Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Leaf litter and rock bag surveys allow for detection and DNA barcoding characterization of diet composition of dusky salamanders

Abstract. Salamanders are vital components of many aquatic ecosystems food webs and are often found in diverse habitats, including both urban and semi-rural environments. The northern dusky salamander, Desmognathus fuscus is a common salamander found throughout the southeastern United States and is an important predator of aquatic macroinvertebrates. However, very little is known about either diet or suitable survey techniques for this species in human altered habitats, which may vary based on level of urbanization (e.g., are either spring-fed, derived from ponds, modified ditches, etc.). Therefore, we used multiple survey methods (leaf litter bags, novel rock bags, and quadrat sampling) to quantify relative abundance of D. fuscus on Wingate University's campus, in Wingate, North Carolina. We also collected and identified aquatic invertebrates from bag sampling and diet items obtained from gastric lavage of adult salamanders from quadrat sampling. Leaf litter bags contained the highest relative abundance of salamanders (47) compared to rock bags (14), with quadrat sampling yielding primarily adult salamanders. We noted a significant difference among our two sites sampled in salamander relative abundance (Man-Whitney U test = 67.5, p < 0.001), possibly due to reduced water quality, canopy cover, or less available habitat. Aquatic worms represented the most frequent potential food item sampled from both bag types (61.9%), followed by Diptera nymphs (13.7%). Potential food items from leaf and rock bags as well as gastric lavage samples collected from Desmognathus were further identified using DNA barcoding. These food items included a variety of both aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates (annelid worms, springtails, chironomids, carpenter ants, shore flies, wasps, and wood lice). These results indicate urban salamanders may forage both in the stream and in the riparian zone or advantageously consume insects which fall into the stream. This study adds to our body of knowledge on the ecology of salamanders in urban stream environments.
The effect of temozolomide on Hsp60 and Hsp70 expression in extracellular vesicles derived from U87MG glioma cells

Abstract Objectives Temozolomide (TMZ) is an effective drug for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), but the mechanism underlying TMZ resistance is poorly understood. New evidence has revealed that the release of heat shock proteins (Hsps) derived from extracellular vesicles (EVs) play an important role in cancer progression by modulating tumor microenvironment and cellular cross-talk. This study aims to evaluate the effects of TMZ on the expression of EV-derived and cellular Hsps and cell motility in U87MG human glioblastoma cell line. Methods Glial-EVs were isolated from the culture medium and characterized by SEM and immunoblotting. The effect of TMZ treatments (25, 200 and 750 µM) on cell proliferation (MTT assay), migration (scratch assay), and Hsp60 and Hsp70 levels (immunoblotting) were evaluated. Results TMZ treatments led to an increase in intracellular Hsp70 while decreasing EV-derived Hsp70. Cellular Hsp60 level was elevated at the low dose of TMZ, but it reduced at higher TMZ concentrations. Hsp60 was also decreased in EVs secreted from TMZ-treated cells. Besides, TMZ treatment reduced the proliferation and migration of glioma cells in a dose-dependent manner. Conclusions Our results suggest that TMZ has the potential to target both EV-derived and cellular Hsps for GBM treatment, thus it may reduce cell motility.
The effectiveness of corpus-based training on collocation use in L2 writing for Chinese senior secondary school students

Abstract Corpus tools are known to be effective in helping L2 learners improve their writing, especially regarding their use of words. Most corpus-based L2 writing research has focused on university students while little attention has been paid to secondary school L2 students. This study investigated whether senior secondary school students in China, upon receiving corpus-based training under the framework of data-driven learning (DDL), could improve their vocabulary use, especially the use of collocations, in their writing for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test. Twenty-two students aged 16–18 in a senior secondary school in Nanchang, China who were planning to take the IELTS exam participated in the study. Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Word and Phrase were the main corpora that the participants used to learn various search functions. Pre-writing and post-writing tests were administered to measure the effect of corpus training. In addition, a questionnaire and interviews were used to collect students’ perspectives and attitudes. The results indicate that students made improvement in word selection after three corpus training sessions, and their attitudes towards corpus use were positive even though they were restricted from using computers to access corpora inside their school.
An evolutionary system of mineralogy, Part V: Aqueous and thermal alteration of planetesimals (~4565 to 4550 Ma)

