Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CLASS B0739+366: A New Two-Image Gravitational Lens System

We present the discovery of CLASS B0739+366, a new gravitational lens system from the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey. Radio imaging of the source with the Very Large Array shows two compact components separated by 0. ″54, with a flux density ratio of ∼6 : 1. High-resolution follow-up observations using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) at 1.7 GHz detect weak, parity-reversed jet emission from each of the radio components. Hubble Space Telescope Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) F160W observations detect infrared counterparts to the lensed images, as well as an extended object between them, which we identify as the lensing galaxy. Redshifts for the galaxy and lensed source have not yet been obtained. For typical lens and source redshifts of z = 0.5 and z = 1.5, respectively, preliminary mass modeling predicts a time delay of ∼7 h-1 days in a flat ΩM = 1.0 universe. The small predicted time delay and weak radio components will make CLASS B0739+366 a challenging target for Hubble constant determination.
Non-Conventional Computers

Today, a “computer”, without further qualifications, denotes a rather well-specified kind of object; we’ll consider a computer “non-conventional” if its physical substrate or its organization significantly depart from this de facto norm. Thus, the thousands of literate Greeks that ended up in Rome as secretaries and accountants after the “liberation” of Greece in the second century b.c. would be viewed today as non-conventional computers, even though at that time one certainly couldn’t imagine a more ordinary kind of personal computer. Furthermore, we’ll be more concerned with features that ultimately have to be answerable to physics (the mechanisms by which the logic elements operate, the geometry of interconnection, the overall flow of energy and information) than with architectural variants of a “firmware” nature (reduced instruction set, speculative execution of program branches, etc.).
Spatial Benefit of Bilateral Hearing Aids

Objectives: To assess the extent to which hearing aids improve spatial benefit by restoring the availability of interaural difference cues, the benefit attributable to spatial separation of speech and babble with and without bilateral hearing aids was measured as a function of low-pass cutoff frequency. Design: Twenty-one older adults with sloping high-frequency hearing loss were provided commercially available bilateral hearing aids. After a 3 to 6 month acclimatization period, speech levels corresponding to 50% correct recognition of sentences from the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) were measured in a 65-dB SPL babble, with speech and babble low-pass filtered at 1.8, 3.6, and 5.6 kHz. Sentences were always at 0° azimuth, and babble was at either 0° or 90°. Speech and babble spectra for all conditions were digitally recorded using a probe microphone placed in each ear canal of each subject. Spectra and levels of speech and babble and unaided thresholds for narrowband noises were used to calculate the aided audibility index and provide predictions of unaided and aided thresholds for HINT sentences, hearing aid benefit, and spatial benefit for each cutoff frequency. In addition, subjects' willingness to tolerate background noise with and without amplification was measured in the spatially coincident and spatially separated conditions using the Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) procedure. Results: Thresholds for HINT sentences in babble and ANL improved significantly when aided and when speech and babble were spatially separated. Specifically, hearing aid benefit improved significantly as cutoff frequency increased from 1.8 to 3.6 kHz but only when speech and babble were spatially separated; likewise, spatial benefit improved significantly from 1.8 to 3.6 kHz but only in the aided condition. No further improvement in hearing aid or spatial benefit was observed when cutoff frequency was increased from 3.6 to 5.6 kHz, although improvement in hearing aid benefit was predicted. Conclusions: Hearing aid benefit, although significant, was poorer than predicted, suggesting that these older adults with high-frequency hearing loss did not take full advantage of the increase in audible speech information provided by amplification. Hearing aid benefit was also limited because hearing aids for some subjects did not restore speech audibility across the full bandwidth of speech. Unaided and aided spatial benefit was significantly greater than predicted, and aided spatial benefit was greater than unaided. This suggests that these older adults were able to take advantage of interaural level and time difference cues to improve speech recognition in babble and that they benefited from these cues to a greater extent with than without bilateral hearing aids. Finally, in contrast to results of previous studies, ANL may vary for an individual depending on the listening condition.
Musical Auditory Hallucinosis from Listeria Rhombencephalitis

