Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In Vitro Stability of Growth Hormone Releasing Factor (GRF) Analogs in Porcine Plasma

Summary The stability of growth-hormone releasing factor (growth regulating factor; GRF) analogs in porcine plasma was examined. GRF analogs were incubated in por cine plasma at 37 °C, extracted and subsequently analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). GRF(l-29)-NH2 was rapidly broken down in the plasma with a degradation rate of t1/2 = 13 min. The primary de gradation product was identified as GRF (3—29)-NH2. Sub stitution of Gly15 by Ala slightly prolonged the plasma half-life (t1/2 =17 min) and the major degradative frag ment was found to be [Ala 15 ]GRF(3-29)-NH2. The cleav age between the 2 and 3 position of the peptide was not in hibited by trasylol at a concentration of 1,000 KIU/ml but was dramatically reduced by the combined use of diprotin A and trasylol. Absence of the free amino group at the N-terminus and/or substitution of a D-amino acid residue at the penultimate position completely prevented cleavage between the 2 and 3 position in the structural linear GRF analogs. Side-chain to side-chain cyclization between Asp8 and Lys12 amino acid residues significantly improved the stability of GRF in plasma with t1/2 > 2 hr. An additional stability was provided by substitution of D-Ala 2 for Ala 2 in the structural cyclic analog. Cyclization between Lys21 and Asp also improved the stability of the GRF peptide in the plasma. Stability was further enhanced by the presence of D-Ala2 or by forming a dicyclic analog through an addi tional linkage between Asp 8 and Lys 12
Lack of Melatonin Effects on Insulin Action in Normal Rats

Despite a large number of studies, the role of melatonin on glucose metabolism is still controversial. The aim of the present work was to further characterize the effect of melato-nm on insulin action during: i) intravenous insulin tolerance test performed at different times of the day using melatonin, a melatonin agonist (5-20304), a melatonin antagonist (5-20928) or in pinealectomized rats. ii) euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp performed in melatonin agonist-treated as well as in pinealec-tomized rats. The fall in glycemia after the insulin injection was not significantly affected by melatonin and melatonin agonist (5-20304) at ZT6, nor by the melatonin antagonist (5-20928) at ZT13 nor in pinealectomized animals at ZT6 in comparison to their respective control. Acute treatment with 5-20304 or chronic suppression of melatonin by pinealectomy did not significantly alter basal plasma glucose and insulin levels or hepa-tic glucose production and whole body or individual tissue glucose utilization. These data do not give support to a crucial role of melatonin on insulin action in normal rats.
Ovariectomy Does not Alter CD4+/CD8+ Ratio in Peripheral Blood T-Lymphocytes in the Rat

Alterations in peripheral blood 1-lymphocyte subsets have been implicated to play a role in the pathophysiology of estrogen deficiency-induced bone loss in postmenopausal women. The aim of this study was to investigate this hypothesis further by flow cytometric analysis of peripheral blood lymphocyte subpopulations together with bone histomorphometry using ovariectomized (OVX) rats as an experimental estrogen deficiency model. 104 female 6-month-old Wistar rats were either OVX or sham-operated (SHAM). Eight rats served as baseline controls. Groups of 8 SHAM and 8 OVX rats were killed 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, and 12 weeks after surgery. Blood was collected prior to sacrifice. In whole blood samples, subpopulations of peripheral lymphocytes were analyzed by flow cytometry using FITC-or PE-labeled monoclonal antibodies against rat CD5, CD4, and CD8. CD4 and CD8 positive 1-lymphocytes were determined by a double-labeling technique. Serum samples were analyzed for estradiol and progesterone. The cancellous bone of the distal femoral metaphysis was analyzed by quantitative bone histo-morphometry. Ovariectomy caused a statistically significant fall in serum estradiol and progesterone levels from 2 weeks post-ovariectomy until the end of the trial. Deterioration of cancel-bus bone structure and osteopenia in the distal femur of OVX rats became evident at 2 and 4 weeks postovariectomy, respectively. Flow cytometric analysis of peripheral blood lymphocytes revealed that, except for a transient increase in CD4 positive 1-lymphocytes in OVX rats relative to SHAM animals at 1 week post-surgery, the number of CD5, CD4, or CD8 positive lymphocytes or the mean fluorescence per cell for these antigens in OVX rats remained unchanged throughout the study. Also the CD4+/CD8+ ratio of peripheral blood 1-lymphocytes was not influenced by ovariectomy, and none of these parameters were significantly correlated with serum estradiol or progesterone levels. These results suggest that consistent changes in peripheral blood 1-lymphocyte subpopulations are not dem-onstrable in OVX rats by the techniques applied in this study, and do not seem to play a pathogenetic role in the development of estrogen deficiency-induced bone loss in the rat.
No Permanent Friends or Enemies: Tracking Relationships between Nations from News

