Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elastic Net Regression with the Value of the L2 Penalty Parameter Associated with Bayesian Analysis

The aim of this article is to propose the method for choosing the value of the L2 penalty parameter, ߣ ଶ, of elastic net linear regression model using Bayesian analysis. The value of ߣ ଶ is specified through the behavior of Bayes factor. We study the performance of elastic net estimators where the value of ߣ ଶ is based on Bayes factor and the value of ߣ ଶ is chosen by 10-fold cross-validation method. Simulation studies and real data examples show that the elastic net estimator where the value of ߣ ଶ is based on Bayes factor performs better in prediction accuracy.
Surface integral formulation of the interior transmission problem

We consider a surface integral formulation of the so-called interior transmission problem that appears in the study of inverse scattering problems from dielectric inclusions. In the case where the magnetic permeability contrast is zero, the main originality of our approach consists in still using classical potentials for the Helmholtz equation but in weaker trace space solutions. One major outcome of this study is to establish Fredholm properties of the problem for relaxed assumptions on the material coefficients. For instance we allow the contrast to change sign inside the medium. We also show how one can retrieve discreteness results for transmission eigenvalues in some particular situations.
Development of clinical research on myasthenia gravis: Present and prospective view from Japan

The clinical scene of myasthenia gravis (MG) is drastically changing. First, the number of patients is increasing. The epidemiological survey carried out in 2018 showed that the prevalence and patient number nearly doubled compared with the 2006 survey. Onset age is shifting toward elderly. Second, treatment strategy is making progress. Until the first decade of the 2000s, thymectomy and high-dose oral steroids were the mainstream to treat generalized MG. However, adverse effects and impaired quality of life due to steroid administration have become a problem. Japan MG Registry Study Group has been investigating this issue since 2009, and proposed early fast-acting treatment accompanied with low-dose prednisolone to secure patients' quality of life. This strategy is gradually being supported by neurologists in Japan. Third, several molecular targeted drugs have been available since 2017. Additionally, clinical trials of many other drugs are in progress. It is time to reconsider the treatment strategy for MG. Meanwhile, the revised Japanese guidelines for MG and Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome was published in 2022. Three review articles that delineate clinical research on MG in Japan appear in this issue. Suzuki et al. summarized the data of over a period of 10 years from the Japan MG Registry Study. Four crosssectional surveys, as well as a longitudinal study, have been carried out in this period. The early fast-acting treatment strategy was derived from this study. This article introduces the data from the fourth largest multicenter survey in 2021, obtaining detailed clinical information from 1710 consecutive MG patients all over Japan. Yoshikawa described the epidemiological survey of MG in Japan, which he carried out in 2018. He also compared the data with previous surveys, and found (i) increasing prevalence; (ii) increasing lateand elderly-onset; (iii) decreasing female dominance; (iv) decreasing infantile-onset (onset age of 0–4 years); and (v) decreasing frequencies of crisis. Clinical features of MG are greatly changing over time. Murai et al. introduced newly published Japanese clinical guidelines for MG/Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome. In these guidelines, diagnostic criteria of MG were revised, and six clinical subtypes were clarified. It was also mentioned that a high-dose oral steroid regimen with escalation and de-escalation schedule is not recommended. Refractory MG was defined, and a treatment algorithm was proposed. The guidelines are expected to serve to bridge the present with the molecular targeted treatment eras. As aforementioned, detailed clinical research on MG has been carried out for >10 years in Japan. Experiencing the recent significant change in the clinical scene of MG, continuing these studies will become more crucial.
How Suboptimal is Work-From-Home Security in IT/ICS Enterprises? A Strategic Organizational Theory for Managers

The COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., especially the first and second COVID waves) had forced firms (organizations) to radically shift a considerable (if not all) proportion of their employees to serve in a work-from-home (WFH) mode. Industry statistics showcase that despite ushering in significant work-flexibility (and other) benefits, the WFH mode has also expanded an organization’s cyber-vulnerability space, and increased the number of cyber-breaches in IT and IT-OT systems (e.g., ICSs). This leads us to an important fundamental question: is the WFH paradigm detrimental to IT and IoT-driven ICS security in general? While vulnerability reasoning and empirical statistics might qualitatively support an affirmative answer to this question, a rigorous, practically motivated, and strategic cost-benefit analysis is yet to be conducted to establish in principle whether and to what degree WFH-induced cyber-security in an IT/ICS system is sub-optimal when compared to that in the non-WFH work mode. We propose a novel and rigorous strategic method to dynamically quantify the degree of sub-optimal cyber-security in an IT/ICS organization of employees, all of whom work in heterogeneous WFH “siloes”. We first derive as benchmark for a WFH setting - the centrally-planned socially optimal aggregate employee effort in cyber-security best practices at any given time instant. We then derive and compute (using Breton’s Nash equilibrium computation algorithm for stochastic dynamic games) for for the same setting - the distributed time-varying strategic Nash equilibrium amount of aggregate employee effort in cyber-security. The time-varying ratios of these centralized and distributed estimates quantify the free riding dynamics, i.e., a proxy concept for security sub-optimality, within an IT/ICS organization for the WFH setting. We finally compare the free-riding ratio between WFH and non-WFH work modes to gauge the (possible) extent of the increase (lower bound) in security sub-optimality when the organization operates in a WFH mode. We counter-intuitively observe through extensive real-world-trace-driven Monte Carlo simulations that the maximum of the time-dependent median increase in the related security sub-optimality ranges around 25% but decreases fast with time to near 0% (implying security sub-optimality in the WFH mode equals that in the non-WFH mode) if the impact of employee security effort is time-accumulative (sustainable) even for short time intervals.
Complementary Feature Pyramid Network for Object Detection

The way of constructing a robust feature pyramid is crucial for object detection. However, existing feature pyramid methods, which aggregate multi-level features by using element-wise sum or concatenation, are inefficient to construct a robust feature pyramid. The reason is that these methods cannot be effective in discriminating the relevant semantics of objects. In this article, we propose a Complementary Feature Pyramid Network (CFPN) to aggregate multi-level features selectively and efficiently by exploring complementary information between multi-level features. Specifically, a Spatial Complementary Module (SCM) and a Channel Complementary Module (CCM) are designed and embedded in CFPN to enhance useful information and suppress irrelevant information during feature fusions along spatial and channel dimensions, respectively. CFPN is a generic feature extractor, as evidenced by its seamless integration into single-stage, two-stage, and end-to-end object detectors. Experiments conducted on the COCO and Pascal VOC datasets demonstrate that integrating our CFPN into RetinaNet, Faster RCNN, Cascade RCNN, and Sparse RCNN obtains consistent performance improvements with negligible overheads. Code and models are available at: https://github.com/VIPLab-CQU/CFPN.
A Mechanism for Power Output of the Upper Limbs During Overhead Throw with Stretch-Shortening Cycle

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) on power output in overhead throwing and on the behavior of shoulder extensor muscles by means of kinematics, kinetics and EMG. Thirteen healthy men performed two kinds of medicine ball throw; concentric throw (CT) without SSC and rebound throw (RT) with SSC. All throws were videotaped using a high-speed camera. Kinematics and kinetics such as joint angle, joint torque and joint torque power of the upper limbs were calculated utilizing the inverse dynamics approach. The EMG activities of trapezius, latissimus dorsi, deltoid, pectoralis major and triceps brachii muscles were recorded using surface electrodes. Mean ball power in RT was significantly higher than that in CT. There was a significant correlation between augmentation of mean ball power and that of mean shoulder joint torque power in RT compared with CT. The EMG activities of pectoralis major and triceps brachii muscles showed nearly no activity during the shoulder flexion phase. These results suggest that although enhancement of power by overhead throwing using upper limb muscles was mainly caused by the enhancement of shoulder joint torque power, the shoulder extensor muscles are not eccentrically contracted but passively stretched during shoulder flexion phase in throwing. This finding contradicts a previously proposed mechanism of power enhancement in SSC.
The Influence of Consequence-Based Messages on Public Responses to Tornado Warnings