ABSTRACT: Background: Complex auditory hallucinations have rarely been reported in cases of brainstem stroke or tumor. Methods: Case study. Results: A patient with acute Listeria rhombencephalitis complained of formed musical auditory hallucinations on the side of recent sensorineural deafness. MRI revealed an abscess in the middle cerebellar peduncule with extensive surrounding edema. Conclusion: Disruption of brainstem auditory pathways may cause complex auditory hallucinations. Potential pathogenetic mechanisms are discussed and a diagnostic approach is proposed.
Effect of a low-fat diet on the incidence of actinic keratosis.

BACKGROUND Actinic keratoses are premalignant lesions and are a sensitive and important manifestation of sun-induced skin damage. Studies in animals have shown that dietary fat influences the incidence of sun-induced skin cancer, but the effect of diet on the incidence of actinic keratosis in humans is not known. METHODS We randomly assigned 76 patients with nonmelanoma skin cancer either to continue their usual diet (control group) or to eat a diet with 20 percent of total caloric intake as fat (dietary-intervention group). For 24 months, the patients were examined for the presence of new actinic keratoses by physicians unaware of their assigned diets. RESULTS At base line, the mean (+/- SD) percentage of caloric intake as fat was 40 +/- 4 percent in the control group and 39 +/- 3 percent in the dietary-intervention group. After 4 months of dietary therapy the percentage of calories as fat had decreased to 21 percent in the dietary-intervention group, and it remained below this level throughout the 24-month study period. The percentage of calories as fat in the control group did not fall below 36 percent at any time. The cumulative number of new actinic keratoses per patient from months 4 through 24 was 10 +/- 13 in the control group and 3 +/- 7 in the dietary-intervention group (P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS In patients with a history of nonmelanoma skin cancer, a low-fat diet reduces the incidence of actinic keratosis.
Specification of the Verity Learning Companion and Self-Assessment Tool

In this paper, the specification of Verity, a webbased instructional tool, is presented. Verity is intended to be used as a learning assistant and self-assessment tool, more than a web-based testing system. This represents a new approach to web-based instruction. Specifically, the purpose of the Verity software tool is twofold: first, to assist the students in their study by providing supporting information, sample examples, exercises and problems related to a given course and, second, to allow the students self-evaluate their knowledge of course material through sets of multiple-choice questionnaires. Both assistance from the instructor to the student and feedback from the students to the instructor are supported by a web-based implementation solution. Verity’s main components are described in the paper and the tool’s functionality is outlined. A discussion of possible extensions is also included.
Fast network oscillations in vitro exhibit a slow decay of temporal auto‐correlations

Ongoing neuronal oscillations in vivo exhibit non‐random amplitude fluctuations as reflected in a slow decay of temporal auto‐correlations that persist for tens of seconds. Interestingly, the decay of auto‐correlations is altered in several brain‐related disorders, including epilepsy, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that the temporal structure of oscillations depends on intact neuronal networks in the brain. Whether structured amplitude modulation occurs only in the intact brain or whether isolated neuronal networks can also give rise to amplitude modulation with a slow decay is not known. Here, we examined the temporal structure of cholinergic fast network oscillations in acute hippocampal slices. For the first time, we show that a slow decay of temporal correlations can emerge from synchronized activity in isolated hippocampal networks from mice, and is maximal at intermediate concentrations of the cholinergic agonist carbachol. Using zolpidem, a positive allosteric modulator of GABAA receptor function, we found that increased inhibition leads to longer oscillation bursts and more persistent temporal correlations. In addition, we asked if these findings were unique for mouse hippocampus, and we therefore analysed cholinergic fast network oscillations in rat prefrontal cortex slices. We observed significant temporal correlations, which were similar in strength to those found in mouse hippocampus and human cortex. Taken together, our data indicate that fast network oscillations with temporal correlations can be induced in isolated networks in vitro in different species and brain areas, and therefore may serve as model systems to investigate how altered temporal correlations in disease may be rescued with pharmacology.
CONVERGENCE OF LATTICE AND PDE METHODS FOR PRICING ASIAN OPTIONS

