Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physics of excitons in layered BiI$_{3}$. Effects of dimensionality and crystal anisotropy

We carry out a detailed theoretical study of the electronic and optical properties of bulk and monolayer bismuth triiodide (BiI$_{3}$), a layered metal halide, using the ab initio GW+BSE scheme with a full spinorial formulation. We discuss in detail the effects due to the change of dimensionality and the role of spin-orbit coupling. Moreover, we compute the exciton dispersion by solving the BSE at finite momentum, also analysing transverse (TE) and longitudinal (LE) excitons, and the L-T splitting at $\bf{q}\approx\Gamma$. The results provide a reference for future experimental measurements. In addition, the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and large binding energy, together with the role of quantum confinement, confirm that BiI$_{3}$ is an interesting material for opto-electronic applications and show that it is a good candidate for the study of exciton dynamics.
Deformation classes of invertible field theories and the Freed--Hopkins conjecture

We prove a conjecture of Freed and Hopkins, which relates deformation classes of reflection positive, invertible, $d$-dimensional extended field theories with fixed symmetry type to a certain generalized cohomology of a Thom spectrum. Along the way, we establish several results, including the construction of a smooth variant of the Brown--Comenetz dual of the sphere spectrum and a calculation of the"deformation type"of the extended geometric bordism category.
$P_c$ states in the mixture of molecular and pentaquark pictures

We systematically study hidden charm pentaquark states in the constituent quark model with a general Hamiltonian for multiquark systems, considering the coupling between the $\Sigma_c^{(*)}\bar{D}^{(*)}$ molecular states and the $q^3c\bar c$ compact pentaquark states by the one-gluon exchange hyperfine interaction. The ground state hidden-charm pentaquark mass spectra and the strong decay widths are calculated. This work suggests that $P_c(4312)$, $P_c(4457)$ and $P_c(4380)$ resonances might be mainly $\Sigma_c \bar D$, $\Sigma_c \bar D^*$ and $\Sigma_c^* \bar D$ hadronic molecules respectively, and $P_c(4440)$ might include sizable pentaquark components.
The Portuguese state of the art on osteoporosis and fracture risk: an update on the treatment options

Abstract Osteoporosis and fragility fractures are serious public health problems, which greatly impact individual health and the economy of other health services. Pharmacological treatment is still one of the main elements of clinical intervention, combined with non-pharmacological measures, in preventing the occurrence of fragility fractures. The emergence of promising new pharmacological options in the treatment of osteoporosis seems to renew expectations in the prevention of complications and a subsequent reduction in morbidity and mortality, including symptomatic treatment, improved physical function and a better quality of life. This review aims to provide updated information on the pharmacological treatment of osteoporosis in the adult population. A comprehensive PubMed search was performed to review the current evidence on osteoporosis treatment. Of the 378 articles identified from the initial queries, the final review included 80 articles. Currently, the following pharmacological options are available: antiresorptive (bisphosphonates, denosumab, postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy and selective oestrogen receptor modulators), bone-forming agents (essentially, teriparatide and abaloparatide) and the new dual-action therapy (romosozumab), recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, but which is not yet an option in Portugal. Therapeutic selection is essentially based on assessment of cost-effectiveness, since current evidence does not suggest any differences between the distinctive classes in reducing the risk of fractures, but this analysis is limited by the scarcity of comparative intraclass studies. Notwithstanding, romosozumab, as a dual effect therapy, is promising in resolving the physiological limitations resulting from the merely unilateral action of antiresorptive agents and bone-forming agents in the inseparable relationship between bone formation and resorption. However, its cardiovascular safety raises some concerns, and this topic is still being debated. The underdiagnosis and the undertreatment of osteoporosis remain one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Over the years, new drugs have appeared that have tried to address these problems with a direct impact on the health of populations, but a long way remains to be come in optimising their effectiveness, safety and tolerability.
Bifurcations and synchrony in a ring of delayed Wilson–Cowan oscillators

