Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Divergent Arctic-Boreal Vegetation Changes between North America and Eurasia over the Past 30 Years

Arctic-Boreal region—mainly consisting of tundra, shrub lands, and boreal forests—has been experiencing an amplified warming over the past 30 years. As the main driving force of vegetation growth in the north, temperature exhibits tight coupling with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)—a proxy to photosynthetic activity. However, the comparison between North America (NA) and northern Eurasia (EA) shows a weakened spatial dependency of vegetation growth on temperature changes in NA during the past decade. If this relationship holds over time, it suggests a 2/3 decrease in vegetation growth under the same rate of warming in NA, while the vegetation response in EA stays the same. This divergence accompanies a circumpolar widespread greening trend, but 20 times more browning in the Boreal NA compared to EA, and comparative greening and browning trends in the Arctic. These observed spatial patterns of NDVI are consistent with the temperature record, except in the Arctic NA, where vegetation exhibits a similar long-term trend of greening to EA under less warming. This unusual growth pattern in Arctic NA could be due to a lack of precipitation velocity compared to the temperature velocity, when taking velocity as a measure of northward migration of climatic conditions.
GRB 060218: The Nature of the Optical-UV Component

The optical-UV component in GRB 060218 is assumed to be due to optically thick cyclotron emission. The key aspect of this model is the high temperature of the absorbing electrons. The heat input derives from nuclei accelerated in semirelativistic internal shocks, like in ordinary gamma-ray bursts. Coulomb collisions transfer part of that energy to electrons. Inverse Compton cooling on the X-ray photons leads to electron temperatures around ~100 keV. Such a high brightness temperature for the optical-UV emission implies an emitting area roughly equal to that of the thermal X-ray component. This suggests a model in which the radio, optical-UV, and thermal X-ray emission are closely related. Although the optical-UV and thermal X-ray emission are two separate spectral components, it is argued that they both come from the photosphere of a quasi-spherical, continuous outflow, whose interaction with the circumstellar medium gives rise to the radio emission. The properties of GRB 060218, as measured in the comoving frame, are similar to those of ordinary gamma-ray bursts; i.e., the main difference is the much lower value of the bulk Lorentz factor in GRB 060218. The cyclotron absorption implies a magnetic field in rough equipartition with the matter energy density in the outflow. Hence, the magnetic field could have a dynamically important role, possibly with a magnetar as the central engine.
Dimensiones e indicadores de la calidad informativa en los medios digitales

El actual ecosistema informativo, atravesado por una logica de mediamorfosis, esta generando con avidez el surgimiento de medios digitales y portales informativos que no siguen los procedimientos editoriales formales de los medios convencionales. La crisis de los medios de comunicacion tradicionales ha cambiado tambien nuestra forma de informarnos. Sin embargo, la calidad informativa sigue siendo un factor de discusion al no existir unidad de criterios para su analisis. En este sentido surge la pregunta ? Como evaluar y valorar la calidad informativa de los medios digitales? Este trabajo contribuye a buscar convergencias entre academicos y profesionales de la comunicacion sobre las areas y dimensiones de la calidad informativa de los medios digitales en funcion de valores objetivos o cuantificables. Para ello se ha realizado una taxonomia de dimensiones de la calidad informativa a partir de la revision de la literatura cientifica, para posteriormente someterlo a la evaluacion y validacion por juicio de 40 expertos, academicos y profesionales de la comunicacion, para verificar su fiabilidad. Como resultado, quedaron validadas tres macroareas de la calidad informativa, contentivas en 21 ambitos que consideran intrinsecamente un total de 75 dimensiones. Esta investigacion propone finalmente un modelo estructurado que permitira analizar la calidad informativa de los medios digitales, tanto en su fase pre-informativa, catalogadas en el medio-empresa, las caracteristicas sociolaborales de los trabajadores del medio, asi como el producto final y el contenido informativo.
Efficient High Order Matching