In a recent article, Barraquand and Pudet (1996) state that the lattice based Forward Shooting Grid (FSG) method is convergent for Asian options if either nearest lattice point or linear interpolation is used. Moreover, this result is claimed to be independent of any relationship between the grid quantization parameter (for the spacing of the nodal averages) and the timestep size. However, a more detailed analysis of the propagation of interpolation error reveals a problem. A worst case error analysis shows that the error may be large as the number of timesteps becomes large if nearest lattice point interpolation is used. We demonstrate that the worst case error is indeed attained in some numerical examples. Moreover, if a linear interpolation scheme is employed the FSG algorithm does not converge to the correct price, being o by a constant error which does not vanish in the limit as t! 0, unless the limit is carried out in a certain way. Similarly, the method proposed by Hull and White (1993) is convergent provided that the node spacing in the average direction is selected appropriately as t ! 0. It is also a straightforward matter to show that partial di erential equation (PDE) based methods are convergent. Numerical examples comparing convergence for all three techniques are presented.
On the Utility of Dielectric Spectroscopy Techniques to Identify Compounds and Estimate Concentrations of Binary Mixtures

An important question is whether it is possible to build a sensor to identify the constituents and estimate their volume fractions in a mixture. In this paper, frequency dependent permittivity measured from dielectric sensors was used to identify both chemical species and their volume fractions of binary mixtures. Our analysis using the data presented in the literature and on-chip coplanar waveguide measurements, in 1-30 GHz range, illustrates that complex permittivity measurements are sufficient to estimate the volume fractions when the constituents of the mixture are known. Changes in concentrations are required to identify the constituent chemicals of binary mixtures when the constituents are unknown. Additional information, such as nonlinear dielectric properties, is required to identify constituents and volume fractions in mixtures with many chemical species.
Using Line Segments as Structuring Elements for Sampling-Invariant Measurements

When performing measurements in digitized images, the pixel pitch does not necessarily limit the attainable accuracy. Proper sampling of a bandlimited continuous-domain image preserves all information present in the image prior to digitization. It is therefore (theoretically) possible to obtain measurements from the digitized image that are identical to measurements made in the continuous domain. Such measurements are sampling invariant, since they are independent of the chosen sampling grid. It is impossible to attain strict sampling invariance for filters in mathematical morphology due to their nonlinearity, but it is possible to approximate sampling invariance with arbitrary accuracy at the expense of additional computational cost. In this paper, we study morphological filters with line segments as structuring elements. We present a comparison of three known and three new methods to implement these filters. The method that yields a good compromise between accuracy and computational cost employs a (subpixel) skew to the image, followed by filtering along the grid axes using a discrete line segment, followed by an inverse skew. The staircase approximations to line segments under random orientations can be modeled by skewing a horizontal or vertical line segment. Rather than skewing the binary line segment we skew the image data, which substantially reduces quantization error. We proceed to determine the optimal number of orientations to use when measuring the length of line segments with unknown orientation.
Effective population size of an indigenous Swiss cattle breed estimated from linkage disequilibrium.

Effective population size is an important parameter for the assessment of genetic diversity within a livestock population and its development over time. If pedigree information is not available, linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis might offer an alternative perspective for the estimation of effective population size. In this study, 128 individuals of the Swiss Eringer breed were genotyped using the Illumina BovineSNP50 beadchip. We set bin size at 50 kb for LD analysis, assuming that LD for proximal single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-pairs reflects distant breeding history while LD from distal SNP-pairs would reflect near history. Recombination rates varied among different regions of the genome. The use of physical distances as an approximation of genetic distances (e.g. setting 1 Mb = 0.01 Morgan) led to an upward bias in LD-based estimates of effective population size for generations beyond 50, while estimates for recent history were unaffected. Correction for restricted sample size did not substantially affect these results. LD-based actual effective population size was estimated in the range of 87-149, whereas pedigree-based effective population size resulted in 321 individuals. For conservation purposes, requiring knowledge of recent history (<50 generations), approximation assuming constant recombination rate seemed adequate.
A General Formulation of Analog-to-Digital Converters Using Parallel Sigma-Delta Modulators and Modulation Sequences

