Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement of the orbital angular momentum spectrum of light through turbid water using modal decomposition

Laser beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) in underwater environments have been a topic of research for underwater communications and remote sensing applications. When a laser beam propagates through turbid water, the dominant form of attenuation and spatial dispersion is scattering due to small particles. The goal of this experimental study is to measure the transmitted OAM mode and its intermodal crosstalk via measurements of the OAM spectrum after propagation through turbid water. An initial beam is encoded with a single OAM state using a spiral phase hologram displayed on a high-resolution spatial light modulator. The optical receiver performs a phase cancellation measurement to decode the OAM on the incident beam. After recording images of the phase canceled beam, the OAM spectrum is found in post-processing. Three methods of post-processing are presented and compared to account for beam wander and an astigmatism in the experiment. After determining which method of post-processing gives the most accurate results, our results are compared to those in the literature. Our results show that an OAM beam maintains mode purity up to an optical depth (OD) of 12, whereas previous literature saw a loss of mode purity at an OD of 6. This is attributed to differences in receiver field of view, scattering volume, scattering length, and beam size.
Causes of Raptor Admissions to Rehabilitation in Jordan

Abstract. We report on the morbidity and fate of 138 raptors of 27 species admitted to the Royal Society of the Conservation of Nature rehabilitation center in Jordan during 2017–2018. Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) made up the greatest percentage admitted (28.3%), followed by the Long-legged Buzzard (Buteo rufinus; 7.3%), Saker Falcon (Falco cherrug; 7.3%), Eurasian Eagle-Owl (Bubo bubo; 7.3%), and nine species represented by a single individual each. Confiscation due to illegal possession or transport (n = 81) was the most common reason for raptor admittance, followed by trauma (n = 26) and infections/disease (n = 26). Other major reasons for admittance included malnutrition (n =12) and orphaning (n =12). Twenty-six birds (18.8%), mostly falcons, were still in the rehabilitation center at the time of publication, and 22 (16%) individuals died during treatment due to their injuries (n =14) or severe Newcastle infections (n =8). Seventy-seven individuals were released into nature reserves, accounting for 55.8% of the total rehabilitated birds, and 13 individuals (9.4%) were returned to their owners.
An Examination of Women’s Experiences with Reporting Sexual Victimization Behind Prison Walls

Women inmates in a southern women’s minimum security facility were interviewed to explore their perceptions of and experiences with reporting sexual victimization in the context of the post-PREA era. The interviewees identified stigma and gossip, officer camaraderie, and fear of retaliation as the dominant barriers to reporting and investigating incidents of sexual assault. The article concludes with recommendations to improve sexual assault training and education in women’s correctional institutions. ﻿
The Limits of “Populism”: How Malaysia Misses the Mark and Why That Matters

Politics in Malaysia seems ripe for a populist upsurge. Parties assume fairly exclusive, ethnic boundaries, inviting insider–outsider pandering. Personalities loom large. Economic inequality is among the highest in the region. Regardless, the extent to which Malaysian politics might be understood as “populist” rather than merely polarised, illiberal, and prone to particularism is dubious. I argue that Malaysian politics is neither populist nor likely to veer that way. However, the case offers a useful test of the boundaries between populism and personalisation of politics, the extent to which appeals designed to maximise popular support suffice to code a polity as populist, and which specific illiberal features facilitate or preclude populism. This examination thus clarifies a messy concept by exploring how populism might develop or falter in a multi-party, parliamentary, and hybrid rather than democratic regime – suggesting the relative reach of institutional rather than personalistic or zeitgeist-related explanations.
Follow Me Too: Determinants of Transitive Tie Formation on Twitter

Transitivity, defined as the tendency for node A to be connected to node B given that A is connected to node X and X is connected to B, has been found to be a strong predictor of tie formation in various types of social networks. As transitive ties can influence information sharing, diffusion, and attitudes toward messages, understanding the motivations and mechanisms behind transitive tie formation in online social networks (OSNs) is important. Using a large longitudinal dataset from a popular OSN, Twitter, we examine the factors affecting transitivity. Results show that the strength of ties, activity like the number of tweets, and most importantly, the number of common connections are key factors affecting transitive tie formation. Theoretical implications regarding the evolution of network structure and polarization of views as well as practical suggestions for organizations aiming to accumulate followers for information sharing are discussed.
Deep drilling reveals massive shifts in evolutionary dynamics after formation of ancient ecosystem

