Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Random sequential packing simulations in three dimensions for aligned cubes

This particular three-dimensional random packing limit problem is to determine the mean fraction of a cubic space that would be occupied by aligned, fixed, equalsize cubes, placed at random locations sequentially until no more can be added. No analytical solution has yet been found for this problem. Simulation results for a finite region and finite number of attempts were extrapolated to an infinite number of attempts (N →∞) in an infinite region by multiple linear regression, using volume fraction occupied (F) as a linear combination of the ratio of the length of the small cube sides (S) to the length of the cubic region side (L) and the cube root of the ratio of the region volume to the total volume of cubes tried, (L 3/NS 3)⅓. These results for random packing in a volume with penetrable walls can be adjusted with a multiplicative correction factor to give the results for impenetrable walls. A total of N = 107 attempts at placement were made for L/S = 20/1 and N = 14 × 106 attempts were made for L/S = 10/1. The results for volume fraction packed are correlated by F = 0.430(±0.008) + 0.966(±0.072)(S/L) – 0.236(±0.029)(L 3/NS)⅓ . The numbers in parentheses are twice the standard errors of estimate of the coefficients, indicating the 95% confidence intervals due to random errors. This value for the packing density limit, 0.430 ± 0.008, is slightly larger than that given by a conjecture by Palásti [10], 0.4178. Our value is consistent with that obtained by rather different simulation methods by Jodrey and Tory [8], 0.4227 ± 0.0006, and by Blaisdell and Solomon [2], 0.4262.
CERN-PH-TH / 2009-159 Brane Embeddings in AdS 4 × CP

We construct D-brane embeddings in AdS4×CP by studying the consistency conditions following from the pull back of target space equations of motion. We explicitly discuss the supersymmetry preserved by these embeddings by analyzing the compatibility of kappa symmetry projections with the target space Killing spinors in each case. The embeddings correspond to AdS/dCFT dualities involving a CFT with a defect.
Device simulation of cuprous oxide heterojunction solar cells

We developed a device simulation model of cuprous oxide (Cu2O)-based heterojunction solar cells. The developed model well reproduces the reported experimental current density–voltage characteristics and the external quantum efficiency results. By using the model, we explored structures for high-efficiency Cu2O-based heterojunction solar cells. It was found that the electron affinity of the buffer layer between transparent conducting oxide and Cu2O significantly affects solar cell performance. Surface recombination on the rear side of the device can be suppressed by employing a highly doped back surface layer. Our device simulation demonstrates a conversion efficiency of 16% without any optical confinement structure.
Scheduling with uncertainty: A proactive approach using Partial Order Schedules

This work addresses the broad question of how tobuild schedules that are robust in the face of dynamicexecution environments. This question is of consider-able practical importance, as a major obstacle to theuse of schedules in practice is their brittleness whenactivities cannot be executed as planned.Scheduling can be deﬁned as the assignment of startand end times to a set of activities (or tasks) subject to anumber of constraints. Constraints are typically recog-nized in either time constraints and/or resource con-straints. Task synchronization in the production chainof a factory, management of space missions, and trans-portation scheduling to support crisis management, areonly but a few representative examples. However, thesynthesis of initially feasible schedules is hardly eversufﬁcient as, in real-world working environments, un-foreseen events tend to quickly invalidate the schedulespredictive assumptions and bring into question the con-tinuing validity of the schedule’s prescribed actions.Therefore, to safeguard against unforeseen events, thethesis defended in this dissertation is that:
Elicitation Designs and Time Discounting: Comparison of Predictive Power on Behavior

A growing number of empirical studies have aimed to identify dynamic inconsistency by combining diverse sets of elicitation designs and tested the extent to which this important component of individual heterogeneity predicts behavior; however, relatively little consensus on which designs are the most reliable for predicting behavior. Using a representative sample randomly assigned across elicitation designs, we gather eight measures of dynamic inconsistency by elicitation design and compare their power to predict behavior. We examine a multiple price list or a titration, whether to ask on amount or delay, and time horizons at two time periods starting either at different points in time or at the same point. We find that the elicitation design combined with (1) a titration, (2) asking subjects on amount, and (3) time horizons starting at different points in time predicts behavior well. Finally, we discuss the implications in the domain of savings and debt.
Error Analysis of Convolutional Beamspace Algorithms

