Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Homogeneous ensemble models for predicting infection levels and mortality of COVID-19 patients: Evidence from China

Background Persistence of long-term COVID-19 pandemic is putting high pressure on healthcare services worldwide for several years. This article aims to establish models to predict infection levels and mortality of COVID-19 patients in China. Methods Machine learning models and deep learning models have been built based on the clinical features of COVID-19 patients. The best models are selected by area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) scores to construct two homogeneous ensemble models for predicting infection levels and mortality, respectively. The first-hand clinical data of 760 patients are collected from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University between 3 January and 8 March 2020. We preprocess data with cleaning, imputation, and normalization. Results Our models obtain AUC = 0.7059 and Recall (Weighted avg) = 0.7248 in predicting infection level, while AUC=0.8436 and Recall (Weighted avg) = 0.8486 in predicting mortality ratio. This study also identifies two sets of essential clinical features. One is C-reactive protein (CRP) or high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and the other is chest tightness, age, and pleural effusion. Conclusions Two homogeneous ensemble models are proposed to predict infection levels and mortality of COVID-19 patients in China. New findings of clinical features for benefiting the machine learning models are reported. The evaluation of an actual dataset collected from January 3 to March 8, 2020 demonstrates the effectiveness of the models by comparing them with state-of-the-art models in prediction.
Unipolar Induction Star-Disk Interaction

Some critical comments on the prevailing model of star-disk interaction are made, in particular, on the rotating nature of the magnetic field lines and on the application of the magnetohydrodynamic frozen-field theorem to the disk plasma. As an alternative, a unipolar induction model is proposed, where the magnetic field is stationary in space and the stellar unipolar electric field $\vec E_{*}$ on the surface is uploaded to the magnetosphere. Through the Poynting vector, the star and the magnetosphere form a coupled system where the total angular momentum, consisting the mechanical one of the star, the electromagnetic one of the magnetosphere, and the mechanical one of the plasma in the magnetosphere, is conserved. The stellar interaction with the accretion disk is through the projection of the unipolar electric field $\vec E_{*}$ onto the disk via the equipotential field lines, generating a disk current and consequently toroidal fields with opposite signs on both sides of the disk, with return current loops via the stellar surface. As a result, magnetic flux is added to the magnetospheric field in the northern and southern hemispheres with the disk current sheet as the boundary condition. This makes the star-disk system an astrophysical site where intense magnetic fields are generated through the rotational energy of the star. Angular momentum extraction from this star-disk system happens as the magnetic flux in the magnetosphere increases to the point that exceeds the current carrying capacity of the disk, leading to a mega scale magnetic eruption sending Poynting fluxes to space either isotropically or beamed.
Bioremoval and Detoxification of Anthracene by a Halophilic Laccase from Alkalibacillus salilacus

Background: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) as resistant compounds in the environment has received much attention in recent years due to their adverse effects on ecological health. Among the various methods studying the removal of PAHs, enzyme biotechnology is one of the most effective and appropriate method. Objectives: In the present study, a halophilic laccase was used for bioremoval of anthracene in the presence of 1-Hydroxybenzotriazole (HBT). Materials and Methods: Halophilic laccase from Alkalibacillus salilacus was tested for anthracene degradation. Residual concentration of anthracene at various concentrations of NaCl (0‒4 M), incubation time, pH, solvent, and surfactants in the enzymatic reaction mixtures was determined by HPLC. Results: The maximum removal of substrate was achieved after 72 h at 40 °C, pH 8, and NaCl concentration 1.5 M. Besides, the addition of 1% (v/v) ionic and non-ionic surfactants and 25% (v/v) of various organic solvents increased removal efficiency. The kinetic parameters Km and Vmax of the laccase for removing of anthracene were 0.114 μM and 0.546 μmoL. h. −1 mg−1, respectively. Conclusions: Laccase showed the maximum removal efficiency of anthracene in the presence of 1-Hydroxybenzotriazole (HBT).
Bell’s palsy and lip HSV-1 infection: importance of subcutaneous access

Although HSV-1 has been implicated in facial palsy for a long time, testing and treating for HSV is not routine. The lack of a meaningful demonstration of how HSV-1 would cause facial palsy has limited progress in this field. Herein we demonstrate that the depth of the lip HSV-1 infection defines the course of the disease, with deeper subcutaneous infection allowing virus access to the facial nerve and causing facial palsy. HSV-1 inoculated subcutaneously caused extensive facial paralysis in cotton rats Sigmodon hispidus, while virus inoculated in the same area of the lip by skin surface abrasion did not. Demyelination along the facial nerve (CN VII) accompanied subcutaneous HSV-1 infection and was identified as the possible underlying mechanism of the disease. This causality demonstration is particularly important in light of increased facial palsy outbreaks associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and SARS-CoV-2 and influenza vaccinations.
Work‐relatedness of carpal tunnel syndrome: Systematic review including meta‐analysis and GRADE

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common peripheral nerve entrapment syndrome with a high prevalence among workers. Insights on the physical work‐related risk factors is necessary to develop appropriate preventative methods. The objective of this systematic review, including meta‐analyses, is to assess which physical work‐related risk factors are associated with carpal tunnel syndrome.
Resolving the Decades-long Transient FIRST J141918.9+394036: An Orphan Long Gamma-Ray Burst or a Young Magnetar Nebula?

