Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Input-output theory for spin-photon coupling in Si double quantum dots

The interaction of qubits via microwave frequency photons enables long-distance qubit-qubit coupling and facilitates the realization of a large-scale quantum processor. However, qubits based on electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots have proven challenging to couple to microwave photons. In this theoretical work we show that a sizable coupling for a single electron spin is possible via spin-charge hybridization using a magnetic field gradient in a silicon double quantum dot. Based on parameters already shown in recent experiments, we predict optimal working points to achieve a coherent spin-photon coupling, an essential ingredient for the generation of long-range entanglement. Furthermore, we employ input-output theory to identify observable signatures of spin-photon coupling in the cavity output field, which may provide guidance to the experimental search for strong coupling in such spin-photon systems and opens the way to cavity-based readout of the spin qubit.
HPLC and mass spectrometry analysis of the free radical degradation of chondroitin sulfate and its implications in osteoarthritis

Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is vital component of bone and cartilage; it is widely used as a daily supplement in the management of arthritis. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in vast array of biological processes ranging from regulatory functions to damaging effects in disease pathogenesis. Mass spectrometry is a major tool in deciphering unknown chemical structures, particularly tandem MS. In this study mass spectrometry coupled with High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) gives some insight into the potential mechanisms involved when ROS are made to attack CS. HPLC and coupled mass spectrometry showed that the free radical depolymerisation of CS yielded an N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) and a uronic acid with varied sulfation. This led us to investigate the possibility of other means of free radical generation with the potential to degrade CS. Alkaptonuria an ultra-rare (1:100000-1:250000) in born error of metabolism resulting in the accumulation of homogentisic acid (HGA) due to a deficiency in homogentisate1,2-dioxygenase. Polymerised HGA is excreted in the urine and deposited as an ochronotic pigment in cartilage. The mechanism of HGAs polymerisation is yet to be concluded due to the complexity of its reactions. This study aims to breakdown individual steps in HGAs biochemistry using mass spectrometry. This will provide further insight into the potential reactions HGA can undergo in the body and propose some mechanisms on how it may polymerise. Using mass spectrometry it became apparent that HGA polymerised when in the presence of copper and whilst HGA in water also yielded a dimer, the structure of which was proposed computationally. Little is known on the mechanisms that underpin the displayed symptoms of AKU, it is known however that the polymerisation of HGA does play a role and is responsible for the ochronotic pigmentation in AKU patients. HPLC and ESI-MS was used to investigate the potential interactions between HGA and CS and propose that HGA is able to degrade CS disaccharides when in the presence of a copper catalyst. And that this interaction will play a role in the early onset of arthritis in AKU patients.
Filling Material Removal with Reciprocating and Rotary Systems Associated with Passive Ultrasonic Irrigation

Objective: The purpose of this ex vivo study was to evaluate the filling material removal ability, and the time required to perform this procedure, of reciprocating and conventional rotary systems when associated with passive ultrasonic irrigation. Methods: The palatal roots of 40 maxillary molars were submitted to root canal preparation and filling. The desobturation of root canals was initially performed with Largo burs in the coronal portion (4 mm) to drill the gutta-percha and to facilitate the action of the instruments used then. Next, the palatal roots were randomly distributed (n=10) according to the systems and irrigation protocols used for filling material removal: ProTaper universal retreatment (PTR), PTR+passive ultrasonic irrigation (PUI) (PTR+PUI), Reciproc system (RS), and RS+PUI. Passive ultrasonic activation was performed in the root canals completely filled with 2.5% sodium hypochlorite solution using a smooth and straight ultrasonic tip, coupled to a low-power (20%) ultrasonic device for 1 min (3 cycles of 20 s). After retreatment, the roots were longitudinally sectioned to the remaining filling material quantification using an operating microscope. Environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) micrographs at 97, 105, and 250 X magnifications were also taken to evaluate the quantity of filling material present at the apical portion of the palatal roots. Results: The RS group presented greater quantity of filling material attached to the root canal walls than the other groups (P>0.05). PTR+PUI and RS+PUI groups were statistically similar (P>0.05). Reinstrumentation of root canals using RS was faster than PTR, irrespective of the irrigation protocol used (P>0.05). Conclusion: The association between PUI and the different systems for reinstrumentation yielded greSater filling material removal. The reciprocating system was faster.
Monolayer MoS 2 : Trigonal warping, the Γ valley, and spin-orbit coupling effects

We use a combined ab initio calculations and k · p theory based approach to derive a low-energy effective Hamiltonian for monolayer MoS2 at the K point of the Brillouin zone. It captures the features which are present in first-principles calculations but not explained by the theory of Xiao et al. [Phys Rev Lett 108, 196802 (2012)], namely the trigonal warping of the valence and conduction bands, the electron-hole symmetry breaking, and the spin splitting of the conduction band. We also consider other points in the Brillouin zone which might be important for transport properties. Our findings lead to a more quantitative understanding of the properties of this material in the ballistic limit.
Pansharpening – Relating Quantitative Quality Measures to Impact on Result of Subsequent Processing Steps

