Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probing local group galactic substructure with cosmological simulations

The Lambda cold dark matter (ACDM) model is enormously successful at predicting large scale structure in the Universe. However, some tensions still remain on small scales, specifically regarding observed satellites of the Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda. Foremost among the problems have been the missing satellite, too big to fail, and cusp/core problems, which concern the expected abundance of satellites and their inner structure. This Ph.D. thesis consists of a series of studies using dark matter only cosmological N-body simulations of MW-mass galaxies to address topics related to these issues. In light of the recent Planck mission, I investigate how changes to cosmological parameters affect dark matter halo substructure. I find that the process of continuous subhalo accretion and destruction leads to a steady state description of most subhalo properties in a given host, unchanged by small fluctuations in cosmological parameters. Subhalo concentration, maximum circular velocity, and formation times, however, are somewhat affected. One way to reduce the central density of satellites, as needed to solve the cusp/core and too big to fail problems, is through self-interacting dark matter (SIDM). I search for new implications of SIDM and find that stars in satellites spread out to larger radii and are tidally stripped at a higher rate in SIDM than CDM, even though the mass loss rate of dark matter is unchanged. These signatures should be particularly prominent in ultrafaint dwarf galaxies for the class of otherwise difficult to constrain velocity-dependent SIDM models. I also helped carry out the Caterpillar project, a suite of 36 high mass resolution (~ 10' Mo/particle) simulations of MW-like galaxies used to study diversity in halo substructure. To these, I apply abundance matching and reionization models to make novel predictions about the abundance of satellites in isolated dwarf galaxies out to 8 Mpc to help guide future searches. Applying the same techniques to predict satellites within 50 kpc of the LMC, I discover large discrepancies with the observed stellar mass function, which may lead to new constraints on the galaxy stellar mass-halo mass relationship, and the ability of reionization to leave dark matter halos entirely dark.
Differential Item Functioning for Accommodated Students with Disabilities: Effect of Differences in Proficiency Distributions

ABSTRACT This study examined the effect of similar vs. dissimilar proficiency distributions on uniform DIF detection on a statewide eighth grade mathematics assessment. Results from the similar- and dissimilar-ability reference groups with an SWD focal group were compared for four models: logistic regression, hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM), the Wald-1 IRT-based test, and the Mantel-Haenszel procedure. A DIF-free-then-DIF strategy was used. The rate of DIF detection was examined among all accommodated scores and common accommodation subcategories. No items were detected for DIF using the similar ability distribution reference group, regardless of method. With the dissimilar ability reference group, logistic regression and Mantel–Haenszel flagged 8–17%, and the Wald-1 and HGLM test flagged 23–38% of items for DIF. Forming focal groups by accommodation type did not alter the pattern of DIF detection. Creating a reference group to be similar in ability to the focal group may control the rate of erroneous DIF detection for SWD.
Lower Semicontinuous Regularization for Vector-Valued Mappings Dedicated to Alex Rubinov in honor of his 65th birthday.

The paper is devoted to studying the lower semicontinuity of vector-valued mappings. The main object under consideration is the lower limit. We first introduce a new definition of an adequate concept of lower and upper level sets and establish some of their topological and geometrical properties. A characterization of semicontinuity for vector-valued mappings is thereafter presented. Then, we define a concept of vector lower limit, proving its lower semicontinuity, and furnishing in this way a concept of lower semi- continuous regularization for mappings taking their values in a complete lattice. The results obtained in the present work subsume the standard ones when the target space is finite dimensional. In particular, we recapture the scalar case with a new flexible proof. In addi- tion, extensions of usual operations of lower and upper limits for vector-valued mappings are explored. The main result is finally applied to obtain a continuous D.C. decomposition of continuous D.C. mappings. Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000). Primary 47A15, Secondary 46A32, 47D20
SUPPRESSION OF LYMPHOCYTE BY LUPEOL

Lupeol has been shown to possess antiarthritic activity through possible suppression of the immune system. As seen in the following studies, it was found to suppress various immune factors such as the phagocytic (cellkilling) activity of macrophages, T-lymphocyte activity that included CD4+T cell mediated cytokine generation. Assessment of T cells and their intracellular content of cytokines was carried out by flow cytometric analysis in Balb/c mice. Oral administration of lupeol at doses of 12.5–200 mg/kg p.o. inhibited CD4+ T and CD8+ T cell counts and cytokines IL-2, IFN-γ (Th1) and IL-4 (Th2). Cytometric bead array (CBA) technology was applied to carry out simultaneous measurement of multiple serum cytokines. The oral LD0 in mice was more than 2 g/kg body weight. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Rate of PoIynRorphism Is Not Substantially Elevated

