Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On particle acceleration and very high energy γ-ray emission in Crab-like pulsars

Context. The origin of very energetic charged particles and the production of very high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission remains still a challenging issue in modern pulsar physics. Aims. By applying a toy model, we explore the acceleration of co-rotating charged particles close to the light surface in a plasma-rich pulsar magnetosphere and study their interactions with magnetic and photon fields under conditions appropriate for Crab-type pulsars. Methods. Centrifugal acceleration of particles in a monopol-like magnetic field geometry is analyzed and the efficiency constraints, imposed by corotation, inverse Compton interactions and curvature radiation reaction are determined. We derive expressions for the maximum particle energy and provide estimates for the corresponding high-energy curvature and inverse Compton power outputs. Results. It is shown that for Crab-like pulsars, electron Lorentz factor up to γ ∼ 10 7 can be achieved, allowing inverse Compton (Klein-Nishina) up-scattering of thermal photons to TeV energies with a maximum luminosity output of ∼10 31 erg/s. Curvature radiation, on the other hand, will result in a strong GeV emission output of up to ∼(10 34 −10 35 )e rg/s, quasi-exponentially decreasing towards higher energies for photon energies below ∼50 GeV. Conclusions. Accordingly to the results presented only young pulsars are expected to be sites of detectable VHE γ-ray emission.
Efficient Sum of Sparse Outer Products Dictionary Learning (SOUP-DIL)

The sparsity of natural signals in a transform domain or dictionary has been extensively exploited in several applications. More recently, the data-driven adaptation of synthesis dictionaries has shown promise in many applications compared to fixed or analytical dictionaries. However, dictionary learning problems are typically non-convex and NP-hard, and the usual alternating minimization approaches for these problems are often computationally expensive, with the computations dominated by the NP-hard synthesis sparse coding step. In this work, we investigate an efficient method for $\ell_{0}$ "norm"-based dictionary learning by first approximating the training data set with a sum of sparse rank-one matrices and then using a block coordinate descent approach to estimate the rank-one terms. The proposed algorithm involves efficient closed-form solutions. In particular, the sparse coding step involves a simple form of thresholding. We provide a convergence analysis for the proposed block coordinate descent method. Our experiments show the promising performance and significant speed-ups provided by our method over the classical K-SVD scheme in sparse signal representation and image denoising.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the development of nephrolithiasis: A cohort study

Background Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a hepatic manifestation or precursor of metabolic syndrome, may increase nephrolithiasis, a renal manifestation of insulin resistance, but the prospective association between NAFLD and incident nephrolithiasis has not been evaluated. We examined the association of NAFLD with the development of nephrolithiasis in a large cohort of Korean men and women. Methods We performed a cohort study of 208,578 Korean adults who underwent a health checkup examination between January 2002 and December 2014 and were followed-up annually or biennially through December 2014. NAFLD was defined as the presence of fatty liver in the absence of excessive alcohol use or other identifiable causes. Fatty liver and nephrolithiasis were determined based on ultrasonographic findings. We used a parametric Cox model to estimate the adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of nephrolithiasis according to the presence of NAFLD. Results During 1,054,887.6 person-year of follow-up, 16,442 participants developed nephrolithiasis. After adjusting for age, center, year of screening exam, smoking status, alcohol intake, physical activity, education level, body mass index, history of hypertension and diabetes, HOMA-IR, uric acid and C-reactive protein, male participants with NAFLD had a significantly increased risk of nephrolithiasis than those without NAFLD (adjusted HR 1.17, 95% CI 1.06–1.30). However, no association between NAFLD and nephrolithiasis was observed in women (adjusted HR 0.97, 95% CI 0.81–1.16). Conclusions In this large cohort study of young and middle-aged Koreans, NAFLD was significantly associated with an increased incidence of nephrolithiasis in men but not in women.
Lernen and Learning Styles: A Comparative Analysis of the Learning Styles of German Adolescents by Age, Gender, and Academic Achievement Level

This study identified and compared the preferred learning-style characteristics of German adolescents and analyzed the similarities and differences by age, gender, and academic achievement within and among groups of students in different educational settings. Participants were 869 German adolescents aged 13, 15, and 17 years old from grades 7 through 13, with approximately equal representation of males and females. Students were administered the German language version of the Learning Style Inventory (R. Dunn, K. Dunn, and G. Price, 1996, 2000). Data were available about students' academic achievement, gender, and age. Results show that younger adolescents in Germany appear to be more persistent, authority-, parent-, and teacher-motivated than older students. As they mature, these students become less tactual and more in need of light. Age differences in learning-style preference indicate a shift from adult-based to self-driven motivation that should be incorporated into classroom instruction. Males and females in this population have distinctly different learning-style preferences, of which teachers and students should be aware. Of the three academic achievement levels investigated in this study, the academically gifted students were the least parentand teacher-motivated, while low achievers favored the presence of an authority figure in their environment. (Contains 3 tables and 74 references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Comparative Analysis of the Learning Styles of German Adolescents by Age, Gender, and Academic Achievement Level
Idealized Model Simulations Examining the Mesoscale Structure of Winter Lake-Effect Circulations

