Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement of Small Strain Shear Modulus Anisotropy on Unconfined Clay Samples Using Bender Elements

This paper presents results of an investigation of the potential to evaluate small stain shear modulus (Gmax) anisotropy for unconfined clay samples using a simple test procedure. Vertical and horizontal shear wave velocities (Vvh, Vhv and Vhh) and residual isotropic effective stress were measured on saturated samples of Boston Blue Clay, Australian Burswood Clay, and Norwegian Onsoy Clay using portable piezoceramic bender element equipment and a suction probe. The measured data, which show significant Gmax anisotropy for the Boston Blue Clay and Onsoy Clay sites, are evaluated and compared with Gmax anisotropy of clays from the literature.
GROWTH IN SAPLINGS OF SCHINOPSIS BALANSAE ENGL.

Schinopsis balansae is a characteristic tree of the Chaco province in northern Argentina, whose timber and tannin values are very high. At present it can be found in forests under intense exploitation. The object of this work was to evaluate the growth of young trees in two types of soil: typical Natraqualf (TN) and vertic Argiudoll (VA) at six, nine, and 12 months old. Leaf area (LA), total mass (TM), root mass (RM), stem mass (SM), and total root length (TRL) were evaluated. The allocation of biomass, the relative growth rates (RGR), the net assimilation rates (NAR), and the percentage increase of the total mass from the seed dry mass (=100%) were analyzed. The plants growth between the two types of soil was compared. Schinopsis balansae showed higher TM, RM, and SM (p < 0.05) in VA at nine months old. At 12 months old, there were higher LA and SM (p < 0.01) in VA. Allocation of biomass tended to balance at 1:1 (SM:RM) while the plants were becoming older in both types of soil. RGR, NAR, and the increase in TM at nine months old showed a peak growth of 27 mg.g -1 day-1; 0.33 mg.cm-2 day-1 and 23 100% in VA soil (p < 0.05 ). Schinopsis balansae positively responded to edaphic differences and can be employed to reforest degraded forests. Accepted 27 October 2007.
A nationwide study on sleep complaints and associated factors in older adults: ELSI-Brazil

Abstract: Sleep problems, such as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, early awakening with failure to continue sleep, and altered sleep-wake cycle, are common in the general population. This cross-sectional study with 6,929 older adults (≥ 60 years) aimed to estimate the prevalence of different types of sleep problems, their associated factors, and the population-attributable fraction of associated factors among older adults. The outcome variables consisted of self-reported sleep problems: insomnia (initial, intermediate, late, and any type of insomnia), poor sleep quality, and daytime sleepiness. The independent variables were sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics and health conditions. The prevalence proportions were initial insomnia (49.1%), intermediate insomnia (49.2%), late insomnia (45.9%), any type of insomnia (58.6%), poor sleep quality (15.6%), and daytime sleepiness (38.4%). Female sex, presence of two or more chronic diseases, not eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, and regular and bad/very bad self-rated health were positively associated with the sleep problems investigated. Consuming alcohol once a month or more was inversely associated with initial insomnia. Population attributable fraction estimates ranged from 3% to 19% considering two or more chronic diseases, not eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, and regular and bad/very bad self-rated health. High prevalence of self-reported sleep problems was evinced in older adults. These results can be useful to guide public health services in the creation of informational, evaluative, and screening strategies for sleep problems in older Brazilian adults.
Multiethnic but multilingual as well? - The Linguistic Landscapes of Vilnius

This paper focuses on the linguistic landscapes of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The aim of this analysis is to define which languages are visible in public sphere in four of the city’s’ dis tricts and constitute its linguistic landscape. Backed up by a corpus of 878 digital pictures of shop signs, placards, posters, graffiti and other d isplays of written language, the study determines the number of langua ges used on signs and the functions they fulfill in the given context . These findings are then compared with the number of speakers of differ ent languages within the same area to find out if the linguistic landscape of Vilnius resembles the city’s ethnolinguistic diversity. Fur thermore, special attention is paid to the phenomenon of the spread o f English.
Evaluating Quadratic Weighted Kappa as the Standard Performance Metric for Automated Essay Scoring

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) tools aim to improve the efficiency and consistency of essay scoring by using machine learning algorithms. In the existing research work on this topic, most researchers agree that human-automated score agreement remains the benchmark for assessing the accuracy of machine-generated scores. To measure the performance of AES models, the Quadratic Weighted Kappa (QWK) is commonly used as the evaluation metric. However, we have identified several limitations of using QWK as the sole metric for evaluating AES model performance. These limitations include its sensitivity to the rating scale, the potential for the so-called “kappa paradox” to occur, the impact of prevalence, the impact of the position of agreements in the diagonal agreement matrix, and its limitation in handling a large number of raters. Our findings suggest that relying solely on QWK as the evaluation metric for AES performance may not be sufficient. We further discuss insights into additional metrics to comprehensively evaluate the performance and accuracy of AES models.
Cloning and Abiotic Stress Expression Pattern Analysis of Mulberry MYB Gene And Its Prokaryotic Expression In E. Coli