Understanding the dynamics of international politics is important yet challenging for civilians. In this work, we explore unsupervised neural models to infer relations between nations from news articles. We extend existing models by incorporating shallow linguistics information and propose a new automatic evaluation metric that aligns relationship dynamics with manually annotated key events. As understanding international relations requires carefully analyzing complex relationships, we conduct in-person human evaluations with three groups of participants. Overall, humans prefer the outputs of our model and give insightful feedback that suggests future directions for human-centered models. Furthermore, our model reveals interesting regional differences in news coverage. For instance, with respect to US-China relations, Singaporean media focus more on “strengthening” and “purchasing”, while US media focus more on “criticizing” and “denouncing”.
Evolutionary modelling in environmental economics

Abstract In this paper, we analyze some evolutionary models for the exploitation of renewable natural resources recently proposed in the specialized literature. The common feature shared by all these models is to consider the evolution of the resource, which is exploited by a population of heterogeneous interacting agents. We review several sources of agents’ heterogeneity: different attitudes towards exploitation (dynamics of cooperative vs. non-cooperative behaviours); harvesting in different patches where different rules are imposed (spatial heterogeneity); harvesting with different technologies (standard and ‘environmentally-friendly’ technologies); heterogeneity with respect to the targeted species.
On the Validity Extent of Linear Viscoelastic Models of Human Brain

Characterization of human brain material properties in the form of computationally feasible mathematical models is a complex problem; especially when the models are used in complicated Finite Element simulations. Various models have been proposed to include the tissue’s hyper-viscoelasticity, most of which are quite complicated and therefore only suited to Software-based Finite Element methods. Use of linear material models simplifies the problem and saves much time and effort, allowing the researcher to verify the results of more sophisticated models with lower computational cost. However, the preciseness of the results from such models is subject to special conditions. This study proposes and validates a Generalized Maxwell linear viscoelastic model with five constants to be used as an acceptable computational method to simulate brain’s viscoelastic behavior at low strain rates. To this end, an explicit numerical integration scheme is used to simulate the single-DOF tissue response with a Generalized Maxwell viscoelastic model. Using the material constants of a previous hyper-viscoelastic model, the results are compared with those obtained from a previous experiment. The comparison shows that the linear GM viscoelastic model is predicting the low-strain-rate behavior of the brain tissue with acceptable error.
Colourizing monochrome images

The automatic restoration of image colours (inpainting) is an interesting challenge in computer vision. The aim is to restore/recover missing colour information in a region based on the surrounding region information in a way that looks acceptable to the human eye. We investigate two functional formulas based on the difference between the directional derivative of the gradient (and the Laplacian) of two channels. The Euler-Langrage process applied to the two functional produces a nonlinear second order (and a nonlinear fourth order) PDE, the numerical solutions of which restore the colour to the region of interest. The first method extends an already established, but only for one specific colour space. We shall establish the effectiveness of the corresponding image inpainting schemes, in both the spatial and wavelet domains for 8 different colour spaces. We demonstrate the success of both schemes for a large number of natural images with better performance in comparison with the popular Poisson formula.
Spatial modulations of kinetic energy in the roughness sublayer

High-Reynolds-number experiments are conducted in the roughness sublayer of a turbulent boundary layer developing over a cubical canopy. Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry is performed in a wall-parallel plane to evidence a high degree of spatial modulation of the small-scale turbulence around the footprint of large-scale motions, despite the suppression of the inner layer by the high roughness elements. Both Fourier and wavelets analyses show that the near-wall cycle observed in smooth-wall-bounded flows is severely disrupted by the canopy, whose wake in the roughness sublayer generates a new range of scales, closer to that of the outer-layer large-scale motions. This restricts significantly scale separation, hence a diagnostic method is developed to divide carefully and rationally the fluctuating velocity fields into large- and small-scale components. Our analysis across all turbulent kinetic energy terms sheds light on the spatial imprint of the modulation mechanism, revealing a very different signature on each velocity component. The roughness sublayer shows a preferential arrangement of the modulated scales similar to what is observed in the outer layer of smooth-wall-bounded flows – small-scale turbulence is enhanced near the front of high momentum regions and damped at the front of low momentum regions. More importantly, accessing spanwise correlations reveals that modulation intensifies the most along the flanks of the large-scale motions.
A Study of Students' Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes toward the Use of Infographics as a Teaching Tool

This research investigates students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward using infographics as a teaching tool in education and explores the factors influencing these perspectives. Surveying a sample of 211 teacher students at a university in the United Arab Emirates, the study finds that students have a moderately positive level of knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward using infographics in education. Their attitudes toward using infographics were only moderate, which may be attributed to their limited knowledge and skills. The study also shows that factors such as age, major, employment status, and teaching experience do not significantly impact students' views of infographics, which contrasts with previous studies. These findings emphasize the need for educators to develop knowledge and skills in infographics and train teaching personnel in its application as a teaching tool to improve students' educational experience.
Exploring the Limitations of Behavior Cloning for Autonomous Driving

