Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Left Shoulder as Part-Time Travel Lane Design Alternatives and Transportation Management Center Staff Training Module Development

Permanent capacity expansion, such as adding new lanes, is no longer a viable strategy to address traffic congestion in California; hence, ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) strategies, such as part-time use of the shoulder as a travel lane, need to be explored. The use of the shoulder as a travel lane during peak traffic hours has limited applications in the US, and most use the right shoulder as a part-time travel lane even though either the right or left shoulder (but not both) may be used. Caltrans District 5 is exploring the use of Left Shoulder as a Part-time Travel Lane (LSPTTL) as a piece of the larger project, titled Five Cities Multimodal Transportation Network Enhancement Project (FCMTNEP), aimed at congestion relief near Pismo Beach, CA. Construction is expected to begin in Winter 2025 with a Winter 2027 completion date. Given that this would be the first instance of LSPTTL in California, it is a Project of Division Interest (PoDI) for the California division of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and the District 5 experience may guide similar future installations of the shoulder as travel lane projects in the state. This research uses a microsimulation-based approach to evaluate design alternatives being explored by Caltrans District 5. This approach allows for evaluating the operational and safety effects of each of the alternatives. Furthermore, a Transportation Management Center (TMC) operator training framework has also been developed to ensure that the local TMC personnel can effectively deploy the LSPTTL during routine operations and emergencies. Based on the operational evaluation, the study found no significant difference in travel times associated with the three design alternatives. Alternative 2, which involves the longest segment with LSPTTL among the alternatives, was found to be the safest based on a surrogate safety measure-based evaluation. This framework for evaluating design alternatives for operations and safety effectiveness may be used for future projects that involve the use of the shoulder as a travel lane. For TMC operator training, this report documents key learning objectives. A hands-on training program that involves operators executing the opening and closing of the shoulder for routine and emergency conditions was developed. As the project nears implementation, there is some scope for improvement in the training modules through replication of the exact features of the LSPTTL design and introducing more realism in the TMC simulator training exercises.
The Causal Effect of Class Size on Academic Achievement

This article addresses three questions: Does reduced class size cause higher academic achievement in reading, mathematics, listening, and word recognition skills? If it does, how large are these effects? Does the magnitude of such effects vary significantly across schools? The authors analyze data from Tennessee’s Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio study (STAR) of 1985, where students and teachers are randomly assigned to a small or regular class. The authors propose a three-level multivariate simultaneous equation model with an instrumental variable (IV) and estimation via maximum likelihood (ML) to analyze the data under an assumption of data missing at random (MAR). The IV, random assignment of students to a small or regular class, reduces class size which, by hypothesis, improves academic achievement in these domains. The authors extend Rubin’s Causal Model (RCM) by involving a modified Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA), requiring no interference between classrooms and intact schools. The method accommodates data with a general missing pattern and extracts full information for analysis from the STAR data. The authors investigate both homogenous and heterogenous causal effects of class size on academic achievement scores across schools. The results show that reducing class size improves reading, mathematics, listening, and word recognition test scores from kindergarten to third grade, although the effects appear relatively small in second grade. The authors find no evidence that the causal effects vary across schools.
Developmental Programming-Aging Interactions Have Sex-Specific and Developmental Stage of Exposure Outcomes on Life Course Circulating Corticosterone and Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) Concentrations in Rats Exposed to Maternal Protein-Restricted Diets