AbstractThe Central Region Headquarters of the National Weather Service (NWS) recently launched an experimental product that supplements traditional tornado and severe thunderstorm warning products with information about the potential impact of warned storms. As yet, however, we know relatively little about the influence of consequence-based messages on warning responsiveness. To address this gap, we fielded two surveys of U.S. residents that live in tornado-prone regions of the country. Both surveys contained an experiment wherein participants were randomly assigned a consequence-based tornado warning message and asked to indicate how they would respond if they were to receive such a warning. Respondents that were assigned to higher-impact categories were more likely choose protective action than respondents assigned to lower-impact categories. There was, however, a threshold beyond which escalating the projected consequences of the storm no longer increased the probability of protective action. To accou.
Sterile protection against Plasmodium vivax malaria by repeated blood stage infection in a non-human primate model

The malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax remains a major global public health challenge, causing major morbidity across tropical and subtropical regions. Several candidate vaccines are in preclinical and clinical trials, however no vaccine against P. vivax malaria is approved for use in humans. Here we assessed whether P. vivax strain-transcendent immunity can be achieved by repeated infection in Aotus monkeys. For this purpose, we repeatedly infected six animals with blood stages of the P. vivax Salvador 1 (SAL-1) strain until sterile immune, and then challenged with the AMRU-1 strain. Sterile immunity was achieved in 4/4 Aotus monkeys after two homologous infections with the SAL-1 strain, while partial protection against a heterologous AMRU-1 challenge (i.e., delay to infection and reduction in peak parasitemia compared to control) was achieved in 3/3 monkeys. IgG levels based on P. vivax lysate ELISA and protein microarray increased with repeated infections and correlated with the level of homologous protection. Analysis of parasite transcriptional profiles across inoculation levels provided no evidence of major antigenic switching upon homologous or heterologous challenge. In contrast, we observed significant transcriptional differences in the P. vivax core gene repertoire between SAL-1 and AMRU-1. Together with the strain-specific genetic diversity between SAL-1 and AMRU-1 these data suggest that the partial protection upon heterologous challenge is due to molecular differences between strains (at genome and transcriptome level) rather than immune evasion by antigenic switching. Our study demonstrates that sterile immunity against P. vivax can be achieved by repeated homologous blood stage infection in Aotus monkeys, thus providing a benchmark to test the efficacy of candidate blood stage P. vivax malaria vaccines. Author summary Plasmodium vivax is the most widespread human malaria parasite. Elimination efforts are complicated due to the peculiar biology of P. vivax including dormant liver forms, cryptic reservoirs in bone marrow and spleen and a large asymptomatic infectious reservoir in affected populations. Currently there is no vaccine against malaria caused by P. vivax. Here we induce sterile immunity by repeated P. vivax infection with the SAL-1 strain in non-human primates. In contrast, heterologous challenge with the AMRU-1 strain only provided partial protection. Antibody levels against a crude antigen and a protein microarray correlated with the level of homologous protection. Parasite transcriptional profiles across inoculation levels failed to show major antigenic switching across SAL-1 infections or upon heterologous challenge, instead suggesting other mechanisms of immune evasion. Our study demonstrates that sterile immunity against P. vivax can be achieved by repeated blood stage infection in Aotus monkeys, thus providing a benchmark to test the efficacy of candidate blood stage P. vivax malaria vaccines.
Divergent patterns of meiotic double strand breaks and synapsis initiation dynamics suggest an evolutionary shift in the meiosis program between American and Australian marsupials

