Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural Data Transformer 2: Multi-context Pretraining for Neural Spiking Activity

The neural population spiking activity recorded by intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCIs) contain rich structure. Current models of such spiking activity are largely prepared for individual experimental contexts, restricting data volume to that collectable within a single session and limiting the effectiveness of deep neural networks (DNNs). The purported challenge in aggregating neural spiking data is the pervasiveness of context-dependent shifts in the neural data distributions. However, large scale unsupervised pretraining by nature spans heterogeneous data, and has proven to be a fundamental recipe for successful representation learning across deep learning. We thus develop Neural Data Transformer 2 (NDT2), a spatiotemporal Transformer for neural spiking activity, and demonstrate that pretraining can leverage motor BCI datasets that span sessions, subjects, and experimental tasks. NDT2 enables rapid adaptation to novel contexts in downstream decoding tasks and opens the path to deployment of pretrained DNNs for iBCI control. Code: https://github.com/joel99/context_general_bci
Determinants of atrazine contamination in Iowa homes and occupational exposure in central America

Background: Atrazine is an agricultural herbicide used extensively in corn production worldwide. Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor and has been linked to many other deleterious health outcomes. Exposure assessment studies have been carried out in Iowa among farm and non-farm populations. However, commercial pesticide applicators have been left out of those studies. Atrazine is also used in developing countries in grain production. In developing countries there is great concern about acute pesticide poisonings, but chronic exposure to less acutely toxic pesticides has not been studied extensively. This study assessed in-home contamination of atrazine among commercial pesticide applicators in Iowa and compared these results to similar studies. Occupational inhalation exposure to atrazine was also assessed in Honduras. Methods: Dust samples were taken from 29 commercial pesticide applicator homes in four different locations. Sampling was done during the atrazine application season and again six months later to assess atrazine persistence. Occupational and household characteristics were analyzed for associations with atrazine dust levels. Data from two previous studies that analyzed farm and non-farm household dust samples for atrazine were combined with this data and analysis was performed to identify which population had the greatest risk for take-home atrazine exposure and which determinants were associated with in-home atrazine dust levels. Lastly, corn production practices in Honduras were evaluated and personal air samples were taken from pesticide applicators during atrazine application to assess inhalation exposure. Results: The first study found that atrazine levels persist into the winter months in the homes of commercial applicators. Atrazine handling (days, pounds, and acres
Dataset compiling dissolved organic carbon concentrations in coastal waters

This data set reports dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from estuarine and coastal waters, including the geographical position (latitude and longitude) and salinity for each data point when provided in the papers. This dataset is subject to a Creative Commons License Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.
The COVID States Project #9: Will Americans vaccinate themselves and their children against COVID-19

At least 5 companies have launched Phase III clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines, the final step before seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to NIAID director Anthony Fauci, vaccines may be widely available in the U.S. by spring 2021 if these trials are successful.But should these vaccines become available, will Americans accept them? Between July 10 and July 26, we surveyed 19,058 adults in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We asked about the likelihood that they would seek vaccination for themselves, and for their children. We also asked about the factors that would influence their decision making.We find that, overall, 66% of adults would be somewhat or extremely likely to vaccinate themselves; 66% would be somewhat or extremely likely to vaccinate their children. These rates vary markedly between states, as shown on the figure below.
Mechanisms underlying the atherosclerosis risk associated with apolipoprotein E isoforms in humans

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . v TABLE OF CONTENTS . ix LIST OF TABLES . xii LIST OF FIGURES . xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xv Chapter I.2 Introduction.2 Hyperlipoproteinemia in Human Disease . 2 Lipoprotein Metabolism. 3 ApoE in lipoprotein metabolism . 7 The LDL Receptor in Lipoprotein Metabolism. 9 Species differences . 10 Genetic Approaches to Studying apoE and the LDLR. 12 Chapter II . 22 Harmful Effects of Increased LDLR Expression in Mice with Human APOE*4 But Not APOE*3. 22 Abstract . 23 Introduction. 24 Methods. 26 Results . 31
Power Generation by Exhaust Gases On Diesel Engine #

In this research work the modification of stationary diesel engine for producing power using turbine. Nowadays in automobile field many new innovating concepts are being developed. We are using the power from vehicle exhaust to generate the electricity which can be stored in battery for the later consumption. In this project, we are demonstrating a concept of generating power in a stationary single cylinder diesel engine by the usage of turbines. Here we are placing a turbine in the path of exhaust in the silencer. An engine is also placed in the chassis of the vehicle. The turbine is connected to a dynamo, which is used to generate power. Depending upon the airflow the turbine will start rotating, and then the dynamo will also starts to rotate. A dynamo is a device which is used to convert the kinetic energy into electrical energy. The generated power is stored to the battery. It can be stored in the battery after rectification. The rectified voltage can be inverted and can be used in various forms of utilities.
Intermediate Elites in Pre-Columbian States and Empires

