Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fractal Geometry, porosity and complex resistivity: from rough pore interfaces to hand specimens

Abstract We propose a new model to interpret the electrical behavior of rocks containing metallic or clay particles. This new model encompasses some of the other commonly used models as special cases. This model is a generalization of two models, one developed by Dias (Journal of Geophysical Research 77, 4945–4956, 1972) and another by Pelton et al. (Geophysics Geophysics, 589–609, 1978). Its circuit analog includes an impedance K(iω)−η which simulates the effects of the fractal rough pore interfaces between the conductive grains (metallic or clay minerals which are blocking the pore paths) and the electrolyte. This generalized Warburg impedance is in series with the resistance of the blocking grains and both are shunted by the double layer capacitance. This combination is in series with the resistance of the electrolyte in the blocked pore passages. The unblocked pore paths are represented by a resistance which corresponds to the normal DC resistivity of the rock. The parallel combination of this resistance with the ‘bulk’ sample capacitance is finally connected in parallel to the rest of the above-mentioned circuit. The model was tested over a wide range of frequencies against experimental data obtained for amplitude and phase of resistivity or conductivity as well as for the complex dielectric constant. The samples studied are those of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks.
Resistin‐like molecule‐β is induced following bronchoconstriction of asthmatic airways

Background and objective: Resistin‐like molecule‐β (RELM‐β) is a necessary and sufficient stimulus for airway remodelling in animal models of asthma, but until recently, its role in human disease had not been investigated. The hypothesis that RELM‐β expression would increase with increasing asthma severity and further increase following acute bronchoconstrictor challenges has been examined.
EFFECTS OF CONSUMER SOCIAL INTERACTION ON TRUST IN ONLINE GROUP-BUYING CONTEXTS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN CHINA

As a type of online shopping, online group-buying is inherently affected by consumers' social interaction. In the context of group-buying, consumers can be affected by other group members who share information and communicate with them online. Previous researchers have found that in an online environment, trust can significantly influence consumers’ purchase intentions. Therefore, in this paper we study social interaction factors that affect consumer trust in the context of online group-buying in China. The results of this empirical study of online group-buying in both product and service contexts indicate that social interaction has significant informational and normative influences on consumer trust. However, informational influence affects consumer trust more in service contexts, whereas normative influence affects trust more in product contexts. Moreover, the results of the study show that the valence of comments (i.e., positive or negative) does not significantly impact how informational influence and normative influence affect consumer trust in the online group-buying context.
Campylobacter jejuni colonization and population structure in urban populations of ducks and starlings in New Zealand

A repeated cross‐sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of Campylobacter spp. and the population structure of C. jejuni in European starlings and ducks cohabiting multiple public access sites in an urban area of New Zealand. The country's geographical isolation and relatively recent history of introduction of wild bird species, including the European starling and mallard duck, create an ideal setting to explore the impact of geographical separation on the population biology of C. jejuni, as well as potential public health implications. A total of 716 starling and 720 duck fecal samples were collected and screened for C. jejuni over a 12 month period. This study combined molecular genotyping, population genetics and epidemiological modeling and revealed: (i) higher Campylobacter spp. isolation in starlings (46%) compared with ducks (30%), but similar isolation of C. jejuni in ducks (23%) and starlings (21%), (ii) significant associations between the isolation of Campylobacter spp. and host species, sampling location and time of year using logistic regression, (iii) evidence of population differentiation, as indicated by FST, and host‐genotype association with clonal complexes CC ST‐177 and CC ST‐682 associated with starlings, and clonal complexes CC ST‐1034, CC ST‐692, and CC ST‐1332 associated with ducks, and (iv) greater genetic diversity and genotype richness in ducks compared with starlings. These findings provide evidence that host‐associated genotypes, such as the starling‐associated ST‐177 and ST‐682, represent lineages that were introduced with the host species in the 19th century. The isolation of sequence types associated with human disease in New Zealand indicate that wild ducks and starlings need to be considered as a potential public health risk, particularly in urban areas.
Single versus double intrauterine insemination in multi-follicular ovarian hyperstimulation cycles: a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND The rationale for double insemination is to create the opportunity for a longer fertilization period as follicle rupture may occur over a wide interval (approximately 22-47 h) after hCG administration in ovarian hyperstimulation (OH) with intrauterine insemination (IUI) cycles. This randomized study evaluates the effectiveness of single versus double IUI in only OH cycles with multi-follicular development. METHODS We conducted a single center trial, 228 eligible patients were randomized for this study on the day of hCG. Only cycles with multi-follicular development without premature luteinization (progesterone levels >1 ng/ml on the day of hCG), were included in the study. Multi-follicular development has been defined as at least two dominant follicles reaching minimum > or = 15 mm diameter in which one of them is >17 mm. OH cycles with more than five dominant follicles (>15 mm in diameter) were excluded from the study. In the single IUI group (Group 1 = 112 patients) IUI was applied 36 h after the hCG injection and in the double IUI group (Group 2 = 114 patients) the first IUI was performed 18 h after hCG administration and the second IUI was performed 40 h after hCG administration. The primary end-point is to compare live birth rates (LBRs) between single and double IUI arms. RESULTS LBRs were 10.7% (12/112 patients) in the single IUI group and 12.3% (14/114) in the double IUI group and the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.835, OR = 1.16, 95% CI: 0.51-2.64). In the unexplained infertility group the LBR was 11.1% (5/45 patients) with single IUI and 18.4% (9/49) with double IUI (P = 0.393). In the mild male factor group this rate was 10.4% (7/67) and 7.7% (5/65) in the single and double IUI groups, respectively (P = 0.764). CONCLUSION Our study did not find any difference in LBRs between single and double IUI groups in OH cycles with multi-follicular development. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report with this kind of study design. The study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov: NCT 00993902.
An objective climatology of the dynamical forcing of polar lows in the Nordic seas