Ofek identified FIRST J141918.9+394036 (hereafter FIRST J1419+3940) as a radio source sharing similar properties and host galaxy type to the compact, persistent radio source associated with the first known repeating fast radio burst, FRB 121102. Law et al. showed that FIRST J1419+3940 is a transient source decaying in brightness over the last few decades. One possible interpretation is that FIRST J1419+3940 is a nearby analog to FRB 121102 and that the radio emission represents a young magnetar nebula (as several scenarios assume for FRB 121102). Another interpretation is that FIRST J1419+3940 is the afterglow of an “orphan” long gamma-ray burst (GRB). The environment is similar to where most such events are produced. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we conducted very long baseline interferometric (VLBI) radio observations using the European VLBI Network (EVN) at 1.6 GHz to spatially resolve the emission and to search for millisecond-duration radio bursts. We detect FIRST J1419+3940 as a compact radio source with a flux density of 620 ± 20 μJy (on 2018 September 18) and a source size of 3.9 ± 0.7 mas (i.e., 1.6 ± 0.3 pc given the angular diameter distance of 83 Mpc). These results confirm that the radio emission is nonthermal and imply an average expansion velocity of (0.10 ± 0.02)c. Contemporaneous high-time-resolution observations using the 100 m Effelsberg telescope detected no millisecond-duration bursts of astrophysical origin. The source properties and lack of short-duration bursts are consistent with a GRB jet expansion, whereas they disfavor a magnetar birth nebula.
Sulforaphane recovers cone function in an Nrf2-dependent manner in middle-aged mice undergoing RPE oxidative stress

Purpose Sulforaphane (SFN) is an isothiocyanate derived from cruciferous vegetables that has therapeutic efficacy in numerous animal models of human disease, including mouse models of retinal degeneration. However, despite dozens of clinical trials, the compound remains to be tested as a clinical treatment for ocular disease. Numerous cellular activities of SFN have been identified, including the activation of Nrf2, a transcription factor that induces a battery of target gene products to neutralize oxidative and xenobiotic stresses. As Nrf2 expression and function reportedly decrease with aging, we tested whether the loss of the transcription factor limits the therapeutic efficacy of SFN against retinal degeneration. Methods Six- to 8-month-old wild-type and Nrf2 knockout mice were treated with SFN beginning 1 month after ribozyme-mediated knockdown of superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) mRNA in the RPE. The impacts of MnSOD (the protein product of SOD2) knockdown and the efficacy of SFN were evaluated using a combination of electroretinography (ERG), spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), and postmortem histology. Results SFN restored the ERG photopic b-wave suppressed by MnSOD loss in wild-type mice, but not in the Nrf2 knockout mice. In contrast, ERG scotopic a- and b-wave loss was not restored for either genotype. SFN significantly improved retinal thickness in the Nrf2 knockout mice with MnSOD knockdown, but this was not observed in the wild-type mice. In both genotypes, SFN treatment reduced morphological markers of RPE atrophy and degeneration, although these improvements did not correlate proportionally with functional recovery. Conclusions These findings highlight the capacity of SFN to preserve cone function, as well as the potential challenges of using the compound as a standalone treatment for age-related retinal degeneration under conditions associated with reduced Nrf2 function.
Magnetic field rotations in the solar wind at kinetic scales

The solar wind magnetic field contains rotations at a broad range of scales, which have been extensively studied in the MHD range. Here we present an extension of this analysis to the range between ion and electron kinetic scales. The distribution of rotation angles was found to be approximately log-normal, shifting to smaller angles at smaller scales almost self-similarly, but with small, statistically significant changes of shape. The fraction of energy in fluctuations with angles larger than $\alpha$ was found to drop approximately exponentially with $\alpha$, with e-folding angle $9.8^\circ$ at ion scales and $0.66^\circ$ at electron scales, showing that large angles ($\alpha > 30^\circ$) do not contain a significant amount of energy at kinetic scales. Implications for kinetic turbulence theory and the dissipation of solar wind turbulence are discussed.
A survey for low-mass stellar and substellar members of the Hyades open cluster

