Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An enhancement to sea ice motion and age products

Abstract. A new version of the sea ice motion and age products distributed at the National Snow and Ice Data Center's NASA Snow and Ice Distributed Active Archive Center has been developed. The new version, 4.0, includes several significant upgrades in processing, corrects known issues with the previous version, and updates the time series through 2018, with regular updates planned for the future. Here, we provide a history of the product development, discuss the improvements to the algorithms that create these products, and compare the Version 4 products to the previous version. While Version 4 algorithm changes were significant, the impact on the products is relatively minor, particularly for more recent years. Trends in motion and age are not substantially different between the versions. Changes in sea ice motion and age derived from the product show a significant shift in the Arctic ice cover, from a pack with a high concentration of older ice, to a sea ice cover dominated by first-year ice, which is more susceptible to summer melt. We also observe an increase in the speed of the ice in recent years, which is anticipated with the annual decrease in sea ice extent.
A Numerus Population Viability and Harvesting Analyses Web App

Population viability analysis (PVA) is used to assess the probability that a biological population will persist for a specified period of time. Such models are typically cast as Markov processes that may include age, stage, sex and metapopulation structures, density-dependence and ecological interaction processes. They may also include harvesting, stocking, and thresholds that trigger interventions. Here we present Numerus PVA, which is a web app that includes extensible user-selected options. Specifically, Numerus PVA allows for the specification of one to ten age classes, one or two sexes, single population or metapopulation configurations with 2 or 3 subpopulations, as well as density-dependent settings for inducing region-specific carrying capacities. Movement among subpopulations can be influenced by age, metapopulation connectivity, and attractivity of regions based on the relative fitness of the youngest age classes in each region. Simulations can be carried out deterministically or stochastically, with a user-specified combination of demographic and environmental processes. Numerus PVA is freely available at http://www.numerusinc. com/webapps/pva for running directly on any browser and device. Numerus PVA is easily modified by users familiar with the NovaModeler Software Platform.
Evolution of tidal disruption candidates discovered by XMM-Newton

Context. It has been demonstrated that active galactic nuclei are powered by gas accretion onto supermassive black holes located at their centres. The paradigm that the nuclei of inactive galaxies are also occupied by black holes was predicted long ago by theory. In the past decade, this conjecture was confirmed by the discovery of giant-amplitude, non-recurrent X-ray flares from such inactive galaxies and explained in terms of outburst radiation from stars tidally disrupted by a dormant supermassive black hole at the nuclei of those galaxies. Aims. Due to the scarcity of detected tidal disruption events, the confirmation and follow-up of each new candidate is needed to strengthen the theory through observational data, as well as to shed new light on the characteristics of this type of events. Methods. Two tidal disruption candidates have been detected with XMM-Newton during slew observations. Optical and X-ray followup, post-outburst observations were performed on these highly variable objects in order to further study their classification and temporal evolution. Results. We show that the detected low-state X-ray emission for these two candidates has properties such that it must still be related to the flare. The X-ray luminosity of the objects decreases according to theoretical predictions for tidal disruption events. At present, optical spectra of the sources do not present any evident signature of the disruption event. In addition, the tidal disruption rate as derived from the XMM-Newton slew survey has been computed and agrees with previous studies.
Beam Monte-Carlo Tree Search

Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is a state-of-the-art stochastic search algorithm that has successfully been applied to various multi- and one-player games (puzzles). Beam search is a search method that only expands a limited number of promising nodes per tree level, thus restricting the space complexity of the underlying search algorithm to linear in the tree depth. This paper presents Beam Monte-Carlo Tree Search (BMCTS), combining the ideas of MCTS and beam search. Like MCTS, BMCTS builds a search tree using Monte-Carlo simulations as state evaluations. When a predetermined number of simulations has traversed the nodes of a given tree depth, these nodes are sorted by their estimated value, and only a fixed number of them is selected for further exploration. In our experiments with the puzzles SameGame, Clickomania and Bubble Breaker, BMCTS significantly outperforms MCTS at equal time controls. We show that the improvement is equivalent to an up to four-fold increase in computing time for MCTS.
Improvements in Adaptive Mesh Refinement and Multilevel Methods in High-Frequency Electromagnetics

