Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advantages of a variable‐resolution global climate model in reproducing the seasonal evolution of East Asian summer monsoon

The East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) is unique among monsoon systems that it features meridional evolution of the summer monsoon. In this study, we evaluate the performances of a Variable‐Resolution Community Earth System Model (VR‐CESM) regionally refined over eastern China (14 km) in reproducing the seasonal evolution of EASM precipitation over China. Compared with reference datasets, VR‐CESM shows better performance than the corresponding globally uniform coarse‐resolution model CESM (quasi‐uniform 1°), especially over western China where complex local topography exists. The northward monsoon migration is closely related to low‐level southerly flows and vertical moisture advection, which are more reasonably simulated in VR‐CESM. The four critical timings of the EASM (monsoon onset, withdrawal, peak, and duration) are also better captured in VR‐CESM than in CESM. The corresponding spatial Pearson correlation coefficients of the four critical timings with respect to reference datasets are about 0.1 higher in VR‐CESM than those in CESM. Both models are most accurate in simulating monsoon onset and least accurate at simulating the monsoon peak. The overestimated zonal thermal contrast in CESM is responsible for the earlier monsoon onset and excessive precipitation in September over the Yangtze River valley. Finer resolution in VR‐CESM, especially over the Tibetan Plateau (TP), appears to be a main factor in simulating better zonal thermal contrast and seasonal evolution of the EASM.
Morphometric parameters and food preference in relation to sex and reference hematological values for Upupa epops from Pakistan

Objective: The study was conducted to investigate the gut content and record morphometric and hematological parameters in the common hoopoe (Upupa epops). Materials and Methods: Twenty samples of healthy birds (10 from each sex) were collected from different locations in Okara District, Punjab, Pakistan, from September 2020 to March 2021. Birds were captured live for blood samples and morphometric and gut analyses. Results: It was revealed that the concentrations of different hematological parameters were as follows: hemoglobin, 20.03g/dl; red blood cells, 3.28 × 106/µl; white blood cells, 326.67 × 103/µl; hematocrit, 56.47%; MCV, 173.33 FL; MCH, 57.4 pg; MCHC, 57.4 pg; PLT, 8.33/µl; and RDW, 8.33/µl. The percentages of neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, and eosinophils were 84.67%, 11.67%, 2.00%, and 1.67%, respectively. The gut content of the common hoopoe mostly consisted of Coleoptera and Acrididae larvae. However, Lepidoptera, Gryllotalpidae, and sand were also recorded, along with seeds of Salvadora persica. Conclusions: There were no significant differences between male and female U. epops in feeding content, total weight of the gut, or weight of the empty gut. Regarding the morphometric parameters, there was a significant difference in both sexes’ wingspan, body length, and body weight. Males were significantly heavier than females.
Level of serum 25(OH) vitamin D among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Iraq, Diwaniyah city

Introduction: COVID-19 is an emerging viral infection whose pathogenic mechanisms are not well understood. Interestingly, Vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 share prevalence patterns for hypertension, diabetes, obesity, advanced age, and male sex. Vitamin D deficiency can contribute to our understanding of COVID-19 health disparities. Patients and methods: a cross sectional study involving 100 adult hospitalized patients with positive PCR for COVID-19 at Diwaniyah teaching Hospital / Shiffaa center, Diwaniyah, Iraq, during a period of 3 months. The serum 25 OH-D level was measured and Vitamin D deficiency, defined as a 25(OH) D level < 20 ng/mL, and insufficiency define as a 25(OH)D level 30-20 ng/mL. History of some other underlying health diseases (diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hypothyroidism and gastro esophageal reflux disease) was taken directly from the patients. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 26 and the study aimed to measure serum vitamin D level among COVID-19 patients. Result: The mean ± SD age was 38.8±13.7 years ranging between 18- 67 years. The mean±SD of 25(OH)D levels was 20.2±16 ng/mL. Vitamin D deficiency was present in 58 patients and vit D insufficiency was found in 25 patients.
Clinical activity of 9-ING-41, a small molecule selective glycogen synthase kinase-3 beta (GSK-3β) inhibitor, in refractory adult T-Cell leukemia/lymphoma

