Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Super-resolution trends in the ALMA Taurus survey: Structured inner discs and compact discs

The 1.33 mm survey of protoplanetary discs in the Taurus molecular cloud found annular gaps and rings to be common in extended sources (≳ 55 au), when their 1D visibility distributions were fit parametrically. We first demonstrate the advantages and limitations of nonparametric visibility fits for data at the survey’s 0.12″ resolution. Then we use the nonparametric model in Frankenstein (frank) to identify new substructure in three compact and seven extended sources. Among the new features we identify three trends: a higher occurrence rate of substructure in the survey’s compact discs than previously seen, underresolved (potentially azimuthally asymmetric) substructure in the innermost disc of extended sources, and a ‘shoulder’ on the trailing edge of a ring in discs with strong depletion at small radii. Noting the shoulder morphology is present in multiple discs observed at higher resolution, we postulate it is tracing a common physical mechanism. We further demonstrate how a super-resolution frank brightness profile is useful in motivating an accurate parametric model, using the highly structured source DL Tau in which frank finds two new rings. Finally we show that sparse (u, v) plane sampling may be masking the presence of substructure in several additional compact survey sources.
Solid Accretion onto Neptune-mass Planets. I. In Situ Accretion and Constraints from the Metallicity of Uranus and Neptune

The currently available, detailed properties (e.g., isotopic ratios) of solar system planets may provide guides for constructing better approaches to exoplanet characterization. With this motivation, we explore how the measured values of the deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio of Uranus and Neptune can constrain their formation mechanisms. Under the assumption of in situ formation, we investigate three solid accretion modes: a dominant accretion mode switches from pebble accretion to drag-enhanced three-body accretion and to canonical planetesimal accretion, as the solid radius increases. We consider a wide radius range of solids that are accreted onto (proto)Neptune-mass planets and compute the resulting accretion rate as a function of both the solid size and the solid surface density. We find that for small-sized solids, the rate becomes high enough to halt concurrent gas accretion if all the solids have the same size. For large-sized solids, the solid surface density needs to be enhanced to accrete enough amounts of solids within the gas disk lifetime. We apply these accretion modes to the formation of Uranus and Neptune and show that if the minimum-mass solar nebula model is adopted, solids with a radius of ∼1 m to ∼10 km should have contributed mainly to their deuterium enrichment; a tighter constraint can be derived if the full solid size distribution is determined. This work therefore demonstrates that the D/H ratio can be used as a tracer of solid accretion onto Neptune-mass planets. Similar efforts can be made for other atomic elements that serve as metallicity indicators.
The Nature of Luminous Quasars with Very Large C iv Equivalent Widths

We report results for a complete sample of 10 luminous radio-quiet quasars with large C iv equivalent widths (EW ≥ 150 Å). For 8/10 we performed Chandra snapshot observations. We find that, in addition to the enhanced C iv line EW, their He ii and Mg ii lines are enhanced, but the C iii] line is not. Their X-ray emission is substantially stronger than expected from their ultraviolet luminosity. Additionally, these large C iv EW quasars show small C iv blueshifts and possibly low Eddington ratios, suggesting that they are “extreme low Eigenvector 1 (EV1)” quasars. The mean excess He ii EW is well matched by radiation pressure compression (RPC) photoionization models, with the harder α ox ionizing spectrum. However, these results do not reproduce well the enhancement pattern of the C iv, Mg ii, and C iii] EWs, or the observed high C iv/Mg ii ratio. RPC calculations indicate that the C iv/Mg ii line ratio is an effective metallicity indicator, and models with subsolar-metallicity gas and a hard ionizing continuum reproduce well the enhancement pattern of all four ultraviolet lines. We find that the C iv/Mg ii line ratio in quasars is generally correlated with the excess X-ray emission. Extremely high EV1 quasars are characterized by high metallicity and suppressed X-ray emission. The underlying mechanism relating gas metallicity and X-ray emission is not clear but may be related to radiation-pressure-driven disk winds, which are enhanced at high metallicity, and consequent mass loading reducing coronal X-ray emission.
Model-Based Disturbance Estimation for a Fiber-Reinforced Soft Manipulator using Orientation Sensing

