Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Compact Passive Q-Switching Pr3+-Doped ZBLAN Fiber Laser With Black Phosphorus-Based Saturable Absorber

In this paper, a compact passively Q-switched praseodymium (Pr3+)-doped fiber laser at the wavelength of 635 nm with black phosphorus (BP) saturable absorber (SA) was first investigated. BP nanoflakes were manufactured by the liquid-phase-exfoliation method and then embedded into polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) film for the experimental usage and a fiber pigtail mirror (FPM, by coating dielectric film onto the fiber-end face) was applied to realize a compact Pr3+-doped red fiber laser. By transferring a block of the BP-PVA thin film onto the FPM and then incorporating into the compact Pr3+-doped fiber laser, the Q-switched operation at 635 nm was achieved. The pulse-repetition rate of the visible-wavelength Q-switched fiber laser can be widely tuned from 108.8 to 409.8 kHz and the shortest pulse duration of this laser is 383 ns. These results reveal that the BP is an available SA for red-light lasers.
Student as producer and the politics of abolition: making a new form of dissident institution?

This paper tells the story of how a group of staff and students set out to establish a subersive teaching and learning project: Student as Producer, within a neoliberal university in England. Faced with the recuperation of its radical practice, the paper recounts how staff and students involved with Student as Producer moved outside of the university to set up a cooperative form of higher education: the Social Science Centre, Lincoln, where students can attain higher education awards without the burden of debt, along with the experience of running a workers' cooperative. This subversive practice is grounded in a Marxist 'critique of value', underpinned by a politics of abolition based on the work of Thomas Mathiesen (1974). The paper concludes that it is possible and necessary to create new dissident institutions 'in and against' the organisational forms of capitalist society as the embodiment of revolutionary theory.
Penicillin V, loracarbef and clindamycin in tonsillar surface fluid during acute group A streptococcal pharyngotonsillitis

Patients with acute group A- strepotococcal pharyngotonsillitis were randomly assigned to treatment for 10 d with either phenoxymethylpenicillin (PcV), loracarbef or clindamycin. The concentrations of the drugs, respectively, were determined in tonsillar surface fluid (TSF), serum and the saliva in each patient on altogether 5 occasions; before, during and 4 d after end of therapy. On the same occasions blood was drawn for analysis of C-reactive protein (CRP) and orosomucoid. On the last d of treatment PcV could be detected in TSF in 1 of 6 patients only. Loracarbef had a slower decrease in TSF during therapy and measurable levels did occur 2 d after end of therapy corresponding to MIC 100 for GAS. This may be related to the somewhat better clinical results of the cephalosporins than of PcV, and possibly indicates that an extended therapy with these drugs in primary GAS pharyngotonsillitis for more than the arbitrarily chosen 10 d could reduce the number of recurrent episodes. PcV and loracarbef were not detected in serum after the end of treatment. The concentration of clindamycin in both TSF and the saliva was fairly longstanding during therapy and reached levels exceeding MIC 100 for GAS, in both TSF and serum 2 d after the end of treatment. Several investigations have shown that GAS, especially in the stationary phase may invade respiratory epithelial cells and are present intracellularly in patients with acute pharyngotonsillitis as well as in asymptomatic carriers. The same T-type, identical DNA fingerprints and arbitrarily primed patterns are found in GAS before and after treatment failure indicating that the primary episode and the failures are caused by the same strain. The longstanding concentrations of clindamycin in TSF, roughly independent of the degree of the local inflammation combined with its intracellular accumulation and activity against resting GAS seem to explain the efficiency of the drug in recurrent GAS pharyngotonsillitis. CRP and orosomucoid were of limited value in differing between bacterial and viral pharyngtonsillitis and a correlation between antibiotic concentration and CRP/orosomucoid levels was not found.
The Causal Effect of the School Day Schedule on Adolescents' Academic Achievement.