We present a computational approach to high-order matching of data sets in Rd. Those are matchings based on data affinity measures that score the matching of more than two pairs of points at a time. High-order affinities are represented by tensors and the matching is then given by a rank-one approximation of the affinity tensor and a corresponding discretization. Our approach is rigorously justified by extending Zass and Shashua's hypergraph matching to high-order spectral matching. This paves the way for a computationally efficient dual-marginalization spectral matching scheme. We also show that, based on the spectral properties of random matrices, affinity tensors can be randomly sparsified while retaining the matching accuracy. Our contributions are experimentally validated by applying them to synthetic as well as real data sets.
A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis Study of WhatsApp Messenger’s Semantic Notifications

This study is the first to analyse WhatsApp’s semantic notifications particularly those of Jordanians. It also seeks to analyse the differences in these notifications’ language use by gender and endeavors to reveal some latent socio-cultural values affecting the way users make certain language choices in these online notifications. The study contributes to knowledge since such analysis helps to reveal unique networks of individuals communicating through Arabic and English in unique and innovative ways. It mainly assists in describing the members of the Jordanian society revealing a great deal of information about their personal status, their activities, society and problems. The discourse analysis of these notifications also describes how the language has been adjusted to online discourse. The written status notifications from 300 WhatsApp’s users were compiled and analysed based on a critical discourse analysis to form a predictive model of the users based on their language and to investigate the traces of social values in these semantic expressions and explain their connotations and functions in discourse. Results indicated that the language used in WhatsApp’s status notifications were a mixture of both standard and non-standard abbreviations, reduced endings which were ungrammatical. It was also found that the linguistic notifications-based assessments constitute a valid reflection of the status of its users and their society as a whole. They were as a revelation of personal, social, religious and political issues the users are concerned about. Differences with respect to gender were not found in structural construction of the language rather in categories indicating various themes. Results showed that females status updates are more personal, religious and social while males are concerned more about political, national and international themes.
Building Useful Models from Imbalanced Data with Sampling and Boosting

Building useful classification models can be a challenging endeavor, especially when training data is imbalanced. Class imbalance presents a problem when traditional classification algorithms are applied. These algorithms often attempt to build models with the goal of maximizing overall classification accuracy. While such a model may be very accurate, it is often not very useful. Consider the domain of software quality prediction where the goal is to identify program modules that are most likely to contain faults. Since these modules make up only a small fraction of the entire project, a highly accurate model may be generated by classifying all examples as not fault prone. Such a model would be useless. To alleviate the problems associated with class imbalance, several techniques have been proposed. We examine two such techniques: data sampling and boosting. Five data sampling techniques and one commonly used boosting algorithm are applied to five datasets from the software quality prediction domain. Our results suggest that while data sampling can be very effective at improving classification performance when training data is imbalance, boosting (which has received considerably less attention in research related to mining imbalanced data) usually results in even better performance.
Using tractography to infer Basal ganglia's functional subterritories distribution change in Huntington disease

The striatum including the caudate and putamen nuclei is involved in numerous functional tasks. It ensures senso-rimotor, associative and limbic functions supported by sensorimo-tor, associative and limbic sub-territories directly connected to the cortex and that may overlap. Damage to the striatum results in movement disorders like in Parkinson's disease or Huntington's disease. In this study, we propose to measure the proportion of each associative, limbic and sensorimotor subterritory inside each nucleus of the striatum using its connectivity to homologeous cortical regions. We then compare these proportions between healthy subjects and Huntington patients in order to better characterize the distribution of the atrophy inside each of the striatum nuclei.
The More the Better? Assessing the Influence of Wikipedia’s Growth on Semantic Relatedness Measures

Wikipedia has been used as a knowledge source in many areas of natural language processing. As most studies only use a certain Wikipedia snapshot, the influence of Wikipedias massive growth on the results is largely unknown. For the first time, we perform an in-depth analysis of this influence using semantic relatedness as an example application that tests a wide range of Wikipedias properties. We find that the growth of Wikipedia has almost no effect on the correlation of semantic relatedness measures with human judgments, while the coverage steadily increases.
Vaccination Using Recombinants Influenza and Adenoviruses Encoding Amastigote Surface Protein-2 Are Highly Effective on Protection against Trypanosoma cruzi Infection