To aid in real-world situations, soft robots need to be able to estimate their state and external interactions based on proprioceptive sensors. Estimating disturbances allows a soft robot to perform desirable force control. However, even in the case of rigid manipulators, force estimation at the end-effector is seen as a non-trivial problem. And indeed, current approaches to address this challenge have shortcomings that prevent their general application. They are often based on simplified soft dynamic models, such as the ones relying on a piece-wise constant curvature approximation or matched rigid-body models that do not represent enough details of the problem. This severely limits applications in complex human-robot interaction. Finite element method (FEM) based modeling allows for predictions of soft robot dynamics in a more generic fashion. Here, using the soft robot modeling capabilities of the frame-work SOFA, we built a detailed FEM model of a multi-segment soft continuum robotic arm composed of compliant deformable materials and fiber-reinforced pressurized actuation chambers. In addition, a model for sensors that provide orientation output is presented. This model is used to establish a state observer for the manipulator. The sensor model is adequate for representing the output of flexible bend sensors as well as orientations provided by IMUs or coming from tracking systems, all of which are popular choices in soft robotics. Model parameters were calibrated to match imperfections of the manual fabrication process using physical experiments. We then solve a quadratic programming inverse statics problem to compute the components of external force that explain the pose mismatch. Our experiments show an average force estimation error of around 1.2%. As the methods proposed are generic, these results are encouraging for the task of building soft robots exhibiting complex, reactive, sensor-based behavior that can be deployed in human-centered environments.
Chandra, HST/STIS, NICER, Swift, and TESS Detail the Flare Evolution of the Repeating Nuclear Transient ASASSN -14ko

ASASSN-14ko is a nuclear transient at the center of the AGN ESO 253−G003 that undergoes periodic flares. Optical flares were first observed in 2014 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) and their peak times are well-modeled with a period of 115.2−1.2+1.3 days and period derivative of −0.0026 ± 0.0006. Here we present ASAS-SN, Chandra, HST/STIS, NICER, Swift, and TESS data for the flares that occurred on 2020 December, 2021 April, 2021 July, and 2021 November. These four flares represent flares 18–21 of the total number of flares observed by ASAS-SN so far since 2014. The HST/STIS UV spectra evolve from blueshifted broad absorption features to redshifted broad emission features over ∼10 days. The Swift UV/optical light curves peaked as predicted by the timing model, but the peak UV luminosities that varied between flares and the UV flux in Flare 20 were roughly half the brightness of the other peaks. The X-ray luminosities consistently decreased and the spectra became harder during the UV/optical rise, but apparently without changes in absorption. Finally, two high-cadence TESS light curves from Flare 18 and Flare 12 showed that the slopes during the rising and declining phases changed over time, which indicates some stochasticity in the flare’s driving mechanism. Although ASASSN-14ko remains observationally consistent with a repeating partial tidal disruption event, these rich multi-wavelength data are in need of a detailed theoretical model.
Reflectionless Klein tunneling of Dirac fermions: comparison of split-operator and staggered-lattice discretization of the Dirac equation

Massless Dirac fermions in an electric field propagate along the field lines without backscattering, due to the combination of spin-momentum locking and spin conservation. This phenomenon, known as ‘Klein tunneling’, may be lost if the Dirac equation is discretized in space and time, because of scattering between multiple Dirac cones in the Brillouin zone. To avoid this, a staggered space-time lattice discretization has been developed in the literature, with one single Dirac cone in the Brillouin zone of the original square lattice. Here we show that the staggering doubles the size of the Brillouin zone, which actually contains two Dirac cones. We find that this fermion doubling causes a spurious breakdown of Klein tunneling, which can be avoided by an alternative single-cone discretization scheme based on a split-operator approach.
The Assessment of Ramp Metering Based on Fuzzy Logic