A volatile assemblage of short-lived endemic species developed into a stable community of long-lived species in Lake Ohrid. The scarcity of high-resolution empirical data directly tracking diversity over time limits our understanding of speciation and extinction dynamics and the drivers of rate changes. Here, we analyze a continuous species-level fossil record of endemic diatoms from ancient Lake Ohrid, along with environmental and climate indicator time series since lake formation 1.36 million years (Ma) ago. We show that speciation and extinction rates nearly simultaneously decreased in the environmentally dynamic phase after ecosystem formation and stabilized after deep-water conditions established in Lake Ohrid. As the lake deepens, we also see a switch in the macroevolutionary trade-off, resulting in a transition from a volatile assemblage of short-lived endemic species to a stable community of long-lived species. Our results emphasize the importance of the interplay between environmental/climate change, ecosystem stability, and environmental limits to diversity for diversification processes. The study also provides a new understanding of evolutionary dynamics in long-lived ecosystems.
Generalized adversarial networks for stress field recovering processes from photoelasticity images

For overcoming conventional photoelasticity limitations when evaluating the stress field in loaded bodies, this paper proposes a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) while maintaining performance, gaining experimental stability, and shorting time response. Due to the absence of public photoelasticity data, a synthetic dataset was generated by using analytic stress maps and crops from them. In this case, more than 100000 pair of images relating fringe colors to their respective stress surfaces were used for learning to unwrap the stress information contained into the fringes. Main results of the model indicate its capability of recovering the stress field achieving an averaged performance of 0.93±0.18 according to the structural similarity index (SSIM). These results represent a great opportunity for exploring GAN models in real time stress evaluations.
A two-step model of autophagy: autophagosome formation, degradation and net turnover

Autophagy is a complex process that encompasses the enclosure of cytoplasmic debris or dysfunctional organelles in membranous vesicles, the autophagosomes, for their elimination in the lysosomes. A gold-standard method to assess its induction is the analysis of the autophagic flux using as a surrogate the expression of the microtubule-associated light chain protein 3 conjugated to phosphatidylethanolamine (LC3-II) by Western blot, in the presence of lysosomal inhibitors. Therefore, the current definition of autophagy flux actually puts the focus on the degradation stage of autophagy. In contrast, the most important autophagy controlling genes that have been identified in the last few years in fact target early stages of autophagosome formation. From a biological standpoint is therefore conceivable that autophagosome formation and degradation are independently regulated and we argue that both stages need to be systematically analyzed. Here, we propose a simple two-step model to understand changes in autophagosome formation and degradation using data from conventional LC3-II Western blot, and test it using two models of autophagy modulation in cultured microglia, the brain macrophages: rapamycin and the ULK1/2 inhibitor, MRT68921. Our model provides a comprehensive understanding of the autophagy process and will help to unravel the effect of genetic, pharmacological, and environmental manipulations on both the formation and degradation of autophagosomes.
Beyond Exogenous Models: Mexican Journalism’s Modernization in its Own Terms

ABSTRACT Mexican journalism scholars have resorted to exogenous models of the press to study this country’s news production. This has imported standards developed abroad and has hindered the analysis of Mexican journalism in its own terms. In order to reverse this trend, this article develops an inductive approach focused on the organizational discourses which gave form to Mexican journalism’s modernization. Identifying the development of the “prensa vendida” (sold-out press) stigma as a key public discourse, it exposes how different journalists and journalism entrepreneurs created diverse paradigm repairs with the intention of overcoming Mexican journalism’s credibility crisis. Through a multiple modernities perspective, it shows how these organizational discourses and paradigm repairs reproduce, resist and reconfigure the liberal model of the press’ norms, standards and values. This article could contribute to transitional journalism studies at large as it presents a theoretical framework and a research design for them to go beyond the normative perspectives embedded in exogenous models of the press.
Dispersing the Opacity of Transparency in Journalism on the Appeal of Different Forms of Transparency to the General Public

ABSTRACT This study investigates the kinds of transparency that appeal to different parts of the public and the extent to which transparency can be a remedy for declining trust in journalism. It uses a representative survey of Swedes, and the results show that there are three distinct forms of transparency, including the previously unreported ambient transparency, and that they appeal to different people. News consumption or social media use has little or no effect on transparency. The strongest positive effect on transparency comes from appreciation of the current quality of journalistic performance, high trust in journalists and media, and having news media and authorities as the preferred channels of information. Those most skeptical about journalism are also least positive about transparency. The results suggest that transparency has very limited reach as a cure for declining trust in, and the trustworthiness of, journalism, possibly since the acts of transparency themselves remain non-transparent.
Sperm acrosome overgrowth and infertility in mice lacking chromosome 18 pachytene piRNA