Abstract An array of 35 idealized mesoscale model simulations was used to examine environmental and surface forcing factors controlling the meso-β-scale circulation structure resulting from cold flow over an isolated axisymmetric body of water at the midlatitudes. Wind speed, lake–air temperature difference, ambient atmospheric stability, and fetch distance were varied across previously observed ranges. Simulated meso-β-scale lake-effect circulations occurred within three basic regimes (e.g., vortices, shoreline bands, widespread coverage), similar to observed morphological regimes. The current study found that the morphological regimes of lake-effect circulations can be predicted using the ratio of wind speed to maximum fetch distance (U/L). Lake-effect environmental conditions producing low values of U/L (i.e., approximately < 0.02 m s−1 km−1) resulted in a mesoscale vortex circulation. Conditions leading to U/L values between about 0.02 and 0.09 m s−1 km−1 resulted in the development of a shoreline ban.
Antibiotic Killing of Diversely Generated Populations of Nonreplicating Bacteria

Nonreplicating bacteria are known to be (or at least commonly thought to be) refractory to antibiotics to which they are genetically susceptible. Here, we explore the sensitivity to killing by bactericidal antibiotics of three classes of nonreplicating populations of planktonic bacteria: (i) stationary phase, when the concentration of resources and/or nutrients are too low to allow for population growth; (ii) persisters, minority subpopulations of susceptible bacteria surviving exposure to bactericidal antibiotics; and (iii) antibiotic-static cells, bacteria exposed to antibiotics that prevent their replication but kill them slowly if at all, the so-called bacteriostatic drugs. ABSTRACT Nonreplicating bacteria are known to be (or at least commonly thought to be) refractory to antibiotics to which they are genetically susceptible. Here, we explore the sensitivity to killing by bactericidal antibiotics of three classes of nonreplicating populations of planktonic bacteria: (i) stationary phase, when the concentration of resources and/or nutrients are too low to allow for population growth; (ii) persisters, minority subpopulations of susceptible bacteria surviving exposure to bactericidal antibiotics; and (iii) antibiotic-static cells, bacteria exposed to antibiotics that prevent their replication but kill them slowly if at all, the so-called bacteriostatic drugs. Using experimental populations of Staphylococcus aureus Newman and Escherichia coli K-12 (MG1655) and, respectively, nine and seven different bactericidal antibiotics, we estimated the rates at which these drugs kill these different types of nonreplicating bacteria. In contrast to the common belief that bacteria that are nonreplicating are refractory to antibiotic-mediated killing, all three types of nonreplicating populations of these Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria are consistently killed by aminoglycosides and the peptide antibiotics daptomycin and colistin, respectively. This result indicates that nonreplicating cells, irrespectively of why they do not replicate, have an almost identical response to bactericidal antibiotics. We discuss the implications of these results to our understanding of the mechanisms of action of antibiotics and the possibility of adding a short-course of aminoglycosides or peptide antibiotics to conventional therapy of bacterial infections.
Reduced platelet monoamine oxidase type B activity and lymphocyte muscarinic receptor binding in unmedicated children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Several lines of evidence support the role of monoaminergic and cholinergic dysregulation in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the concept that peripheral blood neurotransmission indices may represent valuable surrogate CNS markers. We determined platelet MAO-B activity (p-MAO-B) and lymphocyte muscarinic cholinergic receptor binding (l-MR) in 44 unmedicated ADHD children (aged 9.1 ± 2.87 years) and in 26 age-matched controls for comparison. Lower levels of p-MAO-B (~35%) and l-MR (~55%) in ADHD were observed compared with controls. Differences were gender-dependent: p-MAO-B was reduced in males only (5.20 ± 2.99 vs 8.46 ± 5.1 nmol mg−1 protein h−1 in ADHD and controls, respectively) and l-MR in females only (ADHD vs control: 6.63 ± 1.75 and 15.30 ± 8.35 fmol 10−6 cells). The clinical significance was corroborated by the correlation between these markers and severity of specific symptoms: lower p-MAO-B associated with increased inattention scores (Conners’ teacher-rating scale); lower l-MR associated with increased score for oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) (SNAP-IV); and trend towards correlation between increased inattention (SNAP-IV) and lower l-MR.
Prescribing practices in a US cohort of rheumatoid arthritis patients before and after publication of the American College of Rheumatology treatment recommendations.

