Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A re-examination of the Early Medieval Pottery from Saddler Street, Durham

Alan Vince with Quita Mould As part of a survey of the Anglo-Saxon pottery of northern England, the area once part of the kingdom of Northumbria, funded by English Heritage, the pottery from Site D on the 1974 Saddler Street excavations (Carver 1979) was re-examined and samples taken for thin section and chemical analysis and the dating evidence for the earlier part of the stratigraphic sequence was re-assessed.
A Single-Phase Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Inverter Based on a Three-Switch Three-Port Flyback With Series Power Decoupling Circuit

In this paper, a novel single-stage three-port inverter that connects photovoltaic (PV) panel to a single-phase power grid is introduced. In a single-phase grid-connected PV panel, the input power is constant during the line-frequency period, while the output power oscillates at double-line frequency. A series active power decoupling circuit utilizing thin-film capacitors is incorporated to a conventional flyback inverter to handle input and output power differences. Therefore, popularly low-reliable electrolytic capacitors are replaced with small long-lifetime thin film. The proposed inverter can extract the maximum power from PV, deliver a low total harmonic distortion sinusoidal current to the output, and decouple the input and output powers. The proposed power decoupling circuit shares the inverter main switch. Thus, these functions are achieved using just three switches and a simple control scheme which is applicable for both charging and discharging states. Operation principle and control strategy are discussed in detail. Experimental results based on a 100-W prototype inverter verify feasibility and functionality of the proposed inverter.
Neuronal death in primary retinal cultures is related to nitric oxide production, and is inhibited by erythropoietin in a glucose‐sensitive manner

The aim of this work was to investigate the interrelated effects of glucose, nitric oxide (NO) and erythropoietin on neuronal survival in retinal cultures, thereby exploring the mechanism of neuronal death in the diabetic retina. Rat retinal cells were cultured in low (5 mm) or high (15 mm) glucose concentrations. After 9 days, cell viability was assessed by (3,4,5‐dimethylthiazol‐2‐yl)‐2,5‐diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and NO production was determined by the Griess reaction. Immunohistochemistry was used to quantify GABA‐labelled neurones and cells staining for DNA breakdown. High or low glucose concentrations had no effect on basal NO production or the survival of neurones in culture, but treatment with N‐nitro‐l‐arginine methyl ester reduced extracellular levels of NO and increased neuronal survival at both concentrations of glucose. Erythropoietin decreased cell death and NO levels, but only in cultures grown in low concentrations of glucose. It is concluded that erythropoietin's neurotrophic function in the retina is attenuated at glucose concentrations similar to those which occur in diabetes.
Single-stage parallel coupled microstrip line bandpass filter using weak coupling technique

The frequency-dispersive characteristic of a two-port parallel coupled microstrip line (PCML) can be obtained using equivalent J-inverter network parameters. The latter is obtained from its corresponding admittance parameters. Hence, the behaviour of transmission zero frequency, fundamental response frequency and harmonic response frequency of the PCML can be shown. The former is realigned by varying a centrally located single groove size to suppress the first spurious harmonic passband of the filter. Using the J-inverter parameters, the transmission zero of J-susceptance null of a PCML can be realigned by employing a single groove with specific dimension. This simultaneously cancels the first harmonic resonance. In this paper, the behaviour of the J-inverter parameters with varying coupling gaps is presented. The effect of having weak coupling characteristic is then presented. The proposed technique is then justified by two single-stage bandpass filters of PCML with weak coupling characteristic.
Shifts in Ritual Response to Loss due to Death: An Assessment of Funeral Service Mourning Trends over Time

Bereavement, while universal, is experienced and expressed uniquely; it is both ultimate and particular. As the predominant social expression of grief, funerals are purported to be waning and/or transitioning to emergent, less conventional ceremonial forms. In this research, the possible salutary utility of funerals is outlined, and trends relative to the cost, nature (type), and prevalence of funeral services are examined relative to an extant data set from two funeral homes of shared ownership in northeast Tennessee. This data analysis of specific funeral trends in south central Appalachia is juxtaposed against the broader backdrop of current theoretical, clinical, and socio-cultural understandings of bereavement, grief, and mourning.
Capacidade de regeneração da floresta tropical amazônica sob deficiência nutricional: resultados de um estudo numérico da interação biosfera-atmosfera