In eutherian mammals, hundreds of programmed DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are generated at the onset of meiosis. The DNA damage response is then triggered. Although the dynamics of this response is well studied in eutherian mammals, recent findings have revealed different patterns of DNA damage signaling and repair in marsupial mammals. To better characterize these differences, here we analyzed synapsis and the chromosomal distribution of meiotic DSBs markers in three different marsupial species (Thylamys elegans, Dromiciops gliorides, and Macropus eugenii) that represent South American and Australian Orders. Our results revealed inter-specific differences in the chromosomal distribution of DNA damage and repair proteins, which were associated with differing synapsis patterns. In the American species T. elegans and D. gliroides, synapsis progressed exclusively from the chromosomal ends towards interstitial regions. This was accompanied by sparse H2AX phosphorylation, mainly accumulating at chromosomal ends, which appeared conspicuously polarized in a bouquet configuration at early stages of prophase I. Accordingly, RAD51 and RPA were mainly localized at chromosomal ends throughout prophaseI in both American marsupials, likely resulting in reduced recombination rates at interstitial positions. In sharp contrast, synapsis initiated at both interstitial and distal chromosomal regions in the Australian representative M. eugenii, γH2AX had a broad nuclear distribution, and RAD51 and RPA foci displayed an even chromosomal distribution. Given the basal evolutionary position of T. elegans, it is likely that the meiotic features reported in this species represent an ancestral pattern in marsupials and that a shift in the meiotic program occurred after the split of D. gliroides and the Australian marsupial clade. Our results open intriguing questions about the regulation and homeostasis of meiotic DSBs in marsupials. The low recombination rates observed at the interstitial chromosomal regions in American marsupials can result in the formation of large linkage groups, thus having an impact in the evolution of their genomes.
Turbulent rotating convection: an experimental study

We present experimental measurements of velocity and temperature fields in horizontal planes crossing a cylindrical Rayleigh–Bénard convection cell in steady rotation about its vertical axis. The range of dimensionless rotation rates Ω is from zero to 5×104 for a Rayleigh number R = 3.2×108. The corresponding range of convective Rossby numbers is ∞ > Ro > 0.06. The patterns of velocity and temperature and the flow statistics characterize three basic flow regimes. For Ro [Gt ] 1, the flow is dominated by vortex sheets (plumes) typical of turbulent convection without rotation. The flow patterns for Ro ∼ 1 are cyclone-dominated, with anticyclonic vortices rare. As the Rossby number continues to decrease, the number of anticyclonic vortex structures begins to grow but the vorticity PDF in the vicinity of the top boundary layer still shows skewness favouring cyclonic vorticity. Velocity-averaging near the top of the cell suggests the existence of a global circulation pattern for Ro [Gt ] 1.
Nonspecific Membrane-Matrix Interactions Influence Diffusivity of Lipid Vesicles in Hydrogels

The diffusion of extracellular vesicles and liposomes in vivo is affected by different tissue environmental conditions and is of great interest in the development of liposome-based therapeutics and drug-delivery systems. Here, we use a bottom-up biomi-metic approach to better isolate and study steric and electrostatic interactions and their influence on the diffusivity of synthetic large unilamellar vesicles in hydrogel environments. Single-particle tracking of these extracellular vesicle-like particles in agarose hydrogels as an extracellular matrix model shows that membrane deformability and surface charge affect the hydrogel pore spaces that vesicles have access to, which determines overall diffusivity. Moreover, we show that passivation of vesicles with PEGylated lipids, as often used in drug delivery systems enhances diffusivity, but that this effect cannot be fully explained with electrostatic interactions alone. Finally, we compare our experimental findings with existing computational and theoretical work in the field to help explain the non-specific interactions between diffusing particles and gel matrix environments. Statement of Significance The diffusion of nanoparticles in human tissues is dependent on interactions with the surrounding environment. This has wide implications for the development of nanoparticle-based therapeutics and drug delivery systems. Studying these interactions in human tissues and even in model hydrogels composed of reconstituted tissue components can be hampered by the many different complex interactions that can occur. By using a bio-inert hydrogel material like agarose, we remove the influence of specific biochemical interactions, allowing the study of how particle diffusion can be tuned with simple material properties like charge and rigidity. Taking advantage of these non-specific interactions, nanoparticles could one day be engineered to target specific organs by optimizing diffusion in certain tissue environments or retention and immobilization in others.
Continuous Prediction of Leg Kinematics during Walking using Inertial Sensors, Smart Glasses, and Embedded Computing

