Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Aerosol properties and meteorological conditions in the city of BuenosAires, Argentina, during the resuspension of volcanic ash from thePuyehue-Cordón Caulle eruption

Abstract. The eruption in June 2011 of the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle Volcanic Complex in Chile impacted air traffic around the Southern Hemisphere for several months after the initial ash emissions. The ash deposited in vast areas of the Patagonian Steppe was subjected to the strong wind conditions prevalent during the austral winter and spring experiencing resuspension over various regions of Argentina. In this study we analyze the meteorological conditions that led to the episode of volcanic ash resuspension which impacted the city of Buenos Aires and resulted in the closure of the two main airports in Buenos Aires area (Ezeiza and Aeroparque) on 16 October 2011. A relevant result is that resuspended material (volcanic ash plus dust) imprints a distinguishable feature within the atmospheric thermodynamic vertical profiles. The thermodynamic soundings show the signature of "pulses of drying" in layers associated with the presence of hygroscopic ash in the atmosphere that has already been reported in similar episodes after volcanic eruptions in other parts of the world. This particular footprint can be used to detect the probable existence of volcanic ash layers. This study also illustrates the utility of ceilometers to detect not only cloud base at airports but also volcanic ash plumes at the boundary layer and up to 7 km altitude. Aerosol properties measured in the city during the resuspension episode indicate the presence of enhanced concentrations of aerosol particles in the boundary layer along with spectral signatures in the measurements at the Buenos Aires AERONET site typical of ash plus dust advected towards the city. The mandatory aviation reports from the National Weather Service about airborne and deposited volcanic ash at the airport near the measurement site (Aeroparque) correlate in time with the enhanced concentrations. The presence of the resuspended material was detected by the CALIOP lidar overpassing the region. Since the dynamics of ash resuspension and recirculation are similar to the dynamics of dust storms, we use the HYSPLIT model with the dust storm module to simulate the episode that affected Buenos Aires. The results of the modeling agree qualitatively with satellite lidar measurements.
Sequential cellular niches control the generation of enucleated erythrocytes from human pluripotent stem cells

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC), including human embryonic stem cells (hESC) and human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC), possess a powerful potential for in vitro generation of red blood cells (RBC) to overcome blood supply shortages. Previous studies have demonstrated that hPSC have the ability to differentiate into erythroid cells. However, the generation of enucleated erythrocytes has still been challenging. The goal of this study is to investigate cellular niche effects on erythroblast generation and their enucleation. During embryonic development, hemogenic endothelial (HE) cells in the aorta-gonad-mesonephros (AGM) have been recognized as precursors of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) that give rise to multi-lineage hematopoietic cells. Therefore, we firstly initiated hematopoietic differentiation from hPSC by HE generation in a chemically defined monolayer differentiation system (Figure 1A). As previously described, hESCderived HE cells on day 5 (D5) exhibited previously described HE phenotypes (CD34CD144CD43CD73 CD184) (Online Supplementary Figure S1A). The hematopoietic potential of HE cells through endothelialto-hematopoietic transition (EHT) was confirmed by culture of the CD34 cells isolated from the D5 cells (Online Supplementary Figure S1B-E). To induce erythroid differentiation, the D5 cells were sub-cultured for eight days in the presence of erythropoietin (EPO) (Figure 1A). Immunostaining analysis of the emerged round-cell clusters on day 2 showed that they co-expressed CD235a erythroid and CD41 megakaryocytic markers (Figure 1B). Flow cytometry analysis further confirmed that the majority of the emerged hematopoietic cells on day 2 were CD235aCD41 cells (>90%) (Figure 1C) and nearly all the CD235aCD41cells expressed CD31, but not CD144 (Online Supplementary Figure S2). The CD235aCD41 progenitor cells gradually lost the expression of CD41 megakaryocytic marker (Figure 1C). By day 5 of erythroid differentiation (D5+5), less than 50% of the cells were CD235aCD41 cells (Figure 1C). By day 8 (D5+8), the majority of the cells (>90%) were CD235aCD71CD41CD34CD45 cells, indicating an erythroid commitment (Figure 1 C and 1D). Benzidine staining detected hemoglobin expression in erythroid
First Passage Times and Breakthrough Curves Associated with Interfacial Phenomena

Advection and dispersion in highly heterogeneous environments involving interfacial discontinuities in the corresponding drift and dispersion rates are described through disparate examples from the physical and biological sciences. A mathematical framework is formulated to address specific empirical phenomena involving first passage time and occupation time functionals observed in relation to the interfacial parameters.
Chapter 6 Rehabilitation in Sarcopenic Elderly

