Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tornadogenesis in a Simulated Mesovortex within a Mesoscale Convective 6 System 7 8

33 34 The ARPS model is used to simulate a tornadic mesovortex with the aim of 35 understanding the associated tornadogenesis processes. The mesovortex was one of two tornadic 36 mesovortices spawned by a mesoscale convective system (MCS) that traversed southwest and 37 central Oklahoma on 8-9 May 2007. The simulation used 100-m horizontal grid spacing, and is 38 nested within two outer grids with 400-m and 2-km grid spacing, respectively. Both outer grids 39 assimilate radar, upper air, and surface observations via 5-min 3DVAR assimilation cycles. The 40 100 m grid covers a 50 km x 60 km domain with 20-m vertical grid spacing at the surface, and is 41 initialized from a 40-min forecast on the 400 m grid. 42 Results from the 100-m simulation provide a detailed picture of the development of a 43 mesovortex that produces a sub-mesovortex-scale tornado-like vortex (TLV). Closer 44 examination of the genesis of the TLV suggests that a strong low-level updraft is critical in 45 converging and amplifying vertical vorticity associated with the mesovortex. Vertical cross-46 sections and backward trajectory analyses from this low-level updraft reveal that the updraft is 47 the upward branch of a strong rotor that forms just northwest of the simulated TLV. The 48 horizontal vorticity in this rotor originates in the near surface inflow and is caused by surface 49 friction. An additional simulation with surface friction turned off does not produce a rotor, strong 50 low-level updraft, or TLV. Comparison with previous two-dimensional numerical studies of 51 rotors in the lee of mountains shows striking similarities to the rotor formation presented herein. 52 A four-stage conceptual model for tornadogenesis in this case is proposed. 53 54 2
Continued Reforestation and Urban Expansion in the New Century of a Tropical Island in the Caribbean

Accurate and timely monitoring of tropical land cover/use (LCLU) changes is urgent due to the rapid deforestation/reforestation and its impact on global land-atmosphere interaction. However, persistent cloud cover in the tropics imposes the greatest challenge and retards LCLU mapping in mountainous areas such as the tropic island of Puerto Rico, where forest transition changed from deforestation to reforestation due to the economy shift from agriculture to industry and service after the 1940s. To improve the LCLU mapping in the tropics and to evaluate the trend of forest transition of Puerto Rico in the new century, we integrated the optical Landsat images with the L-band SAR to map LC in 2010 by taking advantage of the cloud-penetrating ability of the SAR signals. The results showed that the incorporation of SAR data with the Landsat data significantly, although not substantially, enhanced the accuracy of LCLU mapping of Puerto Rico, and the Kappa statistic reached 90.5% from 88.4% without SAR data. The enhancement of mapping by SAR is important for urban and forest, as well as locations with limited optical data caused by cloud cover. We found both forests and urban lands continued expanding in the new century despite the declining population. However, the forest cover change slowed down in 2000–2010 compared to that in 1991–2000. The deforestation rate reduced by 42.1% in 2000–2010, and the reforestation was mostly located in the east and southeast of the island where Hurricane Georges landed and caused severe vegetation damage in 1998. We also found that reforestation increased, but deforestation decreased along the topography slope. Reforestation was much higher within the protected area compared to that in the surroundings in the wet and moist forest zones.
Serum high sensitivity C-reactive protein and cognitive function in elderly women.

BACKGROUND Inflammation has been linked to cognitive impairment. However, limited data are available on the association between inflammatory markers and cognitive function. OBJECTIVES We tested the hypothesis that elevated serum concentration of high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), an established marker of low-grade inflammation, predicts cognitive impairment in elderly women. DESIGN A 12-year population-based follow-up study. PARTICIPANTS A total of 97 women between 60 and 70 years of age at baseline. METHODS Serum hs-CRP concentration was measured by a high sensitivity assay. Global cognitive function was measured with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and memory and cognitive speed were measured with a detailed cognitive test battery. RESULTS Higher baseline hs-CRP was associated with poorer memory at 12-year follow-up without adjustment and after adjustment for age, education and depression (standardised regression coefficient beta -0.842, 95% confidence interval -1.602 to -0.083, P = 0.030), and further adjustment for the use of hormone replacement therapy, smoking, serum LDL cholesterol and body mass index (standardised regression coefficient beta -0.817, 95% confidence interval -1.630 to -0.004, P = 0.049). Memory at 12-year follow-up worsened linearly with increasing hs-CRP at baseline (P = 0.048 for linear trend). There was no association between hs-CRP at baseline and cognitive speed or MMSE score at 12-year follow-up. CONCLUSIONS High serum hs-CRP concentration predicts poorer memory 12 years later in elderly women. Hs-CRP may be a useful biomarker to identify individuals at an increased risk for cognitive decline.
Deletion of the gene Pip4k2c, a novel phosphatidylinositol kinase, results in hyperactivation of the immune system