From the Mesoamerican highlands to the Colca Valley in Peru, pre-Columbian civilizations were bastions of power that have largely been viewed through the lens of rulership, or occasionally through bottom-up perspectives of resistance. Rather than focusing on rulers or peasants, this book examines how intermediate elites both men and women? helped to develop, sustain, and resist state policies and institutions. Employing new archaeological and ethnohistorical data, its contributors trace a 2,000-year trajectory of elite social evolution in the Zapotec, Wari, Aztec, Inka, and Maya civilizations. This is the first volume to consider how individuals subordinate to imperial rulers helped to shape specific forms of state and imperial organization. Taking a broader scope than previous studies, it is one of the few works to systematically address these issues in both Mesoamerica and the Central Andes. It considers how these individuals influenced the long-term development of the largest civilizations of the ancient Americas, opening a new window on the role of intermediate elites in the rise and fall of ancient states and empires worldwide. The authors demonstrate how such evidence as settlement patterns, architecture, decorative items, and burial patterns reflect the roles of intermediate elites in their respective societies, arguing that they were influential actors whose interests were highly significant in shaping the specific forms of state and imperial organization. Their emphasis on provincial elites particularly shifts examination of early states away from royal capitals and imperial courts, explaining how local elites and royal bureaucrats had significant impact on the development and organization of premodern states. Together, these papers demonstrate that intricate networks of intermediate elites bound these ancient societies together, nd that competition between individuals and groups contributed to their decline and eventual collapse. By addressing current theoretical concerns with agency, resistance to state domination, and the co-option of local leadership by imperial administrators, it offers valuable new insight into the utility of studying intermediate elites.
Upregulation of mRNA myocardium calcium handling in rats submitted to exercise and food restriction.

BACKGROUND Chronic exercise and food restriction (FR) have directionally opposite changes in transcription of molecular structures of calcium handling and thyroid hormone (TH) status. OBJECTIVE Evaluate the association of chronic exercise and FR on serum thyroid hormones and gene transcription of molecular structures of intracellular calcium transients and thyroid receptors in myocardium of rats. METHODS Male Wistar Kyoto rats, divided into two groups: control (C, n = 7), FR (R50, n = 7), chronic exercise (EX, n = 7) and chronic exercise + FR (EX50, n = 7). FR was of 50% and exercise was swimming (1 hour/day, 5 days/week, during 12 weeks). Serum concentrations of T3, T4 and TSH were determined. The mRNA gene expression of the sarcoplasmatic reticulum calcium pump (SERCA2a), phospholamban (PLB), Na+/Ca+2 exchanger (NCX), calcium channel L-type (L-channel), ryanodine (RYR), calsequestrin (CQS) and HT receptor (TRα1 and TRβ1) of the myocardium was performed by PCR real-time. RESULTS FR reduced serum levels of T4 and TSH and TRα1 mRNA and increased the expression of PLB, NCX and L-channel. Exercise increased the TRβ1 receptor, L-channel and NCX. The association of exercise and FR reduced plasma T4 and TSH, TRβ1 mRNA increase, SERCA2a, NCX and PLB, and there was a significant correlation of TRβ1 with CQS and NXC. CONCLUSION Chronic exercise and food restriction increased the mRNA of transient Ca2+ proteins; however, TH-receptor axis cannot participate in the transcription of mRNA of myocardial calcium transient proteins.
Uncertainty and Leveraged Lucas Trees: The Cross Section of Equilibrium Volatility Risk Premia

Volatility risk premia compensate agents for holding assets whose payoffs correlate with times of high return variation. This paper takes a structural approach to explain the cross-section of volatility risk premia of stocks using a Lucas orchard with heterogeneous beliefs, stochastic macro-economic uncertainty, and default risk. I study two manifestations of uncertainty, namely (i) agents’ disagreement and (ii) time-varying volatility of fundamental growth rates. The paper shows that while the former source of risk accounts for the level of the risk premia, the latter mainly affects the higher order moments of the risk premium distribution. Together with uncertainty, default risk associated with levered trees implies a non-monotonic equilibrium link between stock returns and volatility which allows for positive or negative risk premia. Calibrating the economy, I show that the model accounts for predictability of excess stock returns and corporate credit spreads. I construct volatility risk premia from option and stock prices and document that in the time-series, volatility risk premia of individual stocks can be positive or negative, and switch sign rather often. In the cross-section, they are only weakly related to traditional risk factors. I then test the model predictions and find that empirical proxies for investors’ uncertainty about expected growth rates and macro-economic uncertainty are priced risk factors that convey information over and above those contained in other standard factors to explain these risk premia. In line with the model predictions, I present predictability evidence of individual volatility risk premia for stock excess returns and corporate credit spreads.
Tying, Bundling, and Loyalty/Requirement Rebates

