Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deviation Maps for Understanding Thickness Changes of Inner Retinal Layers in Children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

ABSTRACT Purpose: To analyze the use of deviation maps (DevMs) to understand thickness changes of inner retinal layers in optical coherence tomography (OCT) data. To test a new visual analytics (VA) method with reduced complexity of OCT data analysis by comparing the layer thickness of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) to matched controls. Methods: OCT was performed on unilateral eyes of 26 children with T1DM without diabetic retinopathy and 29 healthy children to obtain macular volume scans. Subsequently, segmented inner retinal layers were analyzed using VA. Deviation maps were generated to readily visualize thickness differences between both groups and to investigate thickness changes of individual patients in relation to the control group. Results: In DevMs of the patient group, the total retina (TR) demonstrated localized, irregular areas of thinning (mean ± standard deviation) involving foveal center, inner macula, and inferior-nasal outer macula (−9.31 ± 1.73 µm; p < 0.05). Similarly, retinal nerve fiber layer showed continuous and localized areas of thinning in both inner and outer macula, extending nasally (−5.45 ± 4.31 µm; p < 0.05). In DevMs of individual patients, the TR and inner retinal layers revealed remarkable changes in thickness that were present between patients at both late and early stages of diabetes. Conclusion: The VA method simplifies the in-depth analysis of OCT volume data from different groups and is effective in detecting retinal thickness changes in children with diabetes. It can be easily adopted in a clinical set-up and intuitively used in complex multidisciplinary studies.
The influence of aggregation and statistical post‐processing on the subseasonal predictability of European temperatures

The succession of European surface weather patterns has limited predictability because disturbances quickly transfer to the large‐scale flow. Some aggregated statistics, however, such as the average temperature exceeding a threshold, can have extended predictability when adequate spatial scales, temporal scales and thresholds are chosen. This study benchmarks how the forecast skill horizon of probabilistic 2‐m temperature forecasts from the subseasonal forecast system of the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) evolves with varying scales and thresholds. We apply temporal aggregation by rolling‐window averaging and spatial aggregation by hierarchical clustering. We verify 20 years of re‐forecasts against the E‐OBS dataset and find that European predictability extends at maximum into the fourth week. Simple aggregation and standard statistical post‐processing extend the forecast skill horizon with two and three skilful days on average, respectively. The intuitive notion that higher levels of aggregation capture large‐scale and low‐frequency variability and can therefore tap into extended predictability holds in many cases. However, we show that the effect can be saturated and that there exist regional optimums beyond which extra aggregation reduces the forecast skill horizon. We expect such windows of predictability to result from specific physical mechanisms that only modulate and extend predictability locally. To optimize subseasonal forecasts for Europe, aggregation should thus be limited in certain cases.
Universal Area Law in Turbulence

We re-visit the Area Law in Turbulence discovered many years ago \cite{M93} and verified recently in numerical experiments\cite{S19}. We derive this law in a simpler way, at the same time outlining the limits of its applicability. Using the PDF for velocity circulation as a functional of the loop in coordinate space, we obtain explicit formulas for vorticity correlations in presence of velocity circulation. These functions are related to the shape of the scaling function of the PDF as well as the shape of the minimal surface inside the loop. The background of velocity circulation does not eliminate turbulence but makes observable quantities in inertial range \textbf{calculable}. The scaling dimension of velocity circulation as a function of large area remains unknown. Numerical experiments \cite{S19} suggest transition for log-log derivative of circulation moments $\left $ by the loop area from Kolmogorov index $\frac{2p}{3}$ at $p <4$ down to approximately $0.58 p$ for $4 \leq p \leq 10$ within available Reynolds numbers. We argue that Area Law applies to these moments only in the limit $p\rightarrow \infty$ when they are dominated by the tails of the PDF. So, these numerical experiments suggest that the scaling index in Area law is less then $\frac{2}{3}$.
S=−1
 meson-baryon interaction and the role of isospin filtering processes