Abstract Part V of the evolutionary system of mineralogy explores phases produced by aqueous alteration, metasomatism, and/or thermal metamorphism—relicts of ancient processes that affected virtually all asteroids and that are preserved in the secondary mineralogy of meteorites. We catalog 166 historical natural kinds of minerals that formed by alteration in the parent bodies of chondritic and non-chondritic meteorites within the first 20 Ma of the solar system. Secondary processes saw a dramatic increase in the chemical and structural diversity of minerals. These phases incorporate 41 different mineral-forming elements, including the earliest known appearances of species with essential Co, Ge, As, Nb, Ag, Sn, Te, Au, Hg, Pb, and Bi. Among the varied secondary meteorite minerals are the earliest known examples of halides, arsenides, tellurides, sulfates, carbonates, hydroxides, and a wide range of phyllosilicates.
Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Academic Time Management and Procrastination Measure

Students’ ability to effectively allocate time toward educational tasks and reduction of maladaptive behaviors such as procrastination are important predictors of successful educational outcomes. The Academic Time Management and Procrastination Measure (ATMPM) purports to measure the extent to which students engage in such behaviors; however, the psychometric properties of the ATMPM have only been explored with exploratory techniques. In addition, the extent to which measurement invariance is supported among first-generation college students (FGCS) and non-FGCS is unknown. The purpose of the present study was to (1) examine the factor structure of the ATMPM within a college population by employing confirmatory factor analysis and to (2) investigate measurement invariance through an application of multiple group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). Results supported a three-factor solution (planning time, monitoring time, and procrastination), and invariance analyses supported full configural, metric, and scalar invariance.
Voyageurs malgré eux: Silence, embodiment, and exposure in Minh Tran Huy and Doan Bui

In recent Franco-Vietnamese literature written by descendants of immigrants, the liminality of exile is portrayed in all its complexity through migrant bodies – that of parents’ bodies – and through political and social bodies – linked to History and the Việt Kiều’s positionality in French society. The experience of external movement becomes an internal one, creating porosity between the outside and the body, self and others, places and times. This article argues that, in Minh Tran Huy’s Voyageur malgré lui and Doan Bui’s Le Silence de mon père, by representing their family’s migration, both authors present the silenced histories of the Vietnamese community in France. In order to do so, Tran Huy and Bui first focus on uncovering and writing the stories of their silent fathers: through their embodiment of exilic history, the fathers transmit the wound of their immigrant condition to their daughters. Consequently, daughters come to manifest similar bodily expressions of traumas they have not experienced and know little about. The fathers’ histories are eventually voiced and re-invested by the second generation. This shows how the unearthing of their fathers’ life stories is also about reappropriating a dual identity as well as making Asian diasporic perspectives and histories visible, notably to create new avenues of representation for French individuals of Asian descent.
DOES DISPARITY IN INCOME AND CONSUMPTION EVER INCITE TERRORISM IN AFRICA?

Does disparity in income and consumption incite terrorism in Africa? To answer this important question, we investigate the empirical linkages between inequality and terrorism by separately regressing income and consumption inequalities on four indicators of terrorism: domestic, transnational, unclear, and total over the period 1980–2012. Employing a negative binomial regression across a panel dataset covering 46 African economies, the following findings are established. First, both income and consumption inequalities have decreasing impacts on all terrorism measures—with the exception of uncertain terrorism (the impact of which is negligible). Second, both income and consumption inequalities exert more statistical influence on transnational terrorism than domestic terrorism. Third, income inequality exerts more statistical weight on terrorism measures than consumption inequality across the model specifications. Last, the non-trivial impact of confounding variables—such as the lagged value of terrorism, surface areas, and conflicts—are validated across the terrorism models. In line with these empirical outcomes, policy implications and suggestions for further studies are offered.
Stochastic Bigger Subspace Algorithms for Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization

It is well known that the stochastic optimization problem can be regarded as one of the most hard problems since, in most of the cases, the values of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and its gradient are often not easily to be solved, or the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F(\cdot, \xi)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is normally not given clearly and (or) the distribution function <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is equivocal. Then an effective optimization algorithm is successfully designed and used to solve this problem that is an interesting work. This paper designs stochastic bigger subspace algorithms for solving nonconvex stochastic optimization problems. A general framework for such algorithm is presented for convergence analysis, where the so-called the sufficient descent property, the trust region feature, and the global convergence of the stationary points are proved under the suitable conditions. In the worst-case, we will turn out that the complexity is competitive under a given accuracy parameter. We will proved that the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$SFO$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-calls complexity of the presented algorithm with diminishing steplength is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O\left({\epsilon ^{-{\frac {1}{1-\beta }}}}\right)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$SFO$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-calls complexity of the given algorithm with random constant steplength is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(\epsilon ^{-2})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> respectively, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\beta \in (0.5,1)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\epsilon $ </tex-math></inline-formula> is accuracy and the needed conditions are weaker than the quasi-Newton methods and the normal conjugate gradient algorithms. The detail algorithm framework with variance reduction is also proposed for experiments and the nonconvex binary classification problem is done to demonstrate the performance of the given algorithm.
ANNs for Fast Parameterized EM Modeling: The State of the Art in Machine Learning for Design Automation of Passive Microwave Structures