During the past twelve years, great improvements in finite element solution algorithms have been made. In 1990, a simple coax to waveguide adapter took sixteen hours to solve for a single frequency point on a Sun II computer; today the same part is solved for a fast sweep of 10 or more frequency points on a Pentium IV computer in 6 seconds. This is speed improvement of over 90,000 times. This paper shows the role that better mesh refinement algorithms, better error estimation criteria, multifrontal matrix solution procedures, hierarchical basis functions, and multilevel methods have played in this speed-up.
Cynara Cardunculus in Large Scale Cultivation. a Case Study in Portugal

Cynara Cardunculus in Large Scale Cultivation. A Case Study in Portugal Jorge Gominho*, Ana Lourenço, Maria Dolores Curt , Jesus Fernández, Helena Pereira Centro de Estudos Florestais, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisboa, Portugal Departamento de Producción Vegetal: Botánica y Protección Vegetal, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Av. Complutense s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain jgominho@isa.ulisboa. pt
Online Sketching of Network Flows for Real-Time Stepping-Stone Detection

We present an efficient and robust stepping-stone detection scheme based on succinct packet-timing sketches of network flows. The proposed scheme employs an online algorithm to continuously maintain short sketches of flows from a stream of captured packets at the network boundary. These sketches are then used to identify pairs of network flows with similar packet-timing characteristics, which indicates potential stepping-stones. Succinct flow sketches enable the proposed scheme to compare a given pair of flows in constant time. In addition, flow sketches identify pairs of correlated flows from a given list of flows in sub-quadratic time, thereby allowing a more scalable solution as compared to known schemes. Finally, the proposed scheme is resistant to random delays and chaff, which are often employed by attackers to evade detection. To explore its efficacy, we mathematically analyze the robustness properties of the proposed flow sketch. We also experimentally measure the detection performance of the proposed scheme.
Effects of middle-ear and medial olivocochlear reflexes on TEOAE frequency, magnitude, and phase

Transient otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) and wideband pressure reflectance were simultaneously measured in 24 young normal-hearing listeners. Contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS) was delivered across a wide range of levels (36-78 dB SL) to activate the medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) and middle-ear muscle reflex (MEMR). The resulting measurements were analyzed in terms of changes in frequency, magnitude, and phase. Changes in wideband reflectance were systematic across levels within individuals, but highly variable across subjects. These changes may provide a sensitive measure of middle-ear muscle reflex activation, but do not appear to be helpful in disentangling the effects of the two reflexes on TEOAEs. Frequency changes in TEOAEs occurred in about a third of measurements, but did not appear to be systematically related to CAS level and showed both increases and decreases. Frequency shifts occurred more often in the presence of MEMR. Changes in TEOAE magnitude and phase, after accounting for frequency changes, are reported. Average shifts at the highest CAS level were -4.4 dB and 0.22 cycles of phase lead.
The Associations of Serum Uric Acid with Obesity-Related Acanthosis nigricans and Related Metabolic Indices

Objective. Recent studies have shown that hyperuricemia (HUA) is associated with hypertension, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome (MetS). We aimed to examine the relationship of serum UA with Acanthosis nigricans (AN) and related metabolic indices in obese patients. Methods. A cross-sectional study with 411 obese patients recruited from our department was analyzed in this study. Weight, body mass index (BMI), UA, lipid profile, liver function, and renal function were measured in all participants. Oral glucose tolerance tests were performed, and serum glucose, insulin, and C peptide were measured at 0, 30, 60, 120, and 180 min. Results. AN group had higher serum UA levels than OB group. Circulating UA levels were associated with BMI, dyslipidemia, hypertension, IR, and AN. In logistic regression analyses (multivariable‐adjusted), a high serum UA level was associated with high odds ratios (ORs) (95% confidence interval [CI]) for AN in females (ORs = 3.00 and 95% CI [1.02–8.84]) and males (ORs = 6.07 and 95% CI [2.16–17.06]) in the highest quartile (Q4) of serum UA. Conclusions. Serum UA levels were positively associated with multiple metabolic abnormalities including obesity, hypertension, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and AN and may be an important risk factor in the development of AN; further evidences in vitro and in vivo are needed to investigate the direct or indirect relationship.
Integrative EEG biomarkers predict progression to Alzheimer's disease at the MCI stage