I discuss the impact of tying, bundling, and loyalty/requirement rebates on consumer surplus in the affected markets. I show that the Chicago School Theory of a single monopoly surplus that justifies tying, bundling, and loyalty/requirement rebates on the basis of efficiency typically fails. Thus, tying, bundling, and loyalty/requirement rebates can be used to extract consumer surplus and enhance profit of firms with market power. I discuss the various setups when this occurs.
Exploration with Deep Transient Electromagnetics

1. Introduction. The role of electromagnetic methods in exploration. Historical development of LOTEM. Electrical conductivity / resistivity in exploration. 2. Basic Theoretical Background. Physical principles. Theoretical background. Apparent resistivity. All time apparent resistivity. Image presentation of the data. 3. Distortions of the Signal and their Compensation. The field problem. Deconvolution of the system response. Recursive digital filters. Selective stacking methods. Calibration factor. Prestack and poststack processing. 4. Data Interpretation. One-dimensional inversion. Interpretation of distorted transients ( reversals ). Three-dimensional modeling. 5. The Field System and Field Procedures. System concepts. Field procedures. Survey techniques. 6. Survey Feasibility Studies. Survey design based on well logs. Resolving a deep carbonate unit. High resolution feasibility study. Feasibility study over a two-dimensional structure. 7. General Case Histories. Field survey north of the Ruhr district, FRG. Geological calibration of the technique in the Denver - Julesburg Basin, USA. First field tests in Australia ( Sydney Basin ). 3-D Interpretation case history Munsterland Basin, FRG. 8. Case Histories: Resolving Resistive Layers with LOTEM. Extension of the physical concept to resistive layers. European case history. Canning Basin, Australia, case history. Tai Xing area, PRC, case history. 9. Case Histories: Deep Crustal Applications. Historical case histories. The first demonstration for deep crustal applications in FRG. Black Forest survey. Urach geothermal area. Test survey over the Kaapvaal Craton, R.S. A. Test measurements in China for the application of LOTEM for earthquake prediction. Discussions. Appendix 1 - Derivations. Proof of the iterative deconvolution. Singular value decomposition. Solution of Maxwell's equations using scalar potentials. Appendix 2 - Data Format Standards. Introduction. File formats. File header. Trace header structure. Appendix 3 - Useful Information. Glossary. Operator's log - single site receiver system. Clock drift measurement log. LOTEM transmitter record sheet. Inversion statistics. Appendix 4 - Documentation of the Forward Modeling Program MODALL. Software installation. Description of the menus. Examples. Appendix 5 - List of Figures, Tables, Symbols and References. List of figures. List of tables. Conventions and list of symbols. References. Appendix 6 - Subject Index. Appendix 7 - Color Figures. INSERT: FLOPPY DISKETTE with SOFTWARE.
The Isotopic Composition of Water Vapor in the Upper Troposphere/Lower Stratosphere Region: Modeling, Analysis and Sampling

Die isotopische Zusammensetzung von Wasserdampf in der oberen Troposphäre/unteren Stratosphäre: Genaue Kenntnis über die isotopische Zusammensetzung von Wasserdampf in der Tropopausenregion und der Stratosphäre liefert wichtige Informationen zum Verständnis von atmosphärischem Transport und Photochemie. Diese Arbeit beschreibt zunächst anhand von Modellen, wodurch die isotopische Zusammensetzung des Wasserdampfes bestimmt wird. Dabei wird sowohl auf die stabilen Isotopologe HDO, H 2 O und H 18 2 O, als auch auf das radioaktive Isotopolog HTO eingegangen. Danach wird ein Instrumentensatz vorgestellt, mit dem präzise Messungen der genannten Isotopologe möglich sind. Für die stabilen Isotopologe besteht der Instrumentensatz aus drei Geräten: einem Continuous-Flow System zur chemischen Umwandlung von H2O in H2 und O2 zur anschliessenden massenspektrometrischen Analyse, einer Kalibriereinheit zur Herstellung Wasserdampfs mit bekannten Isotopenverhältnissen, und einer kryogenen Sammeleinheit zum Einsatz auf Flugzeugen und Ballons. Die dabei benötigten Probenmengen konnten auf eine Grössenordnung von 100ng reduziert werden. Weiterhin wurden Experimente mit einer Sammeleinheit für tritierten Wasserdampf durchgeführt. Mit Hilfe der genannten Apparaturen wurden auf insgesamt 6 Flügen zwischen Neuseeland und der Antarktis Proben atmosphärischen Wasserdampfs genommen und analysiert. The isotopic composition of water vapor in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere: Exact knowledge about the isotopic composition of water vapor in the tropopause region and the stratosphere provides important information for the understanding of atmospheric transport and photochemistry. The presented thesis describes with the help of models the processes governing the isotopic composition of atmospheric water vapor. The stable isotopologues HDO, H 2 O and H 2 O and the radioactive isotopologue HTO are discussed. A complete analytical procedure has been developed for the purpose of precise measurements of the mentioned water isotopologues. For the stable isotopologues, it consists of three instruments: a continuous-flow system for the chemical decomposition of H2O to H2 and O2 for subsequent mass-spectrometrical analysis, a calibration
SG-Float: Achieving Memory Access and Computing Power Reduction Using Self-Gating Float in CNNs