MYB transcription factors play a crucial regulatory role in plant growth, development, and response to abiotic stress. A c DNA sequence encoding for the MYB gene was cloned from Morus multicaulis variety YU-711. The gene has an open reading frame (ORF) of 882bp encoding 293 amino acid protein with a predicted molecular weight of 41.7 kDa and an isoelectric point (Pl) 7.61. The mulberry MYB gene is highly conserved. It contains SANT myb-like DNA-binding domain, SHAQKYF class, and belongs to the SNAT superfam - ily. The evolution analysis shows that the Morus multicaulis MYB of an unknown protein is closely related to the Morus notabilis . The qRT-PCR analysis revealed that the MYB gene is highly expressed in Mulberry and is regulated during abi - otic stress (salt, drought, and cold). There was an increase in the mRNA transcription level under all the stress treatment performed compared to the control. The western blot anal - ysis shows that the His-tag MYB protein was expressed in E . coli . Explaining the MYB protein and regulation that is pos - sible in Mulberry will provide the basis for the function and predict the contribution of MYB proteins to the biology of Mulberry plant during breeding for stress resistance variety
Uncertainty in future projections of the North Pacific subtropical high and its implication for California winter precipitation change

This study examines future projections of sea level pressure change in the North Pacific and its impact on winter precipitation changes in California. The multimodel analysis, based on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 models under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario, shows a robust sea level pressure change in the late 21st century over the western North Pacific in which both the Aleutian Low and the North Pacific subtropical high (NPSH) shift poleward in concert with a widening of the Hadley cell. This change is partly explained by a systematic increase of static stability in the subtropics. Despite its robustness, the projected NPSH changes over the eastern North Pacific exhibit a substantial intermodel spread, contributing as a cause for uncertain projections of precipitation changes in California. This intermodel spread in the eastern North Pacific is associated with a Pacific Decadal Oscillation‐like surface temperature change in the western North Pacific and the resulting meridional temperature gradient change. This study points to a major source of uncertainty for the response of winter precipitation to global warming over the West Coast of North America: atmosphere‐ocean coupling in the North Pacific.
Analysis of Attention Identiﬁcation and Recognition of Faces through Segmentation and Relative Visual Saliency (SRVS)

Attentiveness, identiﬁcation and recognition of a human face in a crowd play a starring role in the perspective of visual surveillance. Human vision system is not attending, identifying and recognizing all the faces with the same perception. It is biased towards some faces in the crowd due to their higher relative visual saliency and segment wise perception with respect to the surroundings faces. Using different computer vision-based techniques enormous researches have been carried out on attention, recognition and identiﬁcation of the human face in context of different applications. This paper proposes a novel technique to explain and analyse how the attention, identiﬁcation and recognition of a face in the crowd guided through segmentation and their relative visual saliency. The proposed method is stretched out the solution, using the concept of segmentation and relative visual saliency which is evaluated on the intensity values and respective spatial distance of the faces.
advantages of diabetic tractional retinal detachment repair

Purpose: To evaluate the outcomes and complications of patients with diabetic tractional retinal detachment (TRD) treated with pars plana vitrectomy (PPV). Patients and methods: We retrospectively studied a case series of 24 eyes of 21 patients at a single tertiary, university-affiliated medical center. A review was carried out on patients who underwent PPV for the management of TRD due to proliferative diabetic retinopathy from October 2011 to November 2013. Preoperative and final visual outcomes, intraoperative and postoperative complications, and medical background were evaluated. Results: A 23 G instrumentation was used in 23 eyes (95.8%), and a 25 G instrumentation in one (4.2%). Mean postoperative follow-up time was 13.3 months (4–30 months). Visual acuity significantly improved from logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (LogMAR) 1.48 to LogMAR 1.05 ( P , 0.05). Visual acuity improved by $ 3 lines in 75% of patients. Intraoperative complications included iatrogenic retinal breaks in seven eyes (22.9%) and vitreal hemorrhage in nine eyes (37.5%). In two eyes, one sclerotomy was enlarged to 20 G (8.3%). Postoperative complications included reoperation in five eyes (20.8%) due to persistent subretinal fluid (n = 3), vitreous hemorrhage (n = 1), and dislocated intraocular lens (n = 1). Thirteen patients (54.2%) had postoperative vitreous hemorrhage that cleared spontaneously, five patients (20.8%) required antiglaucoma medications for increased intraocular pressure, seven patients (29.2%) developed an epiretinal membrane, and two patients (8.3%) developed a macular hole. Conclusion: Patients with diabetic TRD can benefit from PPV surgery. Intraoperative and postoperative complications can be attributed to the complexity of this disease. Optometry; Pharmacology drug therapy in eye diseases; Basic eye and
Testicular biometry and its relation with body weight of yak bull (Poephagus grunniens L.)