This paper deals with an assessment project and its results of an experiment with ramp metering based on fuzzy logic. In industrial processes and home appliances the control method based on fuzzy logic is being used more and more. In traffic control however the use of this method is still in a research phase. To our knowledge, the only real-life example, apart from several simulation studies, was an intersection with fuzzy control in Poznan, Poland. To investigate the usefulness of fuzzy logic in traffic control, it was decided to develop and implement an algorithm for ramp metering based on fuzzy logic and to compare it with two other control algorithms used in The Netherlands: the RWS (Rijkswaterstaat) and the ALINEA (Asservissement Lineaire d’Entree Autoroutiere) strategy. These three algorithms were implemented in the existing ramp metering system on the Zoetermeer on-ramp of the A12 motorway from The Hague to Utrecht. The adjusted metering system was operational in May 1995. The paper describes the background of the project and the three control strategies implemented. It will also describe the data collected, the traffic aspects analyzed and the results. The results of the assessment show that the metering strategy based on fuzzy logic was performing better than the other metering strategies: the capacity of the bottleneck increased, giving a better throughput, higher speeds and a shorter travel time. However, also a problem with the fuzzy strategy was observed: it switches on and off too often, which is not preferable from a safety point of view. Probably this problem can be fixed by fine tuning the algorithm. Therefore, the conclusion is that fuzzy logic can be used for on-ramp control and that for the test site it gives good results. Further research should focus on tuning the algorithm and on the sensitivity of the input variables used. The results also give rise to have another look at the other control algorithms to see whether they can be improved.
Vowel speech recognition from rat electroencephalography using long short-term memory neural network

Over the years, considerable research has been conducted to investigate the mechanisms of speech perception and recognition. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a powerful tool for identifying brain activity; therefore, it has been widely used to determine the neural basis of speech recognition. In particular, for the classification of speech recognition, deep learning-based approaches are in the spotlight because they can automatically learn and extract representative features through end-to-end learning. This study aimed to identify particular components that are potentially related to phoneme representation in the rat brain and to discriminate brain activity for each vowel stimulus on a single-trial basis using a bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network and classical machine learning methods. Nineteen male Sprague-Dawley rats subjected to microelectrode implantation surgery to record EEG signals from the bilateral anterior auditory fields were used. Five different vowel speech stimuli were chosen, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, which have highly different formant frequencies. EEG recorded under randomly given vowel stimuli was minimally preprocessed and normalized by a z-score transformation to be used as input for the classification of speech recognition. The BiLSTM network showed the best performance among the classifiers by achieving an overall accuracy, f1-score, and Cohen’s κ values of 75.18%, 0.75, and 0.68, respectively, using a 10-fold cross-validation approach. These results indicate that LSTM layers can effectively model sequential data, such as EEG; hence, informative features can be derived through BiLSTM trained with end-to-end learning without any additional hand-crafted feature extraction methods.
Sickly Insecure? : a study of worker responses to reduced job security using the financial shock that hit the norwegian petroleum industry

A large body of literature has sought to examine how job loss a↵ects those who have been displaced following an economic downturn. However, far less e↵ort has been dedicated to investigate the fear-of-unemployment e↵ect which may arise. This thesis contributes to existing literature by investigating how employees respond to reduced job security. Research on the matter tends to be inconclusive in regards to establishing a clear link between job insecurity and health. We exploit the sudden and substantial drop in oil prices that hit the Norwegian petroleum industry in the autumn of 2014, allowing us to identify the e↵ect of reduced job security on sickness absence. In order to address this issue, we take usage of data retrieved from the Norwegian Labour Force Survey. Existing literature suggests that exposure to job insecurity could lead to opposing e↵ects when it comes to health. For instance, it is argued that a tougher labour market represents a health hazard, whereas some believe that job insecurity works as a disciplinary device. We find no evidence suggesting that job insecurity has a causal e↵ect on sickness absence. This result is consistent when subject to a number of heterogeneity tests and is robust to several specification checks. Nonetheless, there may be rational explanations as to why we obtain a null e↵ect, such as the two opposing, non-mutually exclusive e↵ects cancelling each other out.
Enhancing the clinical value of serum neurofilament light chain measurement

