Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Nature of Intrinsic Absorption in Reddened Seyfert 1 Galaxies

We discuss the origin of the "dusty lukewarm absorber," which we previously identified in the reddened Seyfert 1 galaxies NGC 3227 and Akn 564. This absorber is characterized by saturated UV absorption lines (C IV, N V) near the systemic velocity of the host galaxy and is likely responsible for reddening both the continuum and emission lines (including those from the narrow-line region) from these Seyfert galaxies. From a large sample of Seyfert 1 galaxies, we find that continuum reddening (as measured by UV color) tends to increase with inclination of the host galaxy. Furthermore, reddened inclined Seyfert galaxies observed at moderate to high spectral resolution all show evidence for dusty lukewarm absorbers. We suggest that these absorbers lie in the plane of the host galaxy at distances of ≳100 pc from the nucleus and are physically distinct from the majority of intrinsic absorbers that are outflowing from the nucleus.
Elastography: Ultrasonic estimation and imaging of the elastic properties of tissues

Abstract The basic principles of using sonographic techniques for imaging the elastic properties of tissues are described, with particular emphasis on elastography. After some preliminaries that describe some basic tissue stiffness measurements and some contrast transfer limitations of strain images are presented, four types of elastograms are described, which include axial strain, lateral strain, modulus and Poisson's ratio elastograms. The strain filter formalism and its utility in understanding the noise performance of the elastographic process is then given, as well as its use for various image improvements. After discussing some main classes of elastographic artefacts, the paper concludes with recent results of tissue elastography in vitro and in vivo.
Thailand’s urbanized villagers and political polarization

ABSTRACT Thailand currently suffers from high levels of political polarization; parties associated with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra have won every election since 2001, based partly on strong support from voters registered in the populous North and Northeast regions. Many of these voters are migrant workers who spend much of their time working in Greater Bangkok, yet remain legal residents of their home provinces. This article argues that Thailand’s political polarization could be reduced if many of these “urbanized villagers” either took up formal residence in the capital city, or were encouraged to share in the creation of new small-scale urban communities in their places of birth.
Joint Audiovisual Hidden Semi-Markov Model-Based Speech Synthesis

This paper investigates joint speaker-dependent audiovisual Hidden Semi-Markov Models (HSMM) where the visual models produce a sequence of 3D motion tracking data that is used to animate a talking head and the acoustic models are used for speech synthesis. Different acoustic, visual, and joint audiovisual models for four different Austrian German speakers were trained and we show that the joint models perform better compared to other approaches in terms of synchronization quality of the synthesized visual speech. In addition, a detailed analysis of the acoustic and visual alignment is provided for the different models. Importantly, the joint audiovisual modeling does not decrease the acoustic synthetic speech quality compared to acoustic-only modeling so that there is a clear advantage in the common duration model of the joint audiovisual modeling approach that is used for synchronizing acoustic and visual parameter sequences. Finally, it provides a model that integrates the visual and acoustic speech dynamics.
Building integrated software development environments. Part I: tool specification

The conceptual modeling approach of the IPSEN (Integrated Project Support Environment) project for building highly integrated environments is based on using attributed graphs to model and implement arbitrary object structures, in particular all kinds of software documents and their relationships. A language based on graph grammars, called PROGRESS (PROgrammed Graph REwriting SyStems), and a suitable method for the application of this language, called graph grammar engineering, have been developed over the last ten years. This language and method are being extensively used for specifying the complex graph structures of internal document representations as well as for specifying the functionality of all tools (editors, browsers, analyzers, debuggers) working on these internal rpresentations. This paper explains the language and the method for applying the language based on a pragmatic nontrivial example of a software production process and its corresponding documents. In particular, it is shown why and how a graph grammar-based strongly typed language is perfectly suitable to formally specify highly integrated software tools. In addition, it is shown that the implementation of these tools (i.e., an environment composed of these tools) is systematically being derived from the formal specifications.
Admitting that admitting verb sense into corpus analyses makes sense

Linguistic and psycholinguistic research has documented that there exists a close relationship between a verb’s meaning and the syntactic structures in which it occurs, and that learners and comprehenders take advantage of this relationship both in acquisition and in processing. We address implications of these facts for issues in structural ambiguity resolution, arguing that comprehenders are sensitive to meaning-structure correlations based not on the verb itself but on its specific senses, and that they exploit this information on-line. We demonstrate that individual verbs show significant differences in their subcategorisation profiles across three corpora, and that cross-corpora bias estimates are much more stable when sense is taken into account. Finally, we show that consistency between sense-contingent subcategorisation biases and experimenters’ classifications largely predicts results of recent experiments. Thus comprehenders learn and exploit meaning-form correlations at the level of individual verb senses, rather than the verb in the aggregate.
Core self-evaluations, worry, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being: an investigation in the Asian context