Unlike traditional hierarchical controllers for robotic leg prostheses and exoskeletons, continuous systems could allow persons with mobility impairments to walk more naturally in real-world environments without requiring high-level switching between locomotion modes. To support these next-generation controllers, we developed a new system called KIFNet (Kinematics and Image Fusing Network) that uses lightweight and efficient deep learning models to continuously predict the leg kinematics during walking. We tested different sensor fusion methods to combine kinematics data from inertial sensors and computer vision data from smart glasses and found that adaptive instance normalization achieved the lowest RMSE predictions for knee and ankle joint kinematics. We also deployed our model on an embedded device. Without inference optimization, our model was 20 times faster than the previous state-of-the-art and achieved 20% higher prediction accuracies, and during some locomotor activities like stair descent, decreased RMSE up to 300%. With inference optimization, our best model achieved 125 FPS on an NVIDIA Jetson Nano. These results demonstrate the potential to build fast and accurate deep learning models for continuous prediction of leg kinematics during walking based on sensor fusion and embedded computing, therein providing a foundation for real-time continuous controllers for robotic leg prostheses and exoskeletons.
Temperature and sex shape reproductive barriers in a climate change hotspot

Climate change is shifting species ranges and altering reproductive interactions within those ranges, offering closely-related species new scope to mate and potentially hybridize. Predicting hybridization and its outcomes requires assessing the interplay of biological and climatic factors that mediate reproductive barriers across life stages. However, few studies have done so across the range of environments that parents and offspring potentially encounter in nature, as is crucial to understand the environmental sensitivity of reproductive isolation and its fate under climate change. We set out to assess prezygotic and postzygotic reproductive barriers, and their dependence on temperature and sex, in sister species of a marine tubeworm (Galeolaria) from a sentinel region for climate change impacts in southern Australia. We performed reciprocal crosses within- and between-species using replicate populations, and assessed fertility of crosses, survival of embryos, and survival of larvae, at five temperatures spanning the thermal ranges of populations in nature. We found that barriers were weak and independent of temperature at fertilization, but stronger and more temperature-sensitive at larval development, as species diverged in thermal tolerance. Barriers were asymmetric between reciprocal hybrids, moreover, suggesting a complex interplay between thermal adaptation in parental lineages and maternal inheritance of factors (e.g., mitochondria, endosymbionts) that influence hybrid viability across temperatures. Together, our findings provide new insights into the roles of temperature and sex in reproductive barriers across early life stages, and point to shifting strengths of reproductive isolation in future climates.
A solution of Hadamard’s problem for a restricted class of operators

in an odd number n -1_3 of space dimensions and those operators equivalent2 to On. These are the so-called trivial operators, and the famous "Hadamard conjecture"3 claims that all Huygens' operators are trivial. Examples to the contrary show that this conjecture cannot be completely true (see [2]-[7]); it is, however, valid for real Huygens' operators with constant principal part in 4 independent variables. This result, which was first established by Matthisson [8], plays a decisive role in our present considerations. In this note we will show that there is a sense in which Hadamard's conjecture is essentially correct for operators of the form
Pitch angle distributions of energetic protons near the earth's bow shock

Measurements of energetic protons between approx.28 and approx.145 keV on ISEE-1 upstream and downstream of the earth's bow shock during times of a radial interplanetary magnetic field are presented. The protons exhibited a slight anti-sunward flow in the spacecraft system in front of the bow shock and a strong flow along the magnetic field in the spacecraft system in the magnetosheath. Compton-Getting transformations of these anisotropies into the plasma frame of reference have been performed. It is argued that the observations can be explained best in terms of particle acceleration by multiple reflection between the bow shock and upstream scattering centers.