The steroids corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) perform multiple life course functions. Rodent life-course circulating corticosterone and DHEA trajectories are unknown. We studied life course basal corticosterone and DHEA in offspring of rats fed protein-restricted (10% protein, R) or control (20% protein, C), pregnancy diet first letter, and/or lactation second letter, producing four offspring groups—CC, RR, CR, and RC. We hypothesize that 1. maternal diet programs are sexually dimorphic, offspring life course steroid concentrations, and 2. an aging-related steroid will fall. Both changes differ with the plastic developmental period offspring experienced R, fetal life or postnatally, pre-weaning. Corticosterone was measured by radioimmunoassay and DHEA by ELISA. Steroid trajectories were evaluated by quadratic analysis. Female corticosterone was higher than male in all groups. Male and female corticosterone were highest in RR, peaked at 450 days, and fell thereafter. DHEA declined with aging in all-male groups. DHEA: corticosterone fell in three male groups but increased in all-female groups with age. In conclusion, life course and sexually dimorphic steroid developmental programming-aging interactions may explain differences in steroid studies at different life stages and between colonies experiencing different early-life programming. These data support our hypotheses of sex and programming influences and aging-related fall in rat life course serum steroids. Life course studies should address developmental programming-aging interactions.
Aspherical Spin Density in the Ferrimagnetic Compound Mn2Sb

The spatial distribution of the unpaired electrons about each manganese atom in the ferrimagnetic compound Mn2Sb (space group P4/nmm) has been measured by diffraction of polarized neutrons from single crystals at room temperature. It is found that this distribution is aspherical and highly compact. The moments for the manganese atoms at the 2a and 2c positions are measured to be −1.48±0.15 μB and 2.66±0.15 μB, respectively. Single‐crystal x‐ray determination of the manganese and antimony 2‐c position parameters for this structure yield the values 0.2897±0.0006 and 0.7207±0.0002, respectively. An unusual feature of the spin density of the manganese atom at the 2‐c position is the displacement of the center of the distribution from its nuclear position.
On finite G-locally primitive graphs and the Weiss conjecture

A graph Γ is said to be a G-locally primitive graph, for G ≥ Aut Γ, if for every vertex, α, the stabiliser Gα induces a primitive permutation group on Γ (α) the set of vertices adjacent to α. In 1978 Richard Weiss conjectured that there exists a function f: ℕ →ℕ such that for any finite connected vertex-transitive G-locally primitive graph of valency d and a vertex α of the graph, |Gα| ≥ f(d). The purpose of this paper is to prove that, in the case Soc(G) = Sz(q), the conjecture is true.
Production Scheduling by the Transportation Method of Linear Programming

With fluctuating sales, a manufacturer must have fluctuating production, or fluctuating inventory, or both. Penalties are associated with either type of fluctuation. Several papers place this problem into a conventional linear-programming framework. This paper suggests that the same problem may be placed into a transportation-method framework and, further, that many transportation problems may be extended to include multiple time periods where this is meaningful. A generalized scheduling problem is placed here into the standard form of the transportation table.
Liver Injury in Children with COVID-19: A Systematic Review

Background: The rapid global spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection has become a major health issue with high morbidity and mortality rates. COVID-19 in children showed different unique presentations. Besides respiratory symptoms, a growing body of evidence indicates multi-organ manifestation, including liver involvement. In this regard, several data supported an association between COVID-19 infection and liver injury in adults, while on the other hand, there is compelling but currently limited evidence in children. In this systematic review, we summarize data of updated literature regarding the evidence of acute liver injury in children with COVID-19. Methods: Online scientific articles were explored on PubMed and Google Scholar databases using keywords. The systematic review was performed under the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines Results: The literature search yielded 238 articles, of which 16 were identified as relevant to the topic and met the inclusion criteria. A total of 564 pediatric patients were confirmed positive for COVID-19 by PCR examination, involving 298 (52.9%) boys and 266 (47.1%) girls with an age range of 1 day - 17 years. Liver injuries have been reported in pediatric COVID-19 patients, with prevalence ranging from 1.5 to 52%. Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 virus infection in children shows a unique presentation. Several reports suggest that liver injury correlates with the severity of COVID-19 disease. Therefore, monitoring liver function in COVID-19 patients is important to assess the prognosis.
Community Health Representatives as Trusted Sources for Increasing Representation of American Indian Communities in Clinical Research