Since the advent of high-resolution satellite sensors the pansharpening of multispectral data using the higher spatial information of the panchromatic channel became a prominent topic in the data fusion community. Besides the development of new algorithms also the evaluation of approaches has been addressed in recent years leading e.g. to competitions as by IGARSS (Alparone et al., 2007) using visual inspection and quantitative measures for quality assessment. (Zhang, 2008) questioned the significance of such quantitative measures to evaluate the impact of pansharpening on subsequent processing like classification using an example based on linearly transformed data. This was the motivation for our investigations addressing the question, if quantitative evaluation criteria for pansharpening can reflect its impact on subsequent processing.
"But He's My Brother": How Family Obligation Impacts Moral Judgments

We created practical moral dilemmas for which participants role-played witnessing a transgression by a target person. The identity of the transgressor was manipulated to be either a stranger or the participant’s brother. Participants made factual and unethicality judgments regarding the incident and reported their willingness to report the transgressor to the police. When the factual situation was ambiguous, participants interpreted the facts in favor of the target person when that target was their brother. This family favoritism in turn led to partial moral judgments and decisions, while creating overall coherence. When it was made clear that their brother actually committed the transgression, partiality in unethicality judgment was reduced but partiality in the decision to report persisted, even though overall coherence was thereby reduced. Using path analyses, we show how strong moral constraints such as family obligation can shift moral reasoning processes.
Motivations of Fur Trappers in Interior Alaska

ABSTRACT Understanding how and why trapping effort varies among fur trappers is necessary to accurately interpret trends in fur harvest for wildlife management. We mailed questionnaires to 1,760 fur trappers in interior Alaska to characterize motivations for trapping and primary factors affecting trapping effort. A cluster analysis revealed four groups with distinct motivations for trapping: wildlife management (17% of trappers), recreation (39%), subsistence (18%), and solitude (26%) trappers. Perceived furbearer abundance had the greatest effect on trapping effort, while access to land and human conflicts were the most important social issues to trappers. Economic gain was the least important motivation for trapping among respondents. Because trapping effort mirrored furbearer abundance, harvest-based abundance indices may amplify true changes in population sizes. Our findings also suggested that managers seeking to maintain or increase satisfaction among trappers should focus on reducing human conflicts and maximizing the non-monetary benefits of trapping.
Nonlinear coupling induced toroidal structure of edge localized modes

Edge localized modes (ELMs) are magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities that cause fast periodic relaxations of the strong edge pressure gradient in tokamak fusion plasmas. A novel diagnostic method allows the extraction of toroidal mode numbers, rotation velocities and spatial information during the ELM cycle including the crash. While mode number branches n=3–6 and n=8–10 are dominant just before the ELM crash, during the ELM crash n=2–5 are observed in typical discharges with type-I ELMs in the tokamak experiment. These findings are compared to results from nonlinear MHD simulations. Although n=6 is linearly dominant, nonlinear coupling in which n=1 is particularly important leads to the dominance of n=3–5 during the ELM crash, in excellent agreement with experimental observations. The simultaneous occurrence of these modes over a wide radial region leads to high stochasticity and thus increased transport.
Ultracoherent operation of spin qubits with superexchange coupling

In this theoretical work we investigate superexchange, as a means of indirect exchange interaction between two single electron spin qubits, each embedded in a single semiconductor quantum dot (QD). The exchange interaction is mediated by an intermediate, empty QD. Our findings suggest the existence of first order "super sweet spots", in which the qubit operations implemented by superexchange interaction are simultaneously insensitive to charge noise and errors due to spin-orbit interaction. We also find that the sign of the superexchange can be changed by varying the energy detunings between the QDs.
Satellite Mapping of Rain-Induced Nitric Oxide Emissions from Soils over Africa

[1] We use space-based observations of NO2 columns from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) to map the spatial and seasonal variations of NOx emissions over Africa during 2000. The GOME observations show not only enhanced tropospheric NO2 columns from biomass burning during the dry season but also comparable enhancements from soil emissions during the rainy season over the Sahel. These soil emissions occur in strong pulses lasting 1–3 weeks following the onset of rain, and affect 3 million km2 of semiarid sub-Saharan savanna. Surface observations of NO2 from the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC)/Deposition of Biochemically Important Trace Species (DEBITS)/Africa (IDAF) network over West Africa provide further evidence for a strong role for microbial soil sources. By combining inverse modeling of GOME NO2 columns with space-based observations of fires, we estimate that soils contribute 3.3 ± 1.8 TgN/year, similar to the biomass burning source (3.8 ± 2.1 TgN/year), and thus account for 40% of surface NOx emissions over Africa. Extrapolating to all the tropics, we estimate a 7.3 TgN/year biogenic soil source, which is a factor of 2 larger compared to model-based inventories but agrees with observation-based inventories. These large soil NOx emissions are likely to significantly contribute to the ozone enhancement originating from tropical Africa.
The Importance of Emotional Neural Circuits in Decision Making