How a student’s classes are scheduled throughout the day is often determined by necessity or chance, but can have a meaningful impact on academic performance. Acknowledging students’ internal clocks and making small changes to scheduling patterns could be a relatively low-cost method for administrators to improve performance. The goal of this paper is to expand our understanding of how students learn best by determining the role of time, and it’s interaction with other components of the school day, on academic outcomes. We explore the importance of time of day, student fatigue, and teacher schedules– three aspects of the school day that have never been studied. Our data is five cohorts of college freshman at the United States Air Force Academy who face randomized scheduling and largely take a common set of classes and exams. We find that, all else equal, students perform best later in the day, but gains are often offset by fatigue and free periods are most effective when used to break up the day. Rearranging schedules could improve student performance by as much as . 15 standard deviations. These results imply that better aligning school and work schedules to ones own biological rhythms can lead to large improvements in productivity.
The Superparamagnetic Nanoparticles Carrying the E1A Gene Enhance the Radiosensitivity of Human Cervical Carcinoma in Nude Mice

To explore the effects of early region 1A (E1A) carried by superparamagnetic dextran iron oxide nanoparticles (SDION) on the radiosensitivity of human cervical cancer. The xenograft mice with cervical cancer received weekly intratumoral SDION-E1A injection and a subsequent 50-Gy irradiation. The weekly relative tumor volume and the final tumor volume were compared among different experimental groups. p53 and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2)/Neu expression in final tumor tissue was detected by reverse transcription-PCR and Western blot. The relative tumor volume and the final tissue volume in the SDION-E1A group was significantly smaller than that in Sham and SDION-Vector groups at each time points after irradiation (P < 0.05). Exogenous E1A expression by SDION delivery significantly increased p53 expression, but inhibited HER-2/Neu expression in tumor tissue (P < 0.05). The intratumoral delivery of exogenous E1A carried by SDION increases p53 expression but inhibits HER-2/neu expression, and enhances the radiosensitivity of human cervical cancer in xenograft mice. Mol Cancer Ther; 9(7); 2123–30. ©2010 AACR.
An Empirical Study on Digital Privacy Risk of Senior Citizens

Nowadays, elderly people represent a large group of digital products/services users that has increased steadily since the popularity of smart phones and tablets. However, elderly people’s online behaviors let their digital privacy at a high risk situation. This paper uses the risk management theory to study the digital privacy risk of the elderly. First,presents an extensive empirical of privacy related behaviors of elderly residents form 3 residential communities in a large Chinese city. And then evaluates the impact of risk factors. Finally, the Borda count list of risk factors was given to help the elderly and their families protect digital privacy more effectively. The research shows that the digital privacy of the elderly were violated by the risk of incentives mainly from two aspects: First, privacy awareness is weak, they do not pay attention to the privacy options which provided by digital products/services, and prone to disclose too many personal information;Second, do not have enough IT knowledge to protect their digital privacy.
Perception of Expression in Conductors' Gestures: A Continuous Response Study

The visual channel has been shown to be more informative than the auditory channel in perceptual judgments of a performer's level of expression. Previous work has revealed a positive relationship between amplitude of music-related movement and ratings of expression, for example, and observers have been shown to be sensitive to kinematic features of music-related movement. In this study, we investigate relationships between the kinematics of a conductors' expressive gestures and ratings of perceived expression. Point-light representations (totalling 10 minutes) of two professional conductors were presented to participants who provided continuous ratings of perceived valence, activity, power, and overall expression using a virtual slider interface. Relationships between these ratings and 11 kinematic variables computationally extracted from the movement data were subsequently examined using linear regression. Higher levels of expressivity were found to be conveyed by gestures characterized by increased amplitude, greater variance, and higher speed of movement.
Composite lithium metal anode by melt infusion of lithium into a 3D conducting scaffold with lithiophilic coating

