Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantum reflection of Bose-Einstein Condensates

Recent developments in atom optics have brought Bose-Einstein condensates within 1 μm of solid surfaces where the atom-surface interactions can no longer be ignored. At longrange, the atom-surface interaction is described by the weakly attractive Casimir-Polder potential which is classically predicted to accelerate an incident atom toward the surface where it will interact strongly with the internal modes of the surface, lose energy, and land in a bound state of the surface. When the incident atom is very cold, on the order of a few nanokelvin, however, the acceleration of the atomic wavefunction is so abrupt that the atom may partially reflect from the attractive tail in a process known as quantum reflection. This work presents experimental evidence for quantum reflection from a solid surface at normal incidence. Using atoms from a 23Na BEC, cooled to a few nanokelvin in a recently demonstrated single-coil trap, controlled collisions were induced between atoms and solid silicon surface. A maximum reflection probability of ∼ 12% was observed for an incident velocity of 1 mm/s. Atoms confined against the surface at low density exhibited an enhanced lifetime due to quantum reflection. A surprising aspect of quantum reflection is that nano-structured surfaces are predicted to exhibit enhanced quantum reflection due to the reduction of the atom-surface interaction from reduced density surfaces. Using a pillared surface with an density reduced to 1% of bulk density, we observe an enhancement of the reflection probability to ∼ 60%. At velocities from 2-25 mm/s, predicted threshold dependence of the reflection probability was observed. At velocities below 2 mm/s, the reflection probability was observed to saturate. We develop a simple model which predicts the saturation as a result of mean-field interactions between atoms in the incident Bose-Einstein condensate. Thesis Supervisor: Wolfgang Ketterle Title: John D. MacAurthur Professor of Physics Thesis Supervisor: David E. Pritchard Title: Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics For the parents in my life,
Should Dehydroepiandrosterone be administered to women?

Context: Androgen prohormones such as dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) increase in early puberty, peak in the second and third decade, and thereafter decline, independent of menopausal status. Investigators have examined their potential beneficial effects in normal women and those with DHEA-deficient states. Evidence Acquisition: A review of the literature from 1985 to 2021 on the potential benefits and risks of androgen prohormones in women. Evidence Synthesis: Studies have examined the potential benefit of DHEA therapy for anti-aging, sexual dysfunction, infertility, metabolic bone health, cognition, and wellbeing in hormone-deficient states such as primary adrenal insufficiency, hypopituitarism, and anorexia as well as administration to normal women across the lifespan. Conclusions: Data support small benefits in quality of life and mood but not for anxiety or sexual function in women with primary or secondary adrenal insufficiency or anorexia. No consistent beneficial effects of DHEA administration have been observed for menopausal symptoms, sexual function, cognition, or overall wellbeing in normal women. Local administration of DHEA shows benefit in vulvovaginal atrophy. Use of DHEA to improve induction of ovulation response in women with diminished ovarian reserve is not recommended. Risks of high physiologic or pharmacologic use of DHEA include androgenic and estrogenic side effects which are of concern for long-term administration. Clinical Case: A 49-year-old woman with Addison’s disease who is on low dose estrogen with cyclic progesterone therapy for menopausal symptoms returns for follow-up. She is on a stable glucocorticoid replacement strategy of hydrocortisone 10 mg in the morning and 5 mg in the early afternoon and fludrocortisone 0.05 mg each morning. She has read on the internet that additional therapy with DHEA may help her overall quality of life and libido. She asks whether she should add this therapy to her regimen and at what dose.
The properties of sources and sinks of a linear force-free field

In a highly conducting plasma, the magnetic field topology determines where, for example, current sheets can form, which is of great importance as a potential coronal heating source. With the classical extrapolation of a continuous weak photospheric field, the determination of topology is in general a difficult challenge. Because of the concentration of the photospheric field at intense flux tubes in supergranulation boundaries a more realistic field representation may be a description in terms of magnetic singularities located just below the photosphere. The generalization to linear force-free fields of the standard multipole expansion for singular potential fields is analyzed
NEWCOMERS’ SOCIALIZATION TACTICS AND AFFECTIVE COMMITMENT: INTERPLAY OF PERCEIVED ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT AND PRIOR RELATIONSHIPS

Socialization is a necessary process that helps to manage new talent in the organization in order to survive and thrive in the global market. Numerous studies show that organizational socialization tactics affect workers’ affective commitment. However, the processes through which affective commitment is established during socialization is still unclear. We propose the socialization tactics generate newcomers perceived organizational support (POS) and develop affective commitment. Furthermore, pre-establish links within the organization play a contingency role in the socialization process. Surprisingly, there is no study which theoretically and empirically investigates these referral’s effects on newcomers’ socialization process and its workplace outcomes. We conducted a quantitative sectional survey from 228 newcomers of different organizations. The findings reveal that socialization tactics positively relate to the affective commitment through the mediation of POS and the POS-affective commitment is stronger when prior relationships are high. However, this contingent effect does not empirically support the socialization tactics-POS relationship. The implications are discussed, and future directions are provided.
An Automated Algorithm for Determining Sleep Using Single-Channel Electroencephalography to Detect Delirium: A Prospective Observational Study in Intensive Care Units

