Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QSO ABSORPTION LINE SYSTEMS AND EARLY CHEMICAL EVOLUTION

Heavy element absorption line systems in spectra of QSOs represent unique probes of gas and high redshifts. An understanding of these systems will be important for theories of galaxy formation and large-scale structure. By using spectroscopic studies to obtain abundances in QSO absorption line systems at different redshifts, it is possible to observe clues to the nucleosynthetic history of objects, at a large range in redshift, that are presumably at different points in their evolution. In principle, one could imagine using abundance ratios to identify absorbing gas in which the heavy elements are predominantly those produced in Type II SNe (as are the Galactic halo and oldest disk stars) and those which have a mixture of the products of Type I and Type II SNe (like the gas and young stars of the Galatic disk). We review the present state of abundance measurements in damped Lyman-alpha systems, as well as recent results of studies of Galactic halo star and interstellar abundances. We also briefly discuss the results of imaging studies of fields around QSOs showing absorption by intervening gas, and the results of statistical analyses of the change in number of observed QSO absorption line systems with redshift. The range of overall abundances (10-0.5 to 10-3 solar) found in the absorbers (at redshifts of 0.6-3.4) overlaps the range found in Galactic halo stars. Specific, measurable tracers of supernova activity and dust grain formation in the absorber population are identified. As yet, however, there is no evidence of a system with [O/Zn]> 0 , [S/Zn]> 0, or [Si/Zn]> 0, the most distinguishing characteristic of Galactic halo star abundances. Dust-free gas with halo star abundances and solar metallicity gas with a Galactic cold-cloud depletion pattern are excluded by existing data. Additional observations of absorption line systems with 1019 < N(H I)< 1022 to obtain abundances of Al, Si, S, Mn, Fe, and Zn are needed. High spectral resolution is critical so that H I and H II regions may be identified and separated; otherwise the derived abundances are only upper limits. Future observations of O, N, Ca, Ti and Cr should shed new light on the origin of the elements and of grains in the absorbers. Observed cosmic timescales for elemental buildup can lead to specific predictions for the typical rates of Type I and Type II SNe as a function of redshift.
Cost-Effective Mechanical Aggregation of Cardiac Progenitors and Encapsulation in Matrigel Support Self-Organization in a Dynamic Culture Environment

Human iPSC-derived self-organized cardiac tissues can be valuable for the development of platforms for disease modeling and drug screening, enhancing test accuracy and reducing pharmaceutical industry financial burden. However, current differentiation systems still rely on static culture conditions and specialized commercial microwells for aggregation, which hinders the full potential of hiPSC-derived cardiac tissues. Herein, we integrate cost-effective and reproducible manual aggregation of hiPSC-derived cardiac progenitors with Matrigel encapsulation and a dynamic culture to support hiPSC cardiac differentiation and self-organization. Manual aggregation at day 7 of cardiac differentiation resulted in 97% of beating aggregates with 78% of cTnT-positive cells. Matrigel encapsulation conjugated with a dynamic culture promoted cell migration and the creation of organized structures, with observed cell polarization and the creation of lumens. In addition, encapsulation increased buoyancy and decreased coalescence of the hiPSC-derived cardiac aggregates. Moreover, VEGF supplementation increased over two-fold the percentage of CD31-positive cells resulting in the emergence of microvessel-like structures. Thus, this study shows that the explored culture parameters support the self-organization of hiPSC-derived cardiac microtissues containing multiple cardiac cell types. Additional stimuli (e.g., BMP) in long-term scalable and fully automatized cultures can further potentiate highly structured and mature hiPSC-derived cardiac models, contributing to the development of reliable platforms for high-throughput drug screening and disease modeling.
Non‐algorithmic quantitative problem solving in university physical chemistry: a correlation study of the role of selective cognitive factors