Unlike young open clusters (with ages <250 Myr), the Hyades cluster (age ~600 Myr) has a clear deficit of very low-mass stars (VLM) and brown dwarfs (BD). Since this open cluster has a low stellar density and covers several tens of square degrees on the sky, extended surveys are required to improve the statistics of the VLM/BD objects in the cluster. We search for new VLM stars and BD candidates in the Hyades to improve the present-day cluster mass function down to substellar masses. An imaging survey of the Hyades with a completeness limit of 21m.5 in the $R$ band and 20m.5 in the $I$ band was carried out with the 2kx2k CCD Schmidt camera at the 2m Alfred Jensch Telescope in Tautenburg. We performed a photometric selection of the cluster member candidates by combining results of our survey with 2MASS JHKs photometry. We present a photometric and proper motion survey covering 23.4 deg$^2$ in the Hyades cluster core region. Using optical/IR colour-magnitude diagrams, we identify 66 photometric cluster member candidates in the magnitude range 14m.7<I<20m.5. The proper motion measurements are based on several all-sky surveys with an epoch difference of 60-70 years for the bright objects. The proper motions allowed us to discriminate the cluster members from field objects and resulted in 14 proper motion members of the Hyades. We rediscover Hy 6 as a proper motion member and classify it as a substellar object candidate (BD) based on the comparison of the observed colour-magnitude diagram with theoretical model isochrones. With our results, the mass function of the Hyades continues to be shallow below 0.15 $M_\odot$ indicating that the Hyades have probably lost their lowest mass members by means of dynamical evolution. We conclude that the Hyades core represents the `VLM/BD desert' and that most of the substeller objects may have already left the volume of the cluster.
Rotating double-diffusive convection in stably stratified planetary cores

In planetary fluid cores, the density depends on temperature and chemical composition, which diffuse at very different rates. This leads to various instabilities, bearing the name of double-diffusive convection (DDC). We investigate rotating DDC (RDDC) in fluid spheres. We use the Boussinesq approximation with homogeneous internal thermal and compositional source terms. We focus on the finger regime, in which the thermal gradient is stabilizing whereas the compositional one is destabilizing. First, we perform a global linear stability analysis in spheres. The critical Rayleigh numbers drastically drop for stably stratified fluids, yielding large-scale convective motions where local analyses predict stability. We evidence the inviscid nature of this large-scale double-diffusive instability, enabling the determination of the marginal stability curve at realistic planetary regimes. In particular, we show that in stably stratified spheres, the Rayleigh numbers Ra at the onset evolve like Ra ∼ Ek−1, where Ek is the Ekman number. This differs from rotating convection in unstably stratified spheres, for which Ra ∼ Ek−4/3. The domain of existence of inviscid convection thus increases as Ek−1/3. Secondly, we perform non-linear simulations. We find a transition between two regimes of RDDC, controlled by the strength of the stratification. Furthermore, far from the RDDC onset, we find a dominating equatorially antisymmetric, large-scale zonal flow slightly above the associated linear onset. Unexpectedly, a purely linear mechanism can explain this phenomenon, even far from the instability onset, yielding a symmetry breaking of the non-linear flow at saturation. For even stronger stable stratification, the flow becomes mainly equatorially symmetric and intense zonal jets develop. Finally, we apply our results to the early Earth core. Double diffusion can reduce the critical Rayleigh number by four decades for realistic core conditions. We suggest that the early Earth core was prone to turbulent RDDC, with large-scale zonal flows.
Enhanced betatron radiation by steering a low-energy-spread electron beam in a deflected laser-driven plasma wiggler

Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) hold great potential to produce high-quality high-energy electron beams (e beams) and simultaneously bright x-ray sources via betatron radiation, which are very promising for pump-probe study in ultrafast science. However, in order to obtain a high-quality e beam, electron injection and acceleration should be carefully manipulated, where a large oscillation amplitude has to be avoided and thus the emitted x-ray yield is limited. Here, we report a new scheme to experimentally enhance betatron radiation significantly both in photon yield and photon energy by separating electron injection and acceleration from manipulation of the e-beam transverse oscillation in the wake via introducing a slanted thin plasma refraction slab. Particle-in-cell simulations indicate that the e-beam transverse oscillation amplitude can be increased by more than 10 folds, after being steered into the deflected laser-driven wakefield due to refraction at the slab's boundaries. Spectral broadening of the x-rays can be suppressed owing to the small variation in the peak energy of the low-energy-spread e beam in a plasma wiggler regime. We demonstrate that the high-quality e-beam generation, refracting and wiggling can act as a whole to realize the concurrence of monoenergetic e beam and bright x-rays in a compact LWFA.
Simulation of angular-resolved RABBITT measurements in noble-gas atoms