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are essential for advancing the field of artificial intelligence. However, since these networks are highly demanding in terms of memory and computation, implementing CNNs can be challenging. To make CNNs more accessible to energy-constrained devices, researchers are exploring new algorithmic techniques and hardware designs that can reduce memory and computation requirements. In this work, we present self-gating float (SG-Float), algorithm hardware co-design of a novel binary number format, which can significantly reduce memory access and computing power requirements in CNNs. SG-Float is a self-gating format that uses the exponent to self-gate the mantissa to zero, exploiting the characteristic of floating-point that the exponent determines the magnitude of a floating-point value and the error tolerance property of CNNs. SG-Float represents relatively small values using only the exponent, which increases the proportion of ineffective mantissas, corresponding to reducing mantissa multiplications of floating-point numbers. To minimize the accuracy loss caused by the approximation error introduced by SG-Float, we propose a fine-tuning process to determine the exponent thresholds of SG-Float and reclaim the accuracy loss. We also develop a hardware optimization technique, called the SG-Float buffering strategy, to best match SG-Float with CNN accelerators and further reduce memory access. We apply the SG-Float buffering strategy to vector-vector multiplication processing elements (PEs), which NVDLA adopts, in TSMC 40nm technology. Our evaluation results demonstrate that SG-Float can achieve up to 35% reduction in memory access power and up to 54% reduction in computing power compared with AdaptivFloat, a state-of-the-art format, with negligible power and area overhead. Additionally, we show that SG-Float can be combined with neural network pruning methods to further reduce memory access and mantissa multiplications in pruned CNN models. Overall, our work shows that SG-Float is a promising solution to the problem of CNN memory access and computing power.
STGAN: A Unified Selective Transfer Network for Arbitrary Image Attribute Editing

Arbitrary attribute editing generally can be tackled by incorporating encoder-decoder and generative adversarial networks. However, the bottleneck layer in encoder-decoder usually gives rise to blurry and low quality editing result. And adding skip connections improves image quality at the cost of weakened attribute manipulation ability. Moreover, existing methods exploit target attribute vector to guide the flexible translation to desired target domain. In this work, we suggest to address these issues from selective transfer perspective. Considering that specific editing task is certainly only related to the changed attributes instead of all target attributes, our model selectively takes the difference between target and source attribute vectors as input. Furthermore, selective transfer units are incorporated with encoder-decoder to adaptively select and modify encoder feature for enhanced attribute editing. Experiments show that our method (i.e., STGAN) simultaneously improves attribute manipulation accuracy as well as perception quality, and performs favorably against state-of-the-arts in arbitrary face attribute editing and season translation.
Neither pirates nor politicos : the emergence of venture capital in weak institutional environments

Existing variance studies of venture capital (VC) provide an incomplete understanding of VC emergence, emphasizing either macro-level enabling conditions or the efficient fund-level operation of the VC cycle. While important, such perspectives do not provide for a complete understanding of the systemic, processual character of VC emergence. A multistage process model of emergence is developed, linking industry structural characteristics and their underlying processes to precursor resources through the intermediate processes of coproduction and diffusion. Using data from multiple embedded case studies in South Africa and Botswana, this model integrates four processes--simultaneity, coproduction, diffusion, and the VC cycle. These processes are linked by a logic that is dominated by initial conditions and includes elements of rational choice (conditioned by path dependence) and altruism. The establishment of appropriate simultaneity conditions enables the diffusion of the established VC model and related institutions from other populations. In the presence of a market failure, government investors and private fund managers can then cooperate to fill the equity gap, creating the signal necessary for replication of additional VC funds through the functioning of the VC cycle. 3
De antiguos pueblos y culturas botánicas en el Puerto Rico indígena

The present work inquires into the phyto-cultural interrelationships of two Huecoid communities that inhabited Vieques and Puerto Rico (La Hueca and Punta Candelero) around 2300 years ago. The primary objectives of this investigation were, among others: to characterize for the first time the agroeconomy of these communities and to interpret the role of plants as humanized natural objects which were consciously used during the movement of these peoples across the insular Caribbean. This investigation offers the first archaeological interpretation, supported by a systematic archaeobotanical study, of some of the socio-cultural processes that made it possible for two Huecoid communities to persist and evolve in a dynamic landscape of human and natural interactions in the northern Antilles. Spanish text.