A study of the meson-baryon interaction in the $S=-1$ sector is performed, employing a chiral SU(3) lagrangian up to next-to-leading order (NLO) and implementing unitarization in coupled channels. The model is constrained by a large set of experimental data, paying a especial attention to processes that are sensitive to the NLO contributions, such as the $K^- p\to K^+\Xi^-, K^0\Xi^0$ reactions. The consideration of additional cross sections in single isospin channels, $K^-p\to \eta\Lambda, \eta\Sigma$, has been found to provide more homogeneous and reliable values of the low-energy constants, the stability of which has also been tested by the inclusion of explicit resonant terms. Predictions for new isospin filtering processes, like the $I=1$ $K^0_L p \to K^+ \Xi^0$ reaction that could be measured at the proposed secondary $K^0_L$ beam at Jlab, or the weak decay of the $\Lambda_b$ into a $J/\Psi$ and different meson-baryon pairs in $I=0$, available at LHCb, are presented. The measurement of such reactions would put valuable constraints on the chiral models describing the $S=-1$ meson-baryon interaction.
The complete chloroplast genome sequences of four Viola species (Violaceae) and comparative analyses with its congeneric species

We report the complete chloroplast genomes of four Viola species (V. mirabilis, V. phalacrocarpa, V. raddeana, and V. websteri) and the results of a comparative analysis between these species and the published plastid genome of the congeneric species V. seoulensis. The total genome length of the five Viola species, including the four species analyzed in this study and the species analyzed in the previous study, ranged from 156,507 (V. seoulensis) to 158,162 bp (V. mirabilis). The overall GC contents of the genomes were almost identical (36.2–36.3%). The five Viola plastomes each contained 111 unique genes comprising 77 protein-coding genes, 30 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, and 4 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. Among the annotated genes, 16 contained one or two introns. Based on the results of a chloroplast genome structure comparison using MAUVE, all five Viola plastomes were almost identical. Additionally, the large single copy (LSC), inverted repeat (IR), and small single copy (SSC) junction regions were conserved among the Viola species. A total of 259 exon, intron, and intergenic spacer (IGS) fragments were compared to verify the divergence hotspot regions. The nucleotide diversity (Pi) values ranged from 0 to 0.7544. The IR region was relatively more conserved than the LSC and SSC regions. The Pi values in ten noncoding regions were relatively high (>0.03). Among these regions, all but rps19-trnH, petG-trnW, rpl16-rps3, and rpl2-rpl23 represent useful molecular markers for phylogenetic studies and will be helpful to resolve the phylogenetic relationships of Viola. The phylogenetic tree, which used 76 protein-coding genes from 21 Malpighiales species and one outgroup species (Averrhoa carambola), revealed that Malpighiales is divided into five clades at the family level: Erythroxylaceae, Chrysobalanaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Salicaceae, and Violaceae. Additionally, Violaceae was monophyletic, with a bootstrap value of 100% and was divided into two subclades.
Islamic vs. Conventional Banks in Syria: Analysis on Financial Performances

Doubtful finance is the worst nightmare for banks, but this can be avoided if a bank follows a proper strategy to avoid such kind of finance. Due to the violent political crisis in the country, most of the contemporary studies have excluded Syria from their samples. The present study aims to evaluate the performances of Islamic and conventional banks in Syria through a comparative analysis. A secondary aim of this study is to shed some light on the main factors influencing non-performing finance in both Islamic and conventional banks. This study addressed the entire private banking sector in Syria consisting of 11 conventional banks and 3 full-fledged Islamic banks over the period of 2011-2017. To this end, several financial ratios and macroeconomic variables along with independent sample t-test and panel data regression were employed. The results indicated that the Islamic banks were better in terms of assets quality. Panel data regression manifested that gross domestic product growth, exchange rate, finance to deposit ratio, and operating expenses ratio had a significant impact on non-performing finance. This study provides an alluded picture of Syrian private banking sectors that enables authorities to deliberate on the pertinent macroeconomic NPF determinants such as exchange rate and GDP growth.
Breaking the nonprofit starvation cycle? An experimental test

