Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mass difference matching crystallizes hidden molecular structures of dissolved organic matter from ultrahigh-resolution tandem mass spectra

Ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry has revealed unprecedented detail of natural complex mixtures such as dissolved organic matter (DOM) on a molecular formula level but we lack information on the underlying structural complexity for full-scale identification. We applied a novel approach to decipher DOM’s characteristic chimeric tandem mass (MS2) spectra that represent multiple precursors of the same nominal mass. We calculated mass difference (Δm) matrices from precursor and product ions and matched them with reference Δm’s from 11280 library MS2 spectra and molecular structures. We found 1) indication for the presence of degraded phenolic plant metabolites, unknown N- and S-containing molecules, and missing elements in formula annotation, 2) weak support for postulated Van Krevelen structural domains, 3) multiple significant links between precursor properties, Δm matches, and chemodiversity. Our paper highlights Δm matching by MS2 as a promising tool to reveal novel structural information and molecular ecosystem imprints in complex mixtures like DOM.
Local politics as a context for polarizing cues

ABSTRACT There is adequate research demonstrating that source cues (such as prominent politicians or interest groups) can move public support for some policies, however, most of the research on source cues in the United States tests the impact of national leaders or parties as cues. We argue that hypotheses about source cues should be tested in other settings, such as local politics. Local settings offer a test where source cues may not be so closely tied to partisan identity. We hypothesize that in contexts where the source is well-known, and the policy is relatively obscure, source cues can polarize public opinion substantially. However, on highly salient policies the impact of source cues may be much weaker. We report the results of three survey experiments testing the polarizing impact of a mayor as a source cue on city voters. We find strong source cue effects in each test. The often racially divisive nature and machine-versus-reform type polarization of urban politics provides a fertile context for testing the polarizing impact of source cues.
Status and Perspectives on Rare Decay Searches in Tellurium Isotopes

Neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) is a posited lepton number violating decay whose search is an increasingly active field in modern astroparticle physics. A discovery would imply neutrinos are Majorana particles and inform neutrino physics, cosmology and beyond-standard-model theories. Among the few nuclei where double beta decay (ββ) is allowed, tellurium isotopes stand for their high natural abundance and are currently employed in multiple experiments. The search for 0νββ will provide large exposure data sets in the coming years, paving the way for unprecedented sensitivities. We review the latest rare decay searches in tellurium isotopes and compare past results with theories and prospects from running experiments.
Official Development Aid: Plaster in A Wound? Evidence Using Data From Ethiopia

The flow of aid to developing countries has increased massively and they receive billions of dollars per year in the form of aid from bilateral and multilateral donors. However, the economic growth achieved by many developing countries in general has not been satisfactory. Poverty is still there and resulted in a custom of aid dependence and foster the opportunity for the corrupted political leader. The conclusion on aid effectiveness is doubtful among economists, found to be inconclusive.This paper intends to see how ethiopian economy is reacting to the flow of foreign aid coming from rest of the world viz-a-viz the current most prestigous and influential arguments against and pro-effectiveness of aid. A time series on important parameters extending from 1981 to the most current 2017 is used and an econometrics techniques ECM is employed to examine the short run dynamics and long run relationship among the variables.The result of the short run dynamics showed that aid has a negative and statistically significant impact on economic growth. However, the impacts turns to be positive in the long run. economic growth measured by the real GDP adjusts to its long run equilibrium with an average speed of about 25.7 percent annually and it will roughly take it about 4 years to restore back to equilibrium, ceteris paribus.
Beyond a Dichotomous Understanding of Online Anonymity: Bridging the Macro and Micro Level

Anonymity on the Internet is a contentious issue; by some seen as an important freedom to be protected, while others argue for increased identification to protect groups at risk of exploitation. The debate reflects a dichotomous view of online anonymity; you are, or you are not anonymous. However, anonymity is a complex process played out on different levels and defined by various actors. While empirical studies show this, theoretical synthesis is lacking. This essay provides perspective on anonymity online by comparing two critical cases, online auctions and online gaming, we corroborate results from a 4-year interdisciplinary project with researchers from sociology, economics, and computer and system sciences. We argue that one should talk about anonymities in plural form, as online anonymity is not a state but a relational process. We put forth a conceptual model, which unpacks online anonymity as interdependent macro structures – legal, commercial, and technological – and micro/meso facets – factual, social group, and physical – to be used in future research.
Enterprises’ R&D Investment, Venture Capital Syndication and IPO Underpricing

Based on the data of companies that got ChiNext listed from 2009 to 2018, this paper empirically studies the relationship among R&D investment, venture capital (VC) syndication and IPO underpricing. It is found that there is a significant positive correlation between R&D investment and IPO underpricing, indicating that the higher the R&D investment is, the higher the IPO underpricing degree is; the intervention of VC syndication plays a role of “adverse selection” instead of giving play to its advantages of sharing information, which intensifies the positive correlation between R&D investment and IPO underpricing. Further analysis shows that the reputation of the leading VC in syndication can play a negative regulating role; the higher the reputation of the leading VC is, the more it can play the “certification effect”, reduce the information asymmetry caused by R&D investment, therefore alleviating the IPO underpricing caused by R&D investment.
Clinical Utility of Precision Medicine in Pediatric Oncology: A Systematic Review

PURPOSE Precision medicine uses advanced molecular techniques to guide the use of targeted therapeutic drugs and is an emerging paradigm in pediatric oncology. Clinical evidence related to the efficacy of many novel targeted drugs, however, is currently very limited given the rarity of pediatric cancer and the lack of published evidence for the use of these drugs in children. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the existing evidence for the feasibility and clinical efficacy of precision medicine in pediatric oncology. METHODS A systematic review was conducted using the PubMed, Medline, and Embase databases. Clinical trials and observational studies, which used molecular assays such as whole-exome sequencing to identify molecular targets that guided the allocation of targeted cancer drugs and reported clinical outcomes, were included in this review. RESULTS Twenty-one clinical trials and observational studies were identified, collectively enrolling 1,408 pediatric patients across nine countries. Therapeutic targets were found in 647 patients (46.0%); however, only 175 of these patients (27.0%) received a targeted drug. Objective responses were recorded for 73 (41.7%) of these 175 patients, only 5.2% of the total sample. Inconsistent outcome reporting and limited comparison with conventional treatment hindered evaluation of the clinical utility of precision medicine. CONCLUSION Precision medicine can feasibly identify molecular targets in a clinical setting. However, the inaccessibility of targeted drugs is a significant barrier, restricting the exploration of its therapeutic potential in pediatric oncology. Future clinical trials should endeavor to link the molecular testing results with access to targeted drugs and standardize outcome reporting to advance understanding of the benefits of this novel paradigm in improving patient outcomes.
Nutritional Value, Health-promoting Benefits and Food Application of Sea Buckthorn

ABSTRACT Sea buckthorn (SB) berries have been used as a medicine for centuries. Its exceptional nutritional value and health-promoting benefits have been disclosed by recent research. SB berries are high in health-promoting bioactive compounds, such as vitamin C, flavonoids, free fatty acids and carotenoids. At the same time, health-promoting benefits of SB including but not limited to anti-inflammation, skin healing property, reduction of cardiovascular disease risk have drawn a lot of attention due to accumulating evidence. This review addresses this knowledge through botanical characteristics, processing, nutritional value, health-promoting benefits and applications which provides an insight into SB for future research and development.
Cognitive gains and socioeconomic status in early second language acquisition in immersion and EFL learning settings

ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship of early immersion education, socioeconomic background, and cognitive gains of young learners. We examine the possible advantages of early bilingual education and the impact of family socioeconomic status (SES) for the cognitive development of children. Participants (N = 39) were students at regular (German) or immersion (German-English) primary schools in Germany. The study employed a longitudinal design with school program and socioeconomic status as between-subjects factors, and L2 proficiency and cognitive variables as within-subject factors. The pre- and post-tests consisted of tests of English vocabulary and grammar and tests of working memory capacity, non-verbal intelligence, and phonological awareness. Participants also completed a parental questionnaire assessing their socioeconomic background based on HISEI indicators (Highest International Socioeconomic Index). Repeated measures ANOVAs and regression analyzes revealed that the participants from the immersion school outperformed their peers from the regular schools on all L2 (English) proficiency and cognitive variables on the posttest. Furthermore, our data revealed that SES is significantly more influential in participants who follow regular school programs than in those who are enrolled in immersion schools. Overall, our data provide support for the benefits of early immersion programs in leveling the playing field for children of low socioeconomic status.
College Enrollment and STEM Major Choice in a Rural State

