Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Navigating into the realm of Non-Supersymmetric String Theories

For more than two decades, remarkable progress has been made in the construction of supersymmetric Standard Model-like theories from the heterotic string theory. In particular, considerable effort has been invested in studying the abundant phenomenological features of heterotic strings exhibiting N = 1 spacetime supersymmetry. At the same time, their non-supersymmetric counterparts have received little attention on the grounds that strings which do not exhibit spacetime supersymmetry admit large one-loop dilaton tadpoles, and are therefore unstable. Nonetheless, in this epoch of data acquisition from high-luminosity experiments, the observational absence of supersymmetry is striking. Consequently, non-supersymmetric theories receive a profound interest in the particle physics community. In this thesis, a class of non-supersymmetric, tachyon-free, four-dimensional string models is constructed via a string generalisation of Scherk-Schwarz compactification. Such models demonstrate greatly enhanced finiteness and stability properties, and exhibit some general features on their mass spectra, the behaviour of the one-loop cosmological constant and their interpolation properties. Special attention is paid to how from an exponentially suppressed one-loop cosmological constant, and therefore from an almost vanishing dilaton tadpole, finiteness and stability ensue. The existence of such models is characterised by prominent phenomenological features which involve their natural energy scales, particle-charge assignments, and the magnitudes of the associated Yukawa couplings and scalar masses. A radical result is the existence of Standard Model-like theories emerging as the low energy limit of non-supersymmetric strings; there are no light superpartners and supersymmetry is absent at all energy scales.
Evidence for a Critical Role of Catecholamines for Cardiomyocyte Lineage Commitment in Murine Embryonic Stem Cells

Catecholamine release is known to modulate cardiac output by increasing heart rate. Although much is known about catecholamine function and regulation in adults, little is known about the presence and role of catecholamines during heart development. The present study aimed therefore to evaluate the effects of different catecholamines on early heart development in an in vitro setting using embryonic stem (ES) cell-derived cardiomyocytes. Effects of catecholamine depletion induced by reserpine were examined in murine ES cells (line D3, αPIG44) during differentiation. Cardiac differentiation was assessed by immunocytochemistry, qRT-PCR, quantification of beating clusters, flow cytometry and pharmacological approaches. Proliferation was analyzed by EB cross-section measurements, while functionality of cardiomyocytes was studied by extracellular field potential (FP) measurements using microelectrode arrays (MEAs). To further differentiate between substance-specific effects of reserpine and catecholamine action via α- and β-receptors we proved the involvement of adrenergic receptors by application of unspecific α- and β-receptor antagonists. Reserpine treatment led to remarkable down-regulation of cardiac-specific genes, proteins and mesodermal marker genes. In more detail, the average ratio of ∼40% spontaneously beating control clusters was significantly reduced by 100%, 91.1% and 20.0% on days 10, 12, and 14, respectively. Flow cytometry revealed a significant reduction (by 71.6%, n = 11) of eGFP positive CMs after reserpine treatment. By contrast, reserpine did not reduce EB growth while number of neuronal cells in reserpine-treated EBs was significantly increased. MEA measurements of reserpine-treated EBs showed lower FP frequencies and weak responsiveness to adrenergic and muscarinic stimulation. Interestingly we found that developmental inhibition after α- and β-adrenergic blocker application mimicked developmental changes with reserpine. Using several methodological approaches our data suggest that reserpine inhibits cardiac differentiation. Thus catecholamines play a critical role during development.
The Lyapunov Neural Network: Adaptive Stability Certification for Safe Learning of Dynamic Systems

Learning algorithms have shown considerable prowess in simulation by allowing robots to adapt to uncertain environments and improve their performance. However, such algorithms are rarely used in practice on safety-critical systems, since the learned policy typically does not yield any safety guarantees and thus the required exploration may cause physical harm to the robot or its environment. In this paper, we present a method to learn accurate safety certificates for nonlinear, closed-loop dynamic systems. Specifically, we construct a neural network Lyapunov function and a training algorithm that adapts it to the shape of the largest safe region in the state space. The algorithm relies only on knowledge of inputs and outputs of the dynamics, rather than on any specific model structure. We demonstrate our method by learning the safe region of attraction for a simulated inverted pendulum. Furthermore, we discuss how our method can be used in safe learning algorithms together with statistical models of dynamic systems.
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure reduces daytime sleepiness in mild-moderate obstructive sleep apnoea: Meta-analysis