SENNA, Mônica Carneiro Alves, D.Sc., Federal University of Viçosa, April 2008. Amazon rainforest regrowth under nutrient stress: results from a biosphere-atmosphere interaction numerical study. Adviser: Marcos Heil Costa. Co-Advisers: Carlos Afonso Nobre and Luiz Cláudio Costa. This thesis investigates how the climate feedback and the nutrient feedback interact to regulate the patterns in the regrowth of the Amazon tropical forest after a large-scale deforestation. The study is performed using the fully coupled biosphere-atmosphere model CCM3-IBIS. Initially, the model was validated against observed climate and vegetation dynamics and structure variables. The Amazon climate (annual mean and seasonality) is extremely well simulated for both precipitation and incident solar radiation. Vegetation cover patterns reproduce well the observed patterns. The simulated net primary production and respiration rates are within 5% and 16% of observed data, respectively. The performance of simulated variables that depend on carbon allocation, like net primary production partitioning, leaf area index and biomass, although good on a regional mean, is low when spatial patterns are considered. A better representation of these spatial patterns depends on the understanding of the spatial variation in carbon allocation and its relationship to environmental factors. To evaluate
The Sirtuin-2 Inhibitor AK7 Is Neuroprotective in Models of Parkinson’s Disease but Not Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Cerebral Ischemia

Sirtuin deacetylases regulate diverse cellular pathways and influence disease processes. Our previous studies identified the brain-enriched sirtuin-2 (SIRT2) deacetylase as a potential drug target to counteract neurodegeneration. In the present study, we characterize SIRT2 inhibition activity of the brain-permeable compound AK7 and examine the efficacy of this small molecule in models of Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and cerebral ischemia. Our results demonstrate that AK7 is neuroprotective in models of Parkinson’s disease; it ameliorates alpha-synuclein toxicity in vitro and prevents 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-induced dopamine depletion and dopaminergic neuron loss in vivo. The compound does not show beneficial effects in mouse models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and cerebral ischemia. These findings underscore the specificity of protective effects observed here in models of Parkinson’s disease, and previously in Huntington’s disease, and support the development of SIRT2 inhibitors as potential therapeutics for the two neurodegenerative diseases.
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1060 Depressive Symptoms among Mothers and Fathers in Early Parenthood

Kerstis, B. 2015. Depressive Symptoms among Mothers and Fathers in Early Parenthood. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1060. 75 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9125-3. Aims: The overall aims were to study depressive symptoms among mothers and fathers in early parenthood and how depressive symptoms are related to dyadic consensus (DCS), sense of coherence (SOC), perceiving of the child temperament, separation within the couple and bonding to the infant. Methods: Study I-III was based on the BiT-study, a longitudinal project where 393 couples answered 3 questionnaires including instruments measuring DCS at one week after childbirth, depressive symptoms at 3 months and parental stress at 18 months after childbirth. Study IV was based on the UPPSAT-study, a population based cohort project, where 727 couples answered questionnaires measuring depressive symptoms at 6 weeks and 6 months after childbirth, and impaired bonding at 6 months after childbirth. Results: In the BiT-study, 17.7% of the mothers and 8.7% of the fathers scored depressive symptoms at 3 months after childbirth, using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) cut-off of ≥10. There was an association between depressive symptoms and less consensus (DCS), and the parents partly differed regarding which areas of their relationship they perceived that they disagreed about. Parents with depressive symptoms had a poorer SOC and perceived their child as more difficult than parents without depressive symptoms. Among the couples, 20% were separated 6-8 years after childbirth. Separation was associated with less dyadic consensus, more depressive symptoms and parental stress. In the UPPSAT-study, 15.3% of the mothers and 5.1% of the fathers scored depressive symptoms 6 weeks after childbirth, using the EPDS cut-off of ≥10. Further, there was an association between impaired bonding at 6 months and the parents’ depressive symptoms, as well as experience of deteriorated relationship with the spouse. Conclusions and clinical implications: Health professionals need the knowledge that depressive symptoms are common in both mother and fathers in early parenthood. It is also important to understand how depressive symptoms are associated to dyadic consensus, SOC, separation and impaired bonding in order to optimize conditions for the whole family. This knowledge is also important for the public, so those who are pregnant and new parents as well as the society are aware that there might be problems in early parenthood as depressive symptoms.
Oversampling boosting for classification of imbalanced software defect data

In the community of software defect prediction, a common and significant problem is the data imbalance, which is caused by the fact that the non-defect prone modules are much larger than the defect prone modules. This problem makes most of the typical classifiers, such as LR, SVM, Decision tree, Boosting, etc., prefer to the majority class, non-defect prone modules. In most cases, however, we are more interested in the minority class, defect prone modules, as we want to detect more defect prone modules. In order to improve the ability of identifying the minority class, we propose an adaptive weight updating scheme based on AdaBoost. We first, employ SMOTE or any other synthetic samples generation methods to balance the training datasets. Then, every synthetic sample is given a penalty factor adaptively according to sample's density. The penalty factor is introduced into the cost function to adjust samples' weights so that the base classifiers are guided adaptively to learn the reliable synthetic samples instead of noisy samples. Finally, a more reliable classifier is produced, and the accuracy of the minority class is increased. A series of experiments on MDP, a NASA software defect datasets, is performed, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
E and P Selectins Are Not Required for Resistance to Severe Murine Lyme Arthritis