The concept of core self-evaluations has been extensively investigated in Western and European countries, nonetheless its implications in Asian countries remains relatively unexplored. To void this gap, the current study investigated the association of core self-evaluations with worry, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being among South Korean youths. To test the research hypotheses, data were collected from 228 undergraduate students of a South Korean university. Existing, established scales were used to measure the research constructs. The results of this study indicate that core self-evaluations were negatively related to worry, while a positive relationship was observed between core self-evaluations and life satisfaction and psychological well-being. The findings of this study suggest that a higher level of core self-evaluations may enhance individuals' well-being. The findings of this study may be helpful for educators and mental health professionals in designing the educational curriculum and training programs that focus on enhancing one's sense of self-worth.
Modeling the Role of the Coronary Vasculature During External Field Stimulation

The exact mechanisms by which defibrillation shocks excite cardiac tissue far from both the electrodes and heart surfaces require elucidation. Bidomain theory explains this phenomena through the existence of intramural virtual electrodes (VEs), caused by discontinuities in myocardial tissue structure. In this study, we assess the modeling components essential in constructing a finite-element cardiac tissue model including blood vessels from high-resolution magnetic resonance data and investigate the specific role played by coronary vasculature in VE formation, which currently remains largely unknown. We use a novel method for assigning histologically based fiber architecture around intramural structures and include an experimentally derived vessel lumen wall conductance within the model. Shock-tissue interaction in the presence of vessels is assessed through comparison with a simplified model lacking intramural structures. Results indicate that VEs form around blood vessels for shocks >8 V/cm. The magnitude of induced polarizations is attenuated by realistic representation of fiber negotiation around vessel cavities, as well as the insulating effects of the vessel lumen wall. Furthermore, VEs formed around large subepicardial vessels reduce epicardial polarization levels. In conclusion, we have found that coronary vasculature acts as an important substrate for VE formation, which may help interpretation of optical mapping data.
D-SPARQ: Distributed, Scalable and Efficient RDF Query Engine

We present D-SPARQ, a distributed RDF query engine that combines the MapReduce processing framework with a NoSQL distributed data store, MongoDB. The performance of processing SPARQL queries mainly depends on the efficiency of handling the join operations between the RDF triple patterns. Our system features two unique characteristics that enable efficiently tackling this challenge: 1) Identifying specific patterns of the input queries that enable improving the performance by running different parts of the query in a parallel mode. 2) Using the triple selectivity information for reordering the individual triples of the input query within the identified query patterns. The preliminary results demonstrate the scalability and efficiency of our distributed RDF query engine.
A Simulator of Small-Delay Faults Caused by Resistive-Open Defects

We present a simulator which determines the coverage of small-delay faults, i.e., delay faults with a size below one clock cycle, caused by resistive-open defects. These defects are likely to escape detection by stuck-at or transition fault patterns. For the first time, we couple the calculation of the critical size of a small-delay fault with the computation of the resistance range of the corresponding resistive-open defect for which this size is exceeded. By doing so, we are able to extend probabilistic fault coverage metrics initially developed for static resistive bridging faults to small-delay defects.
Classroom Writing Assessment and Feedback in L2 School Contexts

Book Title: Classroom Writing Assessment and Feedback in L2 School ContextsBook Author: Icy Lee2017, Springer, Singapore. ISBN 978-981-10-3922-5 (Print); 978-981-10-3924-9 (Online). 157 pages. Price: $99.99
Mechanism of Deep-Sea Fish α-Actin Pressure Tolerance Investigated by Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The pressure tolerance of monomeric α-actin proteins from the deep-sea fish Coryphaenoides armatus and C. yaquinae was compared to that of non-deep-sea fish C. acrolepis, carp, and rabbit/human/chicken actins using molecular dynamics simulations at 0.1 and 60 MPa. The amino acid sequences of actins are highly conserved across a variety of species. The actins from C. armatus and C. yaquinae have the specific substitutions Q137K/V54A and Q137K/L67P, respectively, relative to C. acrolepis, and are pressure tolerant to depths of at least 6000 m. At high pressure, we observed significant changes in the salt bridge patterns in deep-sea fish actins, and these changes are expected to stabilize ATP binding and subdomain arrangement. Salt bridges between ATP and K137, formed in deep-sea fish actins, are expected to stabilize ATP binding even at high pressure. At high pressure, deep-sea fish actins also formed a greater total number of salt bridges than non-deep-sea fish actins owing to the formation of inter-helix/strand and inter-subdomain salt bridges. Free energy analysis suggests that deep-sea fish actins are stabilized to a greater degree by the conformational energy decrease associated with pressure effect.
Recovery of Vegetation Cover and Soil after the Removal of Sheep in Socorro Island, Mexico