Beamspace processing for DOA estimation offers low computational complexity and high DOA resolution. Moreover, unlike classical beamspace methods, convolutional beamspace (CBS) preserves the Vandermonde structure of uniform linear array output, so no additional preparation is needed to apply root-MUSIC. In this paper, theoretical MSE of CBS is given when MUSIC or root-MUSIC is used. Error variance can be derived from the asymptotic probability distribution of the eigenvectors of an average finite-snapshot covariance matrix. Meanwhile, the bias due to the filtered stopband sources is given by first-order perturbation analysis. Known advantages of CBS are confirmed by the MSE analysis. For example, CBS yields smaller MSE for correlated sources than element-space. The theoretical results are verified by simulations.
The Effect of Pneumococcal, Influenza, and COVID-19 Vaccinations on COVID-19 Hospitalization and Progression in People over 65 Years Old Living in Nursing Homes

Infectious diseases pose a major threat to elderly populations. Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria, influenza-causing viruses, and COVID-19 viruses cause three pathologies in the respiratory system with similar symptoms, transmission routes, and risk factors. Our study aimed to evaluate the effects of pneumococcal, influenza, and COVID-19 vaccinations on the status of COVID-19 hospitalization and progression in people over 65 years of age living in nursing homes. This study was performed in all nursing homes and elderly care centers in the Uskudar district of Istanbul.The diagnosis rate of COVID-19 was determined as 49%, the rate of hospitalization as 22.4%, the rate of hospitalization in the intensive care unit as 12.2%. The rate of intubation was determined as 10.4%, the rate of mechanical ventilation as 11.1% and the rate of COVID-19 related mortality rate as 9.7%. When the factors affecting the diagnosis of COVID-19 were examined, the presence and dose of COVID-19 vaccine was protective. When the factors affecting hospitalization status were examined, male sex and presence of chronic disease were risk factors; four doses of COVID-19 vaccine and influenza vaccine and pneumococcal vaccine together with COVID-19 vaccine were protective. When the factors affecting COVID-19-related death were examined, the male sex was a risk factor; the pneumococcal and influenza vaccine together with COVID-19 vaccine were protective. Our results revealed that the availability of influenza and pneumococcal vaccines positively impacted the progression of COVID-19 disease in the elderly population living in nursing homes.
One-Shot Medical Action Recognition With A Cross-Attention Mechanism And Dynamic Time Warping

In this paper, we address the classification of medical actions with only one single sample by developing a novel one-shot learning framework which contains both cross-attention and dynamic time warping (DTW) modules. To be concrete, we firstly transform the raw skeleton sequence into the signal-level image representation. We exploit a metric learning approach, which is the prototypical network for the proposed one-shot learning framework and choose the residual network (ResNet18) as the backbone which is widely used in recent years. Cross-attention is applied for guiding the network to focus on the more important joints from each specific action. The cross-attention mechanism that applies between the support and query set will be adapted for mining and matching the relationships with the human body. Furthermore, a DTW module is introduced to mitigate the temporal information mismatching issue between the actions from the support and query sets. The experimental results on the NTU RGB+D 120 dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approach and the improved performance compared to the baseline approach. The code of this work is available at 1.
Transferring Quantified Emotion Knowledge for the Detection of Depression in Alzheimer’s Disease Using Forestnets

Progressive loss of memory is the most known symptom of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD); however, it also affects other cognitive skills and leads to depression symptoms. This paper presents a transfer learning strategy for automatically detecting AD and depression in AD patients using acoustic information and ForestNet, an artificial neural network that allows computing the contribution of a set of features to a model’s decision. The methodology consists of training ForestNet with a dataset commonly used for emotion recognition; then, we fine-tune the pre-trained model to detect AD and depression in AD. We trained the models with several acoustic features commonly used for emotion and AD applications. Unweighted average recalls of up to 0.87 were achieved to classify the disease and up to 0.82 to detect depression in AD. Our results indicate that the information obtained from the Arousal Valence plane may be suitable for discriminating and analyzing depression in AD.
Developing generalized height-diameter models for natural brutian pine stands in Antalya district

