Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fluid advection in shear zones: evidence from geological and geochemical relationships in the Aiguilles Rouges Massif (Western Alps, Switzerland)

At the Southeastern margin of the Aiguilles Rouges Massif, Western Alps, the development of a ductile shear zone has occurred during the Alpine Tertiary events. The feldspathic gneisses of the crystalline basement are transformed into highly-deformed dark mylonites. This study describes mass-transfer and stable isotope behaviour related to the transformation of gneiss to mylonite. Mass balance calculations using major element data show that the deformation of the gneiss occurred without significant changes in volume and under essentially isochemical conditions, except for calcium. The calcium mobility is probably associated to the shift from a ductile towards a more brittle behaviour of the shear zone in the latest stage of the deformative process. This resulted from opening of the system to fluids of an external origin
A Top-N-Balanced Sequential Recommendation Based on Recurrent Network

SUMMARY To solve the low accuracy problem of the recommender system for long term users, in this paper, we propose a top-N-balanced sequential recommendation based on recurrent neural network. We postulated and veriﬁed that the interactions between users and items is time-dependent in the long term, but in the short term, it is time-independent. We balance the top-N recommendation and sequential recommendation to generate a better recommender list by improving the loss function and generation method. The experimental results demonstrate the e ﬀ ectiveness of our method. Compared with a state-of-the-art recommender algorithm, our method clearly improves the performance of the recommendation on hit rate. Besides the improvement of the basic performance, our method can also handle the cold start problem and supply new users with the same quality of service as the old users.
Machine Learning-based Derivation and External Validation of a Tool to Predict Death and Development of Organ Failure in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19

Background COVID-19 mortality risk stratification tools could improve care, inform accurate and rapid triage decisions, and guide family discussions regarding goals of care. A minority of COVID-19 prognostic tools have been tested in external cohorts. Our objective was to compare machine learning algorithms and develop a tool for predicting subsequent clinical outcomes in COVID-19. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study that included hospitalized patients with COVID-19 from March 2020 to March 2021. 712 consecutive patients from University of Washington (UW) and 345 patients from Tongji Hospital in China were included. We applied three different machine learning algorithms to clinical and laboratory data collected within the initial 24 hours of hospital admission to determine the risk of in-hospital mortality, transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU), shock requiring vasopressors, and receipt of renal replacement therapy (RRT). Mortality risk models were derived, internally validated in UW and externally validated in Tongji Hospital. The risk models for ICU transfer, shock and RRT were derived and internally validated in the UW dataset. Results Among the UW dataset, 122 patients died (17%) during hospitalization and the mean days to hospital mortality was 15.7 +/− 21.5 (mean +/− SD). Elastic net logistic regression resulted in a C-statistic for in-hospital mortality of 0.72 (95% CI, 0.64 to 0.81) in the internal validation and 0.85 (95% CI, 0.81 to 0.89) in the external validation set. Age, platelet count, and white blood cell count were the most important predictors of mortality. In the sub-group of patients > 50 years of age, the mortality prediction model continued to perform with a C-statistic of 0.82 (95% CI:0.76,0.87). Mortality prediction models also performed well for shock and RRT in the UW dataset but functioned with lower accuracy for ICU transfer. Conclusions We trained, internally and externally validated a prediction model using data collected within 24 hours of hospital admission to predict in-hospital mortality on average two weeks prior to death. We also developed models to predict RRT and shock with high accuracy. These models could be used to improve triage decisions, resource allocation, and support clinical trial enrichment.
Mall för examensarbete

The goal of this study is to observe if having more interactivity and media richness in teaching will lead to more meaningful learning and remembering information longer, compared to more traditional teaching such as books and slideshow presentations. It has been revealed that using multimedia tools such as video games, which use different cognitive load-reducing methods, can help the learner use less irrelevant cognitive process. This will lead to more cognitive load being assigned to more relevant materials. Two groups of participants were compared to each other, where one group was asked to play a video game containing historical information about the city of Skövde, while the second group was presented with a slideshow containing the historical information but only as simple text. The results from the experiment suggested that there is a significant difference between the two groups, meaning the participants who were asked to play the video game has less difficulty in recalling information after 7 days compared to the group who only read the slideshow presentation.
Agile Design Process with User-Centered Design and User Experience in Web Interfaces: A Systematic Literature Review

In the search for faster software development techniquesthat consider user’s needs, agile methods are gettingspace in the corporate scenario, as well as in scientific research.However, integrating agile software development with usercentereddesign (UCD) and user experience (UX) is a challengingtask. In this way, we systematically reviewed the literature until2017 to identify and understand how UX can be considered inagile development, particularly for graphical interfaces of webapplications. The search was performed in the ACM, IEEE,Science Direct, and Springer databases. We found a total of 815studies, of which 13 met the eligibility criteria. This research isimportant for evidencing the information acquired and used tomap how agile methods can consider the stakeholders, activities,and techniques that directly imply the way the products aredeveloped to meet the user’s expectations. There are many agilemethods, each with its advantages and disadvantages, but weconclude that the methods that integrate better with UX or UCDare Scrum and XP.
Effect of In Situ Water Harvesting Techniques on Soil and Nutrient Losses in Semi‐Arid Northern Ethiopia

Land degradation, mainly due to soil erosion and nutrient losses, is a global problem for sustainable agriculture. Farmlands in the Ethiopian highlands are susceptible to water erosion because of steep slopes and extensive cultivation. A field experiment was conducted in the Gule sub‐watershed in northern Ethiopia to assess the efficacy of in situ water harvesting techniques in reducing soil and nutrient losses. The research was carried out on a sandy clay loam soil under semi‐arid conditions. Soil erosion and nutrient losses were monitored during the rainy season (June to September) in 2013 and 2014. Five treatments with tied ridges, wheat‐straw mulch and effective microorganisms, alone or in combination, and an untreated control were tested. Combined tied ridges and straw mulch, with and without effective microorganisms, significantly reduced average soil loss over the two rainy seasons by 82 and 90% respectively compared with the control. Tied ridges alone reduced average soil loss by 60%. Straw mulch with and without effective microorganisms decreased average soil loss by 81 and 85% respectively. Combined tied ridges and straw mulch significantly decreased average total nitrogen and total phosphorus losses by 82 and 83% respectively. Average nutrient losses were also significantly decreased by tied ridges (59% for nitrogen, 52% for phosphorus) and straw mulch (63% for nitrogen, 68% for phosphorus). Our results indicated that in situ water harvesting techniques can effectively reduce soil and nutrient losses from farmland and were more efficient when the techniques were combined. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Future Changes in Mean and Extreme Monsoon Precipitation in the Middle and Lower Yangtze River Basin, China, in the CMIP5 Models

AbstractIn this study, the potential future changes of mean and extreme precipitation in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin (MLYRB), eastern China, are assessed using the models of phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Historical model simulations are first compared with observations in order to evaluate model performance. In general, the models simulate the precipitation mean and frequency better than the precipitation intensity and extremes, but still have difficulty capturing precipitation patterns over complex terrains. They tend to overestimate precipitation mean, frequency, and intensity while underestimating the extremes. After correcting for model biases, the spatial variation of mean precipitation projected by the multimodel ensemble mean (MME) is improved, so the MME after the bias correction is used to project changes for the years 2021–50 and 2071–2100 relative to 1971–2000 under two emission scenarios: RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Results show that with global warming, pre.
Trends in Obesity and Overweight in Oregon Children With Down Syndrome

Background. Although obesity is a commonly discussed issue in the medical management of children with Down syndrome, there have been no large studies published on its prevalence in the United States or associations with other common comorbidities in this population. Methods. Using a database of children from a single medical center Down syndrome specialty clinic and the standard Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitions, we calculated rates of obesity and overweight by age group and examined possible associations with common comorbidities including cardiac disease, thyroid disease, sleep apnea, autism, and visual and hearing impairment. We also examined mean body mass index (BMI) percentile and change in BMI percentile by age. Results. Data were obtained from 823 visits from 412 unique patients ranging in age from 2 years to 23 years of age. A total of 1.2% were underweight, 55.2% were normal weight, 23% were overweight, and 20.6% were obese. BMI percentile increased with female gender, age, and height percentile for age. Sleep apnea was associated with higher BMI percentile, while autism was associated with lower BMI percentile. Conclusions. Children with Down syndrome have higher rates of obesity than the general population, with especially high risk for girls. Much of the increase in obesity occurs between ages 2 and 6 years. Further research needs to target interventions for prevention in this vulnerable population, particularly in young girls.
Recent range expansion in Australian hummock grasses (Triodia) inferred using genotyping-by-sequencing