Rural students account for almost 20% of the US K-12 students, but rural context varies from state to state. This study uses a statewide longitudinal sample (N = 3,119) to analyze college enrollment and STEM major choice patterns of Montana’s public high school students in the academic years of 2013-2017. The binary logistic regressions showed that Montanan students are more likely to enroll into a 4-year institution than a 2-year institution. Also, students enrolled at a 4-year institution are more likely to consider STEM majors than students at a 2-year institution. Although high school GPA and ACT STEM scores are strong predictors for both college enrollment and STEM major choice, findings for race/ethnicity, gender, and free or reduced-price lunch status varied across the two outcomes. Specifically, race/ethnicity contributes to variation in college enrollment, but not STEM major choice. Similarly, free or reduced-price lunch status in high school is predictive of college enrollment, but not for STEM major choice. Although there was no difference in college enrollment type for gender, male students are more likely to select a STEM major, and this trend occurs at a rate of three times higher at a 4-year institution versus a 2-year institution. Our findings provide additional nuances of rural students, contributing to the understanding of their college enrollment and STEM major choices in the context of Montana - a large geographic, low populous state - which has received less attention than urban and high-density states.
Synthesis and Characterization of Nanofiber of Oxidized Cellulose from Nata De Coco

Oxidized cellulose (OC) nanofiber was successfully prepared from the dry sheet of Nata De Coco (DNDC) using the mixture system of HNO3/H3PO4–NaNO2for the first time. The carboxyl content of the OC was investigated at different conditions (HNO3/H3PO4ratios, reaction times, and reaction temperatures). The results revealed that the carboxyl content of the OC increased along with the reaction time, which yielded 0.6, 14.8, 17.5, 20.9, 21.0, and 21.0% after 0, 6, 12, 36, and 48 hours, respectively. The reaction yields of the OC ranged between 79% and 85% when using HNO3/H3PO4ratio of 1 : 3, 1.4% wt of NaNO2at 30°C at different reaction times. From the structural analysis, the OC products showed a nanofibrous structure with a diameter of about 58.3–65.4 nm. The Fourier transform infrared spectra suggested the formation of carboxyl groups in the OC after oxidation reaction. The crystallinity and crystalline index decreased with an increase of reaction time. The decrease of crystallinity from oxidation process agreed with the decrease of degree of polymerization from the hydrolysis ofβ-1,4-glycosidic linkages in the cellulose structure. The thermal gravimetric analysis results revealed that the OC products were less thermally stable than the raw material of DNDC. In addition, the OC products showed blood agglutinating property by dropping blood on the sample along with excellent antibacterial activity.
The Growth of the Anti-Transgender Movement in the United Kingdom. The Silent Radicalization of the British Electorate

Abstract This article examines the development of anti-transgender debates within the United Kingdom, which have gained traction due to proposed amendments to the country’s Gender Recognition Act (GRA). A group of determined lobby groups, taking their lead from like-minded organizations in the United States, has protested vigorously against the proposed changes to the GRA, especially with respect to “single-sex spaces”. As a result of this furor, the lives of transgender people have become the subject of open debate. Trans people now see their legitimacy questioned, and their ability to access services increasingly being placed under the microscope. This article argues that the literature on radicalization – developed in response to domestic terrorism – can explain these developments. UK lobby groups are successfully pushing a radical agenda to deny the basic rights of trans people, and are doing so under the cover of “free speech” – a sacrosanct element of life in Anglo-Saxon countries.
A novel approach to the complete stress strain curve for plastically damaged concrete under monotonic and cyclic loads

In this paper, new analytical formulations, which can be easily applied to normal and high-strength concretes under monotonic compressive and direct tensile loads, are proposed. Moreover, plastic damage model for concrete under uniaxial cyclic loading is also employed by introducing a simple damage function. The majority of published material models focuses on a certain type of concrete based on their testing results, which can be hardly applied to other types of concrete such as normal or high strength concrete. This paper presents a novel approach that can be applied to different types of concrete and highlights that the differences among testing results may come from the variations of strain at the peak stress. The damage phenomenon of concrete is simplified by a non-linear degradation of elastic modulus function, which in turn creates a linear stress-strain relation under cyclic loading. The damage function can be easily and quickly used to calibrate concrete properties for plastic damage model, which is very useful for industrial applications. Finally, the accuracy and pre-eminence of the proposed damage model are verified through comparison with experimental data and analytical solutions.
Tobacco use and associated factors among university students in Thailand

ABSTRACT Background Tobacco smoking remains a major public health concern as it is a leading cause of serious illness and premature deaths worldwide. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of smoking among university students in Thailand and identify associated factors. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in five public universities in Thailand. The inclusion criteria were current enrollment in the university and age ≥18 years. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect information about sociodemographic characteristics, smoking status, and knowledge and attitudes toward smoking. Multiple logistic regression was used to determine factors associated with smoking. Results Of a total of 1,299 students included, 28.2% were smokers, 76.5% in males and 23.5% in females. Being male, aged between 21 and 22 years, enrolled in a non-science major, living off campus, having a family member or friend who smoked, having a favorable attitude toward smoking, and having a moderate attitude toward smoking were significantly associated with being a smoker. However, knowledge about smoking was not a significant influencing factor. Conclusions A high prevalence of smoking among university students was reported in our study. Our findings should be taken into consideration when developing programs to prevent smoking among this young social group.
ASSD: Feature Aligned Single-Shot Detection for Multiscale Objects in Aerial Imagery