This work provides a correlation study of the role of the following cognitive variables on problem solving in elementary physical chemistry: scientific reasoning (level of intellectual development/developmental level), working‐memory capacity, functional mental (M) capacity, and disembedding ability (i.e., degree of perceptual field dependence–independence). Nine individual studies, with seven problems and with various samples of first‐year undergraduate chemistry students at the University of Ioannina, were used. The problems were open‐book, while the students were as a rule not supplied with the necessary data (facts, figures, values of constants, etc.). The results were analysed by calculating Spearman’s ρ and Pearson r correlation coefficients. In addition, the seven individual studies were combined using a quasi meta‐analysis (n = 250). The main findings are: (1) scientific reasoning showed lack of correlation; (2) working‐memory capacity also showed weak correlation, but stronger than scientific reasoning; and (3) functional M‐capacity and disembedding ability played a very important role. The field may thus be of paramount importance in the novel (for the students) non‐algorithmic problems used in this study. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Perceptions of Resettled Refugee Congolese Women: Maintaining Cultural Traditions during Resettlement

Conflict-displaced refugees have increased significantly globally. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the leading country with refugees in the United States, where many resettle in Ohio. Women refugees are highly vulnerable, yet little literature has focused on them. Furthermore, maintaining cultural traditions can provide comfort during the tumultuous resettlement process. Therefore, this study used mixed methods to understand the perceptions of Congolese refugee women on maintaining cultural traditions during resettlement in Ohio. Translator-assisted, orally administered demographic survey and face-to-face interviews were conducted among resettled Congolese refugee women (n = 20) 18 and older, who arrived in the United States from 2011 to 2018, and were currently receiving Ohio resettlement agency assistance. Researchers applied descriptive coding and thematic analysis to identify themes and subthemes. Three themes were identified among the resettled Congolese refugee women regarding maintaining cultural traditions in the United States. The three themes comprised (1) clothing and dressing, (2) food, and (3) parenting style. Our work examined resettled refugee Congolese women’s perceptions of maintaining their culture after resettling in Ohio. These study findings could assist community engagers with insights and practical recommendations on supportive services for resettled Congolese women and a deeper understanding of complex acculturative situations facing them during resettlement.
Structure of Polar Ring Galaxies: Shock Waves in the Gas of Polar Rings

Polar ring galaxies are peculiar SO galaxies with gaseous rings rotating perpendicularly to the SO disks. The gas in the ring rushes into the potential well of the SO disk with rotational speeds of 130-250 km s −1 , exceeding the sound velocity of the ionized gas. Hence, if the stellar disk of an SO galaxy is dense enough, i.e., if the potential well is deep enough to severely disturb the motions of the gas, shock waves might form, like the galactic shock waves in spiral or barred galaxies. We examined the mass models of the SO disks of three well-observed polar ring galaxies, A0136-0801, MCG 5-29-86, and NGC 4650A, and found that their SO disks are dense enough to produce shock waves in the region of R/r 0 ≤4.5, where R and r 0 are the radius of the polar ring and the exponential scalelength of the SO disk, respectively
Impact of Affordances on Inhibition of Return is moderated by ADHD

Visual attention is essential to performing functional tasks such as reaching out and picking up a cup of coffee from the table. To what extent is attention in individuals diagnosed with ADHD affected during such tasks? What factors influence attention in functional tasks that relate to goal-directed behaviour (i.e. affordances) is largely unknown. Researchers have used the cognitive mechanism of inhibition of return to investigate how attention works. Pragmatic inhibition of return occurs when the affordances, or pragmatic features, of the object are presented repeatedly as both cue and target stimuli, and suppress processing of similar information in the future to facilitate identification of novel stimuli. In the present study, pragmatic inhibition of return was examined by using “preferred” and “non-preferred” stimuli in the Posner cueing task in order to determine whether the stimulus with a more salient or obvious affordance would show a greater inhibition of return effect. The preferred stimuli were a soccer ball being kicked and a tennis ball being hit with a racket. The non-preferred stimuli were a soccer ball being hit by a racket and a tennis ball being kicked with the foot. Both the ADHD group and the control group exhibited inhibition of return, but the ADHD group was affected at later time delays following a cue stimulus. This suggests that the difference between ADHD and normal controls is a consequence of straightforward temporal delay, and not necessarily related to differences in the nature of attentional processing.
Large genomic introgression blocks of Phaseolus parvifolius Freytag bean into the common bean enhance the crossability between tepary and common beans