A formulation based on multirate theory is introduced for analog-to-digital converters using parallel sigma-delta modulators in conjunction with modulation sequences. It is shown how the formulation can be used to analyze a system's sensitivity to channel mismatch errors by means of circulant and pseudo-circulant matrices. It is demonstrated how the time-interleaved-modulated (TIM), Hadamard-modulated (HM) and frequency-band decomposition (FBD) converters can be viewed as special cases of this more general description, and it is shown why the TIM and HM ADCs are sensitive to channel mismatch errors, whereas the FBD ADCs are not
Conjugated equine estrogen, raloxifene and arterial stiffness in postmenopausal women

Methods We analyzed the influence of conjugated equine estrogen (CEE) and raloxifene on arterial stiffness. Sixty-seven healthy, normotensive women 1–10 years into menopause were assigned to receive oral placebo, conjugated equine estrogen 0.625 mg, or raloxifene 60 mg. Arterial stiffness was evaluated by measuring the carotid–femoral and femoral–dorsalis pedis pulse wave velocity (CF PWV, FP PWV). Systolic pressure augmentation index (AI) at the carotid artery was obtained with applanation tonometry. Results Arterial stiffness was not affected by any treatment regimen: placebo (CF PWV before vs. after: 644 vs. 626 cm/s, p = 0.09; FP PWV before vs. after: 1006 vs. 1012 cm/s,p = 0.77; AI before vs. after = 30 vs. 29%, p = 0.55), CEE (CF PWV before vs. after: 642 vs. 600 cm/s, p = 0.11; FP PWV before vs. after: 952 vs. 971 cm/s, p = 0.66; AI before vs. after: 25 vs. 32%, p = 0.82), and raloxifene (CF PWV before vs. after: 636 vs. 601 cm/s, p = 0.12; FP PWV before vs. after: 964 vs. 941 cm/s, p = 0.62; AI before vs. after: 25 vs. 25%, p = 0.65). A correlation occurred between basal stiffness and the degree of reduction in indexes measured, indicating that the higher the basal stiffness, the greater the degree of reduction, particularly in the CEE group: CF PWV (r = − 0.602, p = 0.001); FP PWV (r = − 0.455, p = 0.022); AI (r = − 0.410, p = 0.042). Conclusions Conjugated equine estrogen and raloxifene do not seem to affect arterial stiffness of healthy normotensive women less than 10 years since menopause. Reduction in arterial stiffness seems related to its basal level.
Mineral control of organic carbon mineralization in a range of temperate conifer forest soils

Coupled climate–ecosystem models predict significant alteration of temperate forest biome distribution in response to climate warming. Temperate forest biomes contain approximately 10% of global soil carbon (C) stocks and therefore any change in their distribution may have significant impacts on terrestrial C budgets. Using the Sierra Nevada as a model system for temperate forest soils, we examined the effects of temperature and soil mineralogy on soil C mineralization. We incubated soils from three conifer biomes dominated by ponderosa pine (PP), white fir (WF), and red fir (RF) tree species, on granite (GR), basalt (BS), and andesite (AN) parent materials, at three temperatures (12.5°C, 7.5°C, 5.0°C). AN soils were dominated by noncrystalline materials (allophane, Al‐humus complexes), GR soils by crystalline minerals (kaolinite, vermiculite), and BS soils by a mix of crystalline and noncrystalline materials. Soil C mineralization (ranging from 1.9 to 34.6 [mg C (g soil C)−1] or 0.1 to 2.3 [mg C (g soil)−1]) differed significantly between parent materials in all biomes with a general pattern of AN
Some factors affecting the upper limit of the southern bull kelp Durvillaea antarctica (Chamisso) Hariot on two New Zealand shores