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are information processing systems, with their design inspired by studies of the ability of the human brain to learn from observations and generalize by abstraction. Researchers have investigated a variety of important applications utilizing the ability of ANNs to perform the modeling and optimization of microwave components and circuits, such as high-speed very large-scale integration (VLSI) interconnects [1]-[3], spiral inductors [4], microwave field-effect transistors (FETs) [5], [6], heterojunction bipolar transistors [7], [8], high-electron mobility transistors [9], [10], filters [11]-[14], power amplifiers [15]-[17], oscillators [18], transmitters [19], receivers [20], digital predistortion [21], microelectromechanical systems [22], wireless power transfer [23], and multiphysics design [24], [25].
Examining Measurement Invariance and Perceptions of School Climate Across Gender and Race and Ethnicity

School climate can have a notable impact on student academic, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. It is also a critical component of school improvement efforts, as demonstrated by recent federal and state initiatives to provide resources and supports for increased school climate measurement, accountability, and improvement. The primary purpose of the current study was to establish measurement invariance of the Georgia School Climate Survey across gender and race/ethnicity among middle school students. The secondary purpose was to explore mean comparisons in school climate experiences across student groups. Participants included 629,584 middle and high school students. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a hierarchical model of school climate that included one overall factor, school climate, and eight subscales: school connectedness, civic engagement, physical environment, adult social support, peer social support, cultural acceptance, order and discipline, and safety. Measurement invariance for a subscale model of school climate across gender and race/ethnicity was established, and student means across groups were compared. Implications for the practical use of the GSCS as a school improvement tool to guide targeted and data-based decision are discussed.
Integrated Inter-Tower Wireless Communications Network for Terrestrial Broadcasting and Multicasting Systems

This paper describes systems, devices, and methods to implement a bi-directional integrated inter-tower wireless communications network (IITWCN). The described technology can be implemented in combination with the Broadcast Core Network (BCN) in next generation broadcast eco-system and, therefore, support new business cases for broadcast operators such as the delivery of flexible datacasting services or support broadcast or point-to-point Internet services. The introduced bi-directional inter-tower communications network (ITCN) extends the previous unidirectional in-band distribution links (IDL) and adopts the on-channel repeater (OCR) as a simplified backhaul solution in single frequency networks (SFN). The concept of the coordinated ITCN is also presented, aiming at future broadcast Internet services. The ITCN provides a scalable and configurable network solution embedded in a broadcast system, which becomes independent from any non-broadcasting telecommunication infrastructure. The described technology partially relies on the infrastructure of the underlying broadcast/multicast network, using the allocated service channels without requiring additional frequency bands or a separate frequency band. The bi-directional inter-transmitter communication links are therefore referred to as integrated transmission links and the corresponding network as an integrated network.
Research on Dry Microwave Heating Infectious Aerosols or Droplets on Respirators

Dramatic shortages of filtering facepiece respirator supplies generally occur following the outbreak of a pandemic such as COVID-19. Here, the decontamination and reuse of respirators are considered. Among decontamination methods, microwave irradiation has great potential because of easy access of microwave ovens. However, can a respirator be heated in a microwave oven for a certain time and then be reused? Herein, we demonstrate that dry microwave irradiation cannot heat infectious aerosols or droplets up to their deactivation temperature. The microwave absorption performance of a single aerosol or droplet was analyzed theoretically. The multiphysics simulation results indicate that a single aerosol or droplet can be barely heated under dry microwave irradiation. Experiments were carried out using a traveling wave system to verify the simulation. Following this, we simulated multiple aerosols and droplets on a respirator material, with the results indicating that the aerosols and droplets were at the same temperature as that of the respirator. Experimental measurements using a microwave oven demonstrated that the temperature increase of an N95 respirator under dry heating is less than 10 °C, which is far less than the temperature required to deactivate the COVID-19 virus. Although dry microwave heating cannot be used to heat the aerosols or droplets, microwave-generated steam has proved effective in deactivating infectious biological organisms. Therefore, to successfully decontaminate a used respirator in a microwave oven, a reservoir with a small amount of water beneath the respirator (or a steam bag to accommodate it) is essential to the decontamination process.
Energy-Efficient Task Allocation of Heterogeneous Resources in Mobile Edge Computing