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating disorder of increasing prevalence in modern society. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered a transitional stage between normal aging and AD; however, not all subjects with MCI progress to AD. Prediction of conversion to AD at an early stage would enable an earlier, and potentially more effective, treatment of AD. Electroencephalography (EEG) biomarkers would provide a non-invasive and relatively cheap screening tool to predict conversion to AD; however, traditional EEG biomarkers have not been considered accurate enough to be useful in clinical practice. Here, we aim to combine the information from multiple EEG biomarkers into a diagnostic classification index in order to improve the accuracy of predicting conversion from MCI to AD within a 2-year period. We followed 86 patients initially diagnosed with MCI for 2 years during which 25 patients converted to AD. We show that multiple EEG biomarkers mainly related to activity in the beta-frequency range (13–30 Hz) can predict conversion from MCI to AD. Importantly, by integrating six EEG biomarkers into a diagnostic index using logistic regression the prediction improved compared with the classification using the individual biomarkers, with a sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 82%, compared with a sensitivity of 64% and specificity of 62% of the best individual biomarker in this index. In order to identify this diagnostic index we developed a data mining approach implemented in the Neurophysiological Biomarker Toolbox (http://www.nbtwiki.net/). We suggest that this approach can be used to identify optimal combinations of biomarkers (integrative biomarkers) also in other modalities. Potentially, these integrative biomarkers could be more sensitive to disease progression and response to therapeutic intervention.
Sources of bioterrorism information among emergency physicians during the 2001 anthrax outbreak.

ONGOING COMMUNICATION BETWEEN public health officials and clinicians facilitates recognition of and response to emerging infections and deliberate attacks with biological agents.1 However, little is known about sources of bioterrorism information used by frontline responders, particularly emergency physicians. During the 2001 anthrax attacks, official bioterrorism updates were communicated through Health Alert Networks, the Epidemic Information Exchange (Epi-X), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). 2–4 Additional information was shared through MMWR reprints in medical journals and through the websites of medical associations, the CDC, and state and local health departments.5 To allow rapid dissemination of Health Alerts to key partners, state health departments started to use media such as e-mail and broadcast fax to strengthen links with hospitals, clinicians, and laboratories. In Pennsylvania, the development of a Health Alert Network had started in summer 2001 with the creation of an electronic database of e-mail addresses and fax numbers of hospital directors, emergency physician directors, and professional medical societies. The first Pennsylvania Health Alert was disseminated on September 11, 2001, shortly after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.6 The frequency of Health Alerts remained low until after the CDC announced an investigation of the index case of the 2001 bioterrorismrelated anthrax outbreak.7–8 During October and November, 21 alerts about bioterrorism were sent through the Pennsylvania Health Alert Network. These alerts primarily shared information derived from Epi-X, the eight MMWR updates released during the same period,4 and announcements of the CDC’s four satellite broadcasts targeted to clinicians.9 Health Alerts were sent to more than 300 fax machines and approximately 200 e-mail addresses in the Health Alert Network contact database. Public health communication during the 2001 anthrax attacks relied heavily on Health Alert Networks and other newly developed channels such as websites. However, it was unclear whether clinicians received official public health information disseminated through these newly developed electronic media and other sources. Specifically, we sought to determine whether physicians had been exposed to official Health Alerts and MMWR updates. We also wanted to assess physician-initiated contacts with public health agencies and physicians’ knowledge about bioterrorism. We report here results from a study conducted among Pennsylvania emergency physicians during the 2001 bioterrorism attacks.
Structural superpixel descriptor for visual tracking