The neuroscience of decision making is laying the puzzle of how the brain computes decisions. It tries to sort out which factors are responsible for causing us to choose one way or the other. This thesis reviews to what extent emotional brain processes and their neural circuits impact decision making. The ​somatic marker hypothesis​ (SMH) provides a solid dual-system framework for decision making. Dissociating an impulsive system, in which the amygdala is central, and a reflective system mediated by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). The SMH emphasizes the function of the VMPFC as necessary and crucial for making favorable long-term decisions. Research on moral decision making also shows that similar systems as used by the SMH has a key role in how we think about moral dilemmas as well. Damage or maldevelopment of these neural circuits can cause myopia for the future and deeply immoral behavior. Abnormalities in emotional neuronal circuits can also be linked to addictive behavior and psychopathy. The findings on decision making and its neural substrates dismantle the common sense notion of free will and moral responsibility. An explanation of how the feeling of free will arises is given using the ​Interpreter system​ theory of consciousness. Moral responsibility without the need for a free will is defended by an alternative approach with a framework of a brain​ ​in-control versus out-of-control.
Person Re-identification with Cascaded Pairwise Convolutions

In this paper, a novel deep architecture named BraidNet is proposed for person re-identification. BraidNet has a specially designed WConv layer, and the cascaded WConv structure learns to extract the comparison features of two images, which are robust to misalignments and color differences across cameras. Furthermore, a Channel Scaling layer is designed to optimize the scaling factor of each input channel, which helps mitigate the zero gradient problem in the training phase. To solve the problem of imbalanced volume of negative and positive training samples, a Sample Rate Learning strategy is proposed to adaptively update the ratio between positive and negative samples in each batch. Experiments conducted on CUHK03-Detected, CUHK03-Labeled, CUHK01, Market-1501 and DukeMTMC-reID datasets demonstrate that our method achieves competitive performance when compared to state-of-the-art methods.
Bubble deformations and segmented flows in corrugated microchannels at large capillary numbers

We experimentally investigate the interaction between individual bubble deformations and collective distortions of segmented flows in non-linear microfluidic geometries. Using highly viscous carrier fluids, we study the evolution of monodisperse trains of gas bubbles from a square to a smoothly corrugated microchannel characterized with a series of extensions and constrictions along the flow path. The hysteresis in the bubble shape between accelerating and decelerating flow fields is shown to increase with the capillary number. Measurements of instantaneous bubble velocities reveal the presence of a capillary pull that produces a non-monotonic behavior for the front velocity in accelerating flow regions. Functional relationships are developed for predicting the morphology and dynamics of viscous multiphase flow patterns at the pore scale. 1 Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Email address: thomas.cubaud@stonybrook.edu
Bidding and Drilling under Uncertainty: An Empirical Analysis of Contingent Payment Auctions

Auctions are often used to sell assets whose future cash flows require the winner to make postauction investments. When winners’ payments are contingent on these cash flows, auction design can influence both bidding and incentives to exert effort after the auction. We propose a model of contingent payment auctions that links auction design to postauction economic activity. In the context of oil leases in the Permian Basin, we show that moral hazard affects the relative revenue ranking of different auction designs. Among a large class of alternatives, the observed design cannot be changed to increase both revenues and drilling rates.
An evolutionary view on the Japanese talpids based on nucleotide sequences

ABSTRACT Japanese talpid moles exhibit a remarkable degree of species richness and geographic complexity, and as such, have attracted much research interest by morphologists, cytogeneticists, and molecular phylogeneticists. However, a consensus hypothesis pertaining to the evolutionary history and biogeography of this group remains elusive. Recent phylogenetic studies utilizing nucleotide sequences have provided reasonably consistent branching patterns for Japanese talpids, but have generally suffered from a lack of closely related South-East Asian species for sound biogeographic interpretations. As an initial step in achieving this goal, we constructed phylogenetic trees using publicly accessible mitochondrial and nuclear sequences from seven Japanese taxa, and those of related insular and continental species for which nucleotide data is available. The resultant trees support the view that four lineages (Euroscaptor mizura, Mogera tokuade species group [M. tokudae and M. etigo], M. imaizumii, and M. wogura) migrated separately, and in this order, from the continental Asian mainland to Japan. The close relationship of M. tokudae and M. etigo suggests these lineages diverged recently through a vicariant event between Sado Island and Echigo plain. The origin of the two endemic lineages of Japanese shrew-moles, Urotrichus talpoides and Dymecodon pilirostris, remains ambiguous. Further analyses on intra-species diversity are necessary to fully solve the evolutionary histories of Japanese moles and shrew-moles.
ABO and Rhesus D Blood Groups Distribution among Students in Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, North Western Nigeria