Summary The relationship among testicular parameters and body weight in 24 adult yak bulls were studied. The present findings reveal that there are significant differences in testicular parameters between three age groups younger than five years (P 0.05). Body weight was predicted with testicular parameters like scrotal circumference (SC), scrotal diameter (SD) and scrotal length (SL) with a multiple R 2 value of 75.1.
Discovering prerequisite relationships between knowledge components from an interpretable learner model

We propose in this work a novel approach to retrieve the pre-requisite structure of a domain model from learner traces. We introduce the E-PRISM framework that includes the causal effect of prerequisite relationships in the learner model for predicting the learner’s performance with knowledge tracing. By studying the distribution of the learned values of each learner model parameter from synthetic data, we pro-pose new metrics for measuring the existence, direction, and strength of a prerequisite relationship. We apply the same methodology to real-world datasets and observe promising results in retrieving the prerequisite structure of a domain model from learner traces.
The Functions of Discourse Markers in L2 Teachers’ and Learners’ Speech across Gender and Proficiency: A Corpus Study 1,2

Discourse markers (DMs) as linguistic devices have a significant role in the coherence of conversation—a speakers’ fluency. With the growing use of English worldwide, it is of great importance to focus on DMs as an essential part of communication which provides discourse coherence. This study was conducted to develop a description of spoken English with a special focus on DMs to investigate their functions and frequencies in Iranian non-native discourse and was conducted across 30 EFL teachers and 30 EFL learners. Spoken samples were gathered from the participants in the context of the classroom. Fung and Carter’s (2007) framework was adopted for the analysis of DMs. The results showed no significant gender difference in terms of frequency of using DMs with different functions between learners and also teachers. In investigating the effect of proficiency level on using the markers among learners, advanced learners were found to use more interpersonal DMs than intermediates. At this intermediate level, male learners used fewer interpersonal DMs than female learners, but, at the advanced level, males used more DMs than females. Implications for teachers and researchers are mentioned.
Light and transmission electron microscopy on immature rabbit oocyte: A morphological study

To succeed in in vitro maturation, in vitro fertilization, and to detect any molecular and morphological changes in the rabbit oocyte ultrastructure, the characteristics of immature rabbit oocytes must first be described. The present study aimed to define in detail the ultrastructure of the immature rabbit oocyte as a specific biological model. Oocytes were collected by scraping the ovarian follicles of rabbits. A total of 20 ovaries were used in this study, from which 850 oocytes were obtained. The excellent and good-quality cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) were prepared and analyzed by light and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The zona pellucida (ZP) is completely located around the oocyte and many round cumulus cells surrounded it. The oocyte was determined by a nucleus in the germinal vesicle stage and the ooplasm containing subcellular organelles such as smooth and rough endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, Golgi complexes, vacuoles and lipid droplets. The ultrastructure of rabbit oocytes is morphologically similar to that of other mammalian oocytes; however, there are slight differences that exist between them.
Factors Influencing Nurses' Decisions in Using a Mental Health Triage Scale: A Review

The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise evidence regarding ED nurses’ decision-making when applying a mental health triage scale. The review sought to answer the question: What factors influence ED nurses’ decisions and decision-making process in applying a mental health triage scale? The views, attitudes and experiences of mental health triage nurses performing triages for patients with mental health presentations in emergency department settings were examined in a systematic review of published and peer-reviewed qualitative research articles. CINAHL, PsycINFO, PubMed
A New Upper Pliocene Palaeomagnetic Pole from Western Syria and a preliminary Polar Wander Curve of the Arabian Plate