Object representation is a major component in object tracking, however, most conventional patch-based methods just simply decompose the object into patches with grid or stochastic rectangles. This kind of decomposition ignores the intrinsic structure of object, leading to low discriminative power and weak representation effectiveness when similar objects appear or under background clutters. In this paper, we propose an effective object descriptor based on a hierarchical representation with superpixels for visual tracking, called Structural Superpixel Descriptor (SSD). The proposed SSD not only exploits the superpixels to capture the structural information of object, but also preserves the spatial layout structure among the superpixels inside each target candidate. Moreover, we propose an adaptive patch weighting method based on spatial constraint to alleviate various adverse impacts of background information, making the tracker more robust against background noises. We show that the proposed SSD makes full use of the intrinsic structure inside target candidates. Extensive experiments conducted on various challenging sequences demonstrate that the proposed tracker performs well against state-of-the-art algorithms.
Four Puzzles About Life

To surmount the notorious difficulties of defining life, we should evaluate theories of life not by whether they provide necessary and sufficient conditions for our current preconceptions about life but by how well they explain living phenomena and how satisfactorily they resolve puzzles about life. On these grounds, the theory of life as supple adaptation gets support from the natural and compelling way it resolves the following four puzzles: (a) How are different forms of life at different levels of the vital hierarchy related? (b) Is there a continuum between life and nonlife? (c) Does life essentially concern a living entity's material composition or its form? (d) Are life and mind intrinsically connected?
Aptamer and Its Potential Applications for Food Safety

Accompanied by industrial globalization, rapid urbanization, and population increment, mass production and staple trading for food consumption are upsoaring continuously, foodborne disease resulted from various food safety issues is currently a crucial public health concern worldwide, which has not only created a great burden on both economy and society, but also greatly threatened the sustainability of mankind's livelihood and human reproduction. In order to better ensure food safety and thus effectively curb the occurrence of foodborne diseases, the development and evolving of inspection strategies are indispensable measures for quality assurance and conformity assessment. Nowadays, as complementary measures to and with advantageous merits over classic analytical methods, highly specific and selective aptamer-based assays have found their increasingly important roles in various domains of food analysis. This critical review summarizes the advantages of aptamer as compared with antibody, introduces important evolving variants of systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX), and presents an overview of potential aptamer applications for food safety.
Molecular Epidemiology of Human Enterovirus Associated with Aseptic Meningitis in Shandong Province, China, 2006–2012

Background Human enteroviruses (HEVs) are common causes of acute meningitis. However, there is limited information about HEV associated with aseptic meningitis in mainland China because it has not been classified as a notifiable disease. Objectives To characterize the HEVs associated with sporadic aseptic meningitis in China and to analyze their genetic features. Study Design Cerebrospinal fluid, throat swab and feces specimens were collected from patients with aseptic meningitis in 5 sentinel hospitals in Shandong Province, China between 2006 and 2012. Virological investigation (viral isolation and molecular identification) and phylogenetic analysis were performed. Results A total of 437 hospitalized patients were reported, and enteroviruses were detected in the specimens from 84 patients (19.2%) and were identified into 17 serotypes. The nine main serotypes were echovirus (E) 30 (27.4%), EV71 (13.1%), coxsackievirus (CV) B1 (9.5%), CVB3 (7.1%), CVB5 (7.1%), E6 (7.1%), E9 (7.1%), CVA9 (6.0%), and CVA10 (3.6%). Monthly distribution of isolated enteroviruses revealed a major peak in summer-fall season and a small second peak in winter constituted totally by EV71. Sequence analysis on VP1 coding region suggested Shandong strains had great genetic divergence with isolates from other countries. Conclusions Multiple serotypes were responsible for enterovirus meningitis in mainland China. Aseptic meningitis caused by EV71 and coxsackie A viruses–the predominant pathogens for the hand, foot, and mouth disease–is currently an important concern in mainland China.
Characterization of heterochromatin by sequential counterstain-enhanced fluorescence in three domestic bird species: Meleagris gallopavo, Columba livia domestica, and Anser anser L.