Abstract The production of the common bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris L.), one of the most important sources of protein and minerals and one of the most consumed grain legumes globally, is highly affected by heat and drought constraints. In contrast, the tepary bean ( Phaseolus acutifolius A. Gray), a common bean‐related species, is adapted to hot and dry climates. Hybridization to introduce complex traits from the tepary bean into the common bean has been challenging, as embryo rescue is required. In this study, we report three novel interspecific lines that were obtained by crossing lines from prior common bean × tepary bean hybridization with Phaseolus parvifolius Freytag in order to increase the male gametic diversity to facilitate interspecific crosses. These interspecific lines enhanced the crossability of the common bean and tepary bean species while avoiding the embryo rescue process. Crossing these three interspecific lines with tepary beans resulted in 12‐fold more hybrid plants than crossing traditional common beans with tepary beans. Whole‐genome sequencing analysis of these three interspecific lines shows large introgressions of genomic regions corresponding to P. parvifolius on chromosomes that presumably contribute to reproductive barriers between both species. The development of these lines opens up the possibility of increasing the introgression of desirable tepary bean traits into the common bean to address constraints driven by climate change.
Successively focused details: attention-based recurrent multiscale network for sketch-based image retrieval

Abstract. Sketch-based image retrieval (SBIR) is a cross-domain retrieval problem whose main challenge is that sketches and images differ in many aspects, such as visual content and abstract degree. Existing approaches solve cross-domain gaps using deep neural networks (DNNs) to learn a joint global feature representation for sketches and images. To improve the retrieval effect using local features, some researchers have introduced attention mechanisms and multi-scale inputs. However, these cannot effectively locate regions of detail difference between sketch–image pairs, and the discriminative ability of these models is insufficient. Just as human observational habits range from global to local, this paper constructs a multiscale network with the help of attention modules. The network is stacked in a recurrent way and focuses stepwise on the most discriminative regions from coarse to fine through region-specific attention models. The part-aware attention module is specifically designed for each scale network to make it robust against local spatial misalignment. To address the challenges of SBIR, we extend the network into a three-channel structure that integrates the sketch, edge map, and RGB photo branches to acquire a more discriminative cross-domain feature representation. The proposed network is alternately optimized by weighted regularization triplet loss, classification loss, and pairwise ranking loss. We conduct extensive experiments on several commonly used SBIR datasets, quantitative, and qualitative results demonstrate that our network learns more fine-grained features and outperforms all baselines.
Propagation of torsional waves in a thin circular plate of generalized phononic crystals

By introducing periodicity in the direction of variable vectors, the concept of existing phononic crystals (PCs) is expanded to generalized phononic crystals (GPCs), and a one-dimensional thin circular plate of GPCs (GPC plate) consisting of two alternating homogeneous materials is constructed. To show the characteristics of a torsional stress wave propagating along the radial direction, a transfer matrix is derived based on the basic torsional wave equation of the thin circular plate in cylindrical coordinates. A localization factor is introduced to evaluate the average attenuation of torsional stress waves in the structure, thus the band gaps are calculated. The inherent relationships between wave attenuation band, wave front and periodicity are discussed in detail. Finite element method simulations, numerical analyses and the insertion loss method are combined to investigate the effects of the main parameters on the torsional stress wave band in GPC plate. The results show that there are significant band gaps of the torsional stress waves caused by the periodicity of GPC plate, which are similar to those of existing PCs, and the localization factor can be used for the wave analysis of GPCs. In addition, structural and material parameters have a great influence on the wave attenuation band of the GPC plate.
The Financial availability and Innovation link with Firms & Environmental Performance