ABSTRACT GSK-3β is a serine/threonine kinase implicated in tumorigenesis and chemotherapy resistance. GSK-3β blockade downregulates the NF-κB pathway, modulates immune cell PD-1 and tumor cell PD-L1 expression, and increases CD8 + T cell and NK cell function. We report a case of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL) treated with 9-ING-41, a selective GSK-3β inhibitor in clinical development, who achieved a durable response. A 43-year-old male developed diffuse lymphadenopathy, and biopsy of axillary lymph node showed acute-type ATLL. Peripheral blood flow cytometry revealed a circulating clonal T cell population, and CSF was positive for ATLL involvement. After disease progression on the 3rd line of treatment, he started treatment with 9-ING-41 monotherapy in a clinical trial (NCT03678883). CT imaging after seven months showed a partial response. Sustained reduction of peripheral blood ATLL cells lasted 15 months. Treatment of patient-derived CD8 + T cells with 9-ING-41 increased the secretion of IFN-γ, granzyme B, and tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL). In conclusion, treatment of a patient with refractory ATLL with the GSK-3β inhibitor 9-ING-41 resulted in a prolonged response. Ongoing experiments are investigating the hypothesis that 9-ING-41-induced T cell activation and immunomodulation contributes to its clinical activity. Further clinical investigation of 9-ING-41 for treatment of ATLL is warranted.
The Long-term Effects of Immersive Virtual Reality Reminiscence in People With Dementia: Longitudinal Observational Study

Background Novel nonpharmacological therapies are being developed to prevent cognitive decline and reduce behavioral and psychological symptoms in patients with dementia. Virtual reality (VR) reminiscence was reported to improve anxiety, apathy, and cognitive function immediately after intervention in individuals at residential aged care facilities. However, its effect on elderly patients with dementia and how long this effect could last remain unknown. Objective The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of immersive VR reminiscence in people with dementia both immediately after and 3-6 months after intervention. Methods A pilot study was conducted in 2 dementia care units. VR reminiscence therapy sessions were conducted twice per week for a 3-month period. Cognitive function, global status, depressive symptoms, and caregiver burden were assessed before and immediately after VR intervention in 20 participants. Subsequently, 7 participants were reassessed 3-6 months after the VR intervention. Wilcoxon sign-rank test was used for statistical comparisons of the changes. Results There were no significant changes in cognitive function, global status, and caregiver burden immediately after the VR intervention, but there was a significant reduction in depressive symptoms (P=.008). Moreover, compared with the cognitive function immediately after VR, it kept declining 3-6 months after. Conclusions Immersive VR reminiscence can improve mood and preserve cognitive function in elderly patients with dementia during the period of the intervention. Studies using a control group and comparing the use of VR with traditional forms of reminiscence should be conducted in the future to confirm and expand on these findings.
Development and Evaluation of Performance Measures for Capacity Utilization of Traffic Signals

Emerging high-resolution datasets allow for developing traffic signal performance measures (TSPMs) which can provide a better understanding of traffic signal operations. One of the specific objectives of signal operations is related to the measurement of capacity utilization. A fundamental measure for capacity utilization is the “degree of saturation” (DS), and it has both volume-based and occupancy-based formulations. The former is known as “volume over capacity ratio” (V/C), whereas the latter is known as “green occupancy ratio” (GOR). When V/C is used to observe capacity utilization, it is not known whether the capacity is utilized from interrupted flow, free flow, or a combination of two. Similarly, the amount of time in the cycle utilized by volume (characterized with the first and last vehicle arrival time) is not revealed within V/C. On the other hand, GOR“overlooks” cases when a high number of vehicles travel without stopping or fewer vehicles depart the signal with significant startup delays and similar. In addition, because of a lack of scientific attention, GOR has often been misinterpreted as some similar, yet different TSPM. Therefore, if only V/C or GOR are used to monitor signal performance, the understanding of utilized capacity will be incomplete or misleading. This study proposes three TSPMs: “queued volume in volume to capacity ratio” (QViV/C), “cycle utilization” (CLU), and “volume-occupancy capacity utilization” (VOCU) to overcome the limitations of V/C and GOR. Also, by evaluating existing occupancy-based measures, it was found that they can be used to estimate capacity utilization, including oversaturated conditions.
Colonial Roots of Modern Development Discourse

Abstract The paper is structured around a thesis that the historical and colonial roots of modern development shape contemporary development themes and discourses, and that these in turn influence the metrics and indicators used to measure development. The article looks into how colonial relations shape contemporary development themes; the historical evolution of the key themes and measurements of development; finally, how various important “developers,” particularly multilateral and bilateral development agencies, use their epistemic privilege to influence the metrics or indicators that we use to measure development, with particular emphasis on the measures of poverty and inequality. The paper uses a historically grounded narrative structure in demonstrating how colonial legacies have continued to influence development discourse and the related metrics and indicators used in development theory and practice. Finally, the author identifies future avenues of research, particularly how metrics or measures might correspondingly shape emerging development themes and discourses.
Learning to Predict Bus Arrival Time From Heterogeneous Measurements via Recurrent Neural Network

Bus arrival time prediction intends to improve the level of the services provided by transportation agencies. Intuitively, many stochastic factors affect the predictability of the arrival time, e.g., weather and local events. Moreover, the arrival time prediction for a current station is closely correlated with that of multiple passed stations. Motivated by the observations above, this paper proposes to exploit the long-range dependencies among the multiple time steps for bus arrival prediction via recurrent neural network (RNN). Concretely, RNN with long short-term memory block is used to “correct” the prediction for a station by the correlated multiple passed stations. During the correlation among multiple stations, one-hot coding is introduced to fuse heterogeneous information into a unified vector space. Therefore, the proposed framework leverages the dynamic measurements (i.e., historical trajectory data) and the static observations (i.e., statistics of the infrastructure) for bus arrival time prediction. In order to fairly compare with the state-of-the-art methods, to the best of our knowledge, we have released the largest data set for this task. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performances of our approach on this data set.
Symmetry of domains in morphotropic PbZr_{1−x}Ti_{x}O_{3} ceramics

PbZr1−xTixO3 (PZT) ceramic samples with compositions over the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) ranging from 45/55 to 60/40 [(1−x)/x] are studied by transmission electron microscopy combined with convergent-beam electron diffraction (CBED). All point-group symmetries debated for morphotropic PZT, 4mm, m, and 3m, are identified. Up to PZT 54/46 the symmetry is mainly tetragonal within lamellar domain configurations. From PZT 52/48 to PZT 54/46 nanodomains evolve within the tetragonal microdomains and monoclinic symmetry is identified within the same domain configurations, together with tetragonal symmetry for PZT 54/46. For PZT 55/45 up to PZT 60/40 rhombohedral symmetry is observed. Rhombohedral domains, as identified by CBED, are characterized by their width, curved domain walls, and grainy inner contrast. This contrast, together with anisotropic first-order Laue-zone intensities, implies that local deviations from 3m symmetry may exist within rhombohedral domains. Between PZT 54/46 and PZT 55/45 the morphology of the microdomains changes abruptly. For PZT 54.5/45.5 both types of domain configurations coexist within the same grain. For PZT 56/44 a tetragonal inclusion within a rhombohedral matrix is identified by CBED. On the other side of the MPB, domains with a rhombohedral appearance are found in PZT 53.5/46.5. These observation were less frequent but show that coexistence is present in ceramic samples around the MPB.
Review of anthrax: A disease of farm animals