The edge cloud provides heterogeneous resources, such as cores, memory, and storage which are then allocated to mobile applications in mobile edge computing, which require multiple types of resources to execute. While current work on mobile edge computing focuses on tasks needing a single resource to run, we investigate the task allocation problem aiming to minimize total energy consumption while considering heterogeneous resource settings. Specifically, we consider the binary computation offloading mode, in which a task executes successfully as a whole. We formulate this as an integer programming problem, and transform that to the two subproblems of the resource allocation and the offloading decision. We propose a heuristic approach to solve the resource allocation subproblem and an approximation algorithm for the offloading decision subproblem. We show that our proposed approximation algorithm is a polynomial time approximation scheme, and hence it achieves a tradeoff between optimality loss and time complexity. Experimental results demonstrate that the performance of our proposed algorithm scales very well for multi-resource allocation in different conditions, and it achieves a good balance of performance and speed.
A Compact Wideband Dipole Antenna With Wide Beamwidth

A wideband dipole antenna with wide beamwidth fed by a coaxial balun is presented. The proposed antenna contains a parasitic patch, a U-shaped reflector, and a pair of L-shaped metal arms. The parasitic patch located above the L-shaped metal arms (as an electric dipole) functions as a director. The combination of the U-shaped reflector and the pair of L-shaped metal arms acts as a magnetic dipole. The wideband impedance bandwidth and wide beamwidth are achieved by using the magnetoelectric dipole. The characteristic mode method is used to facilitate the analysis of the antenna. The measured results show that an impedance bandwidth of 0.78–3.05 GHz (118.5%) for VSWR ≤ 2 is obtained. The beamwidth is between 110° and 179° in the band of 0.78–3.05 GHz (118.5%) in the <italic>H</italic>-plane, and between 83° and 146° in the band of 0.78–2.47 GHz (104%) in the <italic>E</italic>-plane. The overall size of the antenna is 0.177<italic>λ<sub>L</sub></italic> × 0.239<italic>λ<sub>L</sub></italic> × 0.104<italic>λ<sub>L</sub></italic> (<italic>λ<sub>L</sub></italic> is the free-space wavelength at the starting frequency).
Why College Students Prefer Typing Over Speech Input: The Dual Perspective

With the development of technology, the accuracy of speech input has vastly improved and the speed of speech input has surpassed that of typing. However, college students still refuse to switch to speech input as their primary compositional tool. To better understanding this phenomenon, this study investigates the preferences of 593 college students using PLS-SEM for structural model analysis. On the basis of innovation resistance theory (IRT) and technology acceptance model (TAM), this study explores the preference of college students for keyboard typing over speech input for document processing. Results showed that functional barriers (i.e., usage, value, and risk barriers) and psychological barriers (i.e., tradition and image barriers) positively affect users’ resistance to change. Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness influence the intention to adopt speech input, which is consistent with TAM. Resistance to change was proven to negatively affect users’ intention to adopt speech input. Academically, results confirm that although barriers to speech input currently exist, users still consider speech input as easy and useful and plan to adopt the technology. In practice, speech recognition system companies can significantly enhance users’ adoption intentions by reducing barriers and increasing their perception of ease of use and usefulness of speech input.
Resolution Enhancement of UWB Time-Reversal Microwave Imaging in Dispersive Environments

Time Reversal (TR) techniques allow optimal refocusing of ultrawideband (UWB) electromagnetic waves in complex propagation environments, due to the invariance of the wave equations. Propagation of electromagnetic waves through dispersive or lossy media breaks this invariance. Consequently, such media degrade the refocusing ability of TR techniques. In this work, we propose a novel algorithm for the enhancement of the UWB TR microwave imaging resolution in dispersive environments. The presented algorithm takes into account the frequency-dependent complex permittivity of the propagation medium across the entire bandwidth of the UWB pulse. Using this complex permittivity, it models the medium-, time-, and frequency- dependent attenuation in the wavelet domain to create inverse filters which compensate for the effects of the attenuation. This is the first algorithm that constructs inverse filters in the wavelet domain using the complex permittivity of the dispersive propagation medium across the entire bandwidth, rather than at a center frequency, of the excitation pulse. We also introduce a smart scaling concept to minimize undesired noise amplification. While our proposed approach is agnostic to the application scenario and thus could be utilized in various disciplines, we apply it in a biomedical imaging scenario and achieve enhancement in the resolution of UWB microwave TR imaging of a simulated brain tumor inside the digital human phantom (DHP).