Significance This research paper presents a novel strategy for the fabrication of metal–scaffold composite materials. Particularly, molten lithium metal is infused into a surface-modified three-dimensional matrix with a “lithiophilic” coating. The resulting lithium–scaffold composite was used as battery anodes and exhibited superior performance compared with bare lithium metal anodes. Whereas the emphasis of this study is on lithium anodes, our present work opens up a direction for realization of other metal-anode–based systems. We believe the present work will contribute significantly to the energy-related field and also inspire research in other areas. Lithium metal-based battery is considered one of the best energy storage systems due to its high theoretical capacity and lowest anode potential of all. However, dendritic growth and virtually relative infinity volume change during long-term cycling often lead to severe safety hazards and catastrophic failure. Here, a stable lithium–scaffold composite electrode is developed by lithium melt infusion into a 3D porous carbon matrix with “lithiophilic” coating. Lithium is uniformly entrapped on the matrix surface and in the 3D structure. The resulting composite electrode possesses a high conductive surface area and excellent structural stability upon galvanostatic cycling. We showed stable cycling of this composite electrode with small Li plating/stripping overpotential (<90 mV) at a high current density of 3 mA/cm2 over 80 cycles.
OBSERVATIONAL 5–20 μm INTERSTELLAR EXTINCTION CURVES TOWARD STAR-FORMING REGIONS DERIVED FROM SPITZER IRS SPECTRA

Using Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph observations of G0–M4 III stars behind dark clouds, I construct 5–20 μm empirical extinction curves for 0.3 ⩽ AK < 7, which is equivalent to AV between ≈3 and 50. For AK < 1, the curve appears similar to the Mathis diffuse interstellar medium extinction curve, but with a greater degree of extinction. For AK > 1, the curve exhibits lower contrast between the silicate and absorption continuum, develops ice absorption, and lies closer to the Weingartner and Draine RV = 5.5 Case B curve, a result which is consistent with that of Flaherty et al. and Chiar et al. Recently, work using Spitzer Infrared Array Camera data by Chapman et al. independently reaches a similar conclusion that the shape of the extinction curve changes as a function of increasing AK. By calculating the optical depths of the 9.7 μm silicate and 6.0, 6.8, and 15.2 μm ice features, I determine that a process involving ice is responsible for the changing shape of the extinction curve and speculate that this process is a coagulation of ice-mantled grains rather than ice-mantled grains alone.
Assay for prostate specific antigen (PSA): Problems and possible solutions

The absolute tissue specificity of prostate specific antigen (PSA) allows the use of PSA test not only for detecting recurrence or metastasis at an early stage after radical prostatectomy but also for screening prostate cancer if combined with digital rectal examination. There is also a need to improve the current PSA test to better differentiate between prostate cancer and benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH). Because of these clinical applications, a much greater demand was placed on PSA test for extra sensitivity, accuracy, and precision even within the normal PSA concentration range. However, the current commercial assay kits for PSA do not provide correct PSA values. Many factors contributing to the problem include the specificity of the anti‐PSA antibodies, the composition of the calibrator, the PSA values assigned to the calibrator, the PSA isoform used for anti‐PSA antibody preparation, the test design, and the composition of the diluent. Most problems were derived from the failure of realizing earlier that the majority of the PSA exists in serum not as free PSA but as complexes with protease inhibitors. Other problems, such as constantly changing composition of various forms of PSA in serum specimens, and different clearance rates for various forms of PSA make almost impossible to develop an ideal assay for PSA. Therefore, we suggest that test should be designed for measuring PSA‐ACT (PSA‐α1‐antichymotrypsin) complex only. Changing the focus from the measurement of total PSA of various forms to the PSA‐ACT complex alone may improve the differentiation between prostate cancer and BPH but may also simplify the selection of anti‐PSA antibodies and the preparation of calibrator for the assay. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Automatic Semantic Role Annotation for Spanish