We simulate angular resolved RABBITT (Reconstruction of Attosecond Beating By Interference of Two-photon Transitions) measurements on valence shells of noble gas atoms (Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe). Our non-perturbative numerical simulation is based on solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation for a target atom driven by an ionizing XUV and dressing IR fields. From these simulations we extract the angular dependent magnitude and phase of the RABBITT oscillations and deduce the corresponding angular anisotropy {\beta} parameter and Wigner time delay ${\tau}_W$ for the single XUV photon absorption which initiates the RABBITT process. Said {\beta} and ${\tau}_W$ parameters are compared with calculations in the random phase approximation with exchange (RPAE) which includes inter-shell correlation. This comparison is used to test various effective potentials employed in the one-electron TDSE. In lighter atoms (Ne and Ar), several effective potentials are found to provide accurate simulation of RABBITT measurements for a wide range of photon energies up to 100 eV above the valence shell threshold. In heavier atoms (Kr and Xe), the onset of strong correlation with the d-shell restricts the validity of the single active electron approximation to several tens of eV above the valence shell threshold.
Oscillations in Arcturus from WIRE Photometry

Observations of the red giant Arcturus (α Boo) obtained with the star tracker on the Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) satellite during a baseline of 19 successive days in 2000 July-August are analyzed. The amplitude spectrum has a significant excess of power at low frequencies. The highest peak is at ~4.1 μHz (2.8 days), which is in agreement with previous ground-based radial velocity studies. The variability of Arcturus can be explained by sound waves, but it is not clear whether these are coherent p-mode oscillations or a single mode with a short lifetime.
The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic globular clusters – XIII. ACS/WFC parallel-field catalogues

As part of the Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters, 110 parallel fields were observed with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys, in the outskirts of 48 globular clusters, plus the open cluster NGC 6791. Totalling about $0.3$ square degrees of observed sky, this is the largest homogeneous Hubble Space Telescope photometric survey of Galalctic globular clusters outskirts to date. In particular, two distinct pointings have been obtained for each target on average, all centred at about $6.5$ arcmin from the cluster centre, thus covering a mean area of about $23\,{\rm arcmin^{2}}$ for each globular cluster. For each field, at least one exposure in both F475W and F814W filters was collected. In this work, we publicly release the astrometric and photometric catalogues and the astrometrised atlases for each of these fields.
Complexity Matching and Requisite Variety

Complexity matching emphasizes the condition necessary to efficiently transport information from one complex system to another and the mechanism can be traced back to the 1957 Introduction to Cybernetics by Ross Ashby. Unlike this earlier work we argue that complexity can be expressed in terms of crucial events, which are generated by the processes of spontaneous self-organization. Complex processes, ranging from biological to sociological, must satisfy the homeodynamic condition and host crucial events that have recently been shown to drive the information transport between complex systems. We adopt a phenomenological approach, based on the subordination to periodicity that makes it possible to combine homeodynamics and self-organization induced crucial events. The complexity of crucial events is defined by the waiting-time probability density function (PDF) of the intervals between consecutive crucial events, which have an inverse power law (IPL) PDF ψ(τ) ∝1/(τ)μ with 1 < μ < 3. We establish the coupling between two temporally complex systems using a phenomenological approach inspired by models of swarm cognition and prove that complexity matching, namely sharing the same IPL index μ, facilitates the transport of information, generating perfect synchronization, reminiscent of, but distinct from chaos synchronization. This advanced form of complexity matching is expected to contribute a significant progress in understanding and improving the bio-feedback therapies. Author Summary This paper is devoted to the control of complex dynamical systems, inspired to real processes of biological and sociological interest. The concept of complexity we adopt focuses on the assumption that the processes of self-organization generate intermittent fluctuations and that the time distance between two consecutive fluctuations is described by a distribution density with an inverse power law structure making the second moment of these time distances diverge. These fluctuations are called crucial events and are responsible for the ergodicity breaking that is widely revealed by the experimental observation of biological dynamics. We argue that the information transport from one to another complex system is ruled by these crucial events and we propose an efficient theoretical prescription leading to qualitative agreement with experimental results, shedding light into the processes of social learning. The theory of this paper is expected to have important medical applications, such as an improvement of the biofeedback techniques, the heart-brain communication and a significant progress on cognition and the contribution of emotions to cognition.
Free energy and entropy for thin sheets

We calculate the entropy and the temperature dependent part of the free energy for a free standing plane plasma sheet and for the a free standing plane slab of finite thickness with dispersion described by the plasma model. In case the plasma sheet describes a charged fluid, the entropy is positive. In case it describes a polarizable dipole sheet, the entropy takes negative values in a certain parameter region. Negative entropy is also observed for the slab, however with the reservation that the contribution from the surface plasmons was not accounted for.