Serum neurofilament light chain (sNFL) is becoming an important biomarker of neuro-axonal injury. Though sNFL correlates with CSF NFL (cNFL), 40% to 60% of variance remains unexplained. We aimed to mathematically adjust sNFL to strengthen its clinical value. We measured NFL in a blinded fashion in 1138 matched CSF and serum samples from 571 patients. Multiple linear regression (MLR) models constructed in the training cohort were validated in an independent cohort. An MLR model that included age, blood urea nitrogen, alkaline phosphatase, creatinine, and weight improved correlations of cNFL with sNFL (from R 2 = 0.57 to 0.67). Covariate adjustment significantly improved the correlation of sNFL with the number of contrast-enhancing lesions (from R 2 = 0.18 to 0.28; 36% improvement) in the validation cohort of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Unexpectedly, only sNFL, but not cNFL, weakly but significantly correlated with cross-sectional MS severity outcomes. Investigating 2 nonoverlapping hypotheses, we showed that patients with proportionally higher sNFL to cNFL had higher clinical and radiological evidence of spinal cord (SC) injury and probably released NFL from peripheral axons into blood, bypassing the CSF. sNFL captures 2 sources of axonal injury, central […] measured predicted cNFL measured NFL levels in 1138 matching CSF and serum samples collected from participants donors relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), primary progressive MS (PPMS), secondary progressive MS (SPMS), clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), noninflammatory neurological diseases (NIND), (OIND). of and trial
Growth delay: an alternative measure of population health based on child height distributions

Abstract Background Indicators of child height, such as mean height-for-age Z-scores (HAZ), height-for-age difference (HAD) and stunting prevalence, do not account for differences in population-average bone developmental stage. Aim Propose a measure of child height that conveys the dependency of linear growth on stage rather than chronological age. Subjects and methods Using Demographic and Health Surveys (2000–2018; 64 countries), we generated: (1) predicted HAZ at specific ages (HAZ regressed on age); (2) height-age (age at which mean height matches the WHO Growth Standards median); (3) Growth delay (GD), the difference between chronological age and height-age; (4) HAD; and (5) stunting prevalence. Metrics were compared based on secular trends within countries and age-related trajectories within surveys. Results In the most recent surveys (N = 64), GDs ranged from 1.9 to 19.1 months at 60 months chronological age. Cross-sectionally, HAZ, HAD and GD were perfectly correlated, and showed similar secular trends. However, age-related trajectories differed across metrics. Accumulating GD with age demonstrated growth faltering as slower than expected growth for children of the same height-age. Resumption of growth at the median for height-age was rarely observed. Conclusion GD is a population-level measure of child health that reflects the role of delayed skeletal development in linear growth faltering.
Caspase‐4/11 is critical for angiogenesis by repressing Notch1 signalling via inhibiting γ‐secretase activity

Notch1 activation mediated by γ‐secretase is critical for angiogenesis. GeneCards database predicted that Caspase‐4 (CASP4, with murine ortholog CASP11) interacts with presenilin‐1, the catalytic core of γ‐secretase. Therefore, we investigated the role of CASP4/11 in angiogenesis.
Remotely Delivered Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention Using an Ad Libitum Plant-Based Diet: Pilot Acceptability, Feasibility, and Preliminary Results

