Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Complexity of the Simplex Method

The simplex method is a well-studied and widely-used pivoting method for solving linear programs. When Dantzig originally formulated the simplex method, he gave a natural pivot rule that pivots into the basis a variable with the most violated reduced cost. In their seminal work, Klee and Minty showed that this pivot rule takes exponential time in the worst case. We prove two main results on the simplex method. Firstly, we show that it is PSPACE-complete to find the solution that is computed by the simplex method using Dantzig's pivot rule. Secondly, we prove that deciding whether Dantzig's rule ever chooses a specific variable to enter the basis is PSPACE-complete. We use the known connection between Markov decision processes (MDPs) and linear programming, and an equivalence between Dantzig's pivot rule and a natural variant of policy iteration for average-reward MDPs. We construct MDPs and then show PSPACE-completeness results for single-switch policy iteration, which in turn imply our main results for the simplex method.
ECOTOXICOLOGICAL RECOVERY OF AGRICULTURAL DRAINAGE WATER IMPACT ON CLARIAS GARIEPINUS IN EL-FAYOUM GOVERNORATE, EGYPT -

Water and catfish samples were collected from two main drainage canals in El-Fyoum Governorate (El-Bats and El-Wadi) and from Wadi El-Rayan lake where effluents of El-Wadi drain mixed with Bahr Yousef fresh water, branch of the river Nile, discharged directly. Fish were subjected to different analyses in comparison with fish transferred from El-Bats drain and reared in dechlorinated tap water in laboratory for a week. Quality of water samples collected from the different studied ecosystems, revealed a significant increase in ammoni, nitrite, copper, lead, cadmium, lindane and aldrin of the studied drainage canals water (El-Bats and El-Wadi) than that collected from Wadi El-Rayan Lake. Fish collected from the El-Bats drainage canal bioaccumulated heavy metal (Pb, Cd and Cu) and pesticides (Lindan and aldrin) in gills, liver and muscles much higher than that collected from El-Wadi drain. Moreover, fish collected from the drainage canals showed highly significant differences at P< 0.01 with the lowest RBCs, Ht, Hb, total protein, total lipids but highest methaemoglobin level, serum glucose level, creatinine, uric acid contents as well as the activities of AST and ALT in comparison with those of fish collected from Wadi El-Rayan Lake. However, fish collected from El-Bats drainage canal and reared in dechlorinated tap water for a week revealed recovery in all studied parameters to normal levels as well as fish collected from Wadi El-Rayan lake that exposed to agricultural drainage water mixed with Bahr Yousef fresh water. Therefore, solutions have to be found; otherwise the virgin wetland, Wadi El-Rayan Lake, will face pollution problems similar to those of Lake Qarun where El-Bats drain discharged directly without any treatment.
A Terahertz-Microfluidic Chip with a Few Arrays of Asymmetric Meta-Atoms for the Ultra-Trace Sensing of Solutions

Biosensing with terahertz (THz) waves has received large amounts of attention due to its potential to detect the functional expression of biomolecules in a label-free fashion. However, many practical challenges against the diffraction limit of THz waves and the strong absorption of THz waves into polar solvents still remain in the development of compact biosensors. Here, we present a non-linear, optical, crystal-based THz-microfluidic chip with a few arrays of asymmetric meta-atoms, an elementary unit of metamaterials, for the measurement of trace amounts of solution samples. A near-field THz emission source, that is locally generated in the process of optical rectification at a fs (femtosecond) laser irradiation spot, induces a sharp Fano resonance and modifies the resonance frequency of the meta-atoms when the channel is filled with solution samples of different concentrations. Using this chip, we successfully detected minute changes in the concentration of trace amounts of mineral water and aqueous sugar solutions by monitoring the shift in the resonance frequency. A higher detectable sensitivity of 1.4 fmol of solute in a 128 pL volume of solution was achieved. This was an improvement of one order of magnitude in the sensitivity compared to our previous experiment.
Polar Vortex Response to Pacific Ocean Warming and Its Additive Nonlinearity with the Indian Ocean