This paper describes and evaluates the automatic annotation of clause-level complements with semantic roles in a Spanish Web corpus, using a rule- and dependency-based approach. In all, 52 different role tags, like agent (§AG), experiencer (§EXP), location (§LOC) etc. are distinguished. The annotator uses a role grammar of 568 hand-written Constraint Grammar rules that take as input the syntactic analysis of the HISPAL parser. A rough evaluation of 5000 running words was performed, where the role annotation achieved an F 1 of 81,6% on raw text and 90,0% on syntactically revised input. A Spanish Internet corpus of 11.2 million words has been compiled and automatically annotated with our semantic role grammar, allowing us to provide some linguistic and statistical interpretations about the relationship between semantic roles on the one hand and syntactic functions, part of speech and semantic prototypes on the other.
Spatial variation in adult sex ratio across multiple scales in the invasive golden apple snail, Pomacea canaliculata

Abstract Adult sex ratio (ASR) has critical effects on behavior and life history and has implications for population demography, including the invasiveness of introduced species. ASR exhibits immense variation in nature, yet the scale dependence of this variation is rarely analyzed. In this study, using the generalized multilevel models, we investigated the variation in ASR across multiple nested spatial scales and analyzed the underlying causes for an invasive species, the golden apple snail Pomacea canaliculata. We partitioned the variance in ASR to describe the variations at different scales and then included the explanatory variables at the individual and group levels to analyze the potential causes driving the variation in ASR. We firstly determined there is a significant female‐biased ASR for this species when accounting for the spatial and temporal autocorrelations of sampling. We found that, counter to nearly equal distributed variation at plot, habitat and region levels, ASR showed little variation at the town level. Temperature and precipitation at the region level were significantly positively associated with ASR, whereas the individual weight, the density characteristic, and sampling time were not significant factors influencing ASR. Our study suggests that offspring sex ratio of this species may shape the general pattern of ASR in the population level while the environmental variables at the region level translate the unbiased offspring sex ratio to the female‐biased ASR. Future research should consider the implications of climate warming on the female‐biased ASR of this invasive species and thus on invasion pattern.
A tapered hollow metallic microneedle array using backside exposure of SU-8

This paper presents a novel fabrication process for a tapered hollow metallic microneedle array using backside exposure of SU-8, and analytic solutions of critical buckling of a tapered hollow microneedle. An SU-8 mesa was formed on a Pyrex glass substrate and another SU-8 layer, which was spun on top of the SU-8 mesa, was exposed through the backside of the glass substrate. An array of SU-8 tapered pillar structures, with angles in the range of 3.1 ◦ –5 ◦ , was formed on top of the SU-8 mesa. Conformal electrodeposition of metal was carried out followed by a mechanical polishing using a planarizing polymeric layer. All organic layers were then removed to create a metallic hollow microneedle array with a fluidic reservoir on the backside. Both 200 µm and 400 µm tall, 10 by 10 arrays of metallic microneedles with inner diameters of the tip in the range of 33.6–101 µm and wall thickness of 10–20 µm were fabricated. Analytic solutions of the critical buckling of arbitrary-angled truncated cone-shaped columns are also presented. It was found that a single 400 µm tall hollow cylindrical microneedle made of electroplated nickel with a wall thickness of 20 µm, a tapered angle of 3.08 ◦ and a tip inner diameter of 33.6 µ mh as a critical buckling force of 1.8 N. This analytic solution can be used for square or rectangular cross-sectioned column structures with proper modifications.
Mesenchymal Stem Cells Facilitate the Induction of Mixed Hematopoietic Chimerism and Islet Allograft Tolerance without GVHD in the Rat