Kizilcam, ulkemizde orman urunleri sanayisi icin en onemli ticari agac turlerinden biridir. Bu calismada, Antalya Yoresi dogal kizilcam mescereleri icin gogus capi ve bazi mescere ozellikleri bagimsiz degisken olarak kullanilarak cap (d)-boy (h) modelleri gelistirilmistir. Calismada, toplam 16 adet genellestirilmis d-h modeli, Antalya Yoresi dogal kizilcam mescerelerinden alinan 59 ornek alan verisi kullanilarak test edilmistir. Bu amacla ornek alan verileri iki gruba ayrilmis, bir kismi (%85) model gelistirmek ve diger bir kismi da (%15) gelistirilen modellerin test edilmesi amaciyla kullanilmistir. Gelistirilen modellerin boy tahminlerindeki performanslari, alti farkli olcut degerleri kullanilarak karsilastirilmis ve elde edilen sonuclar degerlendirilmistir. En basarili sonuclar sirasiyla, Pienaar (1991-II), Sloboda vd. (1993-I) ve Sharma ve Parton (2007) tarafindan gelistirilen modellerle elde edilmistir. Bagimsiz veri seti kullanilarak yapilan degerlendirmede de benzer sonuclar elde edilmistir. Anahtar kelimeler: Kizilcam, Boy, Cap, Genellestirilmis modeller
Saliency-driven Shape Preservation for Image Resizing

We present a novel image resizing method with mesh deformation technique which ensures important regions undergo a similarity transformation. To accomplish this, a mesh is defined over an image. In initial mesh the similarity invariance of local region is calculated based on triangle similarity. When resizing the image,we construct a quadratic energy to measure the similarity error for each local region.The resizing result is obtained by minimizing the energy function sum with salience as weight. The method is enough efficient for it only solves a system of linear equations.Compared to previous methods, our method can preserve the shape of important region better.
Does Tobacco Smoking Affect the Postoperative Outcome of MIS Lumbar Decompression Surgery?

Background: Tobacco smoking is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Several authors reported a significant negative impact of smoking on the outcome of spinal surgeries. However, comparative studies on the effect of smoking on the outcome of minimally invasive (MIS) spinal decompression are rare with conflicting results. In this study, we aimed to evaluate clinical outcomes and postoperative complications following MIS decompression in current and former smoking patients compared to those of non-smoking patients. Methods: We used our prospectively collected database to retrospectively analyse the records of 188 consecutive patients treated with MIS lumbar decompression at our institution between November 2013 and July 2017. Patients were divided into groups of smokers (S), previous smokers (PS) and non-smokers (N). The S group and the PS group comprised 31 and 40 patients, respectively. The N group included 117 patients. The outcome measures included perioperative complications, revision surgery and length of stay. Patient-reported outcome measures included a visual analogue scale (VAS) for back pain and leg pain, as well as the Oswestry disability index (ODI) for evaluating functional outcomes. Results: Demographic variables, comorbidity and other preoperative variables were comparable between the three groups. A comparison of perioperative complications and revision surgery rates showed no significant difference between the groups. All groups showed significant improvement in their ODI and VAS scores at 12 and 24 months following surgery. As shown by a multivariate analysis, current smokers had lower chances of improvement, exceeding the minimal clinical important difference (MCID) in ODI and VAS for leg pain at 12 months but not 24 months postoperatively. Conclusions: Our findings show that except for a possible delay in improvement in leg pain and disability, tobacco smoking has no substantial adverse impact on complications and revision rates following MIS spinal decompressions.
An investigation of undergraduate calculus students' conceptual understanding of the definite integral

