Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Branch error reduction criterion-based signal recursive decomposition and its application to wind power generation forecasting

Due to the ability of sidestepping mode aliasing and endpoint effects, variational mode decomposition (VMD) is usually used as the forecasting module of a hybrid model in time-series forecasting. However, the forecast accuracy of the hybrid model is sensitive to the manually set mode number of VMD; neither underdecomposition (the mode number is too small) nor over-decomposition (the mode number is too large) improves forecasting accuracy. To address this issue, a branch error reduction (BER) criterion is proposed in this study that is based on which a mode number adaptive VMD-based recursive decomposition method is used. This decomposition method is combined with commonly used single forecasting models and applied to the wind power generation forecasting task. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed combination.
Coherent control of radiation patterns of nonlinear multiphoton processes in nanoparticles

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Development of a SARS‐CoV‐2 neutralization assay based on a pseudotyped virus using a HIV system

Abstract Regarding the extensive global attention to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) that constitutes an international public health emergency, pseudovirus neutralization assays have been widely applied due to their advantages of being able to be conducted in biosafety level 2 laboratories and having a high safety factor. In this study, by adding a blue fluorescent protein (AmCyan) gene to the HIV system pSG3‐△env backbone plasmid HpaI and truncating the C‐terminal 21 amino acids of the SARS‐CoV‐2 spike protein (S), high‐titer SARS‐CoV‐2‐Sdel21‐AmCyan fluorescent pseudovirus was successfully packaged. The fluorescent pseudovirus was used to establish a neutralization assay in a 96‐well plate using 293T cells stably transfected with the AF cells. Then, parameters such as the ratio of backbone and membrane plasmid, sensitive cells, inoculation of cells and virus, as well as incubation and detection time were optimized. The pseudovirus neutralization assay demonstrated high accuracy, sensitivity, repeatability, and a strong correlation with the luminescent pseudovirus neutralization assay. Additionally, we scaled up the neutralizing antibody determination method by increasing the plate size from 96 wells to 384 wells. We have established a robust fluorescent pseudotyped virus neutralization assay for SARS‐CoV‐2 using the HIV system, providing a foundation for serum neutralization antibody detection, monoclonal antibody screening, and vaccine development.
The Future of Nonvolatile Memories

– In this paper the ongoing research and development activities on future nonvolatile memory technologies are described. After reviewing the mainstream nonvolatile memories on the market today, memory concepts based on switching effects in inorganic and organic materials as well as in single molecules are summarized. Finally the pros and cons are compared and conclusions for the near, mid and long-term perspectives are drawn.
A narrative approach to explore grief experiences and treatment adherence in people with chronic pain after participation in a pain-management program: a 6-year follow-up study

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore grief caused by chronic pain and treatment adherence, and how these experiences are integrated into ongoing life stories. Methods: A 6-year follow-up using a qualitative mixed-methods design based on written narratives and image narratives was performed. Five women suffering from chronic pain comprised the purposive sample. They had completed an 8-week group pain-management program with two follow-ups, and thereafter continued as a self-help group. A narrative approach was used to analyze the written and image narratives guided by three analytic steps. Results: Findings showed that experiences of grief over time were commonly associated with chronic pain. The participants’ past experiences reflected their grief at having to abandon jobs and social networks, and revealed loneliness and despair. The present life situation seemed to reflect adaptation, and hope for the future had been established. Overall, forward progression means an ongoing struggle towards a reintegrated body and a meaningful life. Conclusion: Through such narratives, health-care workers can identify treatment adherence related to grief and pain, and learn how people might regain their lives beyond using traditional interviews.
The development of a framework for multimedia courseware

Frameworks can be seen as generative since they are intended and well suited to be used as the foundation for the development of a number of applications in the domain captured by the framework. A framework defines a high-level language with which applications within a domain are created through specialization. Specialization takes place at points of predefined refinement that are called hot spots. Hot spots are the generic and flexible aspects and parts of a framework that can be easily adapted to a specific need. Specialization is accomplished through inheritance or composition. A well-designed framework offers the domain-specification hot spots and the desired flexibility to adapt those hot spots. Hot spots are shown by hook methods and hook classes, as well as metapatterns which express how the required flexibility, represented by the hot spots, is gained in a particular framework. We have adopted the hot-spot approach in the development of a framework for multimedia courseware. The adoption of this approach has helped us in enhancing the flexibility and extensibility of the framework. This paper describes the use of a hot-spot-driven approach in the development of a framework for multimedia courseware as well as our experience in using hot spots, design patterns, and metapatterns.
Releasing a preprint is associated with more attention and citations for the peer-reviewed article