ABSTRACT Borrelia burgdorferi-induced arthritis in mice is characterized by tendonitis, synovitis, and inflammatory-cell infiltrate, predominantly of neutrophils. Because genetic deficiency in E and P selectins results in delayed recruitment of neutrophils to sites of inflammation, mice with this deficiency were tested for their response to infection with B. burgdorferi. E and P selectins were not required for the control of B. burgdorferi numbers, nor did deficiency in E and P selectins result in alteration of arthritis severity.
Cost-effectiveness of dabigatran etexilate for stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation. Applying RE-LY to clinical practice in Denmark

Abstract Objective: To estimate the economic implications of introducing dabigatran etexilate (‘dabigatran’) for anti-coagulation therapy in Danish patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation based on results of the RE-LY trial. Methods: The lifetime cost and outcomes of dabigatran and warfarin were estimated using a previously published cost-effectiveness model. The model utilizes the data from the RE-LY study to estimate the costs and outcomes of stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation. Cost estimates were based on official Danish tariffs and prices, and published literature on the cost of stroke. In the base-case analysis a conservative approach was adopted applying tariffs from the lowest range for the cost of International Normalized Ratio (INR) monitoring associated with warfarin. The effectiveness measure of the analysis was quality-adjusted life-years (QALY). Results: The model estimated that the mean cost per patient for the remaining life-time is €16,886 treated with warfarin and €18,752 treated with dabigatran. This was associated with mean QALYs per patient of 8.32 with warfarin and 8.59 with dabigatran. The resulting incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of ∼€7000 per QALY gained is regarded as cost-effective by Danish standards. This conclusion was seen to be robust to realistic variations in input parameters, including adjustment for the RE-LY centres achieving the best INR monitoring quality. Threshold analysis revealed that dabigatran would be cost-saving in settings where the cost of warfarin monitoring exceeds €744 per year. Limitations: The analysis does not include all aspects of Danish clinical practice anti-coagulation that will influence cost-effectiveness of dabigatran, e.g., this study did not attempt to model quality of anticoagulation monitoring and under-utilization in clinical practice. Conclusions: Based on the outcomes observed in the RE-LY trial, dabigatran represents a cost-effective alternative to warfarin in Denmark for all patients with atrial fibrillation within the licensed indication of dabigatran.
The Aqua approximate query answering system

Aqua is a system for providing fast, approximate answers to aggregate queries, which are very common in OLAP applications. It has been designed to run on top of any commercial relational DBMS. Aqua precomputes synopses (special statistical summaries) of the original data and stores them in the DBMS. It provides approximate answers along with quality guarantees by rewriting the queries to run on these synopses. Finally, Aqua keeps the synopses up-to-date as the database changes, using fast incremental maintenance techniques.
The origin of the flatbed scanner artifacts in radiochromic film dosimetry—key experiments and theoretical descriptions

The optical origin of the lateral response and orientation artifacts, which occur when using EBT3 and EBT-XD radiochromic films together with flatbed scanners, has been reinvestigated by experimental and theoretical means. The common feature of these artifacts is the well-known parabolic increase in the optical density OD(x) = −log10 I(x)/I0(x) versus offset x from the scanner midline (Poppinga et al Med. Phys. 41 021707). This holds for landscape and portrait orientations as well as for the three color channels. Dose-independent optical subjects, such as neutral density filters, linear polarizers, the EBT polyester foil and diffusive glass, also present the parabolic lateral artifact when scanned with a flatbed scanner. The curvature parameter c of the parabola function OD(x) = c0 + cx2 is found to be a linear function of the dose, the parameters of which are influenced by the film orientation and film type, EBT3 or EBT-XD. The ubiquitous parabolic shape of function OD(x) is attributed (a) to the optical path-length effect (van Battum et al Phys. Med. Biol. 61 625–49), due to the increasing obliquity of the optical scanner light associated with increasing offset x from the scanner midline, and (b) and (c) to the partial polarization and scattering of the light leaving the film, which affect the ratio I(x)/I0(x), thus making OD(x) increase with x2. The orientation effect results from the changes of effects (b) and (c) associated with turning the film position, and thereby the orientation of the polymer structure of the sensitive film layer. In a comparison of experimental results obtained with selected optical subjects, the relative weights of the contributions of the optical path-length effect and the polarization and scattering of light leaving the films to the lateral response artifact have been estimated to be of the same order of magnitude. Mathematical models of these causes for the parabolic shape of function OD(x) are given as appendices.
Dissecting Tor Bridges: A Security Evaluation of their Private and Public Infrastructures