In the present study we evaluated the protection raised by immunization with recombinant influenza viruses carrying sequences coding for polypeptides corresponding to medial and carboxi-terminal moieties of Trypanosoma cruzi ´s amastigote surface protein 2 (ASP2). Those viruses were used in sequential immunization with recombinant adenovirus (heterologous prime-boost immunization protocol) encoding the complete sequence of ASP2 (Ad-ASP2) in two mouse strains (C57BL/6 and C3H/He). The CD8 effector response elicited by this protocol was comparable to that observed in mice immunized twice with Ad-ASP2 and more robust than that observed in mice that were immunized once with Ad-ASP2. Whereas a single immunization with Ad-ASP2 sufficed to completely protect C57BL/6 mice, a higher survival rate was observed in C3H/He mice that were primed with recombinant influenza virus and boosted with Ad-ASP2 after being challenged with T. cruzi. Analyzing the phenotype of CD8+ T cells obtained from spleen of vaccinated C3H/He mice we observed that heterologous prime-boost immunization protocol elicited more CD8+ T cells specific for the immunodominant epitope as well as a higher number of CD8+ T cells producing TNF-α and IFN-γ and a higher mobilization of surface marker CD107a. Taken together, our results suggest that immunodominant subpopulations of CD8+ T elicited after immunization could be directly related to degree of protection achieved by different immunization protocols using different viral vectors. Overall, these results demonstrated the usefulness of recombinant influenza viruses in immunization protocols against Chagas Disease.
The distribution of information content in English sentences

Sentence is a basic linguistic unit, however, little is known about how information content is distributed across different positions of a sentence. Based on authentic language data of English, the present study calculated the entropy and other entropy-related statistics for different sentence positions. The statistics indicate a three-step staircase-shaped distribution pattern, with entropy in the initial position lower than the medial positions (positions other than the initial and final), the medial positions lower than the final position and the medial positions showing no significant difference. The results suggest that: (1) the hypotheses of Constant Entropy Rate and Uniform Information Density do not hold for the sentence-medial positions; (2) the context of a word in a sentence should not be simply defined as all the words preceding it in the same sentence; and (3) the contextual information content in a sentence does not accumulate incrementally but follows a pattern of "the whole is greater than the sum of parts".
Regulation of WRKY46 Transcription Factor Function by Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases in Arabidopsis thaliana

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades are central signaling pathways activated in plants after sensing internal developmental and external stress cues. Knowledge about the downstream substrate proteins of MAPKs is still limited in plants. We screened Arabidopsis WRKY transcription factors as potential targets downstream of MAPKs, and concentrated on characterizing WRKY46 as a substrate of the MAPK, MPK3. Mass spectrometry revealed in vitro phosphorylation of WRKY46 at amino acid position S168 by MPK3. However, mutagenesis studies showed that a second phosphosite, S250, can also be phosphorylated. Elicitation with pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), such as the bacterial flagellin-derived flg22 peptide led to in vivo destabilization of WRKY46 in Arabidopsis protoplasts. Mutation of either phosphorylation site reduced the PAMP-induced degradation of WRKY46. Furthermore, the protein for the double phosphosite mutant is expressed at higher levels compared to wild-type proteins or single phosphosite mutants. In line with its nuclear localization and predicted function as a transcriptional activator, overexpression of WRKY46 in protoplasts raised basal plant defense as reflected by the increase in promoter activity of the PAMP-responsive gene, NHL10, in a MAPK-dependent manner. Thus, MAPK-mediated regulation of WRKY46 is a mechanism to control plant defense.
Outcome Measure of Pain in Patients with Lumbar Disc Herniation: Validation Study of the Iranian version of Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire

Study Design Cross-sectional. Purpose To translate and culturally adapt an Iranian version of the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ) in Iran. Overview of Literature Instruments measuring patient reported outcomes should satisfy certain psychometric properties. Methods The PSQ was translated following cross-cultural adaptation guidelines. A total of 101 patients with lumbar disc herniation (LDH), and 39 healthy cases were included in the study. All participants completed the PSQ and the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS). The internal consistency, test-retest reliability, known group comparison, criterion validity and item-scale correlations were assessed. Results The mean age of participants was 51.7 years. Reliability, validity and correlation of PSQ and PCS showed satisfactory results. Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.81 for PSQ-total, 0.82 for PSQ-minor, and 0.82 for PSQ-moderate. The intraclass correlation coefficients value was 0.84 (0.616–0.932) indicating an excellent test-retest reliability. The instrument discriminated well between sub-groups of patients who differed in a standard predictive measure of LDH surgery (the Finneson–Cooper score). Total PSQ were also significantly correlated with the total scores of the PCS, lending support to its good convergent validity. Additionally, the correlation of each item with its hypothesized domain on the PSQ indicated acceptable results, suggesting that the items had a substantial relationship with their own domains. Conclusions The adapted Iranian PSQ is a valid and reliable questionnaire for the assessment of pain in patients with LDH.
Comparative Study on the Efficiency of the Photodynamic Inactivation of Candida albicans Using CdTe Quantum Dots, Zn(II) Porphyrin and Their Conjugates as Photosensitizers

The application of fluorescent II-VI semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) as active photosensitizers in photodymanic inactivation (PDI) is still being evaluated. In the present study, we prepared 3 nm size CdTe QDs coated with mercaptosuccinic acid and conjugated them electrostatically with Zn(II) meso-tetrakis (N-ethyl-2-pyridinium-2-yl) porphyrin (ZnTE-2-PyP or ZnP), thus producing QDs-ZnP conjugates. We evaluated the capability of the systems, bare QDs and conjugates, to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) and applied them in photodynamic inactivation in cultures of Candida albicans by irradiating the QDs and testing the hypothesis of a possible combined contribution of the PDI action. Tests of in vitro cytotoxicity and phototoxicity in fibroblasts were also performed in the presence and absence of light irradiation. The overall results showed an efficient ROS production for all tested systems and a low cytotoxicity (cell viability >90%) in the absence of radiation. Fibroblasts incubated with the QDs-ZnP and subjected to irradiation showed a higher cytotoxicity (cell viability <90%) depending on QD concentration compared to the bare groups. The PDI effects of bare CdTe QD on Candida albicans demonstrated a lower reduction of the cell viability (~1 log10) compared to bare ZnP which showed a high microbicidal activity (~3 log10) when photoactivated. The QD-ZnP conjugates also showed reduced photodynamic activity against C. albicans compared to bare ZnP and we suggest that the conjugation with QDs prevents the transmembrane cellular uptake of the ZnP molecules, reducing their photoactivity.
Causal Induction in the Presence of a Perfect Negative Cue: Contrasting Predictions from Associative and Statistical Models

Two experiments on human causal induction with multiple candidate causes are reported. Experiment 1 investigated the influence of a perfect preventive cause on the ratings of a less contingent cause. Whereas the Rescorla-Wagner model (RWM) and Cheng's probabilistic contrast model predict that the less contingent cause should be completely discounted, the Pearce model predicts, in most cases, an enhancement of that cause's perceived importance. Results corresponded more closely tothe predictions of the Pearce model. The predictions of both the RWM and the Pearce model rely on a constant context cue acquiring associative strength, yet no such cue was explicitly identified in the task scenario employed in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 replicated a number of key conditions of Experiment 1 with a task scenario that afforded ratings of the causal importance of the context in which the effectiveness of the discrete candidate causes was evaluated. In addition, the number of trials was increased to test the possibility that the ratings in Experiment 1 were the product of incomplete learning. The results of the first experiment were replicated and the ratings of the effectiveness of the context cue were anticipated by both the RWM and the Pearce model. Overall, the Pearce model offers a more comprehensive account of the causal inferences recorded in this study.
A school-based fusion of East and West: a case study of modern curriculum innovations in a Chinese kindergarten