Preprints in biology are becoming more popular, but only a small fraction of the articles published in peer-reviewed journals have previously been released as preprints. To examine whether releasing a preprint on bioRxiv was associated with the attention and citations received by the corresponding peer-reviewed article, we assembled a dataset of 74,239 articles, 5,405 of which had a preprint, published in 39 journals. Using log-linear regression and random-effects meta-analysis, we found that articles with a preprint had, on average, a 49% higher Altmetric Attention Score and 36% more citations than articles without a preprint. These associations were independent of several other article- and author-level variables (such as scientific subfield and number of authors), and were unrelated to journal-level variables such as access model and Impact Factor. This observational study can help researchers and publishers make informed decisions about how to incorporate preprints into their work.
Migraine : is it related to hormonal disturbances or stress ?

License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. Permissions beyond the scope of the License are administered by Dove Medical Press Limited. Information on how to request permission may be found at: http://www.dovepress. com/permissions.php International Journal of Women’s Health 2014:6 921–925 International Journal of Women’s Health
Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP): statistical guidance of wind speed, direction, and gusts for aviation weather

The Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) is redeveloping the Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP), a system used to provide statistical guidance for sensible weather elements. The current LAMP system produces wind speed and direction guidance every 3 hours by utilizing Nested Grid Model (NGM) Model Output Statistics (MOS) (Kelly and Ghirardelli 1998). The new system will update the latest Global Forecast System (GFS) MOS to produce forecasts for wind speed, direction, and maximum wind gusts in an effort to improve the guidance for aviation purposes. LAMP guidance will be updated hourly producing forecasts every hour out to 25 hours for the conterminous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Evolution of a large population under gene conversion.

The dynamics of allelic frequencies at a single multiallelic locus under gene conversion is studied. Generations are discrete and nonoverlapping; the diploid monoecious population mates at random; selection, mutation, and random drift are negligible. Analytical and numerical investigation indicates the following. (i) If gene conversion is biased within at least one pair of alleles, then the frequency of at least one allele must become arbitrarily small. (ii) If conversion is biased within every pair of alleles, then the frequency of at most one allele can fail to become arbitrarily small. Although allelic frequencies may become repeatedly small instead of remaining small, the biological ubiquity of small random perturbations (due, e.g., to random genetic drift) guarantees the ultimate loss of at least one allele in case i and of all alleles but one in case ii. The decay of genetic variability is often sufficiently rapid to imply that biased gene conversion can be an important mechanism for the genetic divergence of isolated populations.
Remembrance of the experiments past: A redescription based tool for discovery in complex systems

A complex system creates a “whole that is larger than the sum of its parts,” by coordinating many interacting simpler component processes. Yet, each of these processes is difficult to decipher as their visible signatures are only seen in a syntactic background, devoid of the context. Examples of such visible datasets are time-course description of geneexpression abundance levels, neural spike-trains, or click-streams for web pages. It has now become rather effortless to collect voluminous datasets of this nature; but how can we make sense of them and draw significant conclusions? Samantha Kleinberg NYU Bioinformatics Group, Courant Institute Marco Antoniotti NYU Bioinformatics Group, Courant Institute
Compost applicators for horticulture

Horticulture is the art of planting fruit trees, vegetables, and ornamental or agricultural science that deals with the cultivation of gardens, including planting vegetable plants, fruit, flowers, and shrubs and ornamental trees. Fertilization is one of the important things to increase production, even until now regarded as a dominant factor in agricultural production. The use of compost can provide benefits for soil and plants. Problems that occur at the time of application of compost needed manpower and considerable expense, so it needs an efficient technology in the form of mechanical equipment that is simple and easy to operate. This study aims to modify applicator for sugar cane dry land so that it can be used on horticultural crops (vegetables) land and seeks to increase the efficiency of the applicator compost through modifications the system coupling that can be drawn using the tractor two wheels. The results show that the prototype model of applicator conveyor belt type had been made was functioning properly. Modification is done by replacing the joint connection between the applicator and the tractor. The volume of applicator compost is one meter cubic.
Italian registry on long-term intrathecal ziconotide treatment.

BACKGROUND Ziconotide is commonly used for intrathecal (IT) therapy of chronic pain, and has been recently indicated as a first-line IT drug. It is also extremely useful for patients intolerant or refractory to the common IT drugs (such as morphine). The literature, excluding registration studies, mostly includes small samples, and gives only fragmentary evidence on the long-term risks and benefits of ziconotide. OBJECTIVE To collect data on safety and efficacy of long-term ziconotide IT infusion in Italian pain centers. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective cohort study on the use of ziconotide in Italy. The study was designed and coordinated by the Foundation ISAL (Algological Sciences Research and Training Institute). Patients treated with ziconotide from several pain therapy and neurosurgery units were included in the study, allowing the creation of the first Italian Registry of Ziconotide. SETTING Seventeen Italian public and private pain and neurosurgery centers. METHODS Patients suffering from cancer or non-cancer intractable chronic pain who had been treated with ziconotide IT infusion for at least one month. Efficacy was analyzed considering changes on the visual analog scale of pain intensity from baseline observation. Safety was assessed by monitoring the number and intensity of adverse events. RESULTS Currently, 104 patients are included in the Italian Registry of Ziconotide. Ziconotide was administered as the first IT drug choice to 55 patients. Seventy-two patients reported at least a 30% pain intensity reduction with a mean dose of 4.36 ug/d. The sustained analgesic effect (P < 0.001) of the ziconotide IT therapy was observed in a group of 45 patients who remained in the study over 6 months without treatment interruptions and with relatively stable doses. Sixty-six patients reported at least one side effect related to ziconotide. However, adverse events have not always been decisive for treatment interruptions. LIMITATIONS Data were collected retrospectively from different pain centers that used different methods for ziconotide treatment and clinical forms for its data collection; for this reason there is an absence of standardized methodologies and a placebo-controlled group, and some data were missing. CONCLUSIONS Ziconotide IT therapy is a treatment option commonly used for clinical practice in 17 Italian pain therapy and neurosurgery units. It might give relief to patients with refractory chronic pain, and it seems to have a safe profile. Long-term studies and controlled trials are required.
A semantic model for graphical user interfaces

We give a denotational model for graphical user interface (GUI) programming using the Cartesian closed category of ultrametric spaces. The ultrametric structure enforces causality restrictions on reactive systems and allows well-founded recursive definitions by a generalization of guardedness. We capture the arbitrariness of user input (e.g., a user gets to decide the stream of clicks she sends to a program) by making use of the fact that the closed subsets of an ultrametric space themselves form an ultrametric space, allowing us to interpret nondeterminism with a "powerspace" monad. Algebras for the powerspace monad yield a model of intuitionistic linear logic, which we exploit in the definition of a mixed linear/non-linear domain-specific language for writing GUI programs. The non-linear part of the language is used for writing reactive stream-processing functions whilst the linear sublanguage naturally captures the generativity and usage constraints on the various linear objects in GUIs, such as the elements of a DOM or scene graph. We have implemented this DSL as an extension to OCaml, and give examples demonstrating that programs in this style can be short and readable.
Clustering Markov Decision Processes For Continual Transfer

We consider the problem of a lifelong learning agent that continually encounters a sequence of tasks. After sufficient exposure to the domain, it is conceivable that the agent has developed a large library of task-specific optimal policies that may then be used as a basis for transfer learning - to speed up operation in a novel instance of a task from this domain. We present an algorithm for continual transfer learning in this setting of reinforcement learning with MDPs. A key question now is - is it possible to concisely encode the library to enable efficient transfer and search? Towards this end, we present a theory, framework and algorithms to cluster MDPs to select as source tasks a small subset of a large number of previous tasks. Our contributions are as follows. We present a principled policy-reuse algorithm that optimally reuses a given set of source policies when solving a particular MDP. We then present a framework for clustering the previously solved MDPs to obtain a source MDP set which optimize the reuse performance of our transfer algorithm. The framework consists of (i) a class of distance functions over MDPs which helps define clustering of MDPs; (ii) a cost function which measures how good a particular clustering is for generating useful source tasks for the transfer algorithm and (iii) provably convergent optimization algorithm for finding the optimal cluster. Finally, we present a set of experiments that illustrate the efficacy of our approach.
The chromosome 3p21.3-encoded gene, LIMD1, is a critical tumor suppressor involved in human lung cancer development

Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) and homozygous deletions at chromosome 3p21.3 are common in both small and nonsmall cell lung cancers, indicating the likely presence of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs). Although genetic and epigenetic changes within this region have been identified, the functional significance of these changes has not been explored. Concurrent protein expression and genetic analyses of human lung tumors coupled with functional studies have not been done. Here, we show that expression of the 3p21.3 gene, LIMD1, is frequently down-regulated in human lung tumors. Loss of LIMD1 expression occurs through a combination of gene deletion, LOH, and epigenetic silencing of transcription without evidence for coding region mutations. Experimentally, LIMD1 is a bona fide TSG. Limd1−/− mice are predisposed to chemical-induced lung adenocarcinoma and genetic inactivation of Limd1 in mice heterozygous for oncogenic K-RasG12D markedly increased tumor initiation, promotion, and mortality. Thus, we conclude that LIMD1 is a validated chromosome 3p21.3 tumor-suppressor gene involved in human lung cancer development. LIMD1 is a LIM domain containing adapter protein that localizes to E-cadherin cell–cell adhesive junctions, yet also translocates to the nucleus where it has been shown to function as an RB corepressor. As such, LIMD1 has the potential to communicate cell extrinsic or environmental cues with nuclear responses.
Adaptive predistortion of COFDM signals for a mobile satellite channel

In this paper, we consider the optimization of the performance of QPSK and 16‐QAM coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (COFDM) signals over the non‐linear and mobile satellite channel. A high power amplifier and Rician flat fading channel produces non‐linear and linear distortions; an adaptive predistortion technique combined with turbo codes will reduce both types of distortion. The predistorter is based on a feedforward neural network, with the coefficients being derived using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The conventional turbo code is used to mitigate Rician flat fading distortion and Gaussian noise. The performance over a non‐linear satellite channel indicates that QPSK COFDM followed by a predistorter provides a gain of about 1.7 dB at a BER of 3×10−3 when compared to QPSK COFDM without the predistortion scheme and 16‐QAM COFDM provides a gain of 0.5 dB output back‐off and 1.2 dB signal to noise ratio at a BER of 3×10−5 when compared with an adaptive predistorter based on the Harmmerstein model. We also investigate the influence of the guard time interval and Doppler frequency effect on the BER performance. When the guard interval increases from 0 to 0.125T samples and the normalized Doppler frequency is 0.001, there is a gain of 0.7 and 1 dB signal to noise ratio at a BER of 6×10−4 for QPSK and 16‐QAM COFDM, respectively. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Inhibitors of Alphavirus Entry and Replication Identified with a Stable Chikungunya Replicon Cell Line and Virus-Based Assays

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), an alphavirus, has recently caused epidemic outbreaks and is therefore considered a re-emerging pathogen for which no effective treatment is available. In this study, a CHIKV replicon containing the virus replicase proteins together with puromycin acetyltransferase, EGFP and Renilla luciferase marker genes was constructed. The replicon was transfected into BHK cells to yield a stable cell line. A non-cytopathic phenotype was achieved by a Pro718 to Gly substitution and a five amino acid insertion within non-structural protein 2 (nsP2), obtained through selection for stable growth. Characterization of the replicon cell line by Northern blotting analysis revealed reduced levels of viral RNA synthesis. The CHIKV replicon cell line was validated for antiviral screening in 96-well format and used for a focused screen of 356 compounds (natural compounds and clinically approved drugs). The 5,7-dihydroxyflavones apigenin, chrysin, naringenin and silybin were found to suppress activities of EGFP and Rluc marker genes expressed by the CHIKV replicon. In a concomitant screen against Semliki Forest virus (SFV), their anti-alphaviral activity was confirmed and several additional inhibitors of SFV with IC50 values between 0.4 and 24 µM were identified. Chlorpromazine and five other compounds with a 10H-phenothiazinyl structure were shown to inhibit SFV entry using a novel entry assay based on a temperature-sensitive SFV mutant. These compounds also reduced SFV and Sindbis virus-induced cytopathic effect and inhibited SFV virion production in virus yield experiments. Finally, antiviral effects of selected compounds were confirmed using infectious CHIKV. In summary, the presented approach for discovering alphaviral inhibitors enabled us to identify potential lead structures for the development of alphavirus entry and replication phase inhibitors as well as demonstrated the usefulness of CHIKV replicon and SFV as biosafe surrogate models for anti-CHIKV screening.