Significance The mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) signaling pathway is an important facet of the immune system, including that it regulates T-cell differentiation and activation. Here, we report that type 2 phosphatidylinositol-5-phosphate 4-kinase gamma (protein, PI5P4Kγ; gene, PIP4K2C) plays a role in the regulation of the immune system by manipulating mTORC1 signaling. These results suggest that the SNP at the PIP4K2C locus (rs1678542) in human patients with autoimmunity might cause a decrease in PI5P4Kγ expression and thereby an increase in mTORC1 signaling. In addition, these results imply that inhibition of mTORC1 would be beneficial to these patients. These studies also suggest that agents that inhibit PIP4K2C function could be useful to enhance cancer immunotherapy. Type 2 phosphatidylinositol-5-phosphate 4-kinase (PI5P4K) converts phosphatidylinositol-5-phosphate to phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate. Mammals have three enzymes PI5P4Kα, PI5P4Kβ, and PI5P4Kγ, and these enzymes have been implicated in metabolic control, growth control, and a variety of stress responses. Here, we show that mice with germline deletion of type 2 phosphatidylinositol-5-phosphate 4-kinase gamma (Pip4k2c), the gene encoding PI5P4Kγ, appear normal in regard to growth and viability but have increased inflammation and T-cell activation as they age. Immune cell infiltrates increased in Pip4k2c−/− mouse tissues. Also, there was an increase in proinflammatory cytokines, including IFNγ, interleukin 12, and interleukin 2 in plasma of Pip4k2c−/− mice. Pip4k2c−/− mice had an increase in T-helper-cell populations and a decrease in regulatory T-cell populations with increased proliferation of T cells. Interestingly, mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) signaling was hyperactivated in several tissues from Pip4k2c−/− mice and treating Pip4k2c−/− mice with rapamycin reduced the inflammatory phenotype, resulting in a decrease in mTORC1 signaling in tissues and a decrease in proinflammatory cytokines in plasma. These results indicate that PI5P4Kγ plays a role in the regulation of the immune system via mTORC1 signaling.
Using Gamification and Cyber Learning Environment to Improve Students' Learning in an Introductory Computer Programming Course: An Empirical Case Study

Using Gamification and Cyber Learning Environment to Improve Students’ Learning in an Introductory Computer Programming Course: An Empirical Case Study Mrs. Mourya Reddy Narasareddy Gari, North Dakota State University I am Ph.D student at North Dakota State University. My research work is to see how different Learning strategies affect the student learning. Dr. Gursimran Singh Walia, North Dakota State University Gursimran S. Walia is an associate professor of Computer Science at North Dakota State University. His main research interests include empirical software engineering, software engineering education, human factors in software engineering, and software quality. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society. Contact him at gursimran.walia@ndsu.edu Mr. Alex Radermacher, North Dakota State University
Health-related quality of life in transfusion-dependent patients with myelodysplastic syndromes: a prospective study to assess the impact of iron chelation therapy

Objective The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in lower-risk, transfusion-dependent patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) treated with deferasirox. A secondary objective was to investigate the relationship between HRQOL, serum ferritin levels and transfusion dependency. Patients and methods This was a prospective multicentre study enrolling 159 patients, of whom 152 received at least one dose of deferasirox. HRQOL was assessed with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire-Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) at baseline and then at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. Primary analysis was performed estimating mean HRQOL scores over time by a linear mixed model on selected scales. Results The median age of treated patients was 72 years (range 24–87 years). No statistically significant changes over time were found in mean scores for global health status/quality of life (p=0.564), physical functioning (p=0.409) and fatigue (p=0.471) scales. Also, no significant changes were found for constipation (p=0.292), diarrhoea (p=0.815) and nausea and vomiting (p=0.643). Serum ferritin levels were not associated with HRQOL outcomes. A higher patient-reported baseline pain severity was an independent predictive factor of an earlier achievement of transfusion independence with a HR of 1.032 (99% CI 1.004 to 1.060; p=0.003). Conclusions HRQOL of transfusion-dependent patients with MDS receiving deferasirox therapy remains stable over time. HRQOL assessment might also provide important predictive information on treatment outcomes. Trial registration number NCT00469560.
Impact of Conifer Forest Litter on Microwave Emission at L-Band