Ring structures are crucial in network neuroscience, enabling the integration of neural information through closed loop circuits within feedback systems. Here, we use numerical bifurcation analysis to explore time delay effects on a ring of delay-coupled Wilson–Cowan masses. Investigating a low-dimensional ‘self-coupled’ version of the aforementioned system, we uncover the bifurcation structure of the synchronization manifold, and unveil a diverse array of dynamic synchronization patterns that emerge as a consequence of Hopf branch crossings and subsequent higher-order bifurcations. Analysis of the full system reveals transverse instabilities in the synchronized state for large regions of parameter space, with the ring network architecture promoting various dynamics depending on the balance between coupling strength and delay time. Under weak coupling, emergent oscillations are generally synchronous or anti-phase synchronous, with transitions between them triggered by a torus bifurcation of a periodic orbit. Regions of synchronous and anti-phase synchronous solutions are delineated by weakly chaotic borders due to the breakdown of the torus. As coupling strength increases, the bifurcation diagram displays more overlapped branching structure, resulting in increasingly complicated, multistable dynamics.
Male responses to sperm competition risk associated with increased macronutrient intake and reduced lifespan

Increased expenditure on the ejaculate is a taxonomically widespread male response to sperm competition. Increased ejaculate expenditure is assumed to come at a cost to future reproduction, otherwise males should always invest maximally. However, the life-history costs of strategic ejaculation are not well documented. Macronutrient intake is known to affect the trade-off between reproduction and lifespan. Intakes of protein and carbohydrate that maximize reproduction often differ from those that maximize lifespan. Here, we asked whether strategic expenditure on the ejaculate by male crickets, Teleogryllus oceanicus, is mediated by macronutrient intake, and whether it comes at a cost of reduced lifespan. Males were exposed to rival song throughout their lifespan or were held in a silent non-competitive environment. Males exposed to song had a higher intake of both protein and carbohydrate, they reached adulthood sooner, produced ejaculates of higher quality, and died sooner than males living in a silent environment. Our findings provide a rare example of both the mechanisms and life-history costs associated with strategic ejaculation.
Large-scale application of palaeoproteomics (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry; ZooMS) in two Palaeolithic faunal assemblages from China

The application of Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) on Pleistocene sites in Europe and northern Asia has resulted in the discovery of important new hominin fossils and has expanded the range of identified fauna. However, no systematic, large-scale application of ZooMS on Palaeolithic sites in East Asia has been attempted thus far. Here, we analyse 866 morphologically non-diagnostic bones from Jinsitai Cave in northeast China and Yumidong Cave in South China, from archaeological horizons dating to 150–10 ka BP. Bones from both sites revealed a high degree of collagen preservation and potentially time-related deamidation patterns, despite being located in very distinct environmental settings. At Jinsitai, we identified 31 camel bones, five of which were radiocarbon dated to 37–20 ka BP. All dated specimens correspond to colder periods of Marine Isotope Stages 3 and 2. We regard the presence of camels at Jinsitai as evidence of wild camels being a megafauna taxon targeted, most likely by early modern humans, during their expansion across northeast Asia. This large-scale application of ZooMS in China highlights the potential of the method for furthering our knowledge of the palaeoanthropological and zooarchaeological records of East Asia.
GPT3 as a Portuguese Lexical Knowledge Base?

We test the GPT3 language model in zero-and few-shot acquisition of lexico-semantic knowledge in Portuguese, with simple instruction prompts, and compare it with a BERT-based approach. Results are assessed in two test sets: TALES and the Portuguese translation of BATS. GPT3 outperforms BERT in all relations, with the few-shot approach being the best overall and for the majority of relations. Scores in both datasets further suggest that, despite their different creation approaches, they are equally suitable for this kind of evaluation.
DRIPPS: a Corpus with Discourse Relations in Perfect Participial Sentences