A new objective climatology of polar lows in the Nordic (Norwegian and Barents) seas has been derived from a database of diagnostics of objectively identified cyclones spanning the period January 2000 to April 2004. There are two distinct parts to this study: the development of the objective climatology and a characterization of the dynamical forcing of the polar lows identified.
Patient Perception , Preference and Participation Information preferences of high literacy pregnant women regarding informed consent models for genetic carrier screening

Objective: With the increasing carrier screening options being offered to pregnant women, it is critical to consider what information women want in an informed consent process, and how they make decisions regarding screening. Methods: We surveyed 201 pregnant women. Results: Subjects prefer ‘‘to have as much information as possible’’ (84%), and valued their physician’s recommendations (82%) regarding screening. After reviewing two hypothetical scenarios, 71% of participants preferred more information about genetic carrier screening; however, some participants expressed concern that too much information can also lead to anxiety. When specifically asked about components of a potential informed consent process, the highest preferences were to include: the chance of having a child with the disorder (97%), the options for carriers (93%), the value and purpose of testing (91%), and the prognosis if a child has the disease (94%); preference for ‘‘symptoms’’ information differed based on scenario preference (p < 0.001). Conclusion: This study is the first to document variation in patients’ views regarding the information desired as part of the informed consent process. Practice implications: Providers should consider ways to ascertain their patients’ preferred informational style, and how to provide information in the amount and style that patients find useful in making decisions. 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Combining Different Summarization Techniques for Legal Text

Summarization, like other natural language processing tasks, is tackled with a range of different techniques - particularly machine learning approaches, where human intuition goes into attribute selection and the choice and tuning of the learning algorithm. Such techniques tend to apply differently in different contexts, so in this paper we describe a hybrid approach in which a number of different summarization techniques are combined in a rule-based system using manual knowledge acquisition, where human intuition, supported by data, specifies not only attributes and algorithms, but the contexts where these are best used. We apply this approach to automatic summarization of legal case reports. We show how a preliminary knowledge base, composed of only 23 rules, already outperforms competitive baselines.
The use of the Thematic Mapper for the analysis of eutrophic lakes: a case study in the Netherlands.

Abstract Landsat TM images were analysed to assess the scope and limitations of their use for inland water quality detection. The spectral information in the six visible to middle infrared bands is discussed. The relatively wide spectral bands, 1 to 4, of the TM, in the optical wavelength domain contain a mixture of spectrally opposing features of absorption and scattering Qualitative and quantitative analysis is carried out. The limiting factors in the quantitative determination of water quality parameters are in first instance the radiometric resolution and in second instance the spectral resolution. Combinations of spectral bands of the TM are discouraged for analysis purposes as long as a physical explanation of the result is lacking. Under ideal circumstances the TM can be used to assess seston dry weight, sum of chlorophyll a and phaeopigments, Secchi depth transparency with limited accuracy.
Osmosensing by Bacteria