For over 140 years, the habitat of Socorro Island in the Mexican Pacific has been altered by the presence of exotic sheep. Overgrazing, jointly with tropical storms, has caused soil erosion, and more than 2000 hectares of native vegetation have been lost. Sheep eradication was conducted from 2009 to 2012. Since then, the vegetation has begun to recover passively, modifying soil properties. The objective of our study was to verify that this island was resilient enough to be recovered and in a relatively short time scale. To confirm our hypothesis, we analyzed changes in the physical-chemical properties of the soil and vegetation cover, the last one in different times and habitats after sheep eradication. The change in vegetation cover was estimated by comparing the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) between 2008 and 2013. In sites altered by feral sheep, soil compaction was assessed, and soil samples were taken, analyzing pH, electrical conductivity, organic carbon, total nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium. After a year of total sheep eradication, clear indications in the recovery of vegetation cover and improvement of soil quality parameters were observed and confirmed, specifically compaction and nitrogen, organic carbon, phosphorus, and calcium. The results seem to support our hypothesis.
Microbial Mat Functional and Compositional Sensitivity to Environmental Disturbance

The ability of ecosystems to adapt to environmental perturbations depends on the duration and intensity of change and the overall biological diversity of the system. While studies have indicated that rare microbial taxa may provide a biological reservoir that supports long-term ecosystem stability, how this dynamic population is influenced by environmental parameters remains unclear. In this study, a microbial mat ecosystem located on San Salvador Island, The Bahamas was used as a model to examine how environmental disturbance affects the activity of rare and abundant archaeal and bacterial communities and how these changes impact potential biogeochemical processes. While this ecosystem undergoes a range of seasonal variation, it experienced a large shift in salinity (230 to 65 g kg−1) during 2011-2012 following the landfall of Hurricane Irene on San Salvador Island. High throughput sequencing and analysis of 16S rRNA and rRNA genes from samples before and after the pulse disturbance showed significant changes in the diversity and activity of abundant and rare taxa, suggesting overall functional and compositional sensitivity to environmental change. In both archaeal and bacterial communities, while the majority of taxa showed low activity across conditions, the total number of active taxa and overall activity increased postdisturbance, with significant shifts in activity occurring among abundant and rare taxa across and within phyla. Broadly, following the post-disturbance reduction in salinity, taxa within Halobacteria decreased while those within Crenarchaeota, Thaumarchaeota, Thermoplasmata, Cyanobacteria, and Proteobacteria, increased in abundance and activity. Quantitative PCR of genes and transcripts involved in nitrogen and sulfur cycling showed concomitant shifts in biogeochemical cycling potential. Post-disturbance conditions increased the expression of genes involved in N-fixation, nitrification, denitrification, and sulfate reduction. Together, our findings show complex community adaptation to environmental change and help elucidate factors connecting disturbance, biodiversity, and ecosystem function that may enhance ecosystem models.
Neural Markers of Religious

Manypeoplederivepeaceofmindandpurpose inlife fromtheirbelief inGod. Forothers,however,religion provides unsatisfying answers. Are there brain differences between believers and nonbelievers? Here we show that religious conviction is marked by reduced reactivity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a cortical system that is involved in the experience of anxiety and is important for self-regulation. In two studies, we recorded electroenceph- alographic neural reactivity in the ACC as participants completed a Stroop task. Results showed that stronger religiouszealandgreaterbeliefinGodwereassociatedwith less firing of the ACC in response to error and with com- missionoffewererrors.Thesecorrelationsremainedstrong
RGB-D scene classification via heterogeneous model fusion

We study the problem of scene classification for RGB-D images in this paper. Firstly we analyze the difference between the RGB and depth images. And then based on the difference, an efficient method is implemented to make use of the RGB and depth images and make a well fusion for the RGB and depth features. Focusing on the difference of modality between the RGB and depth images, we propose a method to learn features from color and depth separately using the heterogeneous model. Especially we use the deep ConvNet model with shallow finetuning for RGB images and the relatively shallow ConvNet model with deep finetuning, which can adequately extract different characteristics of the two modalities. After obtaining the discriminative features for each modality, a multiple fully-connected layers connected with a soft-max classifier is trained to harness the complementary relationship between the two modalities. Experimental evaluations on two publicly RGB-D datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Oxygen- and capacity-limitation of thermal tolerance: a matrix for integrating climate-related stressor effects in marine ecosystems