Donors' overhead aversion leads to a starvation cycle that hampers the ability of nonprofits to fulfill their missions. This study provides new evidence and suggests possible solutions to break the starvation cycle. Drawing on agency theory, this study adopts a between-subject experimental design to test two strategies for nonprofits with high overhead that seek to overcome donors' overhead aversion. The results suggest that donors are indeed troubled by high overhead ratios. However, charitable contributions to high-overhead nonprofits could be significantly increased if the nonprofits provide information regarding their organizationâ€™s performance and transparency. The study contributes to the literature in two ways: It analyzes the starvation cycle from the donors' perspective rather than nonprofits' perspective, and it tests proactive strategies in response to overhead aversion. This study concludes that breaking the nonprofit starvation cycle could begin with nonprofits taking a more open and direct stance when confronting the issue of overhead aversion.
Online continual learning with no task boundaries

Continual learning is the ability of an agent to learn online with a non-stationary and never-ending stream of data. A key component for such never-ending learning process is to overcome the catastrophic forgetting of previously seen data, a problem that neural networks are well known to suffer from. The solutions developed so far often relax the problem of continual learning to the easier task-incremental setting, where the stream of data is divided into tasks with clear boundaries. In this paper, we break the limits and move to the more challenging online setting where we assume no information of tasks in the data stream. We start from the idea that each learning step should not increase the losses of the previously learned examples through constraining the optimization process. This means that the number of constraints grows linearly with the number of examples, which is a serious limitation. We develop a solution to select a ﬁxed number of constraints that we use to approximate the feasible region deﬁned by the original constraints. We compare our approach against the methods that rely on task boundaries to select a ﬁxed set of examples, and show comparable or even better results, especially when the boundaries are blurry or when the data distributions are imbalanced.
HIRM v1.0: A hybrid impulse response model for climate modeling
and uncertainty analyses

Simple climate models (SCMs) are frequently used in research and decision-making communities because of their flexibility, tractability, and low computational cost. SCMs can be idealized, flexibly representing major climate dynamics as impulse response functions, or process-based, using explicit equations to model possibly nonlinear climate and Earth system dynamics. Each of these approaches has strengths and limitations. Here we present and test a hybrid impulse response modeling framework (HIRM) that combines the strengths of process-based SCMs in an idealized impulse response model, with HIRM’s input derived from the output of a process-based model. This structure enables the model to capture some of the major nonlinear dynamics that occur in complex climate models as greenhouse gas emissions transform to atmospheric concentration to radiative forcing to climate change. As a test, the HIRM framework was configured to emulate the total temperature of the simple climate model Hector 2.0 under the four Representative Concentration Pathways and the temperature response of an abrupt 4 times CO2 concentration step. HIRM was able to reproduce near-term and long-term Hector global temperature with a high degree of fidelity. Additionally, we conducted two case studies to demonstrate potential applications for this hybrid model: examining the effect of aerosol forcing uncertainty on global temperature and incorporating more process-based representations of black carbon into a SCM. The open-source HIRM framework has a range of applications including complex climate model emulation, uncertainty analyses of radiative forcing, attribution studies, and climate model development.
Impacts of forestation and deforestation on local temperature across the globe