Osmosensors are proteins that sense environmental osmotic pressure. They mediate or direct osmoregulatory responses that allow cells to survive osmotic changes and extremes. Bacterial osmosensing transporters sense high external osmotic pressure and respond by mediating organic osmolyte uptake, hence cellular rehydration. Detailed studies of osmosensing transporters OpuA, BetP, and ProP suggest that they sense and respond to different osmotic pressure–dependent cellular properties. These studies also suggest that each protein has a cytoplasmic osmosensory or osmoregulatory domain, but that these domains differ in structure and function. It is not yet clear whether each transporter represents a distinct osmosensory mechanism or whether different research groups are approaching the same mechanism by way of different paths. Principles emerging from this research will apply to other osmosensors, including those that initiate signal transduction cascades in prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Hybrid Orthogonal Projection and Estimation (HOPE): A New Framework to Learn Neural Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel model for high-dimensional data, called the Hybrid Orthogonal Projection and Estimation (HOPE) model, which combines a linear orthogonal projection and a finite mixture model under a unified generative modeling framework. The HOPE model itself can be learned unsupervised from unlabelled data based on the maximum likelihood estimation as well as discriminatively from labelled data. More interestingly, we have shown the proposed HOPE models are closely related to neural networks (NNs) in a sense that each hidden layer can be reformulated as a HOPE model. As a result, the HOPE framework can be used as a novel tool to probe why and how NNs work, more importantly, to learn NNs in either supervised or unsupervised ways. In this work, we have investigated the HOPE framework to learn NNs for several standard tasks, including image recognition on MNIST and speech recognition on TIMIT. Experimental results have shown that the HOPE framework yields significant performance gains over the current state-of-the-art methods in various types of NN learning problems, including unsupervised feature learning, supervised or semi-supervised learning.
The role of faulting in rock uplift in the Southern Alps, New Zealand

Abstract Fission track data for a suite of basement rock samples from the Southern Alps is used to assess the role of faulting in the late Cenozoic rock uplift of the Pacific plate. The amount of rock uplift derived from sites on both sides of the Moonlight, Ostler, Harper, Torlesse, Porters Pass, and Hope Faults shows that for all faults the vertical offset lies within the uncertainty of the data, typically ±2 km, and is <30% of the surrounding uplift. Major faults are conspicuously absent in the zone of greatest uplift. Over a scale of kilometres, the pattern of rock uplift across the Southern Alps is continuous and regular. The amount of rock uplift increases nearly exponentially with increasing proximity to the Alpine Fault, and the pattern is maintained with little variation over the central 350 km long segment of the Southern Alps. This pattern is primarily the result of southeastward tilting of the middle and upper crust of the Pacific plate, which has ramped up the Alpine Fault in response to obli.
Instability of CTG Repeats is Governed by the Position of a DNA Base Lesion through Base Excision Repair

Trinucleotide repeat (TNR) expansions and deletions are associated with human neurodegeneration and cancer. However, their underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated. Recent studies have demonstrated that CAG repeat expansions can be initiated by oxidative DNA base damage and fulfilled by base excision repair (BER), suggesting active roles for oxidative DNA damage and BER in TNR instability. Here, we provide the first evidence that oxidative DNA damage can induce CTG repeat deletions along with limited expansions in human cells. Biochemical characterization of BER in the context of (CTG)20 repeats further revealed that repeat instability correlated with the position of a base lesion in the repeat tract. A lesion located at the 5′-end of CTG repeats resulted in expansion, whereas a lesion located either in the middle or the 3′-end of the repeats led to deletions only. The positioning effects appeared to be determined by the formation of hairpins at various locations on the template and the damaged strands that were bypassed by DNA polymerase β and processed by flap endonuclease 1 with different efficiency. Our study indicates that the position of a DNA base lesion governs whether TNR is expanded or deleted through BER.
Implications of interannual variability in atmospheric circulation on modeled CO2 concentrations and source estimates

The impact of the interannual variability (IAV) of atmospheric transport on atmospheric CO2 observations is often ignored in carbon cycle studies. We use 8 years of analyzed European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) wind fields from 1985–1992 to demonstrate the effect of IAV of the circulation on modeled CO2 concentrations for fossil and biosphere CO2 sources. The wind fields are used to drive the Melbourne University Tracer Model. The modeled annual mean CO2 values at observing locations show little IAV in the fossil case. In the biosphere case the IAV of the annual mean is considerably larger, especially in the high northern latitudes. Simulated baseline selection using modeled radon concentrations does not reduce the IAV. In both cases, surface layer interhemispheric differences show small interannual variations indicating small changes in interhemispheric transport. Source fields from a mass balance inversion using 1985–1992 ECMWF winds are compared with those from inversions using a single year of winds repeated for each year of observations. We find differences in semi‐hemispheric sources of up to 0.6 Gt C yr−1 at some times. However, 8 year mean sources show smaller differences, mostly less than 0.2 Gt C yr−1 at regional scales. This indicates that the variability in the circulation is a second order factor in determining the sources from inversion calculations.
Theoretical Issues