Indigenous and American Indian Alaskan Native (AI/AN) community members are systematically underrepresented in clinical trial research. This paper focuses on exploratory steps to partner with Native Nations of Arizona to engage Community Health Representatives (CHR) as a trusted source for building COVID-19 clinical trial research, including vaccine trials awareness. CHRs are frontline public health workers who apply a unique understanding of the experience, language, and culture of the population served. This workforce has entered the spotlight as essential to the prevention and control of COVID-19. Methods: Three Tribal CHR programs were engaged to develop and refine culturally centered educational materials and a pre-post survey using a consensus-based decision-making approach. CHRs used these materials in brief education sessions during regular client home visits and community events. Results: At 30 days post CHR intervention, participants (N = 165) demonstrated significantly increased awareness about and ability to enroll in COVID-19 treatment and vaccine trials. Participants also described a significant increase in trust in researchers, decreased perceived barriers related to cost for participation in a clinical trial, and improved belief that participation in a COVID-19 clinical trial for treatment was considered a benefit to American Indian and Alaskan Native people. Conclusion: CHRs as trusted sources of information, coupled with culturally centered education materials designed by CHRs for CHR clients, demonstrated a promising approach to improved awareness of clinical trial research generally and COVID-19 trials specifically among Indigenous and American Indian community members of Arizona.
Modulational stability of electron plasma wave spectra

Analytical models for weakly nonlinear electron plasma waves are considered in order to obtain dynamic equations for the space-time evolution of their local power spectra. The model contains the wave kinetic equation as a limiting case for slow, long wavelength modulations. It is demonstrated that a finite spectral width in wavenumbers has a stabilizing effect on the modulational instability. The results invite a simple heuristic relation between the spectral width and the root-mean-square amplitude of stable stationary turbulent Langmuir wave spectra. A non-local average dispersion relation is derived as a limiting form by using the formalism developed for the spectral dynamics.
Ectopic expression of the AtCDF1 transcription factor in potato enhances tuber starch and amino acid contents and yield under open field conditions

Introduction Cycling Dof transcription factors (CDFs) have been involved in different aspects of plant growth and development. In Arabidopsis and tomato, one member of this family (CDF1) has recently been associated with the regulation of primary metabolism and abiotic stress responses, but their roles in crop production under open field conditions remain unknown. Methods In this study, we compared the growth, and tuber yield and composition of plants ectopically expressing the CDF1 gene from Arabidopsis under the control of the 35S promoter with wild-type (WT) potato plants cultured in growth chamber and open field conditions. Results In growth chambers, the 35S::AtCDF1 plants showed a greater tuber yield than the WT by increasing the biomass partition for tuber development. Under field conditions, the ectopic expression of CDF1 also promoted the sink strength of the tubers, since 35S::AtCDF1 plants exhibited significant increases in tuber size and weight resulting in higher tuber yield. A metabolomic analysis revealed that tubers of 35S::AtCDF1 plants cultured under open field conditions accumulated higher levels of glucose, starch and amino acids than WT tubers. A comparative proteomic analysis of tubers of 35S::AtCDF1 and WT plants cultured under open field conditions revealed that these changes can be accounted for changes in the expression of proteins involved in energy production and different aspects of C and N metabolism. Discussion The results from this study advance our collective understanding of the role of CDFs and are of great interest for the purposes of improving the yield and breeding of crop plants.
Storage of spatial-frequency information and spatial-frequency discrimination

The spatial frequencies of two gratings can be discriminated when they differ by about 5%. This discrimination threshold was found to be remarkably independent of interstimulus interval in a temporal two-alternative forced-choice procedure. Discrimination threshold between parallel gratings did not change over a 50:1 range of interstimulus intervals between 0.4 and 20 sec; spatial-frequency information is stored with at least 5% precision without appreciable decay up to 20 sec at least. Spatial-frequency discrimination between orthogonal gratings was the same as spatial-frequency discrimination between parallel gratings and did not change over the 25:1 range of interstimulus intervals investigated (0.4 to 10 sec). It is suggested that, after being encoded to a high degree of precision by a size-opponent mechanism that is tuned to orientation, spatial-frequency information is stored in a form that is independent of orientation.
Effect of Exchange-Traded Funds Arbitrage Transactions on their Underlying Holdings