Background: There is ethnic variation in the prevalence of ABO and Rhesus D blood groups. This aim of this present study is to determine the distribution of ABO and Rhesus D blood group among students of African descent attending Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto North Western, Nigeria. Methods: ABO and Rhesus D phenotype of 250 consecutively -recruited students of Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto North Western, Nigeria was determined using standard tube techniques based on haemagglutination principle. Seraclone Anti- A, B, AB and D reagents (Bio Rad Medical Diagnostics, Germany) was utilized. Results: A total of two hundred and fifty students (250) apparently healthy students of African descent attending Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto North Western aged 18-35 years and mean age 26 ± 2.0 years made up of 145 males (58.0%) and 105 female (42.0%) constituted the subjects in this case study. The distribution of the ABO blood group and Rhesus D revealed that 103 (41.2%) were group O, 68 (27.2%) were group B, 63 (25.6%) were group A and 15 (6%) were group AB. Out the 250 subjects investigated, 223 (89.2%) were Rhesus positive and 105 (10.8%) were Rhesus negative. Our finding is consistent with the general formula O > B ≥ A > AB indicating a preponderance of phenotype B over A. We observed a significant difference in the distribution of O and B based on gender (p=0.01). Conclusion: The pattern of distribution of ABO blood groups among students in Sokoto is at variance with other populations particularly among Caucasians. Data derived from this study will help policy makers make evidenced –based decisions on optimum stocking of blood and blood products in Blood banks in the area, management of Haemolytic Transfusion Reaction and Haemolytic Disease of the Foetus and Newborn.
On the Relationship between Modified Newtonian Dynamics and Dark Matter

Numerous astrophysical observations have shown that classical Newtonian dynamics fails on galactic scales and beyond, if only visible matter is taken into account. The two most popular theoretical concepts dealing with this problem are dark matter (DM) and modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND). In the first part of this Letter it is demonstrated that a generalized MOND equation can be derived in the framework of Newtonian DM theory. For systems satisfying a fixed relationship between the gravitational fields caused by DM and visible matter, this generalized MOND equation reduces to the traditional MOND law, first postulated by Milgrom. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that traditional MOND can be also interpreted as a special limit case of DM theory. In the second part of this Letter, a formal derivation of the Tully-Fisher relation is discussed.
The Inhibition of Socially Rejecting Information Among People with High Versus Low Self-Esteem: The Role of Attentional Bias and the Effects of Bias Reduction Training

In two studies, we examined the inhibition of rejection information. In Study 1, we developed a Rejection Stroop task with the purpose of measuring an attentional bias to rejection words hypothesized to characterize individuals with low self-esteem. Results indicated that people with low self-esteem experienced significantly more interference on rejection words than on acceptance words, whereas for people with high self-esteem there was no such difference. In Study 2, we developed a task to train the response of inhibiting rejection information by repeatedly identifying the smiling/accepting face in a 4 × 4 matrix of frowning faces. Results showed that after this inhibition training, people with chronic low self-esteem experienced significantly less interference on rejection words on the Rejection Stroop than their counterparts in the control condition. People with high self-esteem, on the other hand, did not exhibit different amounts of interference on rejection or acceptance words between conditions. The present findings suggest that it is possible to measure people’s attentional bias to rejection and teach people skills that help them deal with negative social information.
Evaluation of and Suggested Improvements to the WSM6 Microphysics in WRF- ARW Using Synthetic and Observed GOES-13 Imagery

AbstractSynthetic satellite imagery can be employed to evaluate simulated cloud fields. Past studies have revealed that the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) single-moment 6-class (WSM6) microphysics scheme in the Advanced Research WRF (WRF-ARW) produces less upper-level ice clouds within synthetic images compared to observations. Synthetic Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-13 (GOES-13) imagery at 10.7 μm of simulated cloud fields from the 4-km National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) WRF-ARW is compared to observed GOES-13 imagery. Histograms suggest that too few points contain upper-level simulated ice clouds. In particular, side-by-side examples are shown of synthetic and observed anvils. Such images illustrate the lack of anvil cloud associated with convection produced by the 4-km NSSL WRF-ARW. A vertical profile of simulated hydrometeors suggests that too much cloud water mass may be converted into graupel mass, effectively reducing the main source of ice mass in a simulated anvi.