Anthrax is a rapidly fatal infectious disease affecting herbivores and people. In the farm animals, cattle and sheep are more susceptible, followed by goats and horses, while dwarf pigs and Algerian sheep are relatively resistant. Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, produces spores and persists for decades in the soil, initiating an outbreak through a favorable climate shift. Anthrax is enzootic in many Asian and African countries, and is reported in Australia, some parts of Europe, and America. The clinical courses of this disease in animals are peracute, acute, subacute, and chronic forms. In severely infected cases, the animals are dead without premonitory clinical signs. The blood may fail to clot and can be found in the mouth, nostrils, and anus in the animals that die from anthrax. This bacterium is susceptible to many antibiotics, yet only penicillin and oxytetracycline have the most effective under field conditions. When an outbreak occurs in a defined area, it is necessary to take early steps to break the infection cycle by maintaining strict biosecurity and vaccinating uninfected animals. This disease is still a challenge to farm animal production in many countries. This review intends to give a fair knowledge of the etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and control of this disease.
Ending Lacewing Acres: Toward amplifying microperspectives on farm closure

Farmers are invited to tell stories about their farms, especially about their farm’s origin and history. However, some farm stories go untold, are unin­vited, or become obscured, including stories of farm closures. With this case study, we invite jour­nalists and academics to provide further opportuni­ties for farmers to tell their own closure stories. Written by the farmer and her CSA member and friend, who researches farmer communication, this case study calls on farmers to tell their farm-closure stories in the complicated and robust ways such stories deserve. We draw on ­academic and public scholarship about farm closures and farmers’ dis­closures to feature how one farmer decided to end her farm and farming career. We chronicle her decision-making process and her strategies to com­municate the closure of her farm, as well as analyze themes from how audiences reacted to her news. We also offer a range of reasons for inviting such telling of complex closure stories.
Investigation of Virulence Genes of the Predominant Bacteria Associated with Renal Stones and their Correlation with Postoperative Septic Complications

Abstract Purpose Nephrolithiasis is a worldwide disease, and 4.7% of the patients may develop postoperative sepsis. Characterization of virulence genes of bacteria associated with renal stones is still lacking in the literature. The study aimed to investigate the virulence genes of the predominant stone bacterial isolate and their association with postoperative septic complications in patients treated with percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL). Methods Stone and midstream urine samples were collected from 200 nephrolithiasis patients who underwent PCNL. Microbiological examination and virulence profile were studied for the common bacteria isolated from the stones. Results Microbiological analysis revealed that Staphylococcus aureus was the predominant organism in stone samples (42.8%), while Escherichia coli (56.6%) was the dominant pathogen in midstream urine. Eight patients (4%) developed septic complications; stone culture was positive for S. aureus in seven and E. coli in one patient, while all but one had negative midstream urine. The patient with positive midstream urine culture had also S. aureus infection. Detection of virulence genes in S. aureus isolated from stones showed a high positivity of the hemolysine gene hla (93.3%) and adhesion gene fnbA (73.3%), whereas enterotoxin genes (sec and sea) were negative in all S. aureus stone cultures. Moreover, the adhesion genes (fnbB and can), hemolysine gene (hlb), panton-valentine leukocidin (pvl) gene and the enterotoxin gene (seb) were significantly higher in septic patients compared to the non-septic ones (p< 0.05). Interestingly, there was a significant relation between the existence of virulence genes and the resistance of antibiotics (p < 0.05). Conclusion There has been a notable shift toward gram-positive organisms (S. aureus) in the stone culture. Moreover, S. aureus virulence genes were significantly attributed to the resistance of some antibiotics and postoperative septic complications, suggesting that the stone culture could be more informative than urine culture, especially in predicting the risk of postoperative sepsis.
Investigation of collisions between electrons and excited atoms of potassium, rubidium and caesium

Results of measurements of the rate constants for electron impact induced transitions between selected levels of potassium (4P → 6P), rubidium (5P → 7P) and caesium (6P → 8P and 6P → 9P) are presented. The experiment was done in helium plasma produced by electric discharge. The plasma was doped with the atoms of interest at a concentration of about 10 11 cm –3 . The alkali atoms were excited to resonance level by a laser pulse. The rate constants for the investigated transitions were determined by the analysis of atomic fluorescence. The electron temperature was measured using a double probe method.
Extensions of an arbitrary semigroup.

