Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Spectacular Ultraviolet Flash from the Peculiar Type Ia Supernova 2019yvq

Early observations of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) provide essential clues for understanding the progenitor system that gave rise to the terminal thermonuclear explosion. We present exquisite observations of SN 2019yvq, the second observed SN Ia, after iPTF 14atg, to display an early flash of emission in the ultraviolet (UV) and optical. Our analysis finds that SN 2019yvq was unusual, even when ignoring the initial flash, in that it was moderately underluminous for an SN Ia ( mag at peak) yet featured very high absorption velocities ( km s−1 for Si ii λ6355 at peak). We find that many of the observational features of SN 2019yvq, aside from the flash, can be explained if the explosive yield of radioactive 56Ni is relatively low (we measure ) and it and other iron-group elements are concentrated in the innermost layers of the ejecta. To explain both the UV/optical flash and peak properties of SN 2019yvq we consider four different models: interaction between the SN ejecta and a nondegenerate companion, extended clumps of 56Ni in the outer ejecta, a double-detonation explosion, and the violent merger of two white dwarfs. Each of these models has shortcomings when compared to the observations; it is clear additional tuning is required to better match SN 2019yvq. In closing, we predict that the nebular spectra of SN 2019yvq will feature either H or He emission, if the ejecta collided with a companion, strong [Ca ii] emission, if it was a double detonation, or narrow [O i] emission, if it was due to a violent merger.
Dual inhibition of PFKFB3 and VEGF normalizes tumor vasculature, reduces lactate production, and improves chemotherapy in glioblastoma: insights from protein expression profiling and MRI

Rationale: Tumor vascular normalization (TVN) is emerging to enhance the efficacy of anticancer treatment in many cancers including glioblastoma (GBM). However, a common and severe challenge being currently faced is the transient TVN effect, hampering the sustained administration of anticancer therapy during TVN window. Additionally, the lack of non-contrast agent-based imaging biomarkers to monitor TVN process postpones the clinical translation of TVN strategy. In this study, we investigated whether dual inhibition of VEGF and the glycolytic activator PFKFB3 could reinforce the TVN effect in GBM. Dynamic contrast-enhanced-magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) and intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM)-MRI were performed to monitor TVN process and to identify whether IVIM-MRI is a candidate or complementary imaging biomarker for monitoring TVN window without exogenous contrast agent administration. Methods: Patient-derived orthotopic GBM xenografts in mice were established and treated with bevacizumab (BEV), 3PO (PFKFB3 inhibitor), BEV+3PO dual therapy, or saline. The vascular morphology, tumor hypoxia, and lactate level were evaluated before and at different time points after treatments. Doxorubicin was used to evaluate chemotherapeutic efficacy and drug delivery. Microarray of angiogenesis cytokines and western blotting were conducted to characterize post-treatment molecular profiling. TVN process was monitored by DCE- and IVIM-MRI. Correlation analysis of pathological indicators and MRI parameters was further analyzed. Results: Dual therapy extended survival and delayed tumor growth over each therapy alone, concomitant with a decrease of cell proliferation and an increase of cell apoptosis. The dual therapy reinforces TVN effect, thereby alleviating tumor hypoxia, reducing lactate production, and improving the efficacy and delivery of doxorubicin. Mechanistically, several angiogenic cytokines and pathways were downregulated after dual therapy. Notably, dual therapy inhibited Tie1 expression, the key regulator of TVN, in both endothelial cells and tumor cells. DCE- and IVIM-MRI data showed that dual therapy induced a more homogenous and prominent TVN effect characterized by improved vascular function in tumor core and tumor rim. Correlation analysis revealed that IVIM-MRI parameter D* had better correlations with TVN pathological indicators compared with the DCE-MRI parameter Ktrans. Conclusions: Our results propose a rationale to overcome the current limitation of BEV monotherapy by integrating the synergistic effects of VEGF and PFKFB3 blockade to enhance chemotherapy efficacy through a sustained TVN effect. Moreover, we unveil IVIM-MRI parameter D* has much potential as a complementary imaging biomarker to monitor TVN window more precisely without exogenous contrast agent injection.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Estimating Masses of Black Holes in Quasars with Single-epoch Spectroscopy

It is well known that reverberation mapping of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) reveals a relationship between AGN luminosity and the size of the broad-line region, and that use of this relationship, combined with the Doppler width of the broad emission line, enables an estimate of the mass of the black hole at the center of the active nucleus based on a single spectrum. An unresolved key issue is the choice of parameter used to characterize the line width, either FWHM or line dispersion (the square root of the second moment of the line profile). We argue here that use of FWHM introduces a bias, stretching the mass scale such that high masses are overestimated and low masses are underestimated. Here we investigate estimation of black hole masses in AGNs based on individual or “single-epoch” observations, with a particular emphasis in comparing mass estimates based on line dispersion and FWHM. We confirm the recent findings that, in addition to luminosity and line width, a third parameter is required to obtain accurate masses, and that parameter seems to be Eddington ratio. We present simplified empirical formulae for estimating black hole masses from the Hβ λ4861 and C iv λ1549 emission lines. While the AGN continuum luminosity at 5100 Å is usually used to predict the Hβ reverberation lag, we show that the luminosity of the Hβ broad component can be used instead without any loss of precision, thus eliminating the difficulty of accurately accounting for the host-galaxy contribution to the observed luminosity.
Energy values in pig nutrition:3. The digestible and metabolizable energy content of barley, wheat, maize, oats and rye

SUMMARY The digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) content of eight samples of barley, eight of wheat, four of maize and two each of oats and rye were determined using growing gilts. The DE content of barley ranged from 15·35 to 15·89 MJ/kg D.M. , from 15·15 to 16·42 MJ/kg D.M. for wheat and from 16·05 to 16·47 MJ/kg D.M. for maize. DE values for the two oat samples were 12·48 and 12·74 MJ/kg D.M. and 15–04 and 15–47 MJ/kg D.M. for the two rye samples. There was a significant correlation between DE and ME: ME (MJ/kg D.M.) = 0·050 + 0·965 DE: r = 0·99; P < 0·001. The ratio ME/DE was significantly influenced by crude-protein content: ME/DE = 100–0·254 CP%: r = –0·77; P < 0·001. ME values were also corrected to zero nitrogen retention (MEno) and to 30% nitrogen retention (MEN30). The effect of such corrections was expressed as MEN0/ME and MEN30/ME. Values thus obtained were 0·98 and 1·00 respectively for the pooled values for all cereals. The data indicated that there was unlikely to be significant variation in the DE content of samples of the same cereal species, selected from commercial sources within the U.K. when evaluated under standardized experimental conditions.
Assessment of success of financial information system in educational, health, and medical centers affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND: Financial information system is one of the subsystems in management information system that is very important in health institutions. The use of financial information system creating effective and efficient information flow will greatly assist the management in decision-making, so that it can achieve institutional goals easier. This study is endeavored to assess the success of financial information system in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This descriptive-correlational study was performed on the research population consisting of financial information system users in educational, health, and medical centers affiliated to Isfahan University of Medical Sciences during 2018 that were studied by the census method (n = 108) because of a small number of these users. The data were collected using a questionnaire. The content validity of questionnaire was confirmed by pooling the ideas of five academic members of the health information management and two financial information system users. The reliability of questionnaire was also estimated by Cronbach's alpha. Then, the AMOS software was used to analyze the gathered data. RESULTS: The result shows that system quality was positively correlated to the use and user satisfaction whereas use and user satisfaction was positively correlated to net benefit (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the information quality was positively correlated to the user satisfaction (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: As per the finding of this study, to improve user's intention to use the financial information system and their satisfaction toward the system, managers need to develop useful, easy-to-understand, easy-to-learn, and easy-to-use information systems.
Effects of kacangma herb (Leonurus sibiricus) intake on blood chemistry, clinical pathology, body and organ weight changes in rabbit (Kesan pengambilan herba kacangma (Leonurus sibiricus) pada kimia darah, patologi klinikal, serta perubahan berat badan dan organ arnab)

The toxicity of Sarawak traditional herb, kacangma (Leonurus sibiricus L.) was evaluated through acute and subchronic studies on New Zealand White male and female rabbits. In the acute toxicity study, rabbits were given two dosages of kacangma i.e. 2.0 and 5.0 g/kg body weight. The rabbits were observed for any toxic signs and death for the first 24 h and continued up to 14 days. During the 14-day period, none of the animals died and no significant differences were observed in body weight gain, and food and water consumption. Subsequently the subchronic toxicity was studied for 90 days. The rabbits were fed kacangma at the rate of 0.5 (low dose), 5.0 (medium dose) and 25.0 (high dose) g/kg body weight. The control group received only the commercial pellet. The changes in body weight, organ relative weight, lipid profile, and clinical pathology on renal and liver function were observed. Some indications of renal and liver toxicities were evident in the medium and high dose groups when plasma creatinine and liver enzymes (alanine transaminase and alkaline phosphatase) concentrations were significantly different as compared to the control and low dose groups. In conclusion, kacangma herb had showed no signs of toxicity if consumed at the rate of 0.5 g/kg body weight (low dose) based on the 90-day subchronic study.
A Self-aware Sampling Scheme to Efficiently Train Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown excellent performance in object recognition tasks and dense classification problems such as semantic segmentation. However, training deep neural networks on large and sparse datasets is still challenging and can require large amounts of computation and memory. In this work, we address the task of performing semantic segmentation on large data sets, such as three-dimensional medical images. We propose an adaptive sampling scheme that uses a-posterior error maps, generated throughout training, to focus sampling on difficult regions, resulting in improved learning. Our contribution is threefold: 1) We give a detailed description of the proposed sampling algorithm to speed up and improve learning performance on large images. We propose a deep dual path CNN that captures information at fine and coarse scales, resulting in a network with a large field of view and high resolution outputs. We show that our method is able to attain new state-of-the-art results on the VISCERAL Anatomy benchmark.
Socially Embedded Preferences, Environmental Externalities, and Reproductive Rights

We review a class of adverse environmental externalities that accompany consumption and procreation. We also identify externalities that are traceable to socially embedded preferences for family size. Those preference structures can give rise to a heightened demand for children, exacerbating the environmental externalities households impose on future generations. Our analysis exposes weaknesses in basing family planning programmes entirely on individuals' reproductive rights. We use ecological data to obtain a feel for the size of global environmental externalities. We estimate the size of world population the biosphere can support at the standard of living enjoyed in the World Bank's list of high middle-income countries. Today's global population and future population projections far exceed our estimate, implying that the UN's Sustainable Development Goals are in all likelihood unsustainable. We conclude that family planning has been undervalued greatly by national governments and international agencies. Our purpose is to pose questions that continue to be neglected in the development literature. We do not offer forecasts nor make policy recommendations.
Dippers and dusty disc edges: new diagnostics and comparison to model predictions

We revisit the nature of large dips in flux from extinction by dusty circumstellar material that is observed by Kepler for many young stars in the Upper Sco and $\rho$ Oph star formation regions. These young, low-mass "dipper" stars are known to have low accretion rates and primarily host moderately evolved dusty circumstellar disks. Young low mass stars often exhibit rotating star spots that cause quasi-periodic photometric variations. We found no evidence for periods associated with the dips that are different from the star spot rotation period in spectrograms constructed from the light curves. The material causing the dips in most of these light curves must be approximately corotating with the star. We find that disk temperatures computed at the disk corotation radius are cool enough that dust should not sublime. Crude estimates for stellar magnetic field strengths and accretion rates are consistent with magnetospheric truncation near the corotation radius. Magnetospheric truncation models can explain why the dips are associated with material near corotation and how dusty material is lifted out of the midplane to obscure the star which would account for the large fraction of young low mass stars that are dippers. We propose that variations in disk orientation angle, stellar magnetic field dipole tilt axis, and disk accretion rate are underlying parameters accounting for differences in the dipper light curves.
ORGANIC MATTER PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION IN SLASH PINE (PINUS ELLIOTTII) PLANTATIONS

The production and accumulation of total system organic matter (to 100 cm soil depth) in plantations of slash pine were analyzed using three replications of stands 2, 5, 8, 14, 18, 26, and 34 yr old. Maximum leaf area occurred at 5 yr. After this point aboveground net primary production (NPP) continued to increase to a maximum at 26 yr and then declined. After 5 yr stem biomass production composed a constant 50% of NPP. The forest floor increased at a constant rate through 34 yr, although total detritus (forest floor plus soil organic matter) was relatively constant at m160 Mg/ha. Live vegetation mass was less than detritus mass until =m25 yr, the current harvest rotation length. Total system organic matter showed no indication of a decline after site preparation, and was still increasing at 34 yr (340 Mg/ha). During site preparation -30 Mg/ha organic matter were lost through burning and decomposition. This loss was small enough to be completely offset by increases in live vegetation and forest floor over -3 yr following site preparation, which may be important in limiting losses of nutrients from these sites after a disturbance. rently 5.2 x 106 ha of commercial slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. elliottii), with -40% of the total in north- ern Florida. Fifty-two percent of the total is in plan- tations, representing 14% of the forested land area in Florida, and the rest is in naturally regenerated second growth (Scheffield et al. 1981); the proportion in plan- tations is rapidly increasing. Although the conversion of the natural stands to plantations amounts to landscape modification at a tre- mendous scale, we have little idea of the ecological consequences. Delcourt and Harris (1980) proposed
Wild oat and climate change: The effect of CO2 concentration, temperature, and water deficit on the growth and development of wild oat in monoculture

Abstract Seed from six Australian near-isogenic lines of wild oat were germinated and grown in controlled-environment growth chambers under either ambient CO2 (357 parts per million by volume [ppmv]) or elevated CO2 (480 ppmv) at 20/16 C or 23/19 C. Three soil moisture treatments—−0.01 MPa (field capacity), −0.10 MPa, or −1.00 MPa—were imposed. Wild oat lines grown under elevated CO2 had higher seed production and greater plant dry weights, although the response of these variates involved a complex of interactions with temperature, soil moisture, and line. Plant height varied with wild oat line, and plants grown at 20/16 C were taller than those grown at 23/19 C. At 23/19 C, time taken to mature was reduced for some wild oat lines, and elevated CO2 reduced the time taken to maturity for some lines at 20/16 C. There was no significant difference in the level of dormancy developed in freshly harvested caryopses between the two CO2 treatments, but an effect was present in seed that had been after-ripened for 193 d. These results indicate that the main climate change variables ([CO2], soil moisture, and increased temperature) directly influence the growth and development of wild oat and are likely to affect the population dynamics of this species. Nomenclature: Wild oat, Avena fatua AVEFA.
A forward-adjoint operator pair based on the elastic wave equation for use in transcranial photoacoustic tomography

Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is an emerging imaging modality that exploits optical contrast and ultrasonic detection principles to form images of the photoacoustically induced initial pressure distribution within tissue. The PACT reconstruction problem corresponds to an inverse source problem in which the initial pressure distribution is recovered from measurements of the radiated wavefield. A major challenge in transcranial PACT brain imaging is compensation for aberrations in the measured data due to the presence of the skull. Ultrasonic waves undergo absorption, scattering and longitudinal-to-shear wave mode conversion as they propagate through the skull. To properly account for these effects, a wave-equation-based inversion method should be employed that can model the heterogeneous elastic properties of the skull. In this work, a forward model based on a finite-difference time-domain discretization of the three-dimensional elastic wave equation is established and a procedure for computing the corresponding adjoint of the forward operator is presented. Massively parallel implementations of these operators employing multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) are also developed. The developed numerical framework is validated and investigated in computer-simulation and experimental phantom studies whose designs are motivated by transcranial PACT applications.
Control of lactate oxidation in fish hearts by lactate oxidase activity