The theoretical issues in the interpretation of the precision measurements of the nucleon-to-A transition by means of electromagnetic probes are highlighted. The results of these measurements are confronted with the state-of-the-art calculations based on chiral effective-field theories (EFT), lattice QCD, large-iV c relations, perturbative QCD, and QCD-inspired models. The link of the nucleon-to-A form factors to generalized parton distributions (GPDs) is also discussed. 2, 3, 4] for reviews of they/VA transition from both experimental and theoretical sides. electromagnetic N —> A (or, in short yVA) transition is predominantly of the magnetic dipole (Ml) type. A first understanding of the yVA Iransition can be obtained based on symmetries of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and its large number-of-color (N c ) limit. The spin-flavor global symmetry of QCD, is utilized by many quark models and is exactly realized in the large- N c limit. In the quark-model picture, the N —> A Iransition is described by a spin flip of a quark in the s-wave state, which in the yVA case leads to the magnetic dipole (Ml) type of transition. Any d-wave admixture in the nucleon or the A wave functions allows also for the electric (ET) and Coulomb (C2) quadrupole tran sitions. Therefore, by measuring the latter two transitions, one is able to assess the presence of the d-wave components and hence quantify to which extent the nucleon or the A wave function deviates from the spherical shape. In this way one can hope to understand to which extent these particles are "deformed". The d-wave component of A's wave function can be separately assessed by measuring the electric quadrupole mo ment of the A. However, this would be extremely difficult because of the tiny lifetime of the A. The small d-state probability of the A's wave function also enters into the A magnetic dipole moment, which is being measured, but the extraction of a small number from such a quantity is also very complicated. The yVA transition, on the other hand, was accurately measured in the pion photo- and electro-production reactions in the A-resonance energy region. The E2 and C2 transitions were found to be relatively small but non-zero at moderate momentum-transfers (Q 2 ), the ratios REM = E2/M1 and RSM = C2/M1 are at the level of a few percent.
Face Recognition under Varying Illumination with Logarithmic Fractal Analysis

Face recognition under illumination variations is a challenging research area. This paper presents a new method based on the log function and the fractal analysis (FA) to produce a logarithmic fractal dimension (LFD) image which is illumination invariant. The proposed FA feature-based method is a very effective edge enhancer technique to extract and enhance facial features such as eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth. Our extensive experiments show the proposed method achieves the best recognition accuracy using one image per subject for training when compared to six recently proposed state-of-the-art methods.
On Construction of Social Welfare Orders Satisfying Hammond Equity and Weak Pareto Axioms

This paper examines the constructive nature of a social welfare order that respects Hammond equity axiom and Weak Pareto axiom. It describes the domains (of the one period utilities) on which an explicit construction is possible. A social welfare order satisfying the Hammond equity and Weak Pareto admits an explicit construction if and only if the domain is a well-ordered set.
The heart and pulmonary vasculature of the llama (Lama glama)

Heath, D. , Smith, P., Williams, D. , Harris, P., Arias-Stella, J., and Krüger, H. (1974). Thorax, 29, 463-471. The heart and pulmonary vasculature of the llama (Lama glama). A qualitative and quantitative histological study was made of the pulmonary trunk and muscular pulmonary arteries of a male and a pregnant female llama born and living at an altitude of 4,720 m above sea-level in the Peruvian Andes. A similar study was made on the fetal llama. The individual cardiac chambers of the two adults were weighed. Our results show that in the adult llama there is no hypertrophy of the right ventricle or of the media of the pulmonary trunk or small pulmonary arteries. This appears to be of evolutionary significance in respect of survival at high altitude and suggests that the llama does not have a sustained significant pulmonary hypertension. The pulmonary arteries of the fetal llama are thick-walled and we associate this with the physiological pulmonary hypertension of fetal life.
Screening in Josephson-junction ladders.

Both critical current and Shapiro steps in Josephson ladders are found to show effects of vortex exclusion below a critical magnetic field. Vortices are excluded even though the flux itself is {ital not} screened out. When current is injected perpendicular to the ladder edges, the critical current is unchanged from its {ital f}=0 value up to a penetration field of {ital f}{sub {ital c}1{perpendicular}}{approx_equal}0.12 flux quanta per plaquette. Similarly, there are only integer Shapiro steps below a critical {ital c}1{perpendicular}{asterisk}, where vortices first penetrate. A narrower critical current plateau also appears to form near {ital f} =1/2. No such plateaus occur when current is injected in the parallel direction. We attribute the exclusion in the perpendicular geometry to screening currents which flow along the edges of the ladder. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }