Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance of Empirical Bayes Estimators of Level-2 Random Parameters in Multilevel Analysis: A Monte Carlo Study for Longitudinal Designs

Multilevel analysis is a useful technique for analyzing longitudinal data. To describe a person’s development across time, the quality of the estimates of the random coefficients, which relate time to individual changes in a relevant dependent variable, is of importance. The present study compares three estimators of the random coefficients: the Bayes estimator (BE), the empirical Bayes estimator (EBE), and the ordinary least squares estimator (OLSE). Using MLwiN, Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to study the performance of the estimators, while systematically varying the size of the sample as well as the number of measurement occasions. First, we examine for normally distributed random coefficients to what extent the EBE performs better than the OLSE and to what extent the EBE preserves the good properties of the BE. Second, we examine the robustness of the EBE which is based on a normal distribution of the random parameters, by comparing its performance to the OLSE for data being generated from two distributions other than the normal distribution: a modified t-distribution and a modified exponential distribution. As performance criteria we examine the Bayes risk as well as a criterion based on the frequentist notion of mean squared error.
Adaptation and Validation of Indonesian Version of the Commitment to Change Scale

Purpose The study aims to adapt and validate the Indonesian version of the commitment to change scale that was initially developed by Herscovitch and Meyer. Methods Data were collected using an online application among faculty members of several universities who have experienced policy changes from the Indonesian government regarding research-related issues. A total of 204 responses were obtained. The data was validated using the Content Validity Index (CVI), the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), the Convergent and Discriminant correlations as well as the Cronbach’s alpha. Results The results demonstrated that commitment to change could be represented by three dimensions of affective, continuance and normative commitment to change, although there is one item that must be adjusted. The results of the Scale-Content Validity Index (S-CVI) show that the commitment to change scale has excellent content validity (S-CVI/Ave = 0.97). CFA results show a good fit, Cronbach’s alpha obtains good results with ACTC (α = 0.71); CCTC (α = 0.83); NCTC (α = 0.77) and Construct Reliability (CR) values obtained are also quite good with ACTC = 0.85; CCTC = 0.86; NCTC = 0.86. From the results of the convergent and discriminant validity tests, it was found that the affective commitment to change positively correlates with job satisfaction and negatively correlates with job stress. However, both continuance and normative commitment to change scale does not correlate with the two variables. Conclusion The Indonesian version of the commitment to change scale shows good psychometric properties and has proven valid to provide the measurement of commitment to change, especially for the faculty members in Indonesia.
Nonlinear gyrokinetic equations

Nonlinear gyrokinetic equations are derived from a systematic Hamiltonian theory. The derivation employs Lie transforms and a noncanonical perturbation theory first used by Littlejohn for the simpler problem of asymptotically small gyroradius. For definiteness, only electrostatic fluctuations in slab geometry are considered; however, there is a straightforward generalization to arbitrary field geometry and electromagnetic perturbations. An energy invariant for the nonlinear system is derived, and several limiting forms are considered. The weak turbulence theory of the equations is examined. In particular, the wave kinetic equation of Galeev and Sagdeev can ony be derived by an asystematic truncation of the equations, implying that this equation fails to consider all gyrokinetic effects. The equations are simplified for the case of small but finite gyroradius and put in a form suitable for efficient computer simulation. Although it is possible to derive the Terry–Horton and Hasegawa–Mima equations as limit.
Assessment of Oak Groves Conservation Statuses in Natura 2000 Sacs with Single Photon Lidar and Sentinel-2 Data

Among the main objectives of Natura 2000 Network sites management plans is monitoring their conservation status under a reasonable cost and with high temporal frequency. The aim of this study is to assess the ability of single-photon light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology (14 points per m2) and Sentinel-2 data to classify the conservation status of oak forests in four special areas of conservation in Navarra Province (Spain) that comprise three habitats. To capture the variability of conservation status within the three habitats, we first performed a random stratified sampling based on conservation status measured in the field, canopy cover, and terrain slope and height. Thereafter, we compared two metric selection approaches, namely Kruskal–Wallis and Dunn tests, and two machine learning classification methods, random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM), to classify the conservation statuses using LiDAR and Sentinel-2 data. The best-fit classification model, which included only LiDAR metrics, was obtained using the random forest method, with an overall classification accuracy after validation of 83.01%, 75.51%, and 88.25% for Quercus robur (9160), Quercus pyrenaica (9230), and Quercus faginea (9240) habitats, respectively. The models include three to six LiDAR metrics, with the structural diversity indices (LiDAR height evenness index, LHEI, and LiDAR height diversity index, LHDI) and canopy cover (FCC) being the most relevant ones. The inclusion of the NDVI index from the Sentinel-2 image did not improve the classification accuracy significantly. This approach demonstrates its value for classifying and subsequently mapping conservation statuses in oak groves and other Natura 2000 Network habitat sites at a regional scale, which could serve for more effective monitoring and management of high biodiversity habitats.
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE TWO-FOLD CENTRAL EXTENSION OF SL2.Q2/

We define a notion of pseudospherical type for smooth representations of the nontrivial two fold central extension of SL2.Q2/. We describe completely the irreducible representations that contain the pseudospherical type. We relate our results to Kohnen’s plus and minus spaces of classical modular forms of half integral weight.
Low-resource CNN Accelerator Based on FPGA

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are deployed on the Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices with strict restrictions on resource and power consumption. Most of the work's optimization focuses on inference speed and average precision, ignoring resource and power consumption optimization. This paper proposes the strategies of weight quantization, parameter reordering, block convolution multiplexing, and $\text{CONV}+\text{POOL}$ ‘ to implement an FPGA-based CNN accelerator with low-resource and low-power. The CNN algorithm is designed in High Level Synthesis tool (HLS), which can realize the FPGA development with high-level language to achieve high development efficiency and flexibility. The experimental results show that our implementation has achieved 2.812W of low power consumption for executing YOLOV2 on the PYNQ-Z2, consuming only 2052Kb of on-chip BRAMs, which is better than the current work in terms of resource consumption. The performance is about 42.31GOP/s, which is much higher than CPU (ARM-A9).
Wintertime Supercell Thunderstorms in a Subtropical Environment: A Diagnostic Study

Abstract The present study documents the environment, initiation, and evolution of three isolated supercell storms on 19 December 2002, as the first case near Taiwan reported in the literature, mainly using radar data and manual and gridded analyses. In a subtropical environment, the supercells occurred behind a winter cold front that provided a large west-southwesterly vertical wind shear of 6.4 × 10−3 s−1 at 0–3 km. This combined with weak-to-moderate instability (CAPE = 887 J kg−1) above the shallow surface cold air to yield a favorable environment for supercells. An approaching upper-level jet (ULJ) at 200 hPa also provided strong shear through deep layers farther aloft. Prior to storm initiation, significant daytime solar heating occurred over the mountain slopes along the coast of southeastern China, leading to development of local circulation and onshore/upslope winds, resulting in convergence and uplifting. Three storms were initiated about 80 km inland around 1400 LST near the peaks of local terr.
On the Field Variables of the Biot Theory and Modeling of Seismic Wave Propagation

The Biot theory of seismic wave propagation is formulated in terms of two displacement vector fields. These are the displacement fields for the average motions of the solid phase and the fluid phase. In this theory, every representative volume element, i.e. a material point, is ascribed with two constituent mass densities and has six translational degrees of freedom. Clearly, such a framework is incompatible with any wave field recording where only three independent components of a vector field can be ascribed to and measured at a given location. By defining the material point to be the center-of-mass of the constituting solid and fluid masses, this unconformity can be reconciled. The motion of this material point is determined by the vector center of the constituting masses, which we refer to as the center-of-mass or mean field. Realizing that the dynamics of the constituting masses is like a two-body problem, to this material point, the field associated with the relative acceleration between the phases is ascribed as the other field. We refer to it as the internal rotational field, or simply the internal field. It is taken as a weighted relative motion between the two phases, where the dimensionless weighting factor is the product of the reduced mass density of the poro-continuum with the difference of the reciprocal of the densities of the two phases. The mean field and the internal field are taken as the fundamental vector fields. We find that the total mass of the poro-continuum is conserved with the mean field. The total linear momentum is expressed completely in terms of the mean field. Thus, it is the mean field that is associated with three translational degrees of freedom of the material point. Geophones and seismometers are total linear momentum measuring devices thereby tracking the mean field. Therefore, recorded seismic data correspond to the mean field. The internal field is linked to the angular momentum about the center-ofmass (spin) and the rotational kinetic energy of the material point; hence, it represents the three rotational degrees of freedom of the material point. A simple linear transformation recasts the Biot equations of motion in terms of the mean and internal fields. These are be the appropriate equations of motion for wave propagation problems.
Promises and Challenges of Predictive Blood Biomarkers for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer Treated with Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy

The treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) requires a multimodal approach combining neoadjuvant radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy (CRT) and surgery. Predicting tumor response to CRT can guide clinical decision making and improve patient care while avoiding unnecessary toxicity and morbidity. Circulating biomarkers offer both the advantage to be easily accessed and followed over time. In recent years, biomarkers such as proteins, blood cells, or nucleic acids have been investigated for their predictive value in oncology. We conducted a comprehensive literature review with the aim to summarize the status of circulating biomarkers predicting response to CRT in LARC. Forty-nine publications, of which forty-seven full-text articles, one review and one systematic review, were retrieved. These studies evaluated circulating markers (CEA and CA 19-9), inflammatory biomarkers (CRP, albumin, and lymphocytes), hematologic markers (hemoglobin and thrombocytes), lipids and circulating nucleic acids (cell-free DNA [cfDNA], circulating tumor DNA [ctDNA], and microRNA [miRNA]). Post-CRT CEA levels had the most consistent association with tumor response, while cfDNA integrity index, MGMT promoter methylation, ERCC-1, miRNAs, and miRNA-related SNPs were identified as potential predictive markers. Although circulating biomarkers hold great promise, inconsistent results, low statistical power, and low specificity and sensibility prevent them from reliably predicting tumor response following CRT. Validation and standardization of methods and technologies are further required to confirm results.
Locally efficient semiparametric estimators for functional measurement error models

A class of semiparametric estimators are proposed in the general setting of functional measurement error models. The estimators follow from estimating equations that are based on the semiparametric efficient score derived under a possibly incorrect distributional assumption for the unobserved 'measured with error' covariates. It is shown that such estimators are consistent and asymptotically normal even with misspecification and are efficient if computed under the truth. The methods are demonstrated with a simulation study of a quadratic logistic regression model with measurement error. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
The Physical Nature of the Loop-Top X-Ray Sources in the Gradual Phase of Solar Flares

We have analyzed Yohkoh soft and hard X-ray images of 36 flares, primarily to study the loop-top source that often prevails in these wavelengths during and following the impulsive phase. There are typically two patterns for the location of the low-energy (15-30 keV) hard X-ray (HXR) source with respect to the soft X-ray (SXR) loop. In a quarter of the flares, the HXR source lies in an extended structure separate from the brightest SXR loop. In other flares, the HXR source appears to be part of the same bipolar structure as the SXR loop, but its centroid is often displaced from the SXR loop-top source. The fact that the HXR source is not cospatial with the SXR source may reflect the presence of a distinct hotter structure. According to Yohkoh X-ray emission-line spectroscopy, the ~20 MK plasma accounts for only a fraction of the HXR counts. The temperature maps obtained from the SXR broadband photometry occasionally reveal high-temperature areas outside the bright loop, but they also tend to be displaced from the HXR source, indicating that they do not represent the superhot (≳30 MK) plasma. We discuss possible distributions of plasma of different temperatures that could be consistent with the data.
Core-Sheath Pt-CeO2/Mesoporous SiO2 Electrospun Nanofibers as Catalysts for the Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction

One-dimensional (1D) core-sheath nanofibers, platinum (Pt)-loaded ceria (CeO2) sheath on mesoporous silica (SiO2) core were fabricated, characterized, and used as catalysts for the reverse water gas shift reaction (RWGS). CeO2 nanofibers (NFs) were first prepared by electrospinning (ES), and then Pt nanoparticles were loaded on the CeO2 NFs using two different deposition methods: wet impregnation and solvothermal. A mesoporous SiO2 sheath layer was then deposited by sol-gel process. The phase composition, structural, and morphological properties of synthesized materials were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen adsorption/desorption method, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), inductively coupled plasma—optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) analysis, and CO2 temperature programmed desorption (CO2-TPD). The results of these characterization techniques revealed that the core-sheath NFs with a core diameter between 100 and 300 nm and a sheath thickness of about 40–100 nm with a Pt loading of around 0.5 wt. % were successfully obtained. The impregnated catalyst, Pt-CeO2 NF@mesoporous SiO2, showed the best catalytic performance with a CO2 conversion of 8.9% at 350 °C, as compared to the sample prepared by the Solvothermal method. More than 99% selectivity of CO was achieved for all core-sheath NF-catalysts.
Mining Latent Disease Factors from Medical Literature using Causality