Isolated hearts of ocean pout (Macrozoarces americanus) and sea raven (Hemitripterus americanus) were perfused with media containing [14C]lactate or pyruvate and the rate of 14CO2 production was monitored. Increases in exogenous lactate concentration resulted in increases in the rate of lactate metabolism. Under comparable perfusion conditions the rate of decarboxylation of pyruvate was three- to four-fold higher than that of lactate. This finding suggests that lactate oxidation was being limited by lactate oxidase. LDH was purified and the Km values for lactate and pyruvate assessed under conditions of saturating cofactor concentration. Both hearts had a muscle type LDH on the basis of Km (pyruvate). Lactate oxidase from ocean pout and sea raven heart displayed Km values of 25 and 20 mM for lactate, respectively. The Km values were well above the presumptive intracellular level of lactate in the perfused hearts. Considered together, the perfusion and isolated enzyme studies show that the catabolism of ex.
Will their armaments be their downfall? Large horn size increases extinction risk in bovids

Clarifying the emergent fitness associated with sexually selected traits under the current, increasingly anthropogenic selection regimes is important to understand ongoing evolutionary changes in nature and inform the conservation management of endangered species. Several reasons exist why sexual selection may affect extinction risk. Increased risk may result either from inherent trade‐offs between sexually selected traits and viability traits or from selective hunting of sexually selected species. Reduced risk is also possible, for instance if the preference for high‐performing mates characteristic of sexually selected species has beneficial genetic consequences for the population. Here, I show that the threat level of bovid species increases with large male horn size. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that sexually selected weaponry has been shown to increase extinction risk at the interspecific level. However, threat level was unrelated to another trait under sexual selection, sexual body size dimorphism, indicating that the effect of sexual selection on extinction risk depends on trait‐specific interactions with extrinsic factors. The results suggest that the higher threat level of long‐horned species is not primarily due to current trophy hunting practices and rather point to environmentally induced viability costs as a possible main driver. Still, the fact that long‐horned species are known to be preferred by trophy hunters highlights the importance of continuously monitoring trophy hunting practices to assure their long‐term sustainability.
Discretisations of the spectral fractional Laplacian on general domains with Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin boundary conditions

In this work, we propose novel discretizations of the spectral fractional Laplacian on bounded domains based on the integral formulation of the operator via the heat-semigroup formalism. Specifically, we combine suitable quadrature formulas of the integral with a finite element method for the approximation of the solution of the corresponding heat equation. We derive two families of discretizations with order of convergence depending on the regularity of the domain and the function on which the spectral fractional Laplacian is acting. Our method does not require the computation of the eigenpairs of the Laplacian on the considered domain, can be implemented on possibly irregular bounded domains, and can naturally handle different types of boundary constraints. Various numerical simulations are provided to illustrate performance of the proposed method and support our theoretical results.
Growth and Landscape Establishment of Pyracantha and Juniperus after Application of Paclobutrazol

The long-term effects of paclobutrazol applied to confiner-grown «Mojave» pyracantha (Pyracantha×) and «San Jose» juniper (Juniperfus chinensis L.) were investigated. Paclobutrazol was applied as a drench to container-grown (2.8 liter) plants at the rates of 0, 5, 10, 20, and 40 mg a.i./pot in June 1991, and plants were transplanted to the field in Feb. 1992. Pyracantha plant height, shoot and root dry weight, and total biomass (shoot dry weight+root dry weight) decreased quadratically as rate of paclobutrazol increased during nursery production. Paclobutrazol had no effect on plant height or shoot dry weight of Juniperus, although width indices were reduced