OBJECTIVE To examine prescribing practices in the use of biologic and nonbiologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), before and after publication of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) treatment recommendations. METHODS Biologics-naive RA patients under the care of a rheumatologist in the US were identified from the Consortium of Rheumatology Researchers of North America registry. Patients were included if their visits occurred prior to and/or at least 6 months after publication of the ACR treatment recommendations (time periods of February 2002-June 2008 versus December 2008-December 2009). The population was divided into 2 mutually exclusive cohorts: 1) methotrexate (MTX) monotherapy users, and 2) multiple nonbiologic DMARD users. Initiation or dose escalation of biologic and nonbiologic DMARDs in response to active disease was assessed cross-sectionally and longitudinally in comparison to the ACR recommendations. The impact of the publication of the ACR recommendations on treatment practices was assessed using logistic regression, stratified by disease activity and adjusted for clustering of physicians and geographic region. RESULTS After 1 visit, 24-37% of patients receiving MTX monotherapy who had moderate disease activity and a poor prognosis or high disease activity received care consistent with the ACR recommendations; after 2 visits, 34-56% of the MTX monotherapy group received care consistent with the recommendations. In the patients receiving multiple nonbiologic DMARDs, 31-47% of those with moderate or high disease activity received care consistent with the recommendations after 1 visit, and 43-51% received such care after 2 visits. Publication of the recommendations did not significantly change treatment patterns for those with active disease. CONCLUSION Substantial numbers of RA patients with active disease did not receive care consistent with the current ACR treatment recommendations. Innovative approaches to improve care are necessary.
Narrowing the Modeling Gap: A Cluster-Ranking Approach to Coreference Resolution

Traditional learning-based coreference resolvers operate by training the mention-pair model for determining whether two mentions are coreferent or not. Though conceptually simple and easy to understand, the mention-pair model is linguistically rather unappealing and lags far behind the heuristic-based coreference models proposed in the prestatistical NLP era in terms of sophistication. Two independent lines of recent research have attempted to improve the mention-pair model, one by acquiring the mention-ranking model to rank preceding mentions for a given anaphor, and the other by training the entity-mention model to determine whether a preceding cluster is coreferent with a given mention. We propose a cluster-ranking approach to coreference resolution, which combines the strengths of the mention-ranking model and the entity-mention model, and is therefore theoretically more appealing than both of these models. In addition, we seek to improve cluster rankers via two extensions: (1) lexicalization and (2) incorporating knowledge of anaphoricity by jointly modeling anaphoricity determination and coreference resolution. Experimental results on the ACE data sets demonstrate the superior performance of cluster rankers to competing approaches as well as the effectiveness of our two extensions.
Becoming a Therapeutic Teacher for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Teachers who work with students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) know that their job is often challenging. High levels of stress and burnout are common among these teachers. Therapeutic teachers, however, are able to meet these challenges, as well as meet the academic and social needs of students with E/BD. This article will describe what a therapeutic teacher is, how such teachers can create a therapeutic environment for these students, and how they can manage the “stressors” of teaching these students. Most important—becoming a therapeutic teacher is a process of continually maintaining positive attitudes toward oneself, one’s work, and one’s students. Students with emotional and behav
The formation and evolution of bars in low surface brightness galaxies with cold dark matter haloes

We perform several high-resolution simulations of low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs) embedded in cold dark matter haloes to study how likely bar formation is in such systems. The behaviour of various collisionless galaxy models is studied both in isolation and in the presence of a large perturbing satellite. We also consider models with a dominant gaseous component in the disc. We find that in general bar formation requires disc masses at least a factor of 2 higher than those inferred for LSBGs under the assumption of a normal stellar mass-to-light ratio. Instead, if LSBGs have fairly light, low surface density discs, they are stable to the formation of a stellar bar within NFW (Navarro‐Frenk‐White) haloes spanning a range of concentrations. However, a purely gaseous light disc can form a bar for realistic temperatures provided that cooling is very efficient (we adopt an isothermal equation of state) and that the halo has a very low concentration, c < 5. The bars that form in these low surface brightness (LSB) models are significantly shorter than the typical halo scale radius ‐ their overall angular momentum content might be too low to affect significantly the inner dark halo structure. Once formed, all the bars evolve into bulge-like structures in only a few gigayears and can excite spiral patterns in the surrounding disc component. The recently discovered red LSBGs show significant non-axisymmetric structure and bulge-like components, and share many of their structural properties with the final states of our LSB models with massive discs. Our results imply that a bulge-like component must be present in any LSBG that ever went bar-unstable in the past.
Randomized, Blinded Trial Comparing Fondaparinux With Unfractionated Heparin in Patients Undergoing Contemporary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: Arixtra Study in Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: A Randomized Evaluation (ASPIRE) Pilot Trial

