from the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (MBR), and correlate them to thermal stress associated with ocean warming. Results show that Porites spp. are more sensitive to increasing temperature than Montastraea, with calcification rates decreasing by 0.40 g cm−2 year−1 in Porites spp. and 0.12 g cm−2 year−1 in Montastraea spp. for each 1°C increase. Under similar warming trends, the predicted calcification rates at 2100 are close to zero in Porites spp. and reduced by 40% in Montastraea spp. However, these predictions do not account for ocean acidification. Although yearly mean aragonite saturation (Ωar) at MBR sites has recently decreased, only P. astreoides at Chinchorro showed a reduction in calcification. In corals at the other sites calcification did not change, indicating there was no widespread effect of Ωar changes on coral calcification rate in the MBR. Even in the absence of ocean acidification, differential reductions in calcification between Porites spp. and Montastraea spp. associated with warming might be expected to have significant ecological repercussions. For instance, Porites spp. invest increased calcification in extension, and under warming scenarios it may reduce their ability to compete for space. As a consequence, shifts in taxonomic composition would be expected in Indo-Pacific reefs with uncertain repercussions for biodiversity. By contrast, Montastraea spp. use their increased calcification resources to construct denser skeletons. Reductions in calcification would therefore make them more susceptible to both physical and biological breakdown, seriously affecting ecosystem function in Atlantic reefs.
Oral Adsorbent AST-120 Decreases Carotid Intima-Media Thickness and Arterial Stiffness in Patients with Chronic Renal Failure

Background/Aim: Intima media thickness (IMT) and stiffness of the carotid arteries is related to coronary artery disease, and chronic renal failure patients are at high risk for such diseases. An oral adsorbent, AST-120 (Kremezin; Kureha Chemical Industry, Tokyo, Japan), can delay the progression of chronic renal failure in undialyzed uremic patients. The aim of the present study was to determine whether AST-120 affects carotid artery IMT and pulse wave velocity (PWV) in patients with chronic renal failure not undergoing dialysis. Methods: Fifty patients with non-diabetic chronic renal failure were randomly divided into two groups: 30 patients (18 men and 12 women; mean age 53.5 years; mean serum creatinine 3.2 mg/dl) who were given AST-120 (6.0 g/day) and 20 patients (12 men and 8 women; mean age 52.0 years; mean serum creatinine 3.5 mg/dl) who were not given AST-120. Thirty healthy age-matched subjects (18 men and 12 women; mean age 51.5 years; mean serum creatinine 0.9 mg/dl) were also included. The treatment period was 24 months. IMT and arterial stiffness were measured before and after treatment. Results: The slope of the reciprocal serum creatinine concentration over time became significantly less steep in the AST-120 group than in the non-AST-120 group (p < 0.001). Before treatment, carotid artery IMT differed little between the AST-120 group (0.90 ± 0.22 mm) and the non-AST-120 group (0.88 ± 0.20 mm). IMT in these two groups was significantly greater than IMT in the control group (0.64 ± 0.14 mm) (p < 0.01). Carotid IMT in the AST-120 group decreased slightly but not significantly to 0.84 ± 0.20 mm after 12 months and then significantly after 24 months to 0.78 ± 0.18 mm (p < 0.05). Carotid IMT in the non-AST group showed little change throughout the experimental period. PWV differed little between the AST-120 group (1,980 ± 330 cm/s) and the non-AST group (1,940 ± 360 cm/s) before treatment. PWV values in these two groups were significantly greater than PWV in the control group (1,280 ± 240 cm/s) (p < 0.01). After 12 and 24 months, PWV in the AST-120 group decreased significantly to 1,840 ± 280 cm/s (p < 0.05) and to 1,780 ± 260 cm/s (p < 0.05), respectively; however, PWV in the non-AST group showed a slight increase during the experimental period. Conclusion: The data suggest that AST-120 may reduce arterial stiffness and IMT in non-diabetic chronic renal failure patients before dialysis.
A Variational Method for Scene Flow Estimation from Stereo Sequences

This paper presents a method for scene flow estimation from a calibrated stereo image sequence. The scene flow contains the 3-D displacement field of scene points, so that the 2-D optical flow can be seen as a projection of the scene flow onto the images. We propose to recover the scene flow by coupling the optical flow estimation in both cameras with dense stereo matching between the images, thus reducing the number of unknowns per image point. The use of a variational framework allows us to properly handle discontinuities in the observed surfaces and in the 3-D displacement field. Moreover our approach handles occlusions both for the optical flow and the stereo. We obtain a partial differential equations system coupling both the optical flow and the stereo, which is numerically solved using an original multi- resolution algorithm. Whereas previous variational methods were estimating the 3-D reconstruction at time t and the scene flow separately, our method jointly estimates both in a single optimization. We present numerical results on synthetic data with ground truth information, and we also compare the accuracy of the scene flow projected in one camera with a state-of-the-art single-camera optical flow computation method. Results are also presented on a real stereo sequence with large motion and stereo discontinuities. Source code and sample data are available for the evaluation of the algorithm.
Hypoxia Adaptations in the Grey Wolf (Canis lupus chanco) from Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