The main objective of this paper is to introduce a new language resource for some varieties of Portuguese - European, Brazilian, Mozambi-can, and Angolan - and for British English, called DRIPPS (Discourse Relations In Perfect Participial Sentences). The corpus DRIPPS comprises, at the moment, 993 adverbial perfect participial sentences annotated with Discourse Relations and with the following Discourse Relational Devices: connectors, ordering of the clauses, temporal relations, tenses, and aspectual types. Additionally, an application with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been developed not only to browse and manipulate the corpus but also to allow the activation of specific Discourse Relation constraints, thereby selecting specific cases from the data set that can be analyzed separately. Besides calculating simple counts and percentages, insightful statistical graphs can be generated and visualized on the fly from the combination of the user-selected constraints and the loaded corpora. The application is pre-loaded with Portuguese and English cases and allows to import/load further cases from different languages/varieties.
Towards a Unified Digital Resource for Tunisian Arabic

This paper presents our work on linking language tools for Tunisian Arabic, focusing on a lexicographic database and a corpus of informal written texts. This work on Tunisian Arabic is an ongoing pilot study, while our wider goal is to create resources for various under-resourced languages. We outline a methodology that emphasises open science principles, leveraging existing language resources and NLP tools for standardisation and annotation. Our approach ensures reproducibility and benefits other researchers. We share annotated data on a digital platform and release NLP tools on a dedicated repository. Our work aligns with FAIR principles, facilitating open and effective research on under-resourced languages.
MG2P: An Empirical Study Of Multilingual Training for Manx G2P

Neural networks have achieved state of the art results on grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion. In this paper we focus on the development of a G2P system for Manx, an extremely low-resourced language of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic family of languages. We preprocess the data using two different data augmentation techniques which we call DA1 and DA2 and carry out experiments with various model architectures to answer the question What is the optimal choice of data augmentation, training strategy and model architecture for building G2P systems in extremely low-resourced scenarios? The results demonstrate that multi-lingual training of the Transformer with DA1 augmented Manx dataset along with data from orthographically similar English and Welsh improve upon the phoneme error rate of Phoneti-saurus, LSTM and IBM model 2 by 10.25%, 14.42% and 24.05% respectively.
Superior hypophyseal arteries: angiographic re-discovery, comprehensive assessment, and embryologic implications

The superior hypophyseal arteries (SHAs) are well known in anatomical and surgical literature, with a well-established role in supply of the anterior hypophysis and superjacent optic apparatus. However, due to small size and overlap with other vessels, in vivo imaging by any modality has been essentially non-existent. Advances in high resolution cone beam CT angiography (CBCTA) now enables this deficiency to be addressed. This paper presents, to the best of our knowledge, the first comprehensive in vivo imaging evaluation of the SHAs. Methods Twenty-five CBCTA studies of common or internal carotid arteries were obtained for a variety of clinical reasons. Dedicated secondary reconstructions of the siphon were performed, recording the presence, number, and supply territory of SHAs. A spectrum approach, emphasizing balance with adjacent territories (inferior hypophyseal, ophthalmic, posterior and communicating region arteries) was investigated. Results The SHAs were present in all cases. Supply of the anterior pituitary was nearly universal (96%) and almost half (44%) originated from the ‘cave’ region, in excellent agreement with surgical literature. Optic apparatus supply was more difficult to adjudicate, but appeared present in most cases. The relationship with superior hypophyseal aneurysms was consistent. Patency following flow diverter placement was typical, despite a presumably rich collateral network. Embryologic implications with respect to the ophthalmic artery and infraoptic course of the anterior cerebral artery are intriguing. Conclusions SHAs are consistently seen with CBCTA, allowing for correlation with existing anatomical and surgical literature, laying the groundwork for future in vivo investigation.
Law enforcement and firearms: understanding firearm ownership and storage habits