Driving requires reacting to a wide variety of complex environment conditions and agent behaviors. Explicitly modeling each possible scenario is unrealistic. In contrast, imitation learning can, in theory, leverage data from large fleets of human-driven cars. Behavior cloning in particular has been successfully used to learn simple visuomotor policies end-to-end, but scaling to the full spectrum of driving behaviors remains an unsolved problem. In this paper, we propose a new benchmark to experimentally investigate the scalability and limitations of behavior cloning. We show that behavior cloning leads to state-of-the-art results, executing complex lateral and longitudinal maneuvers, even in unseen environments, without being explicitly programmed to do so. However, we confirm some limitations of the behavior cloning approach: some well-known limitations (e.g., dataset bias and overfitting), new generalization issues (e.g., dynamic objects and the lack of a causal modeling), and training instabilities, all requiring further research before behavior cloning can graduate to real-world driving. The code, dataset, benchmark, and agent studied in this paper can be found at \url{github.com/felipecode/coiltraine/blob/master/docs/exploring_limitations. md}
OpenTapioca: Lightweight Entity Linking for Wikidata

We propose a simple Named Entity Linking system that can be trained from Wikidata only. This demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of this data source for this task and provides an easily reproducible baseline to compare other systems against. Our model is lightweight to train, to run and to keep synchronous with Wikidata in real time.
Sample Stratification in Verification of Ensemble Forecasts of Continuous Scalar Variables: Potential Benefits and Pitfalls

AbstractIn the verification field, stratification is the process of dividing the sample of forecast–observation pairs into quasi-homogeneous subsets, in order to learn more on how forecasts behave under specific conditions. A general framework for stratification is presented for the case of ensemble forecasts of continuous scalar variables. Distinction is made between forecast-based, observation-based, and external-based stratification, depending on the criterion on which the sample is stratified. The formalism is applied to two widely used verification measures: the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) and the rank histogram. For both, new graphical representations that synthesize the added information are proposed. Based on the definition of calibration, it is shown that the rank histogram should be used within a forecast-based stratification, while an observation-based stratification leads to significantly nonflat histograms for calibrated forecasts. Nevertheless, as previous studies have warned,.
Covariate-Adjusted Regression for Distorted Longitudinal Data With Informative Observation Times

ABSTRACT In many longitudinal studies, repeated response and predictors are not directly observed, but can be treated as distorted by unknown functions of a common confounding covariate. Moreover, longitudinal data involve an observation process which may be informative with a longitudinal response process in practice. To deal with such complex data, we propose a class of flexible semiparametric covariate-adjusted joint models. The new models not only allow for the longitudinal response to be correlated with observation times through latent variables and completely unspecified link functions, but they also characterize distorted longitudinal response and predictors by unknown multiplicative factors depending on time and a confounding covariate. For estimation of regression parameters in the proposed models, we develop a novel covariate-adjusted estimating equation approach which does not rely on forms of link functions and distributions of frailties. The asymptotic properties of resulting parameter estimators are established and examined by simulation studies. A longitudinal data example containing calcium absorption and intake measurements is provided for illustration. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Calculating skeleton matrix of asynchronous sequential machines based on the semi-tensor product of matrices

In this study, the problem of calculating the skeleton matrix for asynchronous sequential machine (ASMs) is addressed in the framework of the semi-tensor product (STP) of matrices. By applying the STP of matrices and Boolean algebra, a new algebraic expression of ASMs is deduced. By utilising the algebraic expression, the skeleton matrix of ASMs can be easily derived, then the notion of generalised skeleton matrix is further defined for the ASMs with infinite cycles or critical races, and an algorithm of calculating the generalised skeleton matrix is also proposed. For the model matching problem of input/output ASMs, a novel approach is proposed to calculate reachability indictor and generalised fused skeleton matrix. Two examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed results.
Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms for Computing Three-Dimensional Voronoi Diagrams

While Voronoi diagrams are used in a wide range of applications, leading algorithms (e.g., Fortune's algorithm) are limited to two-dimensional Voronoi diagrams. Problematically, many of the space-dividing applications of Voronoi diagrams exist in three-dimensional spaces rather than two-dimensional spaces. While two-dimensional Voronoi diagrams have been used in cases where three-dimensional space can be simplified to two-dimensional space with an acceptable loss of precision, such simplification is not always feasible. In this paper we extend existing work on divide-and-conquer algorithms for computing two-dimensional discretized Voronoi diagrams by introducing and comparing two novel algorithms for calculating three-dimensional discretized Voronoi diagrams. A comparison of the two algorithms is presented for a range of both space sizes and number of sites.
Bulk viscosity effects in compressible turbulent Couette flow