The Tibetan grey wolf (Canis lupus chanco) occupies habitats on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a high altitude (>3000 m) environment where low oxygen tension exerts unique selection pressure on individuals to adapt to hypoxic conditions. To identify genes involved in hypoxia adaptation, we generated complete genome sequences of nine Chinese wolves from high and low altitude populations at an average coverage of 25× coverage. We found that, beginning about 55,000 years ago, the highland Tibetan grey wolf suffered a more substantial population decline than lowland wolves. Positively selected hypoxia-related genes in highland wolves are enriched in the HIF signaling pathway (P = 1.57E-6), ATP binding (P = 5.62E-5), and response to an oxygen-containing compound (P≤5.30E-4). Of these positively selected hypoxia-related genes, three genes (EPAS1, ANGPT1, and RYR2) had at least one specific fixed non-synonymous SNP in highland wolves based on the nine genome data. Our re-sequencing studies on a large panel of individuals showed a frequency difference greater than 58% between highland and lowland wolves for these specific fixed non-synonymous SNPs and a high degree of LD surrounding the three genes, which imply strong selection. Past studies have shown that EPAS1 and ANGPT1 are important in the response to hypoxic stress, and RYR2 is involved in heart function. These three genes also exhibited significant signals of natural selection in high altitude human populations, which suggest similar evolutionary constraints on natural selection in wolves and humans of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Analysis of CNN-based speech recognition system using raw speech as input

Abstract Automaticspeechrecognitionsystemstypicallymodeltherela-tionship between the acoustic speech signal and the phones intwo separate steps: feature extraction and classier training. Inourrecentworks, wehaveshownthat, intheframeworkofcon-volutionalneuralnetworks(CNN),therelationshipbetweentheraw speech signal and the phones can be directly modeled andASR systems competitive to standard approach can be built. Inthis paper, we rst analyze and show that, between the rst twoconvolutional layers, the CNN learns (in parts) and models thephone-specic spectral envelope information of 2-4 ms speech.Given that we show that the CNN-based approach yields ASRtrends similar to standard short-term spectral based ASR sys-tem under mismatched (noisy) conditions, with the CNN-basedapproach being more robust.Index Terms: automatic speech recognition, convolutionalneural networks, raw signal, robust speech recognition. 1. Introduction State-of-the-art automatic speech recognition (ASR) systemstypically model the relationship between the acoustic speechsignal and the phones in two separate steps, which are op-timized in an independent manner [1]. In a rst step, thespeech signal is transformed into features, usually composed ofa dimensionality reduction phase and an information selectionphase, based on the task-specic knowledge of the phenomena.These two phases have been carefully hand-crafted, leading tostate-of-the-art features such as Mel frequency cepstral coef-cients(MFCCs)orperceptuallinearpredictioncepstralfeatures(PLPs). In a second step, the likelihood of subword units suchas, phonemes is estimated using generative models or discrimi-native models.In recent years, in the hybrid HMM/ANN framework [1],there has been growing interests in using intermediate rep-resentations instead of conventional features, such as cepstral-based features, as input for neural networks-based systems.ANNs with deep learning architectures, more precisely, deepneural networks (DNNs) [2, 3], which can yield better systemthan a single hidden layer MLP have been proposed to addressvarious aspects of acoustic modeling. More specically, useof context-dependent phonemes [4, 5]; use of spectral featuresas opposed to cepstral features [6, 7]; CNN-based system withMel lter bank energies as input [8, 9, 10]; combination of dif-ferent features [11], to name a few. Features learning from therawspeechsignalusingneuralnetworks-basedsystemshasalsobeen investigated in [12]. In all these approaches, the features
Locally Invariant Fractal Features for Statistical Texture Classification

We address the problem of developing discriminative, yet invariant, features for texture classification. Texture variations due to changes in scale are amongst the hardest to handle. One of the most successful methods of dealing with such variations is based on choosing interest points and selecting their characteristic scales [Lazebnik et al. PAMI 2005]. However, selecting a characteristic scale can be unstable for many textures. Furthermore, the reliance on an interest point detector and the inability to evaluate features densely can be serious limitations. Fractals present a mathematically well founded alternative to dealing with the problem of scale. However, they have not become popular as texture features due to their lack of discriminative power. This is primarily because: (a) fractal based classification methods have avoided statistical characterisations of textures (which is essential for accurate analysis) by using global features; and (b) fractal dimension features are unable to distinguish between key texture primitives such as edges, corners and uniform regions. In this paper, we overcome these drawbacks and develop local fractal features that are evaluated densely. The features are robust as they do not depend on choosing interest points or characteristic scales. Furthermore, it is shown that the local fractal dimension is invariant to local bi-Lipschitz transformations whereas its extension is able to correctly distinguish between fundamental texture primitives. Textures are characterised statistically by modelling the full joint PDF of these features. This allows us to develop a texture classification framework which is discriminative, robust and achieves state-of-the-art performance as compared to affine invariant and fractal based methods.
“Strong” and “weak” synaptic differentiation in the crayfish opener muscle: Structural correlates

The single excitor motoneuron to the limb opener muscle in the crayfish Procambarus clarkii provides multiterminal innervation to individual muscle fibers. At low impulse frequencies, these neuromuscular synapses generate a threefold larger junctional potential in fibers of the proximal region of the muscle compared to those in the central region. Focal extracellular recording from synapse‐bearing “boutons” showed more quantal release at low frequencies in the proximal region. Structural correlates for the physiological differences were sought. Fluorescence microscopy of surface innervation stained with a vital fluorescent dye, 4‐Di‐2‐Asp, showed that density of innervation was not greater in the proximal region and thus could not account for the overall differences in synaptic strength. Freeze fracture studies showed that the intramembrane organization of excitatory synapses and their active zones was qualitatively similar in proximal and central sites. Serial section electron microscopy of several innervation sites in proximal and central regions showed homogeneity in number and size of synapses. However, presynaptic dense bars (at release sites, or active zones) were longer and occurred at a higher density in proximal than in central synapses. The differences in number and length of presynaptic dense bars correlate positively with the differences in synaptic strength represented by junctional potential amplitudes and quantal contents of individual surface recording sites. Since many individual proximal synapses have multiple dense bars, co‐operativity among these may serve to enhance transmitter output. It is concluded that occurrence of dense bars is a significant pre synaptic correlate of synaptic strength in this neuron. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.