Bridges are onion routers in the Tor Network whose IP addresses are not public. So far, no global security analysis of Tor bridges has been performed. Leveraging public data sources, and two known Tor issues, we perform the first systematic study on the security of the Tor bridges infrastructure. Our study covers both the public infrastructure available to all Tor users, and the previously unreported private infrastructure, comprising private nodes for the exclusive use of those who know their existence. Our analysis of the public infrastructure is twofold. First, we examine the security implications of the public data in the CollecTor service, identifying several pieces of data that may be detrimental for the security of bridges. Then, we measure security relevant properties of public bridges. Our results show that the 55% of public bridges that carry clients are vulnerable to aggressive blocking; that 90% of bridge clients use default bridges that are trivial to identify; that the concurrent deployment of Pluggable Transports in bridges reduces the security of the most secure transports; and that running non-Tor services in the same host as a bridge may harm its anonymity. To study the private infrastructure, we use an approach to discover 694 private bridges on the Internet and a novel technique to track bridges across IP changes. We are first to measure the size of the private bridge population (35% discovered bridges are private) and to report existence of infrastructures that use private proxies to forward traffic to backend bridges or relays. We use a novel clustering approach to analyze the different infrastructures using proxies and bridges, examining its hosting and security properties. We provide an extensive discussion on the security implications of our findings.
A Mathematical Model of Continuous HIV Mutations Eluding Immune Defence

We develop a description of HIV mutations based upon a continuum representation of the fitness of the virus, including the interaction of the virus with both specific Th1 lymphocytes as well as cross-reactive cells. This deterministic model allows a straightforward measure of the diversity of viral population and reproduces the observed increase in diversity as the disease progresses in an untreated patient. We use the diversity threshold theory, extending the modelling to track mutations on a continuum. When the diversity threshold is exceeded, the host immune system collapses.
A New Look at Performance on Theory-of-Mind Tasks by Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PURPOSE A hallmark of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is disruption in theory-of-mind development, including the understanding of false beliefs. Previous studies have typically assessed the development of first- and second-order false belief concepts in ASD, with tasks primarily emphasizing physical causality and logical inferencing. The present study investigated how preadolescents and adolescents with ASD performed on false belief tasks that included social inferencing of psychological states as well as logical inferencing of physical states. METHOD Two categories of tasks were administered: four traditional logical inferencing tasks and four social inferencing tasks specifically developed for this study. In addition, a prompt hierarchy was included to ascertain if performance on both task types improved. Participants were 45 children and adolescents primarily selected from three urban school districts: 15 adolescents with a previous diagnosis of ASD (ASD group); 15 typically developing children matched for age, gender, and ethnicity (CA group); and 15 typically developing children matched for language age, gender, and ethnicity (LA group). RESULTS Three findings were pertinent. First, the CA group performed at higher levels than did the LA group and the ASD group on both task sets. Second, although the CA and the LA groups performed equally well on both the logical and the social inferencing tasks, the ASD group performed better on the social inferencing tasks. Finally, the prompt hierarchy significantly improved overall task performance for the ASD and LA groups. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS These findings indicate that task type, variations in vocabulary ability, and the provision of support influenced performance on the false belief tasks.
Poisonous plants and their uses as insecticides in Cajamarca, Peru

This study focuses on the use of botanical pesticides in Cajamarca, Peru. Fieldwork was conducted in four Quechua communities located in different ecological zones. Interviews and collection of specimens yielded 64 poisonous species and 22 species considered useful because of their toxic properties. The yellow fever mosquito bioassay was applied to methanolic extracts of the latter 22 species to determine their toxicity toAedes aegypti L. larvae. Most extracts showed weak to moderate activity, although three were found to have strong pesticidal activity.ResumenDurante este estudio se colectó información sobre el pasado y presente uso de pesticidas botánicos en Cajamarca, Perú. El trabajo de campo se realizó en cuatro municipalidades, localizadas en diferentes zonas ecológicas. Las entrevistas y colecta de especímenes produjo 64 especies tóxicas y 22 plantas consideradas útiles dadas sus propiedades tóxicas. Se aplicó la prueba biológica del mosquito de la fiebre amarilla, a extractos en metanol de estas últimas 22 especies, con el fin de determinar su toxicidad a las larvae deAedes aegypti L. y proveer información preliminaria sobre la actividad insecticida de los extractos botánicos. La mayoría de los extractos mostraron actividad débil a moderada, excepto tres que mostraron fuerte actividad insecticida.