Abstract The Australian arid zone (AAZ) has undergone aridification and the formation of vast sandy deserts since the mid-Miocene. Studies on AAZ organisms, particularly animals, have shown patterns of mesic ancestry, persistence in rocky refugia and range expansions in arid lineages. There has been limited molecular investigation of plants in the AAZ, particularly of taxa that arrived in Australia after the onset of aridification. Here we investigate populations of the widespread AAZ grass Triodia basedowii to determine whether there is evidence for a recent range expansion, and if so, its source and direction. We also undertake a dating analysis for the species complex to which T. basedowii belongs, in order to place its diversification in relation to changes in AAZ climate and landscapes. We analyse a genomic single nucleotide polymorphism data set from 17 populations of T. basedowii in a recently developed approach for detecting the signal and likely origin of a range expansion. We also use alignments from existing and newly sequenced plastomes from across Poaceae for analysis in BEAST to construct fossil-calibrated phylogenies. Across a range of sampling parameters and outgroups, we detected a consistent signal of westward expansion for T. basedowii, originating in central or eastern Australia. Divergence time estimation indicates that Triodia began to diversify in the late Miocene (crown 7.0–8.8 million years (Ma)), and the T. basedowii complex began to radiate during the Pleistocene (crown 1.4–2.0 Ma). This evidence for range expansion in an arid-adapted plant is consistent with similar patterns in AAZ animals and likely reflects a general response to the opening of new habitat during aridification. Radiation of the T. basedowii complex through the Pleistocene has been associated with preferences for different substrates, providing an explanation why only one lineage is widespread across sandy deserts.
Selected chemical characteristics of the mounds of two species of Amiternes (Isoptera, Termitinae) and their adjacent surface soils from northeastern australia

Dans six biotopes d'Australie tropicale on montre que les nids d'Amitermes laurensis et d'A. vitiosus presentent des teneurs en elements nutritifs pour les plantes et en autres elements plus importants que les sols adjacents. La repartition de la matiere organique et d'un certain nombre des elements varie systematiquement avec la position de la termitiere. Le pediment d'erosion entourant les termitieres possede une forte teneur en elements nutritifs plus proche de celle de la termitiere que de celle ses sols superficiels a distance du nid
Neural networks and artificial intelligence for biomedical engineering

From the Publisher: Using examples drawn from biomedicine and biomedical engineering, this reference text provides comprehensive coverage of all the major techniques currently available to build computer-assisted decision support systems. You will find practical solutions for biomedicine based on current theory and applications of neural networks, artificial intelligence and other methods for the development of decision-making aids, including hybrid systems.
A Computer Model of Language Acquisition – Syllable Learning – Based on Hebbian Cell Assemblies and Reinforcement Learning

language acquisition is one of the most challenging problems in the area of studying language. Syllable learning as a level of language acquisition has a considerable significance since it plays an important role in language acquisition. Because of impossibility of studying language acquisition directly with children, especially in its developmental phases, computer models will be useful in examining language acquisition. In this paper a computer model of early language learning for syllable learning is proposed. It is guided by a conceptual model of syllable learning which is named Directions Into Velocities of Articulators model (DIVA). The computer model uses simple associational and reinforcement learning rules within neural network architecture which are inspired by neuroscience. Our simulation results verify the ability of the proposed computer model in producing phonemes during babbling and early speech. Also, it provides a framework for examining the neural basis of language learning and communication disorders.
Analytical Design of Evolutionary Control Flow Components *

The market demands that software systems be adaptable to changes in requirements. Software must be evolvable to solve slightly different problems over time. The transition from real-world requirements to software is a human-intensive and potentially complex process that provides limited automated support for the analysis of alternative designs with respect to their evolvability. In this paper, we propose an analytical software design approach to localize changes to control flow requirements. We present an analytical and " heuristically good " design approach to generate control components that localize change and reduce the computational complexity of an optimal approach. We apply our heuristic to an example and summarize the results. Lastly, we propose future research and summarize our ideas.
Intangible Assets : How the Interaction of Computers and Organizational Structure Affects Stock Market Valuations Paper

This paper investigates the proposition that the widespread use of information technology has increased investment in intangible organizational assets. Using firm-level data, we find that each dollar of installed computer capital in a firm is associated with at least five dollars of market value, after controlling for other assets. We interpret this value as revealing the existence of a large stock of intangible assets that are complementary with computer investment. Using data on organizational practices at each firm, we identify a specific cluster of practices that appear to represent at least some portion of these intangible assets. Not only are these practices correlated with computer investments, but firms that combine higher computer investments with these organizational characteristics have disproportionate increases in their market valuations. We conclude that investors believe that the contribution of computers is increased when they are combined with certain intangible assets, specifically including the cluster of organizational changes that we have identified. In developed economies, production not only requires the traditional factors such as capital and labor, but skills, organizational structures, know-how, information, and other factors that are collectively referred to as " intangible assets. " Detailed investigation of these types of assets has found that they are often large and have substantial productivity benefits. For example, Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1995) found that the stock of " human capital " in the U.S. economy dwarfs the stock of physical capital and has grown substantially over time; B. (1996) have found that the R&D assets bring benefits in the form of positive marginal product and market valuation. Results from analyses of " Tobin's q " have shown that the stock market valuation of firms has increasingly diverged from their measured book One possible explanation for the recent increase in Tobin's q increasing importance of intangible capital is the growing use of information technology and the associated early applications of computers were primarily directed at factor substitution (particularly of low-skill clerical workers), modern uses of computers and flexible manufacturing technologies have both enabled and necessitated substantial organizational redesign Bresnahan, Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 1999). Collectively, these papers argue for a Intangible Assets Page 2 complementarity between computer investment and organizational investment, and specifically a relationship between information technology use and increased demand for skilled workers, greater decentralization of decision rights, and team-oriented production. Moreover, case studies suggest that these complementary investments are large. For example, less than 20% of the …
Stock market crash and expectations of American households