Understanding causality is a longstanding goal across many different domains. Different articles, such as those published in medical journals, publish newly discovered knowledge, often causal. In this paper, we use this intuition to build a model that leverages causal relations to unearth factors related to Sjögren’s syndrome. Sjögren’s syndrome is an autoimmune disease affecting up to 3.1 million Americans. The uncommon nature of the disease, coupled with common symptoms of other autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, it is difficult for clinicians to timely diagnose the disease. This is further worsened by suboptimal communication between dentists, and physicians, including rheumatologists and ophthalmologists, because clinical manifestations of this disease require the patients to visit physicians with different specialties. A centralized information system with easy access to common and uncommon factors related to Sjögren’s syndrome may alleviate the problem. We use automatically extracted causal relationships from text related to Sjögren’s syndrome collected from the medical literature to identify a set of factors, such as “signs and symptoms” and “associated conditions”, related to this disease. We show that our approach is capable of retrieving such factors with high precision and recall values. Comparative experiments show that this approach leads to 25% improvement in retrieval F1-score compared to several state-of-the-art biomedical models, including BioBERT and Gram-CNN.
Pattern-Reconfigurable Sparse Linear Array Synthesis Under Minimum Element Spacing Control by Alternating Sequential Quadratic Programming

A new method called alternating sequential quadratic programming is proposed to synthesize pattern-reconfigurable sparse linear arrays with minimum element spacing control. The method can find the common element positions and multiple sets of excitations for generating multiple reconfigurable patterns which accurately meet their given upper and lower pattern bounds. In addition, by introducing auxiliary weighting coefficients and collective excitation coefficient vectors and choosing them as optimization variables alternately, the proposed method can appropriately incorporate the minimum element spacing constraint into the pattern synthesis. Synthesized results show that the proposed method can give satisfactory reconfigurable pattern performance but save much more elements compared with some existing methods.
On the nonlinear Helmholtz response of almost-enclosed tidal basins with sloping bottoms

Short relatively deep tidal basins, which are connected to the open sea by a narrow strait, may exhibit either an amplified (resonant), or damped (choked) response to the tide at the entrance. Here particular attention is given to the lowest mode of response, which is the Helmholtz or pumping mode, for which the sea level within the basin executes a spatially uniform oscillation. When the basin's sidewalls slope, the restoring process of this oscillator is nonlinear. Possible consequences of this nonlinearity are that the basin may exhibit either long-lasting high-waters and short, peaked low-waters or long-term regular modulation of its tidal amplitude, or a chaotic modulation of its tidal amplitude, or ‘bent resonance horns’, implying that resonant and choked tidal responses may exist simultaneously for the same parameter regime. Related field observations will be discussed.
Density-functional study of bulk and surface properties of titanium nitride using different exchange-correlation functionals

The adsorption and diffusion of hydrogen on the (100) surface of titanium nitride was studied using density-functional theory (DFT) and the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) for the exchange and correlation energy. The adsorption site was found to be on top of the titanium atom with the chemisorption energy of -2.88 eV. The diffusion barrier was determined as 0.73 eV along the path connecting the neighboring titanium atoms. The surface energies and surface relaxations of the three most important surfaces of TiN were studied. The surface energies have the following order: ${S}_{100}l{S}_{110}l{S}_{111}. $ Three different GGA functionals, the Perdew-Wang 1991 (PW91), the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE), and the revised PBE (RPBE) functionals, were tested on crystals, small molecules and TiN surfaces. The RPBE functional when applied to the surface studies of TiN was found to produce slightly lower values of surface energies and of hydrogen adsorption energies than the PW91 functional.
Relationship of mild to moderate impairment of left ventricular ejection fraction with fatal ventricular arrhythmic events in cardiac sarcoidosis

Background: Current guidelines recommend placing an implantable cardiac defibrillator for patients with cardiac sarcoidosis (CS) and severely impaired left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of [≤]35%. In this study, we aimed to explore the association between mild or moderate LVEF impairment and fatal ventricular arrhythmic event (FVAE). Methods: Here, 401 patients with CS without sustained ventricular arrhythmia at diagnosis were retrospectively analyzed. The primary endpoint was an FVAE, which was defined as the combined endpoint of documented ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac death. Two cut-off points for LVEF were used; sex-specific lower threshold of normal range of LVEF, 52% for men and 54% for women, and LVEF of 35% which is used in the current guidelines. Results: During a median follow-up of 3.2 years, 58 FVAEs were observed, and the 5- and 10-year estimated incidences of FVAE were 16.8% and 23.0%, respectively. All patients were classified into three groups according to LVEF: impaired LVEF group, mild to moderate impairment of LVEF group, and maintained LVEF group. Multivariable competing risk analysis showed that both the impaired LVEF group (HR: 3.02, 95% CI: 1.25-7.32) and the mild to moderate impairment of LVEF group (HR: 2.12, 95% CI: 1.02-4.40) were associated with a higher incidence of FVAE than the maintained LVEF group after adjustment for covariates. Conclusions: Patients with CS are at a high risk of FVAEs, regardless of documented ventricular arrhythmia at the time of diagnosis. In patients with CS, even mild to moderate impairment of LVEF is associated with FVAEs.