SUMMARY The concept of oxygen- and capacity-dependent thermal tolerance in aquatic ectotherms has successfully explained climate-induced effects of rising temperatures on species abundance in the field. Oxygen supply to tissues and the resulting aerobic performance characters thus form a primary link between organismal fitness and its role and functioning at the ecosystem level. The thermal window of performance in water breathers matches their window of aerobic scope. Loss of performance reflects the earliest level of thermal stress, caused by hypoxaemia and the progressive mismatch of oxygen supply and demand at the borders of the thermal envelope. Oxygen deficiency elicits the transition to passive tolerance and associated systemic and cellular stress signals like hormonal responses or oxidative stress as well as the use of protection mechanisms like heat shock proteins at thermal extremes. Thermal acclimatization between seasons or adaptation to a climate regime involves shifting thermal windows and adjusting window widths. The need to specialize on a limited temperature range results from temperature-dependent trade-offs at several hierarchical levels, from molecular structure to whole-organism functioning, and may also support maximized energy efficiency. Various environmental factors like CO2 (ocean acidification) and hypoxia interact with these principal relationships. Existing knowledge suggests that these factors elicit metabolic depression supporting passive tolerance to thermal extremes. However, they also exacerbate hypoxaemia, causing a narrowing of thermal performance windows and prematurely leading the organism to the limits of its thermal acclimation capacity. The conceptual analysis suggests that the relationships between energy turnover, the capacities of activity and other functions and the width of thermal windows may lead to an integrative understanding of specialization on climate and, as a thermal matrix, of sensitivity to climate change and the factors involved. Such functional relationships might also relate to climate-induced changes in species interactions and, thus, community responses at the ecosystem level.
Prevalence of colonization and mitochondrial large subunit rRNA mutation of Pneumocystis jiroveci among Iranian children

Background and Objectives: Pneumocystis jiroveci is an important causative agent of Pneumocystis pneumonia. During childhood, exposure to Pneumocystis occurs and antibody was built in early childhood. The aim of this study was to describe the molecular epidemiology of P. jiroveci in children without any respiratory syndrome and survey the distribution of different mitochondrial large subunit, ribosomal ribonucleic acid (mtLSU- rRNA) genotypes. Materials and Methods: Mini-bronchoalveolar lavage (mini-BAL) fluids from pediatric patients with no history of lung disorders were obtained during a 14-month period. P. jiroveci colonization was confirmed by immunofluorescence staining, nested PCR and sequencing. Genotypic characterization at the mitochondrial large subunit rRNA gene was performed by direct sequencing. Results: Of 172 BAL specimens from patients, with mean age of 4.9 years, the prevalence of P. jiroveci colonization was 3.5% (6 samples). The results of sequencing revealed the two polymorphisms; 85/A; 248/C in 3 cases, and 85/T; 248/C in other cases. One sample also showed a mutation replacement at position 258 (T-to-C change), which was not reported previously. Conclusion: Colonized person as an environmental reservoir might play an important role in the progression of infection in immunocompromised patients. Diagnosis of the reservoir and genotyping can be essential for the prevention of nosocomial infections.
Tree-Structured Random Vector Quantization for Limited-Feedback Wireless Channels

We consider the quantization of a transmit beamforming vector in multiantenna channels and of a signature vector in code division multiple access (CDMA) systems. Assuming perfect channel knowledge, the receiver selects for a transmitter the vector that maximizes the performance from a random vector quantization (RVQ) codebook, which consists of independent isotropically distributed unit-norm vectors. The quantized vector is then relayed to the transmitter via a rate-limited feedback channel. The RVQ codebook requires an exhaustive search to locate the selected entry. To reduce the search complexity, we apply generalized Lloyd or k-dimensional (kd)-tree algorithms to organize RVQ entries into a tree. In examples shown, the search complexity of tree-structured (TS) RVQ can be a few orders of magnitude less than that of the unstructured RVQ for the same performance. We also derive the performance approximation for TS-RVQ in a large system limit, which predicts the performance of a moderate-size system very well.
Highwire Regulates Guidance of Sister Axons in the Drosophila Mushroom Body

Axons often form synaptic contacts with multiple targets by extending branches along different paths. PHR (Pam/Highwire/RPM-1) family ubiquitin ligases are important regulators of axon development, with roles in axon outgrowth, target selection, and synapse formation. Here we report the function of Highwire, the Drosophila member of the PHR family, in promoting the segregation of sister axons during mushroom body (MB) formation. Loss of highwire results in abnormal development of the axonal lobes in the MB, leading to thinned and shortened lobes. The highwire defect is attributable to guidance errors after axon branching, in which sister axons that should target different lobes instead extend together into the same lobe. The highwire mutant MB displays elevation in the level of the MAPKKK Wallenda/DLK (dual leucine zipper kinase), a previously identified substrate of Highwire, and genetic suppression studies show that Wallenda/DLK is required for the highwire MB phenotype. The highwire lobe defect is limited to α/β lobe axons, but transgenic expression of highwire in the pioneering α′/β′ neurons rescues the phenotype. Mosaic analysis further shows that α/β axons of highwire mutant clones develop normally, demonstrating a non-cell-autonomous role of Highwire for axon guidance. Genetic interaction studies suggest that Highwire and Plexin A signals may interact to regulate normal morphogenesis of α/β axons.