The relationship between polysomnography-based objective sleep and delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU) is inconsistent across studies, suggesting limitations in manually determining the sleep stage of critically ill patients. We objectively measured 24-h sleep using a single-channel electroencephalogram (SleepScope [SS]) and an under-mattress sleep monitor (Nemuri SCAN [NSCAN]), both of which have independent algorithms that automatically determine sleep and wakefulness. Eighteen patients (median age, 68 years) admitted to the ICU after valvular surgery or coronary artery bypass grafting were included, and their sleep time was measured one day after extubation. The median total sleep times (TSTs) measured by SS (TST-SS) and NSCAN were 548 (48–1050) and 1024 (462–1257) min, respectively. Two patients with delirium during the 24-h sleep measurement had very short TST-SS of 48 and 125 min, and the percentage of daytime sleep accounted for >80% in both SS and NSCAN. This preliminary case series showed marked sleep deprivation and increased rates of daytime sleeping in ICU patients with delirium. Although data accuracy from under-mattress sleep monitors is contentious, automated algorithmic sleep/wakefulness determination using a single-channel electroencephalogram may be useful in detecting delirium in ICU patients and could even be superior to polysomnography.
Nash equilibrium existence for some discontinuous games

Answering to an open question of Herings et al. (see [3]), one extends their fixed point theorem to mappings defined on convex compact subset of Rn, and not only polytopes. Such extension is important in non-cooperative game theory, where typical strategy sets are convex and compact. An application in game theory is given.
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC ACCRETION DISK WINDS AS X-RAY ABSORBERS IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

We present the two-dimensional ionization structure of self-similar magnetohydrodynamic winds off accretion disks around and irradiated by a central X-ray point source. On the basis of earlier observational clues and theoretical arguments, we focus our attention on a subset of these winds, namely those with radial density dependence n(r) ∝ 1/r (r is the spherical radial coordinate). We employ the photoionization code XSTAR to compute the ionic abundances of a large number of ions of different elements and then compile their line-of-sight (LOS) absorption columns. We focus our attention on the distribution of the column density of the various ions as a function of the ionization parameter ξ (or equivalently r) and the angle θ. Particular attention is paid to the absorption measure distribution (AMD), namely their hydrogen-equivalent column per logarithmic ξ interval, dNH/dlog ξ, which provides a measure of the winds’ radial density profiles. For the chosen density profile n(r) ∝ 1/r, the AMD is found to be independent of ξ, in good agreement with its behavior inferred from the X-ray spectra of several active galactic nuclei (AGNs). For the specific wind structure and X-ray spectrum, we also compute detailed absorption line profiles for a number of ions to obtain their LOS velocities, v ∼ 100–300 km s−1 (at log ξ ∼ 2–3) for Fe xvii and v ∼ 1000–4000 km s−1 (at log ξ ∼ 4–5) for Fe xxv, in good agreement with the observation. Our models describe the X-ray absorption properties of these winds with only two parameters, namely the mass-accretion rate and the LOS angle θ. The probability of obscuration of the X-ray ionizing source in these winds decreases with increasing and increases steeply with the LOS inclination angle θ. As such, we concur with previous authors that these wind configurations, viewed globally, incorporate all the requisite properties of the parsec scale “torii” invoked in AGN unification schemes. We indicate that a combination of the AMD and absorption line profile observations can uniquely determine these model parameters and their bearing on AGN population demographics.
Effect of continuous cropping of konjac (Amorphophallus konjac) on soil bacterial communities as evaluated by Illumina high-throughput sequencing

ABSTRACT Illumina high-throughput sequencing was used to explore the diversity and composition of the soil and root endosphere bacterial communities in three replanted konjac sites in 1-, 3-, and 5-year cropping systems. Continuous cropping of konjac caused a substantial decrease in soil pH and the activities of soil sucrase, urease, catalase, and alkaline phosphatase, and led to a remarkable and persistent decrease in the soil and root endosphere bacterial species abundance and alpha-diversity. Among the nine dominant bacterial phyla, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria had the highest relative abundance, with averages of 61.3% and 11.2%, respectively. Several potentially beneficial genera, including Acinetobacter, Arthrobacter, and Pseudomonas, were less abundant in soil (84.6%, 82.7%, and 83.3%) and root (98.6%, 71.4%, and 98.1%) samples under 5 years of continuous cropping compared with those under 1-year cropping. Conversely, the potentially harmful genus Haliangium exhibited higher relative abundance in 5-year soil and root samples than in 1-year samples. Continuous cropping altered the bacterial community composition in the soil and root endosphere of konjac by influencing soil variables, leading to a reduction in the alpha-diversity of bacteria and the relative abundance of potentially beneficial bacteria, which in turn resulted in konjac poor growth in the continuous cropping system.
Joint Modeling of Multi-Sample and Subband Signals for Fast Neural Vocoding on CPU