Abstract A previous modeling study about Pacific Ocean warming derived polar vortex response signals, by subtracting those in the Indian Ocean warming experiments from those in the Indo-Pacific. This approach questions the resemblance of such an indirectly derived response to one directly forced by Pacific Ocean warming. This is relevant to the additive nonlinearity of atmospheric responses to separated Indian and Pacific Ocean forcing. In the present study, an additional set of ensemble experiments are performed by prescribing isolated SST forcing in the tropical Pacific Ocean to address this issue. The results suggest a qualitative resemblance between responses in the derived and additional experiments. Thus, previous findings about the impact of Indian and Pacific Ocean warming are robust. This study has important implications for future climate change projections, considering the non-unanimous warming rates in tropical oceans in the 21st century. Nevertheless, a comparison of present direct-forced experiments with previous indirect-forced experiments suggests a significant additive nonlinearity between the Indian and Pacific Ocean warmings. Further diagnosis suggests that the nonlinearity may originate from the thermodynamic processes over the tropics.
Constraining climate model simulations of aerosol size distributions over the North Pacific and North America using in-situ airborne measurements

The effect of aerosols on climate is poorly understood compared to green house gases. Aerosols can scatter and/or absorb solar radiation (the "direct effect") and modifY cloud properties (the "indirect effect"), affecting Earth's radiation balance and hydrological cycle. Aerosol lifetimes vary from minutes to weeks in the Earth's atmosphere, so they are heterogeneously distributed in both time and space. Over longer time scales, aerosols can influence climate through sulfur (e.g. eLA W Hypothesis) and iron (e.g. Iron Hypothesis) biogeochemical cycling. Determination of natural and anthropogenic aerosol effects on past and future climate can only be achieved using global climate models (GCM's). Satellites allow global measurements of the present-day atmosphere, but require calibration/validation by observations in-situ. Groundand ship-based observations are confined to the surface boundary layer which can be decoupled from overlying layers and the free troposphere. Here I use in-situ aircraft measurements from five NASA and NSF airborne field campaigns conducted over the North Pacific and North America between 2001 and 2006 to establish a reduced set of airmass types that are stratified vertically, by source region and according to processes governing their characteristics. For each airmass type the aerosol size distribution, mixing state, optical properties and chemical composition are summarized and discussed. In this study I found, i} parameterizations of background free troposphere aerosol overestimate extinction by -50%, minimizing the differences between pre-industrial versus contemporary radiative forcing, ii} meteorological model errors in water vapour mixing
Using smog chambers to estimate the toxic effects of reactive atmospheric mixtures

Melanie Doyle: Using Smog Chambers to Estimate the Toxic Effects of Reactive Atmospheric Mixtures (Under the direction of Harvey Jeffries) We live in a dynamic environment with atmospheric pollutants constantly transforming, interacting with one another, and generating secondary pollutants. Many of these secondary pollutants have not been identified and, because they are often more oxygenated, many are more toxic than their parent compounds. Continuous emissions from biogenic and anthropogenic sources into this reactive environment create problematic conditions for evaluating the respiratory toxicity of exposure to individual components of urban atmospheres. While previous investigations have studied individual atmospheric components of air pollution, the evaluation of “one atmosphere” effects has been limited by experimental complexities. In this work, new techniques were developed to create an air-liquid interface exposure system coupled with a controllable atmospheric reactor, or “smog chamber”, and these were used to examine various reactive atmospheric mixtures using a laboratory setting that still mimicked the outdoor environment. This smog chamber – in vitro exposure system combines common techniques used in classic toxicology with an outdoor environmental chamber system that was developed to investigate chemical reaction mechanisms. This dissertation is divided into three main parts that demonstrate new methods to study reactive atmospheric pollutants utilizing the smog chamber – in vitro exposure system. In the first part, 1,3-butadiene and isoprene were used to evaluate the differences in respiratory toxicity between unreacted parent pollutants and their complete mixture of products generated during photochemical transformations. The second part applied similar techniques to differentiate the roles that specific photochemical products play in the induction of toxicity mediators; in particular, the role of ozone effects compared to the other known, first generation products. In addition to determining the effects induced by product mixtures generated during photochemical transformations, understanding which products induce the greatest overall effect is particularly helpful when regulating ambient pollutants. In the final part, a preconditioning method was developed to ascertain if repeated ozone exposures modify the respiratory effects induced by subsequent challenges to atmospheric mixtures. Combined, these results characterize and estimate the toxic potential of a realistic, complex, reacting, polluted atmosphere.
Foliar Nitrogen Fertilisation as a Factor Determining Technological Parameters of Winter Wheat