Object As an abstract object the definite integral is considered a formal object, independent of context. Thus one analyzes the properties of the definite integral and its relationships to other mathematical objects. Included in this representation is knowing, and being able to work with, a definition for the definite integral. Additionally, the notion of improper integrals could be included here. Ferrini-Mundy and Lauten (1994), in investigating their student Sandy’s understanding of Riemann sums and a definition for the definite integral, noted that at best this understanding was vague and “not necessary to her routine solution of calculus problems” (p. 42). When asked what the limit has to do with integration, Sandy admitted that she was not sure. Finally, within the discussion related to a definition of the definite R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
Comparative Toxicity Analysis of Fenpropathrin with Its Two Commercial Formulations on Developing Zebrafish Embryos

Fenpropathrin displays enduring effects on aquatic environment which can be highly toxic and accumulative to non-targeted aquatic organisms like fish. While most of the previous studies focused on the toxicity of analytical grade of Fenpropathrin, insufficient attention has been paid to compare toxicity of the active ingredient (a.i) with its commercial formulation. Therefore, the present study is an attempt to evaluate the lethal as well as sublethal toxicity along with cardiac, morphological, behavioral and neurotoxic biomarker responses induced by Fenpropathrin and its commercial formulation Meothrin and Danitol on zebrafish embryos. The study reveals 96-hour (h) LC50 values that are 0.156(0.121-0.202), 0.953(0.736-1.248) and 1.168(0.913- 1.503) mg a.i/L; 96 h EC50 values are 0.016, 0.152 and 0.369 mg a.i/L and Teratogenic Index (TI) ratio of 9.75, 6.26 and 3.16 for Fenpropathrin, Meothrin and Danitol respectively (Fenpropathrin>Meothrin>Danitol). The reduction in toxicity in commercial formulations may be attributed to Control Release Systems (CRS). The study also reveals that intensity of malformations, teratogenic potential, behavioral abnormality, cardiotoxicity and neurotoxicity are more prominent in Fenpropathrin when compared to its two formulations.
Splenic Artery Embolism in Liver Transplant Patients: A Single-Center Experience

Background: Hypersplenism, portal hypertension, and ascites have been seen after liver transplants. Patients are usually treated medically with refractory patients potentially undergoing splenectomy. Splenic artery embolism (SAE) is an alternative that can be performed to limit the surgical intervention that may have the benefit of improving portal hypertension. Few studies have studied the effect on main portal vein (MPV) velocities and hepatic artery resistive indices (HARIs) which may be beneficial as markers of portal hypertension. Purpose: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of interventional radiology (IR)-guided SAE for the management of portal hypertension in patients who have had liver transplants. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on liver transplant patients who had undergone IR-guided SAE post-transplant at a single tertiary transplant center from 2012 to 2022. The primary outcome of intervention efficacy was quantified by peak HARIs and MPV velocities. Ultrasound with Doppler obtained before and after the intervention was reviewed for these parameters. Secondary outcomes included adverse events at the time of the procedure and within one year of the procedure, the need for splenectomy, and spleen size. Results: Twenty-eight patients met the criteria for inclusion. The mean age of patients was 52.5 years (21-71 years) and the time after transplant was 149.5 days (2-1588 days). About 96.4% of SAEs were technically successful (n=27). Twenty-one patients had MPV velocities available, and 24 had peak HARIs available. In these patients, HARIs decreased by an average of 0.063 (95% CI 0.014-0.112) after SAE. MPV velocity decreased by an average of 47.2 cm/s (95% CI 27.3-67.1) after SAE. About 10.4% of patients (n=3) developed a procedure-related complication, all of which were femoral access site aneurysms. No (0) patients suffered from bleeding, infections, or abscesses after the procedure. About 10.7% of patients (n=3) required splenectomy after SAE: one splenectomy was due to technical failure and two were due to refractory symptoms. Conclusion: We performed one of the first analyses on MPV and RI and showed that our patients saw an improvement post-embolization with a theoretical improvement in portal hypertension. The complication rate and risk of infection seem to be acceptable risks, making SAE a feasible option for management.
Blind Source Counting and Separation with Relative Harmonic Coefficients