Abstract School-based curriculum innovations have been widely implemented in Chinese kindergartens since the turn of the new millennium. However, in the absence of professional guidance, Chinese kindergartens have been forced to ‘ride a blind horse’ when developing curriculum. The aim of this study was to understand the nature of and mechanisms underlying school-based curriculum (SBC) development (SBCD) in an informative kindergarten in southern China from the sociocultural-historical perspective. Data obtained from interviews, observations and document analysis were triangulated to determine why and how curriculum innovations had taken place and the nature of the curriculum introduced. Evidence suggested that (1) SBCD in the Chinese kindergarten under study was a dynamic process undertaken in four main stages: imitation, absorption, integration, and evaluation; (2) the resulting SBC was a comprehensive and sophisticated curricular system balancing child-centred and teacher-directed pedagogies and hybridising Eastern and Western curricula; and (3) SBCD in the kindergarten under study was guided by Chinese philosophy (highlighting balance and harmony), which offers a valuable perspective on recent curriculum changes in Chinese kindergartens. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings were discussed.
Teacher and School-Related Factors that Promote Achievement Differences among Students with Lower Socioeconomic Status

Bu calisma dezavantajli olup da dusuk ve ustun basarili ogrencileri birbirlerinden ayirt edebilen ogretmen ve okul ile iliskili degiskenleri incelemistir. Bu iki grup arasinda onemli bir basari farkliligi mevcuttur. Bu amacla, PISA 2012 veri kumesinden secilen bazi faktorlerin dusuk ve utun basarili ogrencileri ayirt edip etmediklerini inceemek amaci ile discriminant analysis yontemi kullanilmistir. 5 farkli boyuttan 22 madde calismaya dahil edilmistir: Ogrenciogretmen iliskileri (5 madde), Aidiyet duygusu (9 madde), Okulda Ogrenilerlere karsi tutum (4 madde) ve Okula karsi tutum (4 madde). Calisma sonuclari bazi maddeleri dusuk ve ustun basarili ogrenciler ayirt edebildigini ortaya koymustur. Bu calismanin sonuclarin ustun basarili ogrenci oraninin artirilmasinda kullanilmak uzere onemli bilgiler saglayacagi dusunulmektedir
Chaotic dynamics of the Fractional Order Nonlinear Bloch System

Abstract: The dynamic behaviors in the fractional-order nonlinear Bloch equations were numerically studied. Basic properties of the system have been analyzed by means of Lyapunov exponents and bifurcation diagrams. The derivative order range used was relatively broad. Regular motions (including period-3 motion) and chaotic motions were examined. The chaotic motion identified was validated by the positive Lyapunov exponent. c © Electronic Journal of Theoretical Physics. All rights reserved.
Increasing Rates of Brain Tumours in the Swedish National Inpatient Register and the Causes of Death Register

Radiofrequency emissions in the frequency range 30 kHz–300 GHz were evaluated to be Group 2B, i.e., “possibly”, carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) at WHO in May 2011. The Swedish Cancer Register has not shown increasing incidence of brain tumours in recent years and has been used to dismiss epidemiological evidence on a risk. In this study we used the Swedish National Inpatient Register (IPR) and Causes of Death Register (CDR) to further study the incidence comparing with the Cancer Register data for the time period 1998–2013 using joinpoint regression analysis. In the IPR we found a joinpoint in 2007 with Annual Percentage Change (APC) +4.25%, 95% CI +1.98, +6.57% during 2007–2013 for tumours of unknown type in the brain or CNS. In the CDR joinpoint regression found one joinpoint in 2008 with APC during 2008–2013 +22.60%, 95% CI +9.68, +37.03%. These tumour diagnoses would be based on clinical examination, mainly CT and/or MRI, but without histopathology or cytology. No statistically significant increasing incidence was found in the Swedish Cancer Register during these years. We postulate that a large part of brain tumours of unknown type are never reported to the Cancer Register. Furthermore, the frequency of diagnosis based on autopsy has declined substantially due to a general decline of autopsies in Sweden adding further to missing cases. We conclude that the Swedish Cancer Register is not reliable to be used to dismiss results in epidemiological studies on the use of wireless phones and brain tumour risk.