Over 2002–2005 at the Experiment Station of the Agricultural University in Nitra, at Sladkovicovo – Novy Dvor, about 30 km away from Nitra (Slovakia) a field experiment was carried out which aimed at defining the effect of different nitrogen fertiliser doses and its application method on the value of selected technological parameters in ‘Petrana’ winter wheat grain and flour. In the present research a varied nitrogen fertilisation applying the entire dose range resulted in an increase in the content of total protein in ‘Petrana’ winter wheat grain. However, a significant increase in the value of that character was recorded after the application of 80 kg N × ha, as compared with the control and the treatment with 50 kg N × ha. A varied nitrogen fertilisation, applying the entire dose range, enhanced the values of the technological parameters studies. However, the nitrogen dose optimal for the key indicators of the baking value of flour, namely the sedimentation index value and bread volume have been defined as 95 kg × ha and the content of wet gluten and flour water holding capacity – 80 kg × ha.
Network Dynamics and Field Evolution: the Growth of Interorganizational Collaboration in the Life Sciences Abstract Introduction Topology of Large-scale Networks Field Structuration: Science Meets Commerce Data and Methods Analysis I: Degree Distributions Analysis Ii: Discrete Time Network Visualiza

Acknowledgements: We want to thank the Santa Fe Institute for providing the venue where these ideas were initially discussed and much of the work was done. We are especially grateful to John Padgett, organizer of the States and Markets group at SFI for his support and insights. We have benefited from comments from the audience at seminars We are indebted to Duncan Watts for providing access to his unpublished work, and to Mark Newman for sharing software that allowed us to compute the expected size of the largest connected components in our networks. We appreciate very much the excellent research assistance provided We thank Tanya Chamberlain for exceptional help in keeping track of numerous successive versions of the paper. Abstract We develop and test four alternative logics of attachment – accumulative advantage , homophily, follow-the-trend, and multiconnectivity – to account for both the structure and dynamics of interorganizational collaboration in the field of biotechnology. The commercial field of the life sciences is typified by wide dispersion in the sources of basic knowledge and rapid development of the underlying science, fostering collaboration among a broad range of institutionally diverse actors. We map the network dynamics of the field over the period 1988-99. Using multiple novel methods, including analysis of network degree distributions, network visualizations, and multi-probability models to estimate dyadic attachments, we demonstrate how different rules for affiliation shape network evolution. Commercialization strategies pursued by early corporate entrants are supplanted by collaborative activities influenced more by universities, research institutes, venture capital, and small firms. As organizations increase both the number of activities on which they collaborate and the diversity of organizations with whom they are linked, cohesive sub-networks form that are characterized by multiple, independent pathways. These structural components, in turn, condition the choices and opportunities available to members of a field, thereby reinforcing an attachment logic based on connections to diverse partners that are differently linked. The dual analysis of network and institutional evolution provides an explanation for the decentralized structure of this science-based field. Introduction The images of field and network are common in both contemporary physical and social science. In the physical sciences, fields are organized by information in the form of geometric patterns. The study of the geometry of fields has attracted considerable interest in the statistical mechanics of complex networks. Research by physicists interested in networks has ranged widely from the cellular level, a network of …
Yellowstone's Destabilized Ecosystem : Elk Effects, Science, and Policy Conflict

by equally powerful, but opposite societal forces supporting wilderness or “natural regulation. ” For those unfamiliar with the Yellowstone situation, removal of native peoples from the park in the 1800s and reduction in large carnivores in the early 1900s provided favorable conditions for the population of elk (Cervus elaphus), a generalist herbivore, to increase dramatically. After government biologists observed the effects of high densities of elk on soil and vegetation in the 1920s, park rangers routinely culled the herd for over 4 decades. In the 1960s, recreational game hunters lobbied to take over the cull. Given the potential political incompatibility of sport hunting with conservation in one of the
Lightning Occurrence and Social Vulnerability