Conventionally, organizations tend to rely on financial performance and profit capacity to flow shareholder wealth. Currently, in adding to environmental and financial results, it had also developed a vital effort. Though, all organizations are unable to achieve financial and environmental results, especially medium and small-sized enterprises that need performance-enhancing financial resources. This analysis confirms the part of financial obtainability in financial, and environmental performance with a mediating role in recognizing the opportunity. Pragmatic tests are accumulated through framework questionnaires from 305 SMEs working in Pakistan developing markets. The hypotheses are verified in the AMOS by, Structural Equations Modeling (SEM). The results show that suitable financial resources have contributed to the performance of financial instruments, but they also play a significant part in environmental performance. Our study results indorse CEOs and senior administrators effectively use their financial resources to gain the benefit of a new opportunity, excellent financial and environmental performance. Also, companies with sufficient financial capital identify innovative opportunities significantly via recognition of opportunity mediator where they partially mediate the link among financial performance and financial obtainability.
Numerical Calculation of Particle-Laden Cyclone Separator Flow Using Les

Abstract Numerical flow calculations were carried out at various axial positions of a gas cyclone separator for industrial applications. Due to the nature of cyclone flows, which exhibit highly curved streamlines and anisotropic turbulence, we used the advanced turbulence model of Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The application of LES reveals better agreement with the experimental data, however, it requires higher computer capacity and longer running times when compared to standard turbulence models. These calculations of the continuous phase flow were the basis for modeling the behavior of the solid particles in the cyclone. Particle trajectories, pressure drop and the cyclone separation efficiency have been studied in some details. The paper is organized into five sections. The first section consists of an introduction and a summary of previous work. Section 2 deals with the LES turbulence calculations of the continuous phase flow. The third section treats modeling of the dispersed phase behavior. In section 4, computational issues are presented and discussed as applied grids, boundary conditions and the solution algorithm. In section 5, prediction profiles of the gas flow at axial positions are presented and discussed in some details. Moreover, pressure drop, particle trajectories and cyclone efficiency are discussed. Section 6 summarizes and concludes the paper.
Measuring Memberships in Collectives in Light of Developments in Cognitive Science and Natural-Language Processing

: Which individuals and corporate actors belong in a collective, and who decides? Soci-ology has not had good analytical tools for addressing these questions. Recent work that adapts probabilistic representations of concepts and probabilistic categorization to sociological research opens opportunities for making progress on the measurement of memberships. It turns out that the probabilistic cognitive-based reformulation reveals unexpected connections to language models and natural-language processing. In particular, the leading probabilistic classifier BERT provides new and powerful ways to measure core concepts.
EXTENSIONS AND GENERALIZED RESOLVENTS OF A SYMMETRIC OPERATOR WHICH IS NOT DENSELY DEFINED

We consider extensions of a closed symmetric operator whose domain is, in general, not dense in the given Hilbert space . In particular, we study self-adjoint extensions outside and the one-parameter families of operators () generated by them in which are dissipative for . The set of all generalized resolvents of the operator is characterized.
On shape forming by contractile filaments in the surface of growing tissues

Abstract Growing tissues are highly dynamic, and flow on sufficiently long timescales due to cell proliferation, migration, and tissue remodeling. As a consequence, growing tissues can often be approximated as viscous fluids. This means that the shape of microtissues growing in vitro is governed by their surface stress state, as in fluid droplets. Recent work showed that cells in the near-surface region of fibroblastic or osteoblastic microtissues contract with highly oriented actin filaments, thus making the surface properties highly anisotropic, in contrast to what is expected for an isotropic fluid. Here, we develop a model that includes mechanical anisotropy of the surface generated by contractile fibers and we show that mechanical equilibrium requires contractile filaments to follow geodesic lines on the surface. Constant pressure in the fluid forces these contractile filaments to be along geodesics with a constant normal curvature. We then take this into account to determine equilibrium shapes of rotationally symmetric bodies subjected to anisotropic surface stress states and derive a family of surfaces of revolution. A comparison with recently published shapes of microtissues shows that this theory accurately predicts both the surface shape and the direction of the actin filaments on the surface.
Higher harmonic tweek sferics observed at low latitude: estimation of VLF reflection heights and tweek propagation distance