A critical aspect of trading Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) is the arbitrage trading strategy taken by authorized participants (APs) to keep ETF prices in line with their net asset values (NAVs). ETF arbitrage trading is a strategy that exploits the discrepancies between an ETF price and the value of the ETF’s underlying assets. In this study, I quantitatively examine the eﬀect of ETF arbitrage on the underlying assets of an ETF. I develop a dynamic state-space model that jointly estimates the price dynamics of an ETF and its underlying assets by explicitly incorporating the ETF arbitrage. The model is estimated individually for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) and the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH). The empirical results show that ETF liquidity shocks propagate to the underlying assets via the ETF arbitrage mechanism. These ETF liquidity shocks add a permanent layer of transitory volatility to the underlying asset prices. I ﬁnd that a unit of liquidity shock to DIA brings a range of 0.1% to 0.93% of extra volatility to the underlying assets of DIA. Similarly, a unit of liquidity shock to SMH adds a range of 0.33% to 0.95% of additional volatility to the underlying assets. In addition, I show that it takes APs longer to correct deviations between the ETF price and its NAV. It takes approximately 4 and 10 minutes for APs to perform the ETF arbitrage for DIA and SMH, respectively. Finally, the ﬁndings suggest that an ETF arbitrage transaction speeds up the price discovery process in the ETF markets. There are approximately 74% and 67% variations in the premiums of DIA and SMH due to price discovery, respectively.
Neuronal representation of bimanual arm motor imagery in the motor cortex of a tetraplegia human, a pilot study

Introduction How the human brain coordinates bimanual movements is not well-established. Methods Here, we recorded neural signals from a paralyzed individual’s left motor cortex during both unimanual and bimanual motor imagery tasks and quantified the representational interaction between arms by analyzing the tuning parameters of each neuron. Results We found a similar proportion of neurons preferring each arm during unimanual movements, however, when switching to bimanual movements, the proportion of contralateral preference increased to 71.8%, indicating contralateral lateralization. We also observed a decorrelation process for each arm’s representation across the unimanual and bimanual tasks. We further confined that these changes in bilateral relationships are mainly caused by the alteration of tuning parameters, such as the increased bilateral preferred direction (PD) shifts and the significant suppression in bilateral modulation depths (MDs), especially the ipsilateral side. Discussion These results contribute to the knowledge of bimanual coordination and thus the design of cutting-edge bimanual brain-computer interfaces.
The Structure of a Presented Group Associated to an Extended Affine Root System

Here we study the structure of a group with the presentation by conjugation which has been assigned to an extended affine root system R. We show that is isomorphic to the direct product of the extended affine Weyl group 𝒲 of R and the kernel of a natural epimorphism . The article also shows that has structural features that are well known for 𝒲.
GHASP: an Hα kinematic survey of spiral and irregular galaxies – III. 15 new velocity fields and study of 46 rotation curves

We present Fabry-Perot observations obtained in the frame of the GHASP survey (Gassendi HAlpha survey of SPirals). We have derived the Ha maps, the velocity fields and the rotation curves for a set of 15 galaxies. The data presented in this paper are combined with the data published in our two previous papers in order to make a preliminary analysis of the rotation curves obtained for 46 galaxies. We check the consistency of our data with the Tully-Fisher relationship and conclude that our Ha rotation curves reach the maximum velocity in most of the cases, even with solid-body rotating galaxies. We find that our rotation curves, on average, almost reach the isophotal radius R 25 . We confirm the trend, already mentioned by Rubin, Waterman & Kenney and Marquez et al., that the maximum extension of the Ha rotation curves increases with the type of the spiral galaxy, up to t ∼7-8 and we find that it decreases for magellanic and irregular galaxies. We also confirm the trend seen by Marquez et al. that later types tend to have lower values of the internal slope of the rotation curve, in agreement with Rubin et al.
Explosion Gas Bubbles Near Simple Boundaries