The occurrence of lightning in time and space around the world is well known. Lightning fatalities and injuries are well delineated in the United States; however, there is much less information about lightning impacts on people in the developing world. It is estimated that between 6000 and 24,000 people are killed globally per year, and 10 times as many are injured. The fatality rate per capita has become very low in the developed countries during the past century due to the availability of lightning-safe structures and vehicles, less labor-intensive agriculture, and other factors, but this reduction has not occurred where people continue to work and live in lightning-unsafe situations. Lightning safety advice often mistakenly expects that the direct strike is most common, but ground current, direct contact, side flash, and upward streamers are much more frequent mechanisms. In developed countries, the injury:death ratio is approximately 10:1, meaning that 90% survive but may have permanent disabling injuries. The proximate cause of death is cardiac arrest and anoxic brain injury at the time of the lightning strike, and, at this time, the damage from a lightning strike cannot be reversed or decreased in survivors. Lightning vulnerability in many developing countries continues to be a major issue due to widespread exposure during labor-intensive agriculture during the day when thunderstorms are the most frequent and while occupying lightning-unsafe dwellings at night.
Zvejnieki (Northern Latvia) Stone Age cemetery

The late Mesolithic and Neolithic cemetery of Zvejnieki on the shore of Lake Burtnieki, northern Latvia, is unique. More than 300 burials have been found, spanning over three millennia. The skeletal evidence, supported by the numerous grave goods (both tools and ornaments) provides invaluable evidence for the anthropological types of the Mesolithic tribes and their origins' as well as a better insight into the processes of interaction between Neolithic tribes' over a very long period of time. The study, which includes illustrated catalogues of burials and finds, was first published in Latvia in 1987 (a year after the author's death) but is now available in English for the first time.
Regional Precipitation-Frequency Analysis and Spatial Mapping of 24-HourPrecipitation for Oregon

For this study regional frequency analyses were conducted for precipitation annual maxima in the state of Oregon for the 24-hour duration. A total of 693 precipitation gages in Oregon, southern Washington, western Idaho, northern California and northern Nevada were included in the study, representing 34,062 station-years of record. A regional analysis methodology was utilized that pooled data from climatologically similar areas to increase the dataset and improve the reliability of precipitation-frequency estimates. The regional analysis methodology included L-moment statistics, and an index-flood type approach for scaling the annual maxima data. L-moment statistics were used to: characterize the variability, skewness and kurtosis of the data; measure heterogeneity in proposed homogeneous sub-regions; and assist in identification of an appropriate regional probability distribution. Spatial mapping techniques were employed for mapping of the precipitation-frequency information. This included spatial mapping of at-site means, L-moment ratio values of L-Cv and L-Skewness, and mapping of precipitation for selected recurrence intervals. Procedures were employed to minimize differences between mapped values and observed station values in a manner that was consistent with the regional behavior of the data and also recognized uncertainties due to natural sampling variability. Color-shaded isopluvial maps were developed for the 6-month, 2-year, 10-year, 25-year, 50-year, 100-year, 500-year, and 1000-year precipitation recurrence intervals. Electronic gridded datasets are available for use in creation of geographic information system (GIS) applications that utilize precipitation-frequency information. A catalog of extreme storms was assembled that lists precipitation events that exceeded a 20-year return period for the various climatic regions. The information from the storm catalog was also used to conduct seasonality analyses that identified the occurrence frequency of extreme storms by month. In particular, the seasonality analyses identified those months that were the most likely and least likely for an extreme event to occur. This information is useful in rainfall-runoff modeling and can be used in conducting hydrologic analyses throughout the Oregon study area.
Effect of Cetrorelix administration on ovarian stimulation in aged mice