Sarcopenia is a complex problem and an important emerging field in rehabilitation of the elderly. In 2010, the European working group on sarcopenia in older people (EWGSOP) described sarcopenia as a syndrome characterised by progressive and generalised loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, associated with a risk of adverse outcomes such as physical disability, poor quality of life and death. This field of rehabilitation has been defined as ‘evaluative, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions whose purpose is to restore functional ability or enhance residual functional capability in elderly people with disabling impairments’. With growing numbers of frail older people, there is an increasing need for appropriate geriatric rehabilitation services. Definitely, sarcopenia needs a specific rehabilitation program to improve muscular mass and strength that must be integrated with a global approach with the aim to recover postural assessment, amplify sensory‐motor systems, in order to gain the necessary information for proper motor planning, to reduce risk of falls. Several physical agents in medicine permit to treat sarcopenia, like vibrations or electrical stimulation. The aim of this chapter is to give an overview about rehabilitative medicine for sarcopenia, highlighting the state of the art, presenting the most significative clinical researches and giving some inputs to set a rehabilitation protocol.
An Empirical Study on the Intention to Use Open Banking in India

This article examines the use intention of open banking technology in the context of an emerging economy like India using the theoretical framework of Technology Readiness and Acceptance Model (TRAM). To study the use intention for open banking in India, a primary survey was conducted among 945 customers using a structured questionnaire. The PLS-SEM technique was used to analyze the data. Findings – The results show that Optimism (OPM) contributes positively to the Perceived Ease of Use (PES) and Perceived Usefulness (PUF) of the open banking technology. Innovativeness (INO) of the customers is a significant predictor of PES and PUF. It was found that Discomfort (DCF) negatively contributes to PES and PUF; however, it significantly influences PES and has no significant influence on PUF. Insecurity (INT) is negatively significant to PUF and it has no significant influence on PES. It is observed that PES positively contributes to PUF. The results show that PES and PUF are significant predictors of Perceived Customer Value (PCV). PCVs contribution to the Use Intention (UNT) is significantly positive for open banking technology. The stickiness to traditional banking moderates the relationship between PCV and UNT for open banking.
Janus: Optimizing Memory and Storage Support for Non-Volatile Memory Systems

Non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies can manipulate persistent data directly in memory. Ensuring crash consistency of persistent data enforces that data updates reach all the way to NVM, which puts these write requests on the critical path. Recent literature sought to reduce this performance impact. However, prior works have not fully accounted for all the backend memory operations (BMOs) performed at the memory controller that are necessary to maintain persistent data in NVM. These BMOs include support for encryption, integrity protection, compression, deduplication, etc., necessary to provide security, endurance, and lifetime guarantees. These BMOs significantly increase the NVM write latency and exacerbate the performance degradation caused by the critical write requests. The goal of this work is to minimize the BMO overhead of write requests in an NVM system. The central challenge is to figure out how to optimize these seemingly dependent and monolithic BMOs. Our key insight is to decompose each BMO into a series of sub-operations and then reduce their overall latency through two mechanisms: (i) parallelize sub-operations across BMOs and (ii) pre-execute sub-operations off the critical path as soon as their inputs are ready. We expose a generic software interface that can be used to issue pre-execution requests compatible with common crash-consistency programming models and various BMOs. Based on these ideas, we propose Janus11Janus ( /'dʒeinɘs/) is a god in Roman mythology. He has two opposite faces: one looks to the future and the other to the past. - a hardware-software co-design that parallelizes and pre-executes BMOs in an NVM system. We evaluate Janus in an NVM system that integrates encryption, integrity verification, and deduplication and issues pre-execution requests through the proposed software interface, either manually or using an automated compiler pass. Compared to a system that performs these operations serially, Janus achieves 2.35x and 2.00x speedup using manual and automated instrumentation, respectively.
CROW: A Low-Cost Substrate for Improving DRAM Performance, Energy Efficiency, and Reliability

DRAM has been the dominant technology for architecting main memory for decades. Recent trends in multi-core system design and large-dataset applications have amplified the role of DRAM as a critical system bottleneck. We propose Copy-Row DRAM (CROW), a flexible substrate that enables new mechanisms for improving DRAM performance, energy efficiency, and reliability. We use the CROW substrate to implement 1) a low-cost in-DRAM caching mechanism that lowers DRAM activation latency to frequently-accessed rows by 38% and 2) a mechanism that avoids the use of short-retention-time rows to mitigate the performance and energy overhead of DRAM refresh operations. CROW's flexibility allows the implementation of both mechanisms at the same time. Our evaluations show that the two mechanisms synergistically improve system performance by 20.0% and reduce DRAM energy by 22.3% for memory-intensive four-core workloads, while incurring 0.48% extra area overhead in the DRAM chip and 11.3KiB storage overhead in the memory controller, and consuming 1.6% of DRAM storage capacity, for one particular implementation.
EFFECT OF GLUCOSE AND LACTOSE ON UPTAKE OF PHENOL BY LEMNA MINOR