Background: Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome (OSAS) affects an estimated 24% of the middle-aged population. Meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials have shown that the severe presentation of the syndrome (Apnoea Hypopnoea Index > 30/hr) is effectively treated with Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP). Until recently there has been insufficient data to determine whether CPAP improves sleepiness in the larger sub-group with mild-to-moderate OSAS (AHI 5-30/hr). Methods: A systematic search of MEDLINE and a hand search identified seven randomised controlled trials where CPAP was compared to either a placebo or to conservative management in the treatment of mild-moderate OSAS (AHI 5-30/hr). All trials used the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), four the Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT), and three the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) to measure sleepiness. Results: Meta-analyses indicated that CPAP significantly reduced subjective daytime sleepiness (Epworth Sleepiness Scale) by 1.2 points (95% CI 0.5 to 1.9, p=0.001), improved objective daytime wakefulness (Maintenance of Wakefulness Test) by 2.1 mins (95% CI 0.5 to 3.7, p=0.011), but did not affect objective daytime sleepiness (Multiple Sleep Latency Test, mean benefit -0.2 mins, 95% CI -1.0 to 0.6, p=0.6). The two significant effects were small (Effect size <0.30). Conclusions: Continuous Positive Airway Pressure elicits small improvements in subjective sleepiness and objective wakefulness in people with mild-moderate obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome. However, the effects on sleepiness are of limited clinical significance. Abstract word
Results on Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay Search in GERDA: Background Modeling and Limit Setting

The neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay experiment GERDA has taken 21.6 kg·yr of data in Phase I. A comprehensive background model is presented. The half life of the two-neutrino double beta decay of Ge-76 has been determined as (1.926 ± 0.094) x 10 21 yr. No indication for a 0νββ signal has been found. A lower limit at 90% C.I. on 0νββ half life of 1.85 x 10 25 yr from GERDA data alone and 2.86 x 10 25 yr from the combination with data of past HPGe experiments has been derived using Bayesian analysis.
MITIGATING ADVERSARIAL EFFECTS THROUGH RAN-

Convolutional neural networks have demonstrated their powerful ability on various tasks in recent years. However, they are extremely vulnerable to adversarial examples. I.e., clean images, with imperceptible perturbations added, can easily cause convolutional neural networks to fail. In this paper, we propose to utilize randomization to mitigate adversarial effects. Specifically, we use two randomization operations: random resizing, which resizes the input images to a random size, and random padding, which pads zeros around the input images in a random manner. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed randomization method is very effective at defending against both single-step and iterative attacks. Our method also enjoys the following advantages: 1) no additional training or finetuning, 2) very few additional computations, 3) compatible with other adversarial defense methods. By combining the proposed randomization method with an adversarially trained model, it get a normalized score of 0.921 in a public challenge on defending against adversarial examples, which is far better than using adversarial training alone with a normalized score of 0.830.
Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology.

First published over twenty five years ago, but with a new introduction and thoroughly updated.Every natural symbol - derived from blood, breath or excrement - carries a social meaning and this work focuses on the ways in which any one culture makes its selections from body symbolism. Each person treats his body as an image of society and Mary Douglas examines the varieties of ritual and symbolic expression and the patterns of social ritual in which they are embodied.Natural Symbols is a book about religion, and less directly, about style. It concerns our own society at least as much as any other, and it has stimulated new insights into religious and political movements and has provoked re-appraisals of current progressive orthodoxies in many fields.
A Novel Method for Detecting New Overlapping Community in Complex Evolving Networks

It is an important challenge to detect an overlapping community and its evolving tendency in a complex network. To our best knowledge, there is no such an overlapping community detection method that exhibits high normalized mutual information (NMI) and ${F}$ -score, and can also predict an overlapping community’s future considering node evolution, activeness, and multiscaling. This paper presents a novel method based on node vitality, an extension of node fitness for modeling network evolution constrained by multiscaling and preferential attachment. First, according to a node’s dynamics such as link creation and destruction, we find node vitality by comparing consecutive network snapshots. Then, we combine it with the fitness function to obtain a new objective function. Next, by optimizing the objective function, we expand maximal cliques, reassign overlapping nodes, and find the overlapping community that matches not only the current network but also the future version of the network. Through experiments, we show that its NMI and ${F}$ -score exceed those of the state-of-the-art methods under diverse conditions of overlaps and connection densities. We also validate the effectiveness of node vitality for modeling a node’s evolution. Finally, we show how to detect an overlapping community in a real-world evolving network.
Formulation and evaluation of floating tablets of niacin for sustained release