This paper utilizes data on subjective probabilities of stock market returns from the Health and Retirement Study that was fielded in 2008 to study the impact of the crash on households’ expectations about the one-year returns on the stock market index. Using a structural model that separates survey noise from relevant heterogeneity, we estimate the effect of the crash on the population average of expected returns, the population average of the uncertainty about returns (subjective standard deviation), and the cross-sectional heterogeneity in expected returns. Interviews in the survey were distributed February 2008 through February 2009, in a way that is uncorrelated with previous stock market expectations. We use the interview date for identifying the short-run effects of the stock market crash that took place in September. We find no significant effect on the population average of expectations, but we do find a moderate increase in average uncertainty. A robust finding is that cross-sectional heterogeneity in expectations increased substantially with the crash. We document the co-movement of heterogeneity and stock market volatility in general, and we provide some evidence that the crisis increased heterogeneity even more than what the large increase volatility would have implied. The effects are found to be largest among stockholders, those who follow the stock market and those with higher than average cognitive capacity. These results underline the importance for understanding the sources and consequences of heterogeneous expectations. ___________ * Support from the National Institute of Aging grants PO1 AG026571 and RO3 AG29469) is gratefully acknowledged.
Drought severity in intensive agricultural areas by means of the EDI index

Abstract The aim of this work was the evaluation of drought severity development in the Czech Republic for the period 1971-2015 by the means of the Effective Drought Index (EDI). Annual values of the EDI index were determined using the method of effective precipitation for 14 localities spread throughout the Czech Republic (Central Europe). The seven categories were created according to obtained index values for the drought conditions determination for years during the period 1971-2015 through the percentile method. The annual index values were compared with acquired 2nd, 15th, 45th, 55th, 85th and 98th percentiles. Both the years with precipitation unfavourable conditions: 1972, 1973, 1984, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 2015 and the years with precipitation favourable conditions: 1977, 1987, 1995, 2001, 2002 and 2010 were determined. Precipitation conditions in the growing season from 61st to 180th day of the year were also analysed. This evaluation was conducted during the period 1971-2015 through the ten-day index values which were compared with acquired 2nd, 15th, 45th, 55th, 85th and 98th percentiles. Dry growing seasons occurred in 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1993. Wet growing seasons occurred in 1987, 2006 and 2010. Trend analysis of annual index values was performed through the Mann-Kendall test. Highly statistically significant increasing linear trends (P < 0.01) were found for four localities (Uherský Ostroh, Vysoká, Znojmo-Oblekovice and Žatec); statistically significant increasing trends (P < 0.05) were found for three localities (Brno-Chrlice, Lednice and Lípa). Based on the extrapolation of the trend, a slightly higher effective precipitation can be expected during the year in a substantial part of the country. However, these findings do not necessarily mean an optimal supply of agricultural land with water. Precipitation exhibits considerable unevenness of distribution through time. Given the increasing evapotranspiration demands of the environment their availability is limited.
Benchmarking SMT Performance for Farsi Using the TEP++ Corpus

Statistical machine translation (SMT) suffers from various problems which are exacerbated where training data is in short supply. In this paper we address the data sparsity problem in the Farsi (Persian) language and introduce a new parallel corpus, TEP++. Compared to previous results the new dataset is more efficient for Farsi SMT engines and yields better output. In our experiments using TEP++ as bilingual training data and BLEU as a metric, we achieved improvements of +11.17 (60%) and +7.76 (63.92%) in the Farsi– English and English–Farsi directions, respectively. Furthermore we describe an engine (SF2FF) to translate between formal and informal Farsi which in terms of syntax and terminology can be seen as different languages. The SF2FF engine also works as an intelligent normalizer for Farsi texts. To demonstrate its use, SF2FF was used to clean the IWSLT–2013 dataset to produce normalized data, which gave improvements in translation quality over FBK’s Farsi engine when used as training data.