Object detection is a fundamental part of the interpretation of remote sensing imagery. The one-stage object detector has been adopted into this field because of its high computational efficiency. However, this detector suffers from the misalignment among predefined anchor, object, and feature extracted by standard convolution kernel both in spatial and scale. It limits the further improvement of performance, especially for the long-narrow and multiscale geospatial objects. In this article, the problem is defined as the feature misalignment problem. To deal with this issue, an efficient feature aligned single-shot detector (ASSD) is proposed, which consists of two modules: a novel pseudo anchor proposal module (PAPM) and a flexible context-based feature alignment module (CFAM). The PAPM replaces the regular anchor group with the proposed core anchor and refines it to get aligned locations. It can tackle the spatial misalignment between anchors and their corresponding objects and alleviate the negative/positive imbalance problem. Then, the CFAM adaptively adjusts the sampling points of the convolution kernel and collects the context information according to the aligned core anchor. This plug-and-play module can effectively rectify the misalignment between kernel and objects and extract aligned and robust features. A series of comprehensive experiments are conducted on two large-scale public remote sensing object detection datasets. Experiment results suggest that the proposed method is effective to alleviate the misalignment problem. Compared with the baseline model, the detection accuracy is improved by 8.5% mAP and 11.0% mAP on the challenging benchmark for object detection in optical remote sensing image (DIOR) and a large-scale dataset for object detection in aerial image (DOTA) dataset, respectively. Our best-resulting model achieves the state-of-the-art performance, surpassing other one-stage detectors both on the two datasets at a high detection speed of 21 FPS.
Computational fluid dynamics confirms drag reduction associated with trilobite queuing behaviour

Queuing behaviour has been documented in marine arthropods from Cambrian to modern oceans. It was previously hypothesized that this behaviour provided energy savings through hydrodynamic drafting, with trilobites in following positions hypothesized to produce less drag than those leading. In this study, we evaluate the hydrodynamics of queuing behaviour in the Devonian trilobite Trimerocephalus chopini using computational fluid dynamics. The results show that the drag forces of the trilobites following in the queue were substantially lower than those produced by the leader (˜65–79% lower at velocities of 0.5–2 cm s−1). Drag reduction was positively correlated with the movement speed of the trilobites, but decreased with increasing distance from the leader, and there was essentially no drag reduction at all for the first following trilobite when the following distance was greater than about six times its body length. This agrees with fossil evidence preserving trilobites in queues in close proximity to each other. The results also show that drag reduction was still significant (˜86.8% at 2 cm s−1) even for the longest queues preserved in the fossil record. Our findings support the hypothesis that the queuing behaviour of trilobites was an adaptation for reducing hydrodynamic drag. This drag reduction effect compensated for the energy cost of movement, which would have been particularly advantageous during migration.
Effect of mechanical scarification on seed germination of selected weeds occurring in rice field

Worldwide crop production is affected by different kinds of weeds that reduce yield in agricultural practices. Therefore, for the observation of weed seeds germination and the effect of mechanical scarification of the seed coats on the germination of selected weeds was assessed in the laboratory conditions. For the assessment of scarification effects on seed germination, the seven different kinds of weed genotypes were collected from rice fields in Kumaltar, Lalitpur, Nepal. The collected seeds were kept for one month and after de-husking of each species of 25 seeds was allowed to germinate in the laboratory with unscarred (normal) and scarred conditions on blotters at temperature 25±5oC and experimental observation was done for 14 days. Among all the species, the highest germination (96%) was observed in scarred seeds but the lower germination (58%) was observed in normal seeds of B. pilosa compare to scarred seeds. The unscarred seeds of A. conyzoides seeds did not germinate at all, while the scarred seeds germinated up to 20%. But the seeds of A. viridis were germinated well in both scarred (84%) and unscarred conditions (80%). The germination of E. colona was also greatly influenced by scarification which increased from 4 to 32%. Similarly, the germination of E. crus-galli, P. barbartum, and S. acmella was also increased by 12, 20, and 4% respectively on scarification. It was observed that scarification of the seeds of the weeds under study quite satisfactorily improved the germination rate. The linear growth of the seedlings was also affected by the scarification of the seeds. In conclusion, the weed seeds management is needed for better production in the cropping system.