Changing forest cover is a key driver of local climate change worldwide, as it affects both albedo and evapotranspiration (ET). Deforestation and forestation are predicted to have opposing influences on surface albedo and ET rates, and thus impact local surface temperatures differently. Relationships between forest change, albedo, ET, and local temperatures may further vary regionally, as the strengths of warming by albedo effects and cooling by ET effects vary with latitude. Despite these important relationships, the magnitude of forest cover effects on local surface temperature across the globe remains unclear. Using recently-released global forest change data, we first show that forestation and deforestation have pervasive and opposite effects on LST, ET and albedo worldwide. Deforestation from 2000 to 2010 caused consistent warming of 0.38 ± 0.02 (mean ± SE) and 0.16 ± 0.01°C in tropical and temperate regions respectively, while forestation caused cooling in those regions of -0.18 ± 0.02 and -0.19 ± 0.02°C. Tropical forests were particularly sensitive to the climate effects of forest change, with forest cover losses of ~50% associated with increased LST of 1.08 ± 0.25°C, whereas similar forest cover gains decreased LST by -1.11 ± 0.26°C. Secondly, based on a new structural equation model, we show that these changes on LST were largely mediated by changes in albedo and ET. Finally, based on this model, we show that predicted forest changes in Brazil associated with a business-as-usual land use scenario through 2050 may increase LST up to 1.45°C. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the mechanistic inter-relationships between forest change and changes in albedo, ET and LST, and provide additional evidence that forestation has the potential to reverse deforestation impacts on local climate, especially in tropical and temperate regions.
Oxymatrine-mediated maturation of dendritic cells leads to activation of FOXP3+/CD4+ Treg cells and reversal of cisplatin-resistance in lung cancer cells

The dendritic cell (DC)-regulatory T (Treg) system serves a leading role in the immunosuppression of the tumor microenvironment, which is not conducive to radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment for lung cancer. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of oxymatrine (OMT) on the DC-Treg system in the tumor microenvironment in vitro and to examine its mechanism. The expressions of CD83 antigen, T-lymphocyte activation antigen CD86, CD11 antigen-like family member C and major histocompatibility complex II in DCs were increased upon treatment with 1 mg/ml OMT, as detected by flow cytometry. Following pretreatment with OMT, the DCs mediated the forkhead box protein P3 overexpression in primitive cluster of differentiation 4+ T cells at the protein and mRNA expression levels. The expression levels of anti-inflammatory factors, including interleukin (IL)-10, tumor growth factor-β, IL-35, and pro-inflammatory cytokines, including interferon-γ, IL-12 and IL-2, in the co-culture supernatant were increased as measured by ELISA. When DCs and DC-Tregs were co-cultured with cisplatin-resistant A549 cells, the proportion of apoptosis in the co-culture groups was increased under treatment with cisplatin, which was detected by Annexin V/propidium Iodide staining and western blotting. The present results suggested that OMT may promote the maturation of DCs, mediate the differentiation of T cells into Treg cells, and reverse the resistance of tumor cells to cisplatin in vitro. It was suggested that OMT is an important adjunct to chemotherapy through the regulation of antitumor responses.
Maternal Accuracy for Children’s Fearful Distress in Toddlerhood and Kindergarten: Moderation of a Serial Indirect Effect by Toddler Fearful Temperament

SYNOPSIS Objective. Drawing on existing literature concerning the interrelations among toddler fearful temperament, maternal protective parenting, and maternal cognitions, the current study sought to test how mothers’ abilities to predict their children’s distress expressions and behaviors in future novel situations (“maternal accuracy”), may be maintained from toddlerhood to children’s kindergarten year. Design. A sample of 93 mother-child dyads completed laboratory assessments at child age 2 and was invited back for two laboratory visits during children’s kindergarten year. Fearful temperament, age 2 maternal accuracy, and protective behavior were measured observationally at age 2, and children’s social withdrawal and kindergarten maternal accuracy were measured observationally at the follow-up kindergarten visits. Results. We tested a moderated serial mediation model. For highly fearful children only, maternal accuracy may be maintained because it relates to protective parenting, which predicts children’s social withdrawal, which feeds back into maternal accuracy. Conclusions. Maternal accuracy may be maintained across early childhood through the interactions mothers have with their temperamentally fearful children. Given concurrent measurement of some of the variables, the role of maternal cognitions like maternal accuracy should be replicated and then further considered for inclusion in theories and studies of transactional influences between parents and children on development.
Previous breastfeeding difficulties: an existential breastfeeding trauma with two intertwined pathways for future breastfeeding—fear and longing