Objective This study seeks to better understand firearm ownership among law enforcement officers (LEO), with the goal of informing future firearm injury and suicide prevention efforts. We describe the frequency and sociodemographic correlates of firearm ownership and storage practices among, and examine the association between suicidal ideation and current firearm storage practices. Methods The present study used data from a large online study (n=6410) and included data from individuals who were currently or previously being employed as an LEO (n=369; M (SD) age=39.2 y (15.8 y), 75.2% male, 66.7% white). Self-report measures were used to assess for firearm ownership, storage habits and suicidal ideation. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the frequency of firearm ownership and logistic regressions were used to examine the extent to which demographic characteristics and suicidal ideation were associated with firearm ownership. Results Overall, 70.5% (n=261) of the sample reported firearm ownership. LEO who were older had significantly lower odds of reporting firearm ownership. Those who were married and those who reported lifetime suicidal ideation had significantly greater odds of reporting firearm ownership. Whereas firearm-owning LEO who reporting storing a firearm locked had significantly lower odds of reporting lifetime suicidal ideation, those who reported storing a firearm unloaded had significantly greater odds of reporting lifetime suicidal ideation. Conclusion Findings have important public health implications and can be used to increase adherence with secure storage recommendations. Increasing secure storage may help reduce suicide risk among LEO, a sample at heightened risk for suicide.
Body dissatisfaction, disordered eating and exercise behaviours: associations with symptoms of REDs in male and female athletes

Objectives Disordered eating and compulsive exercise behaviours are common among athletes and can increase the risk of relative energy deficiency in sport (REDs). Contrarily, the prevalence of muscle dysmorphia and its relationship with REDs are unknown. This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate associations of all three with REDs symptoms. Methods Elite and subelite Icelandic athletes (n=83, 67.5% females) answered the Low Energy Availability in Females/Males Questionnaires (LEAF-Q/LEAM-Q), Eating Disorder Examination–Questionnaire Short (EDE-QS), Exercise Addiction Inventory (EAI) and Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder Inventory (MDDI). Body composition was assessed via dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry; resting metabolic rate via indirect calorimetry; and blood samples were drawn for analysis of nutrition and hormonal status. Females were compared based on LEAF-Q total score (≥8 (at risk) vs <8). Simple linear regression was applied to evaluate associations of (a) testosterone with other objective measures and LEAM-Q scores in males; and (b) LEAF-Q/LEAM-Q scores with EDE-QS, EAI and MDDI scores. Results In total, 8.4% of participants scored above cut-off on EDE-QS, 19.3% on EAI and 13.3% on MDDI. Females with LEAF-Q total score ≥8 had higher median scores on EDE-QS, EAI and MDDI compared with those scoring <8. Testosterone was positively associated with iron and inversely with total iron-binding capacity but was not associated with scoring on any of the administered questionnaires. Conclusion Drive for muscularity and aesthetic physique may play a role in the complex presentation of REDs. Screening for muscle dysmorphia, in addition to disordered eating and compulsive exercise, could therefore facilitate early detection of REDs.
External confinement of brick masonry columns with open-grid basalt reinforced mortar

A large portion of existing unreinforced masonry buildings in earthquake regions is in urgent need of retrofitting. Masonry brick columns are frequently used as load-bearing elements in such buildings. In this paper, the efficiency of historical masonry column confinement externally with open-grid basalt fiber reinforced mortar, as a strengthening method, is investigated experimentally. A total of 5 masonry column specimens are produced with solid bricks, which have been collected from a historical building constructed around the 1930s, and a local mortar with sub-standard mechanical characteristics to simulate existing historical mortar. The columns with 900 mm height and cross-sectional dimensions of 360 mm x 360 mm are constructed in running bond. All column specimens are tested under concentric compressive loads and the outcomes of the column tests are evaluated in terms of strength, deformability and failure characteristics. A comparison is also made between the experimental results and theoretical predictions made using available analytical models.
Contrasting the impact of aerosols at northern and southern midlatitudes on heterogeneous ice formation