Background Many traditional lifestyle interventions use calorie prescriptions, but most individuals have difficulty sustaining calorie tracking and thus weight loss. In contrast, whole food plant-based diets (WFPBDs) have previously shown significant weight loss without this issue. However, most WFPBD interventions are face-to-face and time-intensive, and do not leverage gold standard behavioral strategies for health behavior change. Objective This open pilot trial was the first to evaluate the feasibility of a fully featured, remotely delivered behavioral weight loss intervention using an ad libitum WFPBD. Methods Over 12 weeks, participants (N=15) with overweight or obesity received a newly designed program that integrated behavioral weight loss and a WFPBD prescription via weekly web-based modules and brief phone coaching calls. Assessments were performed at baseline, midtreatment (6 weeks), and after treatment (12 weeks). Results The intervention was rated as highly acceptable (mean 4.40 out of 5, SE 0.18), and attrition was low (6.7%). In all, intention-to-treat analyses revealed that 69% (10.4/15) of the participants lost 5% of their weight (mean –5.89, SE 0.68 kg). Predefined benchmarks for quality of life were met. Conclusions A pilot digital behavioral weight loss intervention with a non–energy-restricted WFPBD was feasible, and the mean acceptability was high. Minimal contact time (80-150 minutes of study interventionist time per participant over 12 weeks) led to clinically relevant weight loss and dietary adherence for most participants (10.4/15, 69% and 11.8/15, 79%, respectively), and quality of life improvements (reliable change indices >1.53). We hope that this work will serve as a springboard for future larger scale randomized controlled studies evaluating the efficacy of such programs for weight loss, dietary change, and quality of life. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04892030; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04892030
Prediction of childhood maltreatment and subtypes with personalized functional connectome of large‐scale brain networks

Childhood maltreatment (CM) has a long impact on physical and mental health of children. However, the neural underpinnings of CM are still unclear. In this study, we aimed to establish the associations between functional connectome of large‐scale brain networks and influences of CM evaluated through Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) at the individual level based on resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 215 adults. A novel individual functional mapping approach was employed to identify subject‐specific functional networks and functional network connectivities (FNCs). A connectome‐based predictive modeling (CPM) was used to estimate CM total and subscale scores using individual FNCs. The CPM established with FNCs can well predict CM total scores and subscale scores including emotion abuse, emotion neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect, and sexual abuse. These FNCs primarily involve default mode network, fronto‐parietal network, visual network, limbic network, motor network, dorsal and ventral attention networks, and different networks have distinct contributions to predicting CM and subtypes. Moreover, we found that CM showed age and sex effects on individual functional connections. Taken together, the present findings revealed that different types of CM are associated with different atypical neural networks which provide new clues to understand the neurobiological consequences of childhood adversity.
Association of prediabetes with death and diabetic complications in older adults: the pros and cons of active screening for prediabetes.

BACKGROUND active screening can improve health outcomes for people with prediabetes. However, its efficacy in older adults remains uncertain. OBJECTIVE the study aimed to analyse the progression from prediabetes to diabetes in older adults, including associated complications and mortality rates, to determine the benefits of active screening. DESIGN retrospective cohort study. SETTING Korean National Health Insurance Service claims database. SUBJECTS a total of 36,946 adults aged ≥65 years who underwent national health examinations from 2006 to 2008. METHODS follow-up was until 31 December 2015. Cox's proportional hazards models estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for death and diabetic complications. RESULTS over a median follow-up of 8.2 years, 19.3% of older adults with prediabetes progressed to diabetes. Compared with normoglycaemic adults, the multivariable-adjusted HRs (95% CI) for major adverse cardiovascular events were 1.01 (0.95-1.07), 1.08 (0.95-1.23), 1.14 (1.05-1.23) and 1.50 (1.35-1.68) in adults with prediabetes, newly diagnosed diabetes, diabetes not on insulin and diabetes on insulin, respectively. The corresponding HRs (95% CI) for diabetic retinopathy risk were 1.28 (1.15-1.43), 3.16 (2.71-3.69), 6.58 (6.02-7.19) and 9.17 (8.21-10.24). Diabetic nephropathy risk also significantly increased. CONCLUSIONS progression from prediabetes to diabetes is an important concern among older adults. Prediabetes is associated with the risk of microvascular complications, but not cardiovascular complications and mortality. Therefore, active regular screening for prediabetes is necessary to prevent microvascular complications.