Background—Factor Xa plays a central role in the generation of thrombin, making it a novel target for treatment of arterial thrombosis. Fondaparinux is a synthetic factor Xa inhibitor that has been shown to be superior to standard therapies for the prevention of venous thrombosis. We performed a randomized trial to determine the safety and feasibility of fondaparinux in the percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) setting. Methods and Results—A total of 350 patients undergoing elective or urgent PCI were randomized in a blinded manner to receive unfractionated heparin (UFH), 2.5 mg fondaparinux IV, or 5.0 mg fondaparinux IV. Randomization was stratified for planned or no planned use of glycoprotein (GP) IIb/IIIa antagonists. The primary safety outcome was total bleeding, which was a combination of major and minor bleeding events. The incidence of total bleeding was 7.7% in the UFH group and 6.4% in the combined fondaparinux groups (hazard ratio, 0.81; 95% confidence interval, 0.35 to 1.84; P=0.61). Bleeding was less common in the 2.5-mg fondaparinux group compared with the 5-mg fondaparinux group (3.4% versus 9.6%, P=0.06). The composite efficacy outcome of all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction, urgent revascularization, or need for a bailout GPIIb/IIIa antagonist was 6.0% in the UFH group and 6.0% in the fondaparinux group, with no significant difference in efficacy among the fondaparinux doses compared with UFH. Coagulation marker analysis at 6 and 12 hours after PCI demonstrated that fondaparinux was superior to UFH in inducing a sustained reduction in markers of thrombin generation, as measured by prothrombin fragment F1.2 (P=0.02). Conclusions—In this pilot study of patients undergoing contemporary PCI, factor Xa inhibition with the synthetic anticoagulant fondaparinux in doses of 2.5 and 5.0 mg was comparable to UFH for clinical safety and efficacy outcomes. These data form the basis for further evaluation of fondaparinux in arterial thrombosis.
Power allocation for two-way amplify-forward relaying with receive channel knowledge

The power allocation problem corresponding to the communication of two sources via a relay with amplify-forward capability is studied from the outage probability perspective. Analog network coding is considered for half-duplex nodes with perfect channel state information at the receiver side. Under a sum-power constraint on the transmit powers of the nodes, an optimal power allocation strategy that minimizes the high signal-to-noise ratio approximation of the outage probability is derived and shown to improve the performance significantly. As a reference for comparison, a cut-set type bound is also optimized for the setup.
Arabidopsis histone H3K4 demethylase JMJ17 functions in dehydration stress response.

Under dehydration in plants, antagonistic activities of histone 3 lysine 4 (H3K4) methyltransferase and histone demethylase maintain a dynamic and homeostatic state of gene expression by orientating transcriptional reprogramming toward growth or stress tolerance. However, the histone demethylase that specifically controls histone methylation homeostasis under dehydration stress remains unknown. Here, we document that a histone demethylase, JMJ17, belonging to the KDM5/JARID1 family, plays crucial roles in response to dehydration stress and abscisic acid (ABA) in Arabidopsis thaliana. jmj17 loss-of-function mutants displayed dehydration stress tolerance and ABA hypersensitivity in terms of stomatal closure. JMJ17 specifically demethylated H3K4me1/2/3 via conserved iron-binding amino acids in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, H3K4 demethylase activity of JMJ17 was required for dehydration stress response. Systematic combination of genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with massively parallel DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq) and RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analyses revealed that a loss-of-function mutation in JMJ17 caused an ectopic increase in genome-wide H3K4me3 levels and activated a plethora of dehydration stress-responsive genes. Importantly, JMJ17 bound directly to the chromatin of OPEN STOMATA 1 (OST1) and demethylated H3K4me3 for the regulation of OST1 mRNA abundance, thereby modulating the dehydration stress response. Our results demonstrate a new function of a histone demethylase under dehydration stress in plants.
CABOB: A Fast Optimal Algorithm for Combinatorial Auctions

Combinatorial auctions where bidders can bid on bundles of items can lead to more economical allocations, but determining the winners is NP-complete and inapproximable. We present CABOB, a sophisticated search algorithm for the problem. It uses decomposition techniques, upper and lower bounding (also across components), elaborate and dynamically chosen bid ordering heuristics, and a host of structural observations. Experiments against CPLEX 7.0 show that CABOB is usually faster, never drastically slower, and in many cases drastically faster. We also uncover interesting aspects of the problem itself. First, the problems with short bids that were hard for the first-generation of specialized algorithms are easy. Second, almost all of the CATS distributions are easy, and become easier with more bids. Third, we test a number of random restart strategies, and show that they do not help on this problem because the run-time distribution does not have a heavy tail (at least not for CABOB).