Three cloud data sets, each covering four months of observations, were recently recorded with a lidar at Punta Arenas (53°S), Chile, at Stellenbosch (34°S, near Cape Town), South Africa, and aboard the research vessel Polarstern during three north‐south cruises. By comparing these observations with an 11–year cloud data set measured with a lidar at Leipzig (51°N), Germany, the occurrence of heterogeneous ice formation (as a function of cloud top temperature) for very different aerosol conditions in the northern and southern hemisphere is investigated. Large differences in the heterogeneous freezing behavior in the mostly layered clouds are found. For example, <20%, 30%–40% and around 70% of the cloud layers with cloud top temperatures from −15°C to −20°C, showed ice formation over Punta Arenas, Stellenbosch, and Leipzig, respectively. The observed strong contrast reflects the differences in the free tropospheric aerosol conditions at northern midlatitudes, that are controlled by anthropogenic pollution, mineral dust, forest fire smoke, terrestrial biological material and high southern midlatitudes with clean marine conditions.
Surface-wave analysis for identifying unfrozen zones in subglacial sediments

ABSTRACTTo reveal the extent of freezing in subglacial sediments, we estimated S-wave velocity along a glacier using surface-wave analysis. Because the S-wave velocity varies significantly with the degree of freezing of the pore fluid in the sediments, this information is useful for identifying unfrozen zones within subglacial sediments, which again is important for glacier dynamics. We used active-source multichannel seismic data originally acquired for reflection analysis along a glacier at Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic and proposed an effective approach of multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) in a glacier environment. Common-midpoint crosscorrelation gathers were used for the MASW to improve lateral resolution because the glacier bed has a rough topology. We used multimode analysis with a genetic algorithm inversion to estimate the S-wave velocity due to the potential existence of a low-velocity layer beneath the glacier ice and the observation of higher modes in the dispersion curves. I.
Geochemical behaviour of the aerosol sampled in a suburban zone of Sfax City (Tunisia)

This work examines the geochemistry of the soluble elements (Ca2+, Mg2+, Fe2+ + Fe3+, Na+, K+, NH4+, Cl−, NO3−, SO42− and PO43−) present in the aerosol collected from a suburban site in Sfax City (Tunisia), which is frequently subjected to the urban plume. The descriptive study showed the influence of enrichment sources and meteorological factors. Complementary statistical approaches based on principal component analysis and multiple linear regression showed that the sampled aerosol has three different origins: crustal, marine and anthropogenic. The corresponding components are respectively made of (Ca2+, Mg2+, Fe2+ + Fe3+, K+ and PO43−), (Cl− and Na+) and (SO42−, NH4+ and NO3−). The contribution of the first two components is shown to depend on seasonal effects caused by two antagonistic circulations of continental and marine winds. The contribution of the anthropogenic component (SO42−, NH4+ and NO3−) is shown to be related to the effect of dominant north-easterly winds, which carry the pollution of Sfax City to the study site. Statistical approaches related to the behaviour of these anthropogenic compounds, in the presence of secondary aerosol precursors (SO2, NO2), proved their dependence on gas/particle conversion processes, especially those of neutralisation.
Remote Vegetation Feedbacks and the Mid-Holocene Green Sahara

AbstractIn the mid-Holocene, the climate of northern Africa was characterized by wetter conditions than present, as evidenced by higher paleolake levels and pollen assemblages of savannah vegetation suggesting a wetter, greener Sahara. Previous modeling studies have struggled to simulate sufficient amounts of precipitation when considering orbital forcing alone, with limited improvement from considering the effects of local grasslands. Here it is proposed that remote forcing from expanded forest cover in Eurasia relative to today is capable of shifting the intertropical convergence zone northward, resulting in an enhancement in precipitation over northern Africa approximately 6000 years ago greater than that resulting from orbital forcing and local vegetation alone. It is demonstrated that the remote and local forcing of atmospheric circulation by vegetation can lead to different dynamical patterns with consequences for precipitation across the globe. These ecoclimate teleconnections represent the linkage.