This work investigates the effect of bulk viscosity in one-, two-, and three–dimensional compressible flows via direct numerical simulation. The role of bulk viscosity in compressible turbulence is of increasing importance due to three applications: spacecraft descending through the Martian atmosphere, the thermodynamic cycle of solar–thermal power plant, and carbon capture and storage compressors. All three rely on the accurate description of turbulence in carbon dioxide, a gas with a bulk–to–shear viscosity ratio three orders of magnitude larger than for air. In these applications, invoking Stokes’s hypothesis is questioned as the divergence of velocity is non–zero, implying a significant difference between mechanical and thermodynamic pressures. Results of a constantly forced velocity perturbation follow the same trend as that predicted by Landau’s acoustic absorption coefficient for sufficiently high Reynolds numbers. Below an optimum Reynolds number, the damping effectiveness reduces by a different mechanism to that of Landau. Maximum damping is achieved at an acoustic Reynolds number equal to unity. Two– dimensional decaying turbulence at the bulk-to-shear viscosity ratio of carbon dioxide demonstrates that the magnitude of the dilatational production term is greatly enhanced and is strongly biased to negative values, reducing the generation of velocity dilatation compared to the zero bulk viscosity case. Compressible Couette flow at two Reynolds numbers and two bulk–to–shear viscosity ratios show minimal changes to mean flow quantities and the main terms of interest in the turbulence kinetic energy budget. Instantaneous views of the dilatational velocity field show that an intermediate range of scales are damped in accordance with Landau’s acoustic damping coefficient. At small scales, however, damping reduces and turbulent patterns are preserved.
Primary Hyperhidrosis: A Systematic Review of Current Status and Potential Interventions

Primary hyperhidrosis (PH) is a rare inherited disorder characterized by excessive sweating. It can affect any part of the body, but most commonly affects the axilla, palms of the hands, groin, chest, and soles of the feet. This paper comprehensively overviews current and potential diagnosis and management methods of PH from both medical and engineering perspectives. We also investigate how patients and society can live better with PH by non-invasive medical treatments and propose potential engineering and social interventions.
Effects of Low-Level Flow Orientation and Vertical Shear on the Structure and Intensity of Tropical Cyclones

This article explores the simultaneous effect of vertical wind shear (VWS) and low-level mean flow (LMF) on tropical cyclone (TC) structure evolution. The structural evolution of 180 western North Pacific TCs from 2002 to 2014 was measured by a new parameter, the RV ratio, which is defined as the ratio of a TC’s radius of 34-kt (17.5 m s−1) wind to its maximum wind speed at the ending point of the intensification period. Whereas TCs with RV ratios in the lowest quartile of all 180 samples favored intensification over expansion, and 82% of these TCs experienced rapid intensification, TCs with RV ratios in the topmost quartile favored size expansion over intensification. A novel result of this study is that TC RV ratios were found to correlate with the LMF orientation relative to the deep-layer VWS vector. Specifically, whereas an LMF directed toward the left-of-shear orientation favors TC intensification, a right-of-shear LMF favors TC size expansion. This study further analyzed the TC rainfall asymmetry and asymmetric surface flow using satellite observations. Results show that for a TC affected by an LMF with right-of-shear orientation, the positive surface flux anomaly in the upshear outer region promotes convection in the downshear rainband region. On the other hand, a left-of-shear LMF induces a positive surface flux anomaly in the downshear outer region, thus promoting convection in the upshear inner core. Enhancement of the symmetric inner-core convection favors intensification, whereas enhancement of the downshear rainband favors expansion.
Teaching of the harmonic oscillator damped by a constant force: The use of analogy and experiments

A description of oscillations damped by a constant force, despite the importance of the phenomenon, is missing from secondary (i.e., high-school) and university physics textbooks. In this paper, a simple explanation of this type of energy loss is given, using the analogy of a vertical spring-mass system. The predicted result, a linear time reduction in the amplitude of oscillation, can be confirmed in the classroom with the demonstration outlined here. In addition, the possibility of extending the experiment to a laboratory exercise at the university level is described. During the exercise, students distinguish different energy loss mechanisms in harmonic oscillations and measure the values of physical quantities associated with energy loss using a simple analytical procedure.A description of oscillations damped by a constant force, despite the importance of the phenomenon, is missing from secondary (i.e., high-school) and university physics textbooks. In this paper, a simple explanation of this type of energy loss is given, using the analogy of a vertical spring-mass system. The predicted result, a linear time reduction in the amplitude of oscillation, can be confirmed in the classroom with the demonstration outlined here. In addition, the possibility of extending the experiment to a laboratory exercise at the university level is described. During the exercise, students distinguish different energy loss mechanisms in harmonic oscillations and measure the values of physical quantities associated with energy loss using a simple analytical procedure.