ABSTRACT Purpose: Experiencing breastfeeding difficulties poses a risk for early cessation of breastfeeding and decreases the likelihood of breastfeeding a future child. To further understand breastfeeding outcomes, the aim of this study is to explain the phenomenon of breastfeeding difficulties in order to understand how women’s previous experiences of breastfeeding difficulties relate to their decisions about future breastfeeding. Methods: A reflective lifeworld hermeneutical approach was adopted. The study consisted of 15 lifeworld interviews with eight women who had previously experienced difficulties with initial breastfeeding. Results: Previously experienced breastfeeding difficulties represent an existential breastfeeding trauma in an individual woman’s life, from which there are two intertwined pathways for future breastfeeding: a fear of breastfeeding, which renders the idea of future breastfeeding unthinkable, and a longing for breastfeeding, which increases the likelihood of future breastfeeding. Fear and longing are intertwined in ambiguous ways in an individual woman’s life. Conclusion: Women with previous breastfeeding difficulties may bring negative breastfeeding experiences with them, which are etched into the woman’s being as a mother as an embodied memory. A lifeworld-led caring science perspective as a foundation for care can contribute to the development of caring practices, which grasp the existential nature of the breastfeeding trauma.
Effect of Taxane Plus Platinum Regimens vs Doxorubicin Plus Cisplatin as Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Endometrial Cancer at a High Risk of Progression: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance The efficacy of taxane plus platinum regimens has been demonstrated for advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer; however, it has not been assessed in postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy for endometrial cancer. Objective To evaluate the clinical benefit of taxane plus platinum compared with standard doxorubicin plus cisplatin as postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy in endometrial cancer. Design, Setting, and Participants In this multicenter, open-label, phase 3 randomized clinical trial, patients with endometrial cancer at high-risk stage I or II or stage III or IV that did not extend beyond the abdominal cavity and had 2 cm or greater residual tumor were included from 118 institutions in Japan from November 24, 2006, to January 7, 2011. Data was analyzed from March 15, 2017, to June 30, 2017. Interventions Eligible patients were randomly assigned (1:1:1) to receive 6 cycles of doxorubicin, 60 mg/m2, plus cisplatin, 50 mg/m2, on day 1; docetaxel, 70 mg/m2, plus cisplatin, 60 mg/m2, on day 1; or paclitaxel, 180 mg/m2, plus carboplatin (area under the curve, 6.0 mg/mL × min) on day 1 every 3 weeks. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary end point was progression-free survival. Secondary end points were overall survival, occurrence of adverse events, tolerability, and status of lymph node dissection. Results Among 788 eligible patients, the median (SD) age was 59 (22-74) years; 263 patients were assigned to doxorubicin plus cisplatin treatment, 263 patients to docetaxel plus cisplatin treatment, and 262 patients to paclitaxel plus carboplatin treatment. The number of patients who did not complete 6 cycles was 53 (20.1%) for the doxorubicin plus cisplatin group, 45 (17.1%) for the docetaxel plus cisplatin group, and 63 (24.0%) for the paclitaxel plus carboplatin group. Tolerability of these regimens were not statistically different. After a median follow-up period of 7 years, there was no statistical difference of progression-free survival (doxorubicin plus cisplatin, 191; docetaxel plus cisplatin, 208; paclitaxel plus carboplatin, 187; P = .12) or overall survival (doxorubicin plus cisplatin, 217; docetaxel plus cisplatin, 223; paclitaxel plus carboplatin, 215; P = .67) among the 3 groups. The 5-year progression-free survival rate was 73.3% for the doxorubicin plus cisplatin group, 79.0% for the docetaxel plus cisplatin group, and 73.9% for the paclitaxel plus carboplatin group, while the 5-year overall survival rates were 82.7%, 88.1%, and 86.1%, respectively. Conclusions and Relevance There was no significant difference of survival among patients receiving doxorubicin plus cisplatin, docetaxel plus cisplatin, or paclitaxel plus carboplatin as postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy for endometrial cancer. Because each regimen showed adequate tolerability but different toxic effects, taxane plus platinum regimens may be a reasonable alternative to treatment with doxorubicin plus cisplatin. Trial Registration UMIN-CTR identifier: UMIN000000522.