Finite element analyses of explosion gas bubbles show that including the compressibility of the surrounding media leads to appreciable differences in key areas of the bubble’s behavior. In order to more fully understand the behavior of bubbles created by detonations near simple boundaries, analyses incorporating fluid compressibility were conducted at various stand-off distances from simple rigid and constant pressure surface boundaries. The results from these analyses serve to characterize the behavior of the bubbles for the charge type, charge weight, and hydrostatic pressure used in the analyses.
On the Cauchy problem for focusing and defocusing Gross-Pitaevskii hierarchies

We consider the dynamical Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) hierarchy on $\R^d$, $d\geq1$, for cubic, quintic, focusing and defocusing interactions. For both the focusing and defocusing case, and any $d\geq1$, we prove local existence and uniqueness of solutions in certain Sobolev type spaces $\cH_\xi^\alpha$ of sequences of marginal density matrices. The regularity is accounted for by $\alpha>\frac12& if $d=1$, $\alpha>\frac d2-\frac{1}{2(p-1)} $ if $d\geq2$ and $(d,p)\neq(3,2)$, and $\alpha\geq1$ if $(d,p)=(3,2)$, where $p=2$ for the cubic, and $p=4$ for the quintic GP hierarchy; the parameter $\xi>0$ is arbitrary and determines the energy scale of the problem. This result includes the proof of an a priori spacetime bound conjectured by Klainerman and Machedon for the cubic GP hierarchy in $d=3$. In the defocusing case, we prove the existence and uniqueness of solutions globally in time for the cubic GP hierarchy for $1\leq d\leq3$, and of the quintic GP hierarchy for $1\leq d\leq 2$, in an appropriate space of Sobolev type, and under the assumption of an a priori energy bound. For the focusing GP hierarchies, we prove lower bounds on the blowup rate. Also pseudoconformal invariance is established in the cases corresponding to $L^2$ criticality, both in the focusing and defocusing context. All of these results hold without the assumption of factorized initial conditions.
Backward Stochastic Differential Equations Driven By Càdlàg Martingales

Backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) arise in many financial problems. Although there exists a growing number of papers considering general financial markets, the theory of BSDEs has been developed just in the Brownian setting. We consider BSDEs driven by an ${\bf R}^d$-valued cadlag martingale and we study the properties of the solutions in the case of a, possibly nonuniform, Lipschitz generator.
Robustness of iterated function systems of Lipschitz maps

Abstract Let $\{X_n\}_{n\in{\mathbb{N}}}$ be an ${\mathbb{X}}$ -valued iterated function system (IFS) of Lipschitz maps defined as $X_0 \in {\mathbb{X}}$ and for $n\geq 1$ , $X_n\;:\! =\;F(X_{n-1},\vartheta_n)$ , where $\{\vartheta_n\}_{n \ge 1}$ are independent and identically distributed random variables with common probability distribution $\mathfrak{p}$ , $F(\cdot,\cdot)$ is Lipschitz continuous in the first variable, and $X_0$ is independent of $\{\vartheta_n\}_{n \ge 1}$ . Under parametric perturbation of both F and $\mathfrak{p}$ , we are interested in the robustness of the V-geometrical ergodicity property of $\{X_n\}_{n\in{\mathbb{N}}}$ , of its invariant probability measure, and finally of the probability distribution of $X_n$ . Specifically, we propose a pattern of assumptions for studying such robustness properties for an IFS. This pattern is implemented for the autoregressive processes with autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic errors, and for IFS under roundoff error or under thresholding/truncation. Moreover, we provide a general set of assumptions covering the classical Feller-type hypotheses for an IFS to be a V-geometrical ergodic process. An accurate bound for the rate of convergence is also provided.