In this work, we propose a fast and high quality neural vocoder for CPU implementation. The main approaches to realize fast inference via an autoregressive model are 1) a subband-based vocoder and 2) multiple samples prediction. Our previous work demonstrated that the combination worked well up to two samples simultaneous generation without quality degradation. To further increase the number of simultaneous samples while maintaining quality, we focus on the existence of an association between subband signals and multiple samples. Our proposed vocoder jointly models these associations with a multivariate Gaussian. Experimentals show that our proposed four-sample vocoder is 1.47 times faster than the conventional two-sample equivalent. For both the acoustic features extracted from natural speech and those predicted by TTS, the proposed method realizes generation with up to four samples without any significant degradation in naturalness. This vocoder also matched the nat-uralness comparable of the two-sample conventional method.
Convex decomposition techniques applied to handlebodies

Contact structures on 3-manifolds are 2-plane fields satisfying a set of conditions. The study of contact structures can be traced back for over two-hundred years, and has been of interest to mathematicians such as Hamilton, Jacobi, Cartan, and Darboux. In the late 1900’s, the study of these structures gained momentum as the work of Eliashberg and Bennequin described subtleties in these structures that could be used to find new invariants. In particular, it was discovered that contact structures fell into two classes: tight and overtwisted. While overtwisted contact structures are relatively well understood, tight contact structures remain an area of active research. One area of active study, in particular, is the classification of tight contact structures on 3-manifolds. This began with Eliashberg, who showed that the standard contact structure in real three-dimensional space is unique, and it has been expanded on since. Some major advancements and new techniques were introduced by Kanda, Honda, Etnyre, Kazez, Matic, and others. Convex decomposition theory was one product of these explorations. This technique involves cutting a manifold along convex surfaces (i.e. surfaces arranged in a particular way in relation to the contact structure) and investigating a particular set on these cutting surfaces to say something about the original contact structure. In the cases where the cutting surfaces are fairly nice, in some sense, Honda established a correspondence between information on the cutting surfaces and the tight contact structures supported by the original manifold.
The empire of the narrative: Plan making through the prism of classical and postclassical narratologies

This article theorizes the “narrative turn” in urban planning studies, using Gérard Genette’s work to differentiate first- and second-degree narratives. Genette defines the latter as paratexts that determine the public’s reception of the former. The article assesses how second-degree narratives work with different perceptual regimes to construct the reception of the political vision of territory. To that end, it resorts to the recent work of postclassical narratology. Indeed, the latter is particularly interested in the way in which the narrative, in various forms, affects its addressee. Postclassical narratology allows us to renew the theory of narrative in urban planning by focusing on what hypothetically happens in the consciousness of the receiver of the narrative when he or she becomes aware of it. Consequently, the paper sheds light on an emerging aspect of the design process: disambiguating signals embedded in urban planning documents intended for a wider public.
STRATEGY FOR IMPLEMENTATING PREDICTIVE PROCESS-ORIENTED MACHINE TOOL DIGITAL TWINS

Process planning for the productive machining of complex shaped parts is a comprehensive activity where the dynamic behaviour of a machine tool, workpiece and the process setting has to be taken into account. The predictive process-oriented machine tool digital twin is a digital simulation tool enabling full control of the process results with respect to the adjustment of the whole machining system and the machining process. The paper defines and describes four different levels of such a digital twin according to its complexity. An overview of key elements and modelling techniques employed for creating the process digital twins is provided. The strategy for implementing the process digital twin as an enhancement of the NC machining process planning chain is presented. Selected use cases in the field of mould machining or thin walled blade machining are used for the method demonstrated.
CyclicAugment: Speech Data Random Augmentation with Cosine Annealing Scheduler for Auotmatic Speech Recognition

Recent speech data augmentation approaches use static augmentation operations or policies with consistency magnitude scaling. However, few work is done to explore the influence of the dynamic magnitude of augmentation policies. In this paper, we propose a novel speech data augmentation approach, Cycli-cAugment, to generate more diversified augmentation policies by dynamically configuring the magnitude of augmentation policies with a cosine annealing scheduler. We also propose additional augmentation operations to enlarge the diversity of augmentation policies. Motivated by learning rate warm restart and cyclical learning rates, we hypothesize that using dynamically configured magnitude for augmentation policies can also help escape local optima more efficiently than static augmentation policies with consistency magnitude scaling. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach is effective for escaping local optima. Our approach achieves 12%-35% relative improvement in word error rate (WER) over SpecAugment and RandAugment on the LibriSpeech 960h dataset, and achieves state-of-the-art result 7.1% in phoneme error rate (PER) on the TIMIT 5h dataset.
Synthesis of Novel N-Methylmorpholine-Substituted Benzimidazolium Salts as Potential α-Glucosidase Inhibitors

The α-glucosidase enzyme, located in the brush border of the small intestine, is responsible for overall glycemic control in the body. It hydrolyses the 1,4-linkage in the carbohydrates to form blood-absorbable monosaccharides that ultimately increase the blood glucose level. α-Glucosidase inhibitors (AGIs) can reduce hydrolytic activity and help to control type 2 diabetes. Aiming to achieve this, a novel series of 1-benzyl-3-((2-substitutedphenyl)amino)-2-oxoethyl)-2-(morpholinomethyl)-1H-benzimidazol-3-ium chloride was synthesized and screened for its α-glucosidase inhibitory potential. Compounds 5d, 5f, 5g, 5h and 5k exhibited better α-glucosidase inhibitions compared to the standard drug (acarbose IC50 = 58.8 ± 0.012 µM) with IC50 values of 15 ± 0.030, 19 ± 0.060, 25 ± 0.106, 21 ± 0.07 and 26 ± 0.035 µM, respectively. Furthermore, the molecular docking studies explored the mechanism of enzyme inhibitions by different 1,2,3-trisubstituted benzimidazolium salts via significant ligand–receptor interactions.
“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”: Molecular Tools to Reconstruct multilocus Genetic Profiles from Wild Canid Consumption Remains

Simple Summary Wolves and European wildcats are two iconic predator species that can live in overlapping ecological contexts and also share their habitats with their domestic free-ranging relatives, increasing the risk of anthropogenic hybridisation and its possible deleterious consequences. By applying a multidisciplinary approach, we morphologically and molecularly analysed the cat remains found in a canid faecal sample collected in a forested area of central Italy. Individual multilocus genotypes of both predator and prey were identified turning out to be, respectively, a wolf showing traces of dog ancestry at autosomal microsatellite loci and a domestic cat. Abstract Non-invasive genetic sampling is a practical tool to monitor pivotal ecological parameters and population dynamic patterns of endangered species. It can be particularly suitable when applied to elusive carnivores such as the Apennine wolf (Canis lupus italicus) and the European wildcat (Felis silvestris silvestris), which can live in overlapping ecological contexts and sometimes share their habitats with their domestic free-ranging relatives, increasing the risk of anthropogenic hybridisation. In this case study, we exploited all the ecological and genetic information contained in a single biological canid faecal sample, collected in a forested area of central Italy, to detect any sign of trophic interactions between wolves and European wildcats or their domestic counterparts. Firstly, the faecal finding was morphologically examined, showing the presence of felid hair and claw fragment remains. Subsequently, total genomic DNA contained in the hair and claw samples was extracted and genotyped, through a multiple-tube approach, at canid and felid diagnostic panels of microsatellite loci. Finally, the obtained individual multilocus genotypes were analysed with reference wild and domestic canid and felid populations to assess their correct taxonomic status using Bayesian clustering procedures. Assignment analyses classified the genotype obtained from the endothelial cells present on the hair sample as a wolf with slight signals of dog ancestry, showing a qi = 0.954 (C.I. 0.780–1.000) to the wolf cluster, and the genotype obtained from the claw as a domestic cat, showing a qi = 0.996 (95% C.I. = 0.982–1.000) to the domestic cat cluster. Our results clearly show how a non-invasive multidisciplinary approach allows the cost-effective identification of both prey and predator genetic profiles and their taxonomic status, contributing to the improvement of our knowledge about feeding habits, predatory dynamics, and anthropogenic hybridisation risk in threatened species.
A Sample-Efficient OPF Learning Method Based on Annealing Knowledge Distillation

To quickly respond to variations in the state of network load demand, a solution using data-driven techniques to predict optimal power flow (OPF) has emerged in recent years. However, most of the existing methods are highly dependent on large data volumes. This limits their application on the newly established or expanded systems. In this regard, this work proposes a sample-efficient OPF learning method to maximize the utilization of limited samples. By decomposing the OPF task before knowledge distillation, deep learning complexity is reduced. Thereafter, knowledge distillation is used to integrate decoupled tasks and improve accuracy in low-data setups. Unsupervised pre-training is introduced to alleviate the demand for labeled data. Additionally, the focal loss function and teacher annealing strategy are adopted to achieve higher accuracy without extra samples. Numerical tests on different systems corroborate the advanced accuracy and training speed over other training methods, especially on fewer-sample occasions.