An (ideal) extension of a semigroup S is a semigroup V containing S s an ideal; one says also that V is an extension of S by the Rees-quotient V/S = Q. These extensions were introduced by Clifford. So far they have been studied mostly in the case when S is weakly reductive, apparently due to the fact that the general case is considerably more difficult. Yet a structure theorem in this case would allow a complete inductive construction of all finite semigroups. In this paper we bring three important results in that direction; they concern particular classes of extensions which we call strongly strict, weakly pure, and dense, respectively. First, any extension of S is a weakly pure extension of a strongly strict extension of S. Next, we give the structure of all strongly strict extensions. Finally we show how all the extensions of S can be constructed from the dense extensions of S. These results extend to the general case the previous results of Clifford (see [1]; also [2]) and the authors [5] on weakly reduetive semigroups. Our technique is different, however; the main tools are the iS-congruences on an extension (— congruences whose restriction to S is the equality). After a brief recall of some concepts and notation, we introduce these congruences in section l and prove a lemma which will later help characterize all our particular classes of extensions in terms of elements. Strongly strict extensions (= in which any element is related to some element of S by some 5-congruence) are introduced in section 2 and compared to the strict extensions of [5] and to the extensions determined by a partial homomorphism. Section 3 brings weakly pure extensions and our first main result. The o'-congruences for which S is a union of classes are of special interest because, on any extension, all such congruences are contained in a largest one. This is proved in section 4 and helps define a possible analogue of the types defined in [5]. Dense extensions (= on which the equality is the only 5-congruence) are considered in section 5; we give a number of circumstances where dense extensions appear naturally and complete the section by showing that they may well be strict. Finally, section 6 uses material from the previous sections for establishing of our two last main results; to this end, we describe a very general method to obtain new extensions from a given extension. The reader is referred to [2] for the fundamentale on semigroups. In what follows, S is an arbitrary semigroup and Ω (S) denotes the translational h ll of S (i. e. the semigroup of all pairs (A, ρ) of mappings of S into S such that λ(χι/) — (λχ)ι/, (xy)q = x(yo), x(Xy) = (xq)y for all x, y £ S (linked translations), with the obvious multiplication). For any a € 5, na = (λα, ρα) (where λαχ = αχ, χρα = χαϊοτ all χ € S) is in Ω (S), and π : a — ~> πα is a homomorphism of S into Ω (S)] the r nge Π (S) of π is an ideal of Ω (S). One calls S
Rider's Head Injury Risks in Relation to Dynamics of Motorcycle in Frontal Crashes

Motorcycle frontal crashes usually cause serious and fatal head injuries to riders. This paper presents a two-level factorial experiment through finite element simulations of motorcycle-rigid wall impact scenario to investigate the effects of motorcycle layout design variations on rider's relative head injury risks, and also of the deformation mechanisms of motorcycle frontal structures on dynamics of the motorcycle. The motorcycle layout design variations were represented by the changes of three design factors, namely location of the engine block, location of air filter casing and its orientation. Head Injury Criteria (HIC15) based on a time interval of 15 ms were selected as the response variable to evaluate the effects of the corresponding changes. The analysis showed that HIC15 values were significantly influenced by the changes of these factors, with the differences ranging from -21% to +11% for seven different designs of motorcycle layout as compared to the original one. Such influences on HIC15 values were mainly due to the changes in motorcycle dynamics caused by different deformation mechanisms of the wheel, which was attributed to interactions between the frontal structures and the engine block and also air filter casing. It was also found that HIC15 values were significantly influenced by the vertical component of motorcycle accelerations, but not by the horizontal component. A regression model for predicting the HIC15 value was established and the effect plots of the factors were also produced from the factorial analysis and it was found that there were interactions between the effect of the design factors. The outcomes of the present study provide an insight into how the structural response of the frontal structures of motorcycles could be taken into consideration as part of design elements in reducing rider's head injury risks in frontal crashes.