Induction of hematopoietic chimerism and subsequent donor‐specific immune tolerance via bone marrow transplantation is an ideal approach for islet transplantation to treat type‐1 diabetes. We examined the potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in the induction of chimerism and islet allograft tolerance without the incidence of graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD). Streptozotocin‐diabetic rats received a conditioning regimen consisting of antilymphocyte serum and 5 Gy total body irradiation, followed by an intraportal co‐infusion of allogeneic MSCs, bone marrow cells (BMCs) and islets. Although all the recipients rejected the islets initially, half of them developed stable mixed chimerism and donor‐specific immune tolerance, shown by the engraftment of donor skin and second‐set islet transplants and acute rejection of a third‐party skin. The engraftment of the primary islet allografts with stable chimerism was achieved by the addition of a 2‐week peritransplant administration of 15‐deoxyspergualin (DSG). Without MSCs, none of the recipients treated with DSG developed chimerism or reversal of diabetes. GVHD was not observed in any of the recipients infused with MSCs (0/15), whereas it occurred in 4/11 recipients without MSCs. These results indicate a potential use of MSCs for induction of hematopoietic chimerism and subsequent immune tolerance in clinical islet transplantation.
Relationship of a trypsin-like enzyme in rabbit spermatozoa to capacitation.

The existence of a trypsin-like enzyme (TLE) in acrosomes ofepididymal spermatozoa was confirmed and was further demonstrated to be present in acrosomes of ejaculated and capacitated spermatozoa. TLE rapidly removes the zona pellucida of the ovum. Extracts of acrosomes of ejaculated spermatozoa contain an inhibitor that is separated from the TLE by purification of the TLE. The inhibitor of TLE is also present in seminal plasma. This enzyme\p=m-\ enzyme inhibitor relationship appears analogous to the corona-removing enzyme-decapacitation factor relationship and part of capacitation very likely involves removal of the inhibitor from TLE and decapacitation factor from the corona-removing enzyme. TLE is inhibited by soybean trypsin inhibitor and less effectively by mercaptoethanol.
Associations among behavioral and acute physiologic responses to lipopolysaccharide-induced clinical mastitis in lactating dairy cows.

OBJECTIVE To examine behavioral and physiologic effects of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced mastitis in lactating dairy cows. ANIMALS 20 Holstein cows. PROCEDURES Cows were assigned to 5 blocks (4 cows/block) on the basis of parity and number of days in lactation. Intramammary infusion and IV treatments were assigned in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement. Cows within each block were assigned to receive intramammary infusion with 25 μg of LPS or sterile PBS solution 3 hours after milking, and treatment with flunixin meglumine or sterile PBS solution was administered IV 4 hours after intramammary infusion. Video monitoring was continuously performed during the study. RESULTS LPS-infused cows spent less time during the first 12 hours after infusion lying, eating, and chewing cud, compared with results for PBS solution-infused cows. Behavioral responses were correlated with physiologic responses for the first 12 hours after intramammary infusion. Flunixin meglumine administration after intramammary infusion mitigated some behavioral and clinical systemic responses. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Intramammary infusion of LPS caused changes in both behavioral and physiologic variables in lactating dairy cows. Time spent lying, eating, and chewing cud were negatively correlated with physiologic responses in cows. Evaluation of behavior patterns may provide an ancillary measure, along with evaluation of physiologic variables, for monitoring well-being, clinical responses, and recovery from acute clinical mastitis.
Cutinase and pectinase in cotton bioscouring: an innovative and fast bioscouring process

This manuscript describes the potential of a cutinase from the fungus Fusarium solani pisi for cotton wax degradation in order to design an efficient low temperature scouring process. The main characteristics, relevant to cotton wax removal with F. solani pisi cutinase are given. The additive effect of cutinase on pectinase was investigated and optimum incubation conditions were determined. Compatibility of cutinase with surfactants, essential for the rapid migration of enzymes into the fabric, is explored. A clear strategy is presented to achieve a rapid enzymatic cotton scouring process. Wax removal with cutinase reduces pectinase incubation time and increases the hydrolytic rate of pectinase. Cutinase appears to be effective in the degradation of cotton waxes at low-temperature, allowing the design and introduction of a competitive innovative enzymatic scouring process.