Previous researches have demonstrated that presence of some carbohydrates in the culture medium will cause callus induction and frond regeneration in Lemna minor, and it is expected that presence of carbohydrates will affect the uptake of organics by this plant. However, limited studies have investigated the uptake of organics by this plant. The aim of this study was to clarify the effect of conventional carbohydrates such as glucose and lactose on uptake of phenol by Lemna- minor. Experiments were carried out in the presence and absence of glucose and lactose in the growth solution. The growth solution was fresh water collected from river and phenol was added to it. The initial concentrations of phenol were 20, 50 and 100 mg/L and density of Lemna minor (fresh weight) were 50, 100 and 150 g/m 2 . The plants were contacted with growth solutions for 4 weeks. Control bottles (without plants) were examined with the same manner. The bottles were placed under white cool light with 12h photo periods at room temperature. Every four days sample was taken and the concentration of phenol was determined by spectrophotometer. Uptake of phenol by lemna-minor increased with increasing the contact time and decreased by increasing phenol concentration. In the presence of glucose and lactose in the growth solutions, uptake of phenol was decreased. Phenol uptake was dependent to plant density and when Lemna minor completely covered the surface of the water, uptake decreased. In the presence of glucose and lactose, uptake of phenol by Lemna minor was decreased. Uptake of phenol by lemna minor was affected by density of plant.
Mathematics Performance of the Primary School Students: Attention and Shifting

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between executive functions and mathematical abilities to determine the contribution of these functions to math performance. In this study, 30 students were selected from among 4th graders of elementary school, in two groups with low achievement in mathematics (poor) and high achievement in mathematics (strong), such that their IQ and reading ability were as close as possible. These groups were measured and compared in terms of attention by means of continuous performance test and shifting by means of Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The ANOVA and t-test showed that the low-achieving group stood significantly lower than the high-achieving group in shifting, which mirrors the effect of this function in math performance of the students. However, there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of attention.
Bias Misperceived: The Role of Partisanship and Misinformation in YouTube Comment Moderation

Social media platforms have been the subject of controversy and scrutiny due to the spread of hateful content. To address this problem, the platforms implement content moderation using a mix of human and algorithmic processes. However, content moderation itself has lead to further accusations against the platforms of political bias. In this study, we investigate how channel partisanship and video misinformation affect the likelihood of comment moderation on YouTube. Using a dataset of 84,068 comments on 258 videos, we find that although comments on right-leaning videos are more heavily moderated from a correlational perspective, we find no evidence to support claims of political bias when using a causal model that controls for common confounders (e.g., hate speech). Additionally, we find that comments are more likely to be moderated if the video channel is ideologically extreme, if the video content is false, and if the comments were posted after a fact-check.
Impact of Age on Risk of Lymph Node Positivity in Patients with Colon Cancer

Background: Lymph node (LN) positivity is a prognostic indicator in patients with colon cancer regardless of age, and age is an important parameter that impacts therapeutic recommendations. But little is known about the impact of age on LN positivity in patients with colon cancer. Methods: We analyzed 257,334 patients with colon cancer diagnosed from SEER database. Logistic regression was used to examine the association of age and LN positivity. Poisson regression was used to evaluate whether age was associated with the number of positive LNs. Results: LN positivity was inversely associated with age (P < .001 for each T stage). Age was predictive of LN positivity after adjustment for number of LNs examined and other covariates (P < .001 for each T stage). Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for LN positivity for age 20 to 39 vs 80+ were 3.06 for stage T1 (95 % CI, 2.09 to 4.48), 2.46 for stage T2 (95 % CI, 2.00 to 3.02), 1.77 for stage T3 (95 % CI, 1.62 to 1.93), and 1.68 for stage T4 (1.51 to 1.86). Young age was a significant predictor of an increased number of positive LNs (P < .005 for each T stage). Conclusion: Young age at diagnosis is associated with an increased risk of LN positivity. LN examination and resection could aid younger patients more with detection and removal of metastasis. Guidelines that define postdetection interventions may be needed to limit the overtreatment of older patients, who may be vulnerable to unnecessary tests and treatments.
The Determinants and Stability of Real Money Demand in Vietnam, 1999-2009