sites were sampled from the Upper Pliocene (βN b 2) basaltic flows, from the western flank and the distant eastern flank of the Levant Fault in the Buqeia area NW of Tel Kalakh and west of Homs. Thermal demagnetization led to the identification of consistent directions of remanence in most sites. Normal, Reversed and Intermediate polarities are identified, with Reversed polarities dominating. The Intermediate polarity sites were excluded and the mean directions of the Reversed sites were reversed. The mean site direction of the 16 accepted sites from the western flank of the Levant Fault is 3.6o, 46.5o with α95=7.0o, while the mean site direction of the 10 accepted sites from the eastern flank is 17.5o, 46.8o with α95=2.6o. The overall mean direction of the 26 accepted sites in the western and eastern flanks is 9.0o, 46.9o with α95=4.6o. While the mean VGP of the 16 accepted sites from the western flank of the Levant Fault is 83.2o N, 188.3o E with α95=7.0o, and the mean VGP of the 10 accepted sites from the eastern flank is 73.8o N, 145.6o E with α95=2.6o. The overall mean VGP of the 26 accepted sites in the western and eastern flanks is 80.2o N, 162.4o E with α95=4.8o. The entire available palaeomagnetic pole data sources were consulted which resulted in collecting 51 poles from the Arabian plate, ranging in age from Precambrian to Quaternary. These poles were used to construct a preliminary polar wander curve, which will improve with the increase of the future results from Arabia.
Generalizing Predictive Models of Reading Ability in Adaptive Mathematics Software

Recent research seeks to develop more comprehensive learner models for adaptive learning software. For example, models of reading comprehension built using data from students’ use of adaptive instructional software for mathematics have recently been developed. These models aim to deliver experiences that consider factors related to learning beyond performance in the target domain for instruction. We investigate the extent to which generalization is possible for a recently developed predictive model that seeks to infer students’ reading comprehension ability (as measured by end-of-year standardized test scores) using an introductory learning experience in Carnegie Learning’s MATHia intelligent tutoring system for mathematics. Building on a model learned on data from middle school students in a single school district in a mid-western U.S. state, using that state’s end-of-year English Language Arts (ELA) standardized test score as an outcome, we consider data from a school district in a south-eastern U.S. state as well as that state’s end-of-year ELA standardized test outcome. Generalization is explored by considering prediction performance when training and testing models on data from each of the individual school districts (and for their respective state’s test outcomes) as well as pooling data from both districts together. We conclude with discussion of investigations of some algorithmic fairness characteristics of the learned models. The results suggest that a model trained on data from the smaller of the two school districts considered may achieve greater fairness in its predictions over models trained on data from the other district or both districts, despite broad, overall similarities in some demographic characteristics of the two school districts. This raises interesting questions for future research on generalizing these kinds of models as well as on ensuring algorithmic fairness of resulting models for use in real-world adaptive systems for learning.
Does Wording Matter?: “Mate” versus “Partner” and Long-Term Relationship Preferences

Surveys asking for ratings of the most important characteristics for a long-term “partner” or long-term “mate” were randomly administered to heterosexual and non-heterosexual participants (N = 690). Overall, sex differences were hypothesized such that ratings from those who identified as male and female would differ. The hypothesis regarding whether differences would arise as a result of asking for “mate” versus “partner” preferences was exploratory since no prior research has investigated this to date. The results revealed no significant differences for preferences based on “partner” versus “mate” preference ratings. The hypothesis regarding overall sex differences was supported. Women rated kindness as more important than men did, and men rated physical attractiveness as more important than women did. Additionally, heterosexuals rated physical attractiveness, and health as more important than non-heterosexuals did.
« Andrachne telephioides » L. nella Valle dell'Aterno, nuovo reperto per la Flora Abruzzese

Riassunto In un terrazzamento fluviale della Valle dellAterno, in prossimita di Fontecchio (AQ) (668 m.s.m.), e stata rinvenuta una folta colonia di Andrachne telephioides L. , entita nuova per lAbr.
Chasing clouds: Differentiable volumetric rasterisation of point clouds as a highly efficient and accurate loss for large-scale deformable 3D registration

Learning-based registration for large-scale 3D point clouds has been shown to improve robustness and accuracy compared to classical methods and can be trained without supervision for locally rigid problems. However, for tasks with highly deformable structures, such as alignment of pulmonary vascular trees for medical diagnostics, previous approaches of self-supervision with regularisation and point distance losses have failed to succeed, leading to the need for complex synthetic augmentation strategies to obtain reliably strong supervision. In this work, we introduce a novel Differentiable Volumetric Rasterisation of point Clouds (DiVRoC) that overcomes those limitations and offers a highly efficient and accurate loss for large-scale deformable 3D registration. DiVRoC drastically reduces the computational complexity for measuring point cloud distances for high-resolution data with over 100k 3D points and can also be employed to extrapolate and regularise sparse motion fields, as loss in a self-training setting and as objective function in instance optimisation. DiVRoC can be successfully embedded into geometric registration networks, including PointPWC-Net and other graph CNNs. Our approach yields new state-of-the-art accuracy on the challenging PVT dataset in three different settings without training with manual ground truth: 1) unsupervised metric-based learning 2) self-supervised learning with pseudo labels generated by self-training and 3) optimisation based alignment without learning. https://github.com/mattiaspaul/ChasingClouds