Blind source separation aims to recover a series of unmixed signals from only a mixture recording of source signals. For the mixture of speech signals where sources have unique spatial positions, the relative transfer function has been found useful as it contains the spatial information of each source regardless of its signal. In this paper, we transfer a previous relative transfer function based separation method into the wave domain by utilizing a higher-order microphone for the mixture recording. Consequently, the higher-order microphone enables the processing with relative harmonic coefficients, which provides better independency between different coefficient components than the conventional relative transfer functions in each time frame. We demonstrate that the proposed method using relative harmonic coefficients outperforms the relative transfer function based method in highly reverberant rooms through simulation with both simulated and real measured room impulse response data.
Ensiling Characteristics, In Vitro Rumen Fermentation Patterns, Feed Degradability, and Methane and Ammonia Production of Berseem (Trifolium alexandrinum L.) Co-Ensiled with Artichoke Bracts (Cynara cardunculus L.)

Simple Summary Despite the importance of legume forage silage in ruminant livestock feeding, its low water-soluble carbohydrate content, great buffering capacity, and urea release to the environment limit its value. Ensilage of artichoke byproducts appears to be an environmentally efficient means of disposing of artichoke crops waste. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of berseem co-ensiling with graded levels of artichoke bracts on silage characteristics. Moreover, the changes in ruminal fermentation characteristics and methane and ammonia production were evaluated using a buffalo inoculum source. The results showed that the co-silage of berseem and artichoke bracts considerably enhanced the silage quality, particularly after 30 days of ensiling at intermediate ratios. Moreover, the in vitro rumen degradation was significantly improved by artichoke bracts concentration of 500 g/kg fresh forage. Abstract This study investigated the effect of co-ensiling increasing levels of artichoke bracts (Cynara cardunculus L.) with berseem (Trifolium alexandrinum L.) (100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, and 0:100, respectively) on silage quality after 0, 30, 60, and 120 days. Moreover, the in vitro rumen fermentation characteristics and methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3-N) production were evaluated using a buffalo inoculum source. The results showed that pH of the silage and the concentration of acetic, propionic, butyric acid, and NH3-N significantly decreased (L; p < 0.01) with the increasing amounts of artichoke bracts in the mixture. At 30 and 60 days of ensiling, the highest lactic acid concentration was observed at intermediate proportions of artichoke bracts (p < 0.01). Cumulative gas production was higher in artichoke bracts than in the berseem silage. After 24 h of incubation, the highest value (p < 0.05) of truly dry matter, organic matter, natural detergent fiber degradability, and NH3-N concentration was recorded with 500 g/kg of forage mixtures. As the artichoke bract concentration increased, the partitioning factor and ruminal pH declined linearly (p ≤ 0.05). No significant differences were observed for total volatile fatty acids and volatile fatty acids molar proportions. In summary, co-ensiling artichoke bracts with berseem at a ratio of 1:1 might be a promising and easy method for the production of high-quality silage from legume forage with positively manipulating rumen fermentation.
The relative role of soil moisture and vapor pressure deficit in affecting the Indian vegetation productivity

Atmospheric aridity (vapor pressure deficit, VPD) and soil moisture (SM) deficit limit plant photosynthesis and, thus, affect vegetation carbon uptake. The strong correlation between SM and VPD makes it challenging to delineate their relative contributions to regional vegetation productivity. Addressing this gap is vital to understand the future trajectory of plant productivity in India—the second-highest contributor to global greening. Here, we separate the controls of SM and VPD on the Indian vegetation using statistical and causal analysis. We found that vegetation productivity in India is primarily controlled by SM limitation (87.66% of grids) than VPD limitation (12.34% of grids). Vegetation has a varying association with SM and VPD across different agroecological regions in India. The negative impact of VPD on vegetation carbon uptake is not visible in high-rainfall areas of India. These findings advance our understanding of vegetation dynamics under regional dryness stress and can enhance dynamic vegetation model estimates for India under changing climate scenarios.