piRNAs are germline-specific, small non-coding RNAs required to maintain genome integrity and preserve RNA homeostasis during male gametogenesis. In murine adult testes, the highest levels of piRNAs are present in the pachytene stage of meiosis, but their mode of action and function remains incompletely understood. We previously reported that BTBD18 binds to 50 pachytene piRNA-producing loci. Here we show that spermatozoa in gene-edited mice lacking a BTBD18 targeted pachytene piRNA cluster on Chr18 have severe sperm head dysmorphology, poor motility, impaired acrosome exocytosis and are sterile. The absence of Chr18 piRNA results in an imbalance of heat shock proteins associated with renaturing proteins and the ubiquitin-proteasome system involved with protein degradation. The mutant phenotype arises from aberrant formation of proacrosomal vesicles, distortion of the trans-Golgi network, and up-regulation of GOLGA2 associated with acrosome dysgenesis. Collectively, our findings reveal central role of pachytene piRNAs in controlling spermiogenesis and male fertility.
The composition of the microbiota in the full-term fetal gut and amniotic fluid: a bovine caesarean section study

The fetal development of the intestinal immune system is stimulated by the maternal microbiota, but it is still unclear whether viable bacteria exist in the healthy fetus. Analysis of such low microbial biomass environments are challenging due to contamination issues. The aims of the current study were to assess the bacterial load and characterize the bacterial composition of the amniotic fluid and meconium of full-term calves, leading to a better knowledge of prenatal bacterial seeding of the fetal intestine. Amniotic fluid and rectal meconium samples were collected during and immediately after elective caesarean section, performed in 25 Belgian Blue cow-calf couples. The samples were analyzed by qPCR, bacterial culture using GAM agar and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. To minimize the effects of contaminants, we included multiple technical controls and stringently filtered the 16S rRNA gene sequencing data to exclude putative contaminant sequences. The meconium samples contained a significantly higher amount of bacterial DNA than the negative controls and 5 of 24 samples contained culturable bacteria. In the amniotic fluid, the amount of bacterial DNA was not significantly different from the negative controls and all samples were culture negative. Bacterial sequences were identified in both sample types and were primarily of phyla Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria, with some individual variation. We conclude that most calves encounter in utero maternal-fetal transmission of bacterial DNA, but the amount of bacterial DNA is low and viable bacteria are rare.
Approximate Spintronic Memories

Various applications, such as multimedia, machine learning, and signal processing, have a significant intrinsic error resilience. This makes them preferable for approximate computing as they have the ability to tolerate computations and data errors along with producing acceptable outputs. From the technology perspective, emerging technologies with inherent non-determinism and high failure rates are candidates for the realization of approximate computing. Spin Transfer Torque Magnetic Random Access Memories (STT-MRAM) is an emerging non-volatile memory technology and a potential candidate to replace SRAM due to its high density, scalability, and zero-leakage. The write operation in this technology is inherently stochastic and increases the rate of write errors. Moreover, this technology is associated with other failure mechanisms such as read-disturb and failures due to data retention. These errors are highly dependent on the STT-MRAM parameters (i.e., thermal stability, read/write current, and read/write latency), which varies with the operating temperature and the process variation effects. Fast and energy-efficient STT-MRAM designed for on-chip memories can be easily achieved by relaxing the device parameters at the cost of increased error rate, which can be addressed by approximating memory accesses. In this work, a detailed study of reliability and gains (i.e., performance and energy) tradeoff at the device and system-level of the STT-MRAM-based data cache system is presented in the scope of approximate memories.
Impaired online error-correction disrupts synchronization to external events in autism

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social skills and accompanied by motor and perceptual atypicalities. Its etiology is an open question, partly due to the diverse range of associated difficulties. Based on recent observations that individuals with autism are slow in updating perceptual priors, we now hypothesized that motor updating is also slow. Slow motor updating is expected to hamper the ability to synchronize to external events, since asynchronies are corrected sluggishly. Since sensorimotor synchronization is important for social bonding and cooperation, its impairment is expected to impair social skills. To test this hypothesis, we measured paced finger tapping to a metronome in neurotypical, ASD, and dyslexia groups. Dyslexia was assessed as a control group with a non-social neurodevelopmental atypicality. Only the ASD group showed reduced sensorimotor synchronization. Trial-by-trial computational modelling revealed that their ability to form controlled motor responses and to maintain reliable temporal representations was adequate. Only their rate of error-correction was slow and was correlated with the severity of their social difficulties. Taken together, these findings suggest that slow updating in autism contributes to both sloppy sensorimotor performance and difficulties in forming social bonds. Significance The prevalence of autism diagnosis has increased immensely is the last decades. Yet its etiology remains a challenge, partly since the functional relations between characteristic social difficulties, perceptual and motor atypicalities are not understood. Using trial-by-trial computational modelling, we show that a single deficit underlies the poor synchronization of individuals with autism in both static and changing environments. Slow updating, leading to slow online error correction of motor plans, has an immense explanatory power explaining both difficulties in sensorimotor synchronization, and social impairments.
Divergent selection on behavioral and chemical traits contributes to isolation between populations of Drosophila melanogaster