Niacin or nicotinic acid (NA) is used in the treatment of hyperlipidemia. NA immediate release formulation shows undesirable effects like flushing of the face and neck parts. In the present study, NA floating sustained release dosage form was developed to prolong the drug release, to retain the drug delivery system above the site of absorption for the desired period of time, and to reduce the drug release rate compared to conventional formulations in order to minimize the side effects. The preformulation parameters such as flow properties and drug-excipient compatibility studies were performed. The drug excipient compatibility studies were performed using the FTIR study and the results showed that all the polymers used in the study are compatible with the pure drug. The floating sustained release tablets of niacin were prepared by the wet granulation method and the granules were evaluated for various micromeritic properties like bulk density, tapped density, Carr’s Index, Hausner’s ratio, and angle of repose. The tablets were evaluated for post-compressional parameters like average weight, thickness, hardness, friability, swelling index, floating lag time and total floating time, and in vitro drug release studies. All the formulations showed total floating time >20 hr. The concentration of the effervescent agent and the concentration and type of polymer showed an effect on the floating behavior and drug release. The formulation containing 13% sodium bicarbonate, HPMC (33%) and Eudragit RS PO (4%) showed required drug release up to 20 hr.
WHO EMRO | Factors associated with low birthweight in term pregnancies: a matched case–control study from rural Pakistan

Low birthweight (LBW) remains a significant public health problem in Pakistan and further understanding of factors associated with LBW is required. We conducted a hospital-based matched case control study to identify risk factors associated with LBW in a rural district of Pakistan. We found that illiteracy (AOR: 2.68; 95% CI: 1.59 4.38), nulliparity (AOR: 1.82; 95% CI: 1.26-2.44), having a previous miscarriage/abortion (AOR: 1.22; 95% CI: 1.06-2.35), having Facteurs associés à une insuffisance pondérale à la naissance dans les cas de grossesses à terme : étude cas-témoins appariés au Pakistan rural RÉSUMÉ L’insuffisance pondérale à la naissance demeure un problème de santé publique significatif au Pakistan, et une compréhension approfondie des facteurs associés à ce problème est requise. Nous avons conduit une étude cas-témoins appariés en hôpital afin d’identifier les facteurs de risque associés à l’insuffisance pondérale à la naissance dans un district rural du Pakistan. Il est apparu que l'analphabétisme (OR ajusté : 2,68 ; IC de 95 % : 1,59-4,38), la nulliparité (OR ajusté : 1,82 ; IC de 95 % : 1,26-2,44), les antécédents de fausse couche ou d’avortement (OR ajusté : 1,22; IC de 95 % : 1,06-2,35), le fait d’avoir eu moins de deux visites de soins prénatals au cours de la dernière grossesse, (OR ajusté : 2,43 ; IC de 95 % : 1,34-2,88), de n’avoir recherché des soins prénatals qu’au troisième trimestre (OR ajusté : 3,62 ; IC de 95 % : 2,14-5,03), de ne pas avoir bénéficié d’une supplémentation en fer et en acide folique pendant la dernière grossesse (OR ajusté : 2,72 ; IC de 95 % : 1,75-3,17), d’avoir souffert d’hypertension durant la dernière grossesse (OR ajusté : 1,42 ; IC de 95 % : 1,13-2,20), d’anémie (OR ajusté : 2,67; IC de 95 % : 1,65-5,24) et d’avoir un poids post-partum de moins de 45 kg (OR ajusté : 3,30 ; IC de 95 % : 1,97-4,52) étaient significativement associés à des risques accrus d’avoir un bébé souffrant d'une insuffisance pondérale à la naisance. La présente étude a identifié les facteurs de risque modifiables nécessitant un engagement immédiat des autorités sanitaires. 1Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Neonatology, Central Clinical School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia (Correspondence to: M.A. Habib: atif.habib@aku.edu; habibatif@yahoo.com), 2Women and Child Health Division, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. 3Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Received: 06/12/16; accepted: 30/01/17
A Review of Thermal Transport in Low-Dimensional Materials Under External Perturbation: Effect of Strain, Substrate, and Clustering

ABSTRACT Due to their exceptional electrical, thermal, and optical properties, low-dimensional (LD) materials are very promising for many applications, such as nanoelectronic devices, energy storage, energy conversion, and thermal management. The thermal performance of LD materials is often an important consideration in these applications. Although freestanding LD materials exhibit interesting thermal properties, they are almost never used in such a form. Instead, they are often integrated into a certain environment; for example, in a composite material or on a substrate. Due to the large surface-to-volume ratio of LD materials, the environment usually has a strong impact on the thermal transport properties of these materials. The thermal behavior of the LD materials can be completely different from the freestanding form. The effect of environmental perturbation on thermal transport properties has recently attracted a lot of research interest. In this article, we aim to provide a comprehensive review of how the typical external perturbations, including tensile strain, substrate, and clustering, can affect the thermal transport properties of LD materials. Emphasis will be placed on how these perturbations affect the lattice structure, phonon dispersion, lattice anharmonicity, and thermal conductivity. We will also summarize the achievements and the remaining challenges on this research topic.
Formation of Cool and Warm Jets by Magnetic Flux Emerging from the Solar Chromosphere to Transition Region