In mice, ovarian stimulation via hormone administration is an effective method for obtaining many ova 22 simultaneously, but its effect is reduced by the influence of aging. In this study, we demonstrate that this problem 23 can be improved by administering the gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist Cetrorelix prior to ovarian 24 stimulation. Before 12-month-old female mice were injected with 5 IU pregnant mare serum gonadotropin and 25 5 IU human chorionic gonadotropin, we administered 5 µg/kg Cetrorelix for 7 consecutive days (7 times) or 3 26 times once every 3 days. As a result, 8.7 ± 1.9 (mean ± standard error of the mean, n = 10) and 9.8 ± 1.3 (n = 27 10) oocytes were obtained, respectively, as opposed to 4.7 ± 1.2 oocytes (n = 9) in the case of no administration. 28 Collagen staining of ovarian tissue showed that Cetrorelix administration reduced the degree of fibrosis, which 29 improved ovarian function. In addition, equivalent fertilization and fetal development rates between control and 30 Cetrorelix-treated aged mouse-derived oocytes were confirmed by in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer 31 (Fertilization rate; control: 92.2% vs. 3 times: 96.9%/7 times: 88.5%, Birth rate; control: 56.4% vs. 3 times: 32 58.3%/7 times: 51.8%), indicating the normality of the obtained oocytes. It is concluded that Cetrorelix improved the effect of superovulation in aged mice without reducing oocyte quality. This procedure will contribute to animal welfare by extending the effective utilization of aged female breeding mice.
Elite networks of the London Season : perspectives from the New Mobilities literature

This research investigates and analyses the London Season in the nineteenth century through an engagement with „New Mobilities‟ literature. By positioning the research within this literature and connected theories surrounding material and performative geographies, the research provides a historical perspective to this emerging area of geographical enquiry. Using a wide variety of sources, the mobility of this societal group is reassessed, highlighting the crucial role movement played in the practices of the Season. The concept of „networks‟ is adopted to enable a detailed analysis of the connections forged during the London Season, revealing the powerful role held by women in the period. This desire to network is understood in detail through an engagement with performance literatures to illustrate the importance of dance to those participating. This detailed engagement with networking practices is continued through a material engagement with the Season; analysing the use of fashion to increase the chances of connection. The spatial implications of the London Season are addressed through the construction of broad scale analyses using court directories, ball attendance records and rate books. This enabled the popularity of certain spaces to be ascertained, leading to discussions regarding the use of space as a tool by those participating in the Season to attract connections. This active engagement with space moves away from previous interpretations of the period, in which the West End is treated as a banal template. This research also adopts calls from within historical geography (Blunt, 2000a; McDowell, 2004) to utilise biographical material in understanding the past. Individual experiences of the Season are contrasted throughout the thesis, revealing that the period should not be understood as a single, indivisible „Season‟, but instead as many „Seasons‟ overlapping with one another, yet offering different experiences of the same phenomenon.
First Report of Fusarium proliferatum Causing Rot of Stored Garlic Bulbs (Allium sativum L.) in Italy

During 2011, Fusarium rot of stored garlic was detected on bulbs of ‘Aglio Bianco’ (white garlic) in Piacenza, Ferrara and Rovigo districts. Bulbs, harvested in July, were asymptomatic. During conservation in the drying sheds, approximately thirty percent of bulbs appeared emptied and softened. Fusarium proliferatum was consistently recovered from infected bulbs. The morphological identification was confirmed by Translation Elongation Factor 1-alpha gene sequencing. Koch postulates were checked through pathogenicity tests. The disease has already been reported in Serbia, Germany, Spain, United States, China and India, but to our knowledge, this is the first report of F. proliferatum garlic bulb rot in Italy.