Speciation is driven by traits that can act to prohibit mating between nascent lineages, including male courtship and female preference for male traits. Mating barriers involving these traits evolve quickly because there is strong selection on males and females to maximize reproductive success, and the tight co-evolution of mating interactions can lead to rapid diversification of sexual behavior. Using lineages of D. melanogaster that show strong asymmetrical reproductive isolation, we ask two key questions: which specific male traits are females selecting, and are these traits under divergent sexual selection? These questions have proven extremely challenging to answer, because even in closely related lineages males often differ in multiple traits related to mating behavior. We address these questions by estimating selection gradients for male courtship and cuticular hydrocarbons for two different female genotypes. We identify specific behaviors and particular cuticular hydrocarbons that are under divergent sexual selection and likely contribute to reproductive isolation. Additionally, we discovered that a subset of these traits are plastic; males adjust these traits based on the identity of the female genotype they interact with. These results suggest that even when male courtship is not fixed between lineages, ongoing selection can contribute to reproductive isolation.
Bullying in male physical education: a figurational sociological analysis

Abstract Dunning and Sheard’s seminal work, Barbarians, Gentleman and Players, illustrates the importance of adopting a sociological approach to understanding the development of modern sport. Their specific analysis of the role of football in public schools and peer and pupil–master relations offered an important perspective on changing relations between these social groups. Since then, research on physical education (PE) from a figurational viewpoint has focused more on teachers’ perspectives and experiences, with fewer articles concerning pupils’ thoughts. In this article, we revisit power relations within male PE by drawing upon data from a recent ethnographic study in the North East of England. We locate contemporary perspectives and experiences of bullying along long-term shifts in people’s attitudes towards violence and conflict resolution. In particular, we consider how the social processes involved in bullying illustrate the nuanced relationships and behaviours young people must navigate and negotiate within increasingly complex contemporary societies. In competitive single-sex PE environments, we demonstrate how young males are required to exhibit heightened levels of control over their emotional and behavioural expression.
Hamiltonian formulation of flowlines, first step for Wigner formalism analysis

The postulation of Flowline design method, in the frame of nonimaging optics, was a fundamental step in the development of Field Theory of Geometrical Optics. During lasts years there have been new advances in the application of Field Theory elements to Flowline analysis, vector potential, interface factors, contour integrals. In this paper we starts a new natural step in the development of Flowline theory, we study Hamiltonian formulation of Flowline, as a first step for Wigner formalism analysis. We study two different perspectives in our approach to the problem, first the classical ray optics approach and second a new approach from Radiative force point of view. Radiative force approach seems to be more advantageous than ray optics, but further studies will be needed to confirm that hypothesis.
The extent of protein hydration dictates the preference for heterogeneous or homogeneous nucleation generating either parallel or antiparallel β-sheet α-synuclein aggregates† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/d0sc05297c

α-Synuclein amyloid self-assembly is the hallmark of a number of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, although there is still very limited understanding about the factors and mechanisms that trigger this process. Primary nucleation has been observed to be initiated in vitro at hydrophobic/hydrophilic interfaces by heterogeneous nucleation generating parallel β-sheet aggregates, although no such interfaces have yet been identified in vivo. In this work, we have discovered that α-synuclein can self-assemble into amyloid aggregates by homogeneous nucleation, without the need of an active surface, and with a preference for an antiparallel β-sheet arrangement. This particular structure has been previously proposed to be distinctive of stable toxic oligomers and we here demonstrate that it indeed represents the most stable structure of the preferred amyloid pathway triggered by homogeneous nucleation under limited hydration conditions, including those encountered inside α-synuclein droplets generated by liquid-liquid phase separation. In addition, our results highlight the key role that water plays not only in modulating the transition free energy of amyloid nucleation, and thus governing the initiation of the process, but also in dictating the type of preferred primary nucleation and the type of amyloid polymorph generated depending on the extent of protein hydration. These findings are particularly relevant in the context of in vivo α-synuclein aggregation where the protein can encounter a variety of hydration conditions in different cellular microenvironments, including the vicinity of lipid membranes or the interior of membraneless compartments, which could lead to the formation of remarkably different amyloid polymorphs by either heterogeneous or homogeneous nucleation.