In the solar atmosphere, jets are ubiquitous at various spatial-temporal scales. They are important for understanding the energy and mass transports in the solar atmosphere. According to recent observational studies, the high-speed network jets are likely to be intermittent but continual sources of mass and energy for the solar wind. Here, we conduct a 2D magnetohydrodynamics simulation to investigate the mechanism of these network jets. A combination of magnetic flux emergence and horizontal advection is used to drive the magnetic reconnection in the transition region between a strong magnetic loop and a background open flux. The simulation results show that not only a fast warm jet, much similar to the network jets, is found, but also an adjacent slow cool jet, mostly like classical spicules, is launched. Differing from the fast warm jet driven by magnetic reconnection, the slow cool jet is mainly accelerated by gradients of both thermal pressure and magnetic pressure near the outer border of the mass-concentrated region compressed by the emerging loop. These results provide a different perspective on our understanding of the formation of both the slow cool jets from the solar chromosphere and the fast warm jets from the solar transition region.
Landau problem with time dependent mass in time dependent electric and harmonic background fields

The spectrum of a Hamiltonian describing the dynamics of a Landau particle with time-dependent mass and frequency undergoing the influence of a uniform time-dependent electric field is obtained. The configuration space wave function of the model is expressed in terms of the generalised Laguerre polynomials. To diagonalize the time-dependent Hamiltonian, we employ the Lewis-Riesenfeld method of invariants. To this end, we introduce a unitary transformation in the framework of the algebraic formalism to construct the invariant operator of the system and then to obtain the exact solution of the Hamiltonian. We recover the solutions of the ordinary Landau problem in the absence of the electric and harmonic fields for a constant particle mass.
An Improved Feedback Coding Scheme for the Wire-tap Channel

Secure and reliable transmission over communication channels is first characterized by Wyner's wiretap channel (WTC) model. In recent years, the WTC with noiseless feedback (WTC-NF) attracts a lot attention, and it has been shown that the legal receiver's feedback enlarges the secrecy capacity of the WTC. Even so, the current feedback strategy for the WTC mainly focuses on generating key used for encrypting the transmitted message, and this strategy does not achieve the secrecy capacity of the WTC-NF. In this paper, a new coding strategy for the WTC-NF is presented. Besides used for generating key, the legal receiver's feedback of this new strategy is also used to produced a help information which helps the legal receiver to ameliorate his decoding performance. For the WTC-NF, the proposed new feedback strategy is shown to be better than the already existing one, and a binary example is given to further explain these results.
PROXIMALLY GUIDED STOCHASTIC SUBGRADIENT METHOD FOR NONSMOOTH , NONCONVEX

In this paper, we introduce a stochastic projected subgradient method for weakly convex (i.e., uniformly prox-regular) nonsmooth, nonconvex functions—a wide class of functions which includes the additive and convex composite classes. At a high-level, the method is an inexact proximal point iteration in which the strongly convex proximal subproblems are quickly solved with a specialized stochastic projected subgradient method. The primary contribution of this paper is a simple proof that the proposed algorithm converges at the same rate as the stochastic gradient method for smooth nonconvex problems. This result appears to be the first convergence rate analysis of a stochastic (or even deterministic) subgradient method for the class of weakly convex functions. In addition, a two-phase variant is proposed that significantly reduces the variance of the solutions returned by the algorithm. Finally, preliminary numerical experiments are also provided.
Coupled fixed point theorems in complete metric spaces endowed with a directed graph and application

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to present some existence results for coupled fixed point of a (φ,ψ) —contractive condition for mixed monotone operators in metric spaces endowed with a directed graph. Our results generalize the results obtained by Jain et al. in (International Journal of Analysis, Volume 2014, Article ID 586096, 9 pages). Moreover, we have an application to some integral system to support the results.
An exploration of FET mathematics learners' understanding of geometry.

1 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 2 1.1 Rationale and motivation of the study.2 1.2 Focus of the study.3 1.3 Outline of the study.3 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW.5 2.
A Fair Top-k Ranking Algorithm

We present a formal problem de nition and an algorithm to solve the Fair Top-k Ranking problem. The problem consists of creating a ranking of k elements out of a pool of n k candidates. The objective is to maximize utility, and maximization is subject to a ranked group fairness constraint. Our de nition of ranked group fairness uses the standard notion of protected group to extend the concept of group fairness. It ensures that every pre x of the rank contains a number of protected candidates that is statistically indistinguishable from a given target proportion, or exceeds it. The utility objective favors rankings in which every candidate included in the ranking is more quali ed than any candidate not included, and rankings in which candidates are sorted by decreasing quali cations. We describe an e cient algorithm for this problem, which is tested on a series of existing datasets, as well as new datasets. Experimentally, this approach yields a ranking that is similar to the so-called “color-blind” ranking, while respecting the fairness criteria. To the best of our knowledge, FA*IR is the rst algorithm grounded in statistical tests that can be used to mitigate biases in ranking against an under-represented group.