Abstract Experimental removal of limpets from intertidal rock above the low tidal band of the bull kelp Durvillaea antarctica on the Kaikoura coast enabled kelp sporelings to colonize levels up to 1.6 m above the normal upper margin of the kelp band. A similar experiment on the southeast Otago coast involving the removal of both barnacles and limpets did not have the same effect. The sporelings which grew above the kelp band at Kaikoura were unable to survive hot, dry conditions during summer, and it appears that although removing limpets did raise the level colonized by sporelings, the upper margins of the D. antarctica band is determined mainly by the physiological tolerance of sporelings to desiccation. The upper margin of the D. antarctica band is shown to be higher on the shore in southeast Otago than at Kaikoura. This difference is attributed to the relatively cooler and moister conditions that occur during summer in southeast Otago.
Problems in trace element analysis in water

The determination of trace elements in water is of widespread importance. However, in practice uncertainties in assay values may arise from a number of factors associated with the physical and chemical aggregation of such tracers in water and with problems of sampling and subsequent handling. The adsorption loss of trace elements at low concentrations and fractionation effects on suspended particles in water have been investigated by means of radioactive tracers. The carrier effect provided by ‘hardness ions’ has been studied in its relation to tracer recovery and to beaker wall adsorption on plastics and glassware. It is found that a clearer definition is required for the conventional ‘dissolved solids’ determinations. (Key words: Geochemistry; hydrology; quality of water; radioactivity; water analysis; water resources)
A CARD9 Polymorphism Is Associated with Decreased Likelihood of Persistent Conjugated Hyperbilirubinemia in Intestinal Failure

Recently, genetic associations have been described in intestinal transplants. Namely, Crohn's disease susceptibility gene NOD2 polymorphisms have been reported to be more prevalent in patients with graft failure following intestinal transplantation (IT). Therefore, we sought to determine if polymorphisms in the NOD2 signaling cascade, including NOD2, CARD9, RAC1 and ATG16L1 are associated with intestinal failure (IF) or its complications. We carried out a cross-sectional study of 59 children with IF and 500 healthy Caucasian controls. Using the Taqman platform we determined the prevalence of NOD2 as well as ATG16L1, RAC1 and CARD9 SNPs. NOD2 pathway polymorphisms were evaluated in relation to outcomes of episodes of sepsis, ICU admissions, hyperbilirubinemia and need for IT. We found that the minor allele of a CARD9 SNP was associated with protection from developing IF when compared to healthy controls and was also associated with decreased odds of sustained conjugated hyperbilirubinemia. Therefore, IF patients with CARD9 polymorphism are less likely to develop progressive liver disease and suggests that host innate immunity may play a role in IF associated liver disease.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Etomidate Use for Intubation of Patients with Sepsis

Etomidate is a potent imidazole hypnotic used widely in single doses in the rapid sequence intubation of critically ill patients with sepsis due to its presumed hemodynamic safety, fast onset, and short duration of action. However, the literature is conflicting regarding the hemodynamic advantages of etomidate over other induction agents, and its safety in this population is a matter of strong debate in the critical care community as the drug is associated with suppression of adrenal steroidogenesis, which can last up to 72 hours after a single dose, primarily through potent inhibition of the 11β‐hydroxylase enzyme. However, the clinical impact of this adrenal suppressive effect is not certain. The use of continuous‐infusion etomidate in critically ill patients was abandoned more than 20 years ago due to reports of increased mortality. Nevertheless, mortality data of single‐dose etomidate are still controversial, with no strong evidence of benefit over other agents and a tendency toward harm (keeping in mind the limitations of the available literature). Proponents of single‐dose etomidate use in patients with sepsis suggest that the increased mortality associated with etomidate is merely a reflection of the patients' severity of illness and not related to the drug itself, whereas others believe that the drug causes true harm and increases mortality in this population. In view of the lack of a clear clinical advantage of etomidate over other agents used in rapid sequence intubation, it would be prudent to favor other agents until further conclusive evidence of etomidate safety is available in critically ill patients with sepsis.