The karyotypes of three avian species--Meleagris gallopavo, Anser anser L. , and Columba livia domestica--were investigated by means of counterstain-enhanced fluorescence techniques (chromomycin A3/distamycin A/DAPI followed by DAPI/actinomycin D staining). A heterochromatin characterization of macro- and microchromosomes was performed. CMA3-positive (GC-rich) regions in the turkey included the telomeres of chromosomes 1, 3, 4, and Z. In the goose, the chromosome 2 was also CMA3-bright at the telomeres. The W chromosome possessed large amounts of CMA3-bright material on the short arm in both the turkey and the goose. Two types of centromeric heterochromatin were distinguished on acro- to telocentric chromosomes 6 to 14 in the pigeon. The microchromosomal heterochromation of the turkey and goose was GC-rich but had a high degree of variation. In the pigeon, several microchromosomes possessed predominantly AT-rich heterochromatin.
Protein structure alignment by incremental combinatorial extension (CE) of the optimal path.

A new algorithm is reported which builds an alignment between two protein structures. The algorithm involves a combinatorial extension (CE) of an alignment path defined by aligned fragment pairs (AFPs) rather than the more conventional techniques using dynamic programming and Monte Carlo optimization. AFPs, as the name suggests, are pairs of fragments, one from each protein, which confer structure similarity. AFPs are based on local geometry, rather than global features such as orientation of secondary structures and overall topology. Combinations of AFPs that represent possible continuous alignment paths are selectively extended or discarded thereby leading to a single optimal alignment. The algorithm is fast and accurate in finding an optimal structure alignment and hence suitable for database scanning and detailed analysis of large protein families. The method has been tested and compared with results from Dali and VAST using a representative sample of similar structures. Several new structural similarities not detected by these other methods are reported. Specific one-on-one alignments and searches against all structures as found in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) can be performed via the Web at http://cl.sdsc. edu/ce.html.
Rumen microbes and fermentation of wild sika deer on the Shiretoko peninsula of Hokkaido Island, Japan

A total of 32 wild Hokkaido sika deer (Cervus nippon yesoensis) were shot (13 in summer, nine in autumn and 10 in winter) in the Syari district, Shiretoko Peninsula of Hokkaido Island, Japan. The ingested foods, rumen fermentation parameters and microbes were determined to evaluate digestive strategy and food availability in each season. Ingested foods and ruminal characteristics greatly varied by season. Rumen digesta mainly comprised of graminoids in summer, graminoids and agricultural products in autumn, and bark and twigs in winter. Rumen pH showed seasonal differences (P < 0.05) and was lowest in summer, highest in winter, and intermediate in autumn, reflecting the seasonal differences in ruminal concentration of total volatile fatty acids which were significantly lower (P < 0.05) in winter than in summer and autumn. Acetate proportions were significantly higher in winter than in other seasons (P < 0.05), while the opposite trend was seen in proportions of propionate and butyrate. Rumen ammonia levels showed significant seasonal differences (P < 0.05), decreasing from summer to autumn to winter. Rumen protozoa levels in autumn and winter decreased to 28 and 10% of the levels observed in summer, respectively (P < 0.05 for both). The rumen bacteria level in winter was lower (P < 0.05) than that in autumn, but no difference was seen for the other seasonal comparisons. Gram negative cocci were present in significantly higher proportions in winter than in other seasons (P < 0.05), while Gram negative curved rods were less frequently observed in winter (P < 0.05). Based on these results, wild sika deer in this area are shown to survive with rumen microbial populations altered with the dietary conditions that vary greatly by season.