Previous data suggested an elevated rate of polymorphism in Alu sequences. Direct genomic sequencing was performed on five Alu repeats in the factor IX gene in at least 20 unrelated males of European and Asian descent (40 kb total). In these Alu sequences, the estimated rate of polymorphism in Caucasians (HE = 7.1 x is similar to previously examined nonrepetitive sequences in the factor IX gene, and about twofold lower than previous estimates of the average rate of polymorphism for the X-chromosome which utilized random genomic clones to detect RFLPs. The aggregate data on the rate of polymorphism in Alu sequences suggest that mutations due to gene conversions at these sites are infrequent.
Passivation of multiple-quantum-well Ge0.97Sn0.03/Ge p-i-n photodetectors

We study the effect of surface passivation on pseudomorphic multiple-quantum-well Ge0.97Sn0. 03/Ge p-i-n photodetectors. A combination of ozone oxidation to form GeOx and GeSnOx on the surface of the diodes followed by atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 for protection of these native oxides provides reduced dark current. With a temperature-dependent investigation of dark current, we calculate the activation energy to be 0.26 eV at a bias of −0.1 V and 0.05 eV at −1 V for the sample passivated by this ozone method. Based on these activation energy results, we find that the current is less dominated by bulk tunneling at lower reverse bias values; hence, the effect of surface passivation is more noticeable with nearly an order-of-magnitude improvement in dark current for the ozone-passivated sample compared to control devices without the ozone treatment at a voltage of −0.1 V. Passivation also results in a significant enhancement of the responsivity, particularly for shorter wavelengths, with 26% higher respons.
A New Application of Miller and Mocanu Lemma

Bu calismada, R ( ) α , ρ ve P ( ) α ,r . siniﬂarina ait f ( ) z fonksiyonu icin Miller ve Mocanu lemmasinin (Miller and Mocanu, 1978) yeni bir uygulamasi verilecektir.
PARABENS IN COSMETICS AND BREAST CANCER

A recent review by Darbre (2003) published in this journal (J. Appi. Toxicol. 23: 89–95) has attracted public and scientific interest that requires perspective, particularly on the use of esters of p-hydroxybenzoic acid (parabens) as preservatives in underarm cosmetics. Although parabens are generally regarded as safe, recent reports suggest that they are oestrogenic in a variety of in vitro (including MCF7 and ZR-75-1 human breast cancer cell lines) and in vivo tests for oestrogenicity (uterotrophic assays in both rat and mouse). There are also recent reports of adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes in rodent toxicity studies. Of interest is the lack of activity by the oral route but clear activity by the subcutaneous and topical routes, which is of some relevance to the use of underarm cosmetics. There would seem to be a case now to supplement these emerging toxicity data with longer term regulatory standard tests examining other oestrogenic endpoints and at least to consider these findings in more up-to-date risk assessments specific for cosmetic use. Further, there are few data on the use of underarm cosmetics and the risk of breast cancer, and although one recent retrospective interview-based study found no association there is a need for more thorough investigation taking into account the type of chemicals used. Darbre has forwarded a hypothesis and called for further work to establish whether or not the use of underarm cosmetics (particularly containing oestrogenic formulants) contributes to the rising incidence of breast cancer. It would seem prudent to conduct this work because the current database is sparse and the effects of long-term low-level exposures to weakly oestrogenic chemicals on human health, particularly their application to the underarm and the risks of breast cancer, are unknown. The role of oestrogens in breast cancer, however, is undisputed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. JOURNAL OF APPLIED TOXICOLOGY J. Appl. Toxicol. 23, 285–288 (2003) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jat.946
In-Situ Demonstration of Epstein-Burr Virus

A 44-year-old man infected with human immunodeficiency virus had Hodgkin's disease, mixed cellularity, and malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, diffuse large cell type. Colorimetric in-situ hybridization showed the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV] genome in the cells of the large cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and in the ReedSternberg cells and reactive lymphocytes of the Hodgkin's lymphoma. These results suggest that EBV may play a similar causative role in both neoplasms. This colorimetric method of hybridization, yielding results within 8 hours, is applicable to archival material and will be useful in further epidemiologic work associating EBV and lymphoid proliferations and malignancies. Cancer 66:796-800, 1990.
Can LLMs Capture Human Preferences?