Lightning generated signals recorded at a low-latitude station, Suva (18.2° S, 178.3° E) Fiji, in the South Pacific region, during September 2003–July 2004, are used to study the propagation features and the reflection heights of tweek atmospherics in the waveguide formed by the Earth's surface and the lower ionosphere. Tweeks are observed only during the local night and the maximum harmonic ( n ) recorded is six. The occurrence of tweeks with higher n progressively decreases as n increases. The dispersed part of tweeks decreases as n increases. The attenuation factor has been calculated for tweeks with n =1–3. The ionospheric reflection heights obtained assuming the transverse magnetic mode of propagation for tweek signals vary from 83–92 km. A higher harmonic of the same tweek is reflected from about 2.0 km higher than the lower harmonic. For 90% of tweeks, propagation distances are estimated to be between 1000–5000 km. Tweeks with lower n propagate longer distances than the tweeks with higher n .
A Novel Therapeutic Target for Small-Cell Lung Cancer: Tumor-Associated Repair-like Schwann Cells

Simple Summary Schwann cells (SCs) have been reported to support tumor spreading and metastasis formation in both the in vitro and in vivo models. However, the role of SCs in the progression of small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) has not been investigated. This study demonstrated the crosstalk between SCLC and tumor-associated SCs (TA-SCs) and constructed the mRNA-miRNA-lncRNA network that may regulate tumor cell-SC interaction and cancer progression. Abstract Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), representing 15–20% of all lung cancers, is an aggressive malignancy with a distinct natural history, poor prognosis, and limited treatment options. We have previously identified Schwann cells (SCs), the main glial cells of the peripheral nervous system, in tumor tissues and demonstrated that they may support tumor spreading and metastasis formation in the in vitro and in vivo models. However, the role of SCs in the progression of SCLC has not been investigated. To clarify this issue, the cell proliferation assay, the annexin V apoptosis assay, and the transwell migration and invasion assay were conducted to elucidate the roles in SCLC of tumor-associated SCs (TA-SCs) in the proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion of SCLC cells in vitro, compared to control group. In addition, the animal models to assess SC action’s effects on SCLC in vivo were also developed. The result confirmed that TA-SCs have a well-established and significant role in facilitating SCLC cell cancer migration and invasion of SCLC in vitro, and we also observed that SC promotes tumor growth of SCLC in vivo and that TA-SCs exhibited an advantage and show a repair-like phenotype, which allowed defining them as tumor-associated repair SCs (TAR-SCs). Potential molecular mechanisms of pro-tumorigenic activity of TAR-SCs were investigated by the screening of differentially expressed genes and constructing networks of messenger-, micro-, and long- non-coding RNA (mRNA-miRNA-lncRNA) using DMS114 cells, a human SCLC, stimulated with media from DMS114-activated SCs, non-stimulated SCs, and appropriate controls. This study improves our understanding of how SCs, especially tumor-activated SCs, may promote SCLC progression. Our results highlight a new functional phenotype of SCs in cancer and bring new insights into the characterization of the nervous system-tumor crosstalk.
A generalized backward scheme for solving nonmonotonic stochastic recursions

We propose an explicit construction of a stationary solution for a stochastic recursion of the form X ◦ θ = ϕ(X) on a partially-ordered Polish space, when the monotonicity of ϕ is not assumed. Under certain conditions, we show that an extension of the original probability space exists, on which a solution is well deﬁned, and construct explicitly this extension using a randomized contraction technique. We then provide conditions for the existence of a solution on the original space. We ﬁnally apply these results to the stability study of two nonmonotonic queuing systems.