Understanding the money demand function is highly important for monetary policy implementation, especially in a monetary targeting framework. The paper uses cointegration analysis and a reduced-form short-run error correction model to investigate the demand for money in Vietnam between 1999 and 2009. We find evidence for a cointegrating relationship between the real money demand, income, the foreign interest rate, and the real stock price. More importantly, statistical tests show that real money demand in Vietnam is stable in this period.
Impacts of Sleep Duration and Snoring on The Risk of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background Sleep duration and snoring are correlated with tumorigenesis while their associations with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) are unclear. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of night sleep duration and snoring on ESCC risk. Methods This study included a total of 527 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients and 505 gender- and age- matched healthy controls from five hospitals in China. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated by conditional logistic regression models. Results Subjects with sleep duration <7 h (adjusted OR 3.18, 95%CI 1.55-6.53) and regular snoring (adjusted OR 2.56, 95%CI 1.82-3.59) were exposed to high esophageal squamous cell carcinoma risk. After the multivariate models adjusted for body mass index (BMI), the results changed slightly. In the stratified analysis regarding gender, the similar trends occurred in both men and women, and BMI ≥25.0 kg/m2 (adjusted OR 0.68, 95%CI 0.48-0.96) was associated with decreased esophageal squamous cell carcinoma risk in men. Additionally, the esophageal squamous cell carcinoma risk attributable to sleep duration <7 h and regular snoring could be completely or partially diminished in subjects with BMI ≥25.0 kg/m2. Conclusion In both genders, short sleep duration (<7h) and regular snoring were significantly related to increased risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma independently.
Phenotypic Diversity in Maize Landraces in Ghana

Detailed knowledge of the genetic diversity among maize (Zea mays L.) germplasm is useful for their systematic and efficient use in breeding programmes. Two multivariate techniques were used to characterize 77 landraces collected from southern Ghana and four Ghanaian improved varieties. The objectives of the study were to (i) characterize Ghanaian landraces for agronomic and morphological traits, (ii) use agromorphological traits to determine the variability of the local landraces and (iii) evaluate the landraces for adaptation to two major maizegrowing zones in Ghana. Euclidean distance estimates from agro-morphological traits averaged 6.49 over all accessions and ranged from 2.30 to 13.61, indicating high phenotypic variability among them. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the first four principal components explained 69.8% of the total variability among the accessions. Grain yield, ear and cob diameters, and kernels per ear dominated the first PC; vegetative characters such as plant and ear heights, and days to anthesis and silking were the major discriminatory traits associated with PC2. Ear and kernel traits also appeared important in the third PC. The results will help in maintaining the landrace accessions and serve as a guide in designing breeding strategies that utilize Ghanaian maize genetic resources effectively.
FloatPIM: In-Memory Acceleration of Deep Neural Network Training with High Precision

Processing In-Memory (PIM) has shown a great potential to accelerate inference tasks of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). However, existing PIM architectures do not support high precision computation, e.g., in floating point precision, which is essential for training accurate CNN models. In addition, most of the existing PIM approaches require analog/mixed-signal circuits, which do not scale, exploiting insufficiently reliable multi-bit Non-Volatile Memory (NVM). In this paper, we propose FloatPIM, a fully-digital scalable PIM architecture that accelerates CNN in both training and testing phases. FloatPIM natively supports floating-point representation, thus enabling accurate CNN training. FloatPIM also enables fast communication between neighboring memory blocks to reduce internal data movement of the PIM architecture. We evaluate the efficiency of FloatPIM on ImageNet dataset using popular large-scale neural networks. Our evaluation shows that FloatPIM supporting floating point precision can achieve up to 5.1% higher classification accuracy as compared to existing PIM architectures with limited fixed-point precision. FloatPIM training is on average 303.2x and 48.6x (4.3x and 15.8x) faster and more energy efficient as compared to GTX 1080 GPU (PipeLayer [1] PIM accelerator). For testing, FloatPIM also provides 324.8x and 297.9x (6.3x and 21.6x) speedup and energy efficiency as compared to GPU (ISAAC [2] PIM accelerator) respectively.
Opportunistic Computing in GPU Architectures

Data transfer overhead between computing cores and memory hierarchy has been a persistent issue for von Neumann architectures and the problem has only become more challenging with the emergence of manycore systems. A conceptually powerful approach to mitigate this overhead is to bring the computation closer to data, known as Near Data Computing (NDC). Recently, NDC has been investigated in different flavors for CPU-based multicores, while the GPU domain has received little attention. In this paper, we present a novel NDC solution for GPU architectures with the objective of minimizing on-chip data transfer between the computing cores and Last-Level Cache (LLC). To achieve this, we first identify frequently occurring Load-Compute- Store instruction chains in GPU applications. These chains, when offloaded to a compute unit closer to where the data resides, can significantly reduce data movement. We develop two offloading techniques, called LLC-Compute and Omni- Compute. The first technique, LLC-Compute, augments the LLCs with computational hardware for handling the computation offloaded to them. The second technique (Omni- Compute) employs simple bookkeeping hardware to enable GPU cores to compute instructions offloaded by other GPU cores. Our experimental evaluations on nine GPGPU workloads indicate that the LLC-Compute technique provides, on an average, 19% performance improvement (IPC), 11% per- formance/watt improvement, and 29% reduction in on-chip data movement compared to the baseline GPU design. The Omni-Compute design boosts these benefits to 31%, 16% and 44%, respectively.