We explore the viability of Large Language Models (LLMs), specifically OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, in emulating human survey respondents and eliciting preferences, with a focus on intertemporal choices. Leveraging the extensive literature on intertemporal discounting for benchmarking, we examine responses from LLMs across various languages and compare them to human responses, exploring preferences between smaller, sooner, and larger, later rewards. Our findings reveal that both GPT models demonstrate less patience than humans, with GPT-3.5 exhibiting a lexicographic preference for earlier rewards, unlike human decision-makers. Though GPT-4 does not display lexicographic preferences, its measured discount rates are still considerably larger than those found in humans. Interestingly, GPT models show greater patience in languages with weak future tense references, such as German and Mandarin, aligning with existing literature that suggests a correlation between language structure and intertemporal preferences. We demonstrate how prompting GPT to explain its decisions, a procedure we term"chain-of-thought conjoint,"can mitigate, but does not eliminate, discrepancies between LLM and human responses. While directly eliciting preferences using LLMs may yield misleading results, combining chain-of-thought conjoint with topic modeling aids in hypothesis generation, enabling researchers to explore the underpinnings of preferences. Chain-of-thought conjoint provides a structured framework for marketers to use LLMs to identify potential attributes or factors that can explain preference heterogeneity across different customers and contexts.
Crisis response during the COVID-19 pandemic: Changes in social contact and social participation of older Americans

Objective This study aimed to assess changes in social contact with family, friends and healthcare providers, as well as social participation in working, volunteering, religious services and other organized activities, among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic while examining the role of pre-COVID sociodemographic characteristics or cognitive and physical limitations in changes in social contact and participation. Methods We conducted secondary data analyses in the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) COVID-19 questionnaire, collected in 2020 during a period of workplace closures and social distancing guidelines. We linked data to pre-COVID sociodemographic and medical information collected in 2019 before COVID interrupted social life. The frequency of participants’ social contact and social participation prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, were compared using paired t-tests for summed scores. Multivariate linear regression was used to relate participants’ socio-demographic, prior physical and cognitive performance with levels of social contact and participation and with changes reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results In total, results from 2,486 eligible participants revealed that COVID-19 was associated with decreased social contact among family and friends (change: -0.62; SE: 0.06; p<0.0001), and social participation among older adults (change: -0.58; SE: 0.02; p<0.0001). Pre-COVID characteristics including older age, lower educational attainment, poorer physical performance, and more chronic conditions were associated with lower social contact and social participation and with how older adults adapted their social lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion These results emphasize the importance of increasing digital inclusion for older adults in a major crisis.
Honey bees and social wasps reach convergent architectural solutions to nest-building problems

The hexagonal cells built by honey bees and social wasps are an example of adaptive architecture; hexagons minimize material use, while maximizing storage space and structural stability. Hexagon building evolved independently in the bees and wasps, but in some species of both groups, the hexagonal cells are size dimorphic—small worker cells and large reproductive cells—which forces the builders to join differently sized hexagons together. This inherent tiling problem creates a unique opportunity to investigate how similar architectural challenges are solved across independent evolutionary origins. We investigated how 5 honey bee and 5 wasp species solved this problem by extracting per-cell metrics from 22,745 cells. Here, we show that all species used the same building techniques: intermediate-sized cells and pairs of non-hexagonal cells, which increase in frequency with increasing size dimorphism. We then derive a simple geometric model that explains and predicts the observed pairing of non-hexagonal cells and their rate of occurrence. Our results show that despite different building materials, comb configurations, and 179 million years of independent evolution, honey bees and social wasps have converged on the same solutions for the same architectural problems, thereby revealing fundamental building properties and evolutionary convergence in construction behavior.
Workplace violence and its associated factors among health care workers of a tertiary hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal

Workplace violence (WPV) is a globally prevailing public health concerns among healthcare workers. Workplace violence includes occupational abuse (physical, sexual, verbal and psychological), threats or harm among health workers, and workplace harassment. It is important to identify the prevalence of workplace violence at the workplace. Therefore, this study aimed to assess workplace violence and its associated factors among healthcare workers at a tertiary hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among 369 health care workers in a tertiary hospital in Kathmandu. A semi-structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS v20. Descriptive statistics were used to assess workplace violence and other independent variables. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression model was used to examine the factors associated with workplace violence. The prevalence of verbal violence was highest among doctors (34.3%) and nurses (52.8%) followed by bullied/mobbed among doctors (11.9%) and nurses (17%) any time in the past. Experience of any type of workplace violence in the past among doctor was 45.5% and among nurses was 54% while 35.8% doctors and 46.8% nurses had experienced it in the past 12 months. Patients and relatives of patient were major perpetrator for physical and verbal violence while management and staff members were major perpetrators for bullying/mobbing. Participants marital status, work experience, posted department, nature of work shift, frequency of night shift and working hours per week showed statistically significant association with the experience of workplace violence within past 12 months (p<0.05) in binary logistic regression analysis. There is a crucial need to establish evidence-based actions to prevent violence in the workplace and promote a healthy workplace setting. Placing adequate staffs at emergency and medical departments and providing training to cope with the stressful emergency situations would help in minimizing workplace violence among health workers.
Exploring bacterial community composition and immune gene expression of European eel larvae (Anguilla anguilla) in relation to first-feeding diets

European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is a commercially important species for fisheries and aquaculture in Europe and the attempt to close the lifecycle in captivity is still at pioneering stage. The first feeding stage of this species is characterized by a critical period between 20 to 24 days post hatch (dph), which is associated with mortalities, indicating the point of no return. We hypothesized that this critical period might also be associated with larvae-bacterial interactions and the larval immune status. To test this, bacterial community composition and expression of immune and stress-related genes of hatchery-produced larvae were explored from the end of endogenous feeding (9 dph) until 28 dph, in response to three experimental first-feeding diets (Diet 1, Diet 2 and Diet 3). Changes in the water bacterial community composition were also followed. Results revealed that the larval stress/repair mechanism was activated during this critical period, marked by an upregulated expression of the hsp90 gene, independent of the diet fed. At the same time, a shift towards a potentially detrimental larval bacterial community was observed in all dietary groups. Here, a significant reduction in evenness of the larval bacterial community was observed, and several amplicon sequence variants belonging to potentially harmful bacterial genera were more abundant. This indicates that detrimental larvae-bacteria interactions were likely involved in the mortality observed. Beyond the critical period, the highest survival was registered for larvae fed Diet 3. Interestingly, genes encoding for pathogen recognition receptor TLR18 and complement component C1QC were upregulated in this group, potentially indicating a higher immunocompetency that facilitated a more successful handling of the harmful bacteria that dominated the bacterial community of larvae on 22 dph, ultimately leading to better survival, compared to the other two groups.
Member commitment in farmers’ cooperatives in China: The role of contractual and relational governance mechanisms

Farmers’ cooperatives play a critical role in social, economic, and environmental sustainability in terms of poverty reduction, food quality and safety, farm sustainability, and members’ well-being. However, they are generally faced with low or declining member commitment, which restricts their performance and sustainable development. This study aims to investigate the effect of cooperative governance on member commitment as well as the moderating effects of cooperative types through an empirical exploratory study applying a random sampling survey. The results indicate that both contractual and relational governance have significant positive effects on member commitment, but vary with cooperative types. Specifically, there is a greater effect of contractual governance in company-affiliated cooperatives than in primary cooperatives, while the effects of relational governance increase in the order of company-affiliated, primary, and company-led cooperatives. Moreover, relational governance displays a greater positive influence on member commitment than contractual governance. These findings suggest that cooperatives should take organizational features, contractual and relational governance into consideration to improve member commitment and sustainable development.
Relationship between hematological parameters and bronchopulmonary dysplasia in premature infants

Objective To evaluate the association between hematological parameters on the first day of life and bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) in preterm infants. Methods This retrospective study involved all premature infants admitted to our neonatal intensive care unit from January 2017 to June 2022. BPD was diagnosed based on hypoxia exposure for ≥28 days. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), platelet count (PLT), mean platelet volume (MPV), and platelet mass index (PMI) were compared between infants with and without BPD. Multivariate analysis was conducted to evaluate the association between hematological parameters and BPD. Results This study involved 124 premature infants (48 with BPD, 76 without BPD). The BPD group had a lower gestational age and lower weight. The NLR, MPV, and PLR were considerably higher and the PLT and MPI were lower in the BPD than non-BPD group. After adjusting for covariates, logistic regression analysis suggested that the NLR, PLT, and PMI were independent risk factors for BPD. Moreover, the receiver operating characteristic curve indicated that the NLR, PLT, and PMI were reliable predictors of BPD. Conclusion Our findings suggest that a higher NLR and a lower PLT and PMI on the first day may increase the risk of BPD.
What is the Role of SNORA42 in Carcinogenesis? A Systematic Review

Objective: Perform a systematic literature review on SNORA42 in carcinogenesis in order to elucidate its importance, its potential use as a biomarker and as a therapeutic target. Methods: Using PubMed, SciELO and Science Direct databases as search means, articles that are in line with the scope of the study, written in English, that were published between 2012 and 2022, were selected using the following keywords: “small nucleolar RNA 42”, “snoRNA 42” and “SNORA42”, as well as searches for the synonyms of this snoRNA (SNORA80E, box H/ACA 42 and ACA42). Result: From a total of 131 studies, seven were selected, in which it was possible to identify that SNORA42 interferes in several biological processes, such as proliferation, migration, invasion, metastasis, apoptosis, and signaling pathways. Among the signaling pathways, the p53 and NF-KappaB pathways stand out. Moreover, it is a potential biomarker for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cancer. Conclusion: The summary of the main information about SNORA42 in the process of carcinogenesis and cancer progression shows that the use of this snoRNA is ideal for future applications in the field of oncology, in which it can be used as a biomarker and therapeutic target. Thus, it is of fundamental importance to carry out new studies to consolidate the applicability of this molecule.