This study reports on the utilization of microwave modeling, together with ground truth, and L-band (1.4-GHz) brightness temperatures to investigate the passive microwave characteristics of a conifer forest floor. The microwave data were acquired over a natural Virginia Pine forest in Maryland by a ground-based microwave active/passive instrument system in 2008/2009. Ground measurements of the tree biophysical parameters and forest floor characteristics were obtained during the field campaign. The test site consisted of medium-sized evergreen conifers with an average height of 12 m and average diameters at breast height of 12.6 cm. The site is a typical pine forest site in that there is a surface layer of loose debris/needles and an organic transition layer above the mineral soil. In an effort to characterize and model the impact of the surface litter layer, an experiment was conducted on a day with wet soil conditions, which involved removal of the surface litter layer from one half of the test site while keeping the other half undisturbed. The observations showed detectable decrease in emissivity for both polarizations after the surface litter layer was removed. A first-order radiative transfer model of the forest stands including the multilayer nature of the forest floor in conjunction with the ground truth data are used to compute forest emission. The model calculations reproduced the major features of the experimental data over the entire duration, which included the effects of surface litter and ground moisture content on overall emission. Both theory and experimental results confirm that the litter layer increases the observed canopy brightness temperature and obscure the soil emission.
Anti-HIV Activities and Mechanism of 12-O-Tricosanoylphorbol-20-acetate, a Novel Phorbol Ester from Ostodes katharinae

APOBEC3G is a member of the human cytidine deaminase family that restricts Vif-deficient viruses by being packaged with progeny virions and inducing the G to A mutation during the synthesis of HIV-1 viral DNA when the progeny virus infects new cells. HIV-1 Vif protein resists the activity of A3G by mediating A3G degradation. Phorbol esters are plant-derived organic compounds belonging to the tigliane family of diterpenes and could activate the PKC pathway. In this study, we identified an inhibitor 12-O-tricosanoylphorbol-20-acetate (hop-8), a novel ester of phorbol which was isolated from Ostodes katharinae of the family Euphorbiaceae, that inhibited the replication of wild-type HIV-1 and HIV-2 strains and drug-resistant strains broadly both in C8166 cells and PBMCs with low cytotoxicity and the EC50 values ranged from 0.106 μM to 7.987 μM. One of the main mechanisms of hop-8 is to stimulate A3G expressing in HIV-1 producing cells and upregulate the A3G level in progeny virions, which results in reducing the infectivity of the progeny virus. This novel mechanism of hop-8 inhibition of HIV replication might represents a promising approach for developing new therapeutics for HIV infection.
Selecting Optimal Proposal Number for Image-based Object Detection

In order to balance the detection time and accuracy, the state-of-the-art region-based detectors use a fixed number of proposals to obtain detection results in the inference phase. However, in surveillance scenes, object population varies in different images, causing the fixed proposal number becomes an undeterminable hyper-parameter, which needs to be correspondingly adjusted to maintain high recall. To solve this problem, we propose two image-level optimal proposal number selection methods called linear proposal number (LPN) selection method and adaptive proposal number (APN) selection method respectively, both aiming at selecting an optimal proposal number for each image to adapt both the images with sparsely and densely distributed objects. In LPN selection method, we introduce a linear weighting hyper-parameter to formulate the relationship between the actual object number and proposals’ scores to obtain the optimal proposal number. To avoid setting the hyper-parameter manually, we further propose another APN selection method where the optimal proposal number of each image is selected by exploring the distribution of the proposals’ scores. Results obtained from the UA-DETRAC car dataset and self-built bird dataset (BSBDV 2017) show that our proposed methods can largely improve the detection performance in terms of detection time and accuracy without any re-training process.
Suitability Analysis of Various Software Development Life Cycle Models

— In this current era of software development, a large number of life cycle models are available for the systematic development of computer software and projects. SDLC models give a theoretical guide line regarding development of the software. SDLC models are very important for developing the software in a systematic manner such that it will be delivered within the time deadline and should also have proper quality. These models have their own unique characteristics and are suited to a particular situation of software development and software types. One software life cycle model may prove to be more efficient than the other one depending upon the development environment. In this paper, the work has been done to analyze the various software life cycle models from this aspect. Selecting proper SDLC allows the project managers to regulate whole development strategy of the software. Each SDLC has its advantages and disadvantages according to which we decide which model should be implemented under which circumstances. In this paper we will present a comprehensive study of different life cycle models like-waterfall model
The CLEF 2011 Plant Images Classification Task

ImageCLEF’ plant identiﬁcation task provides a testbed for the system-oriented evaluation of tree species identiﬁcation based on leaf images. The aim is to investigate image retrieval approaches in the context of crowdsourced images of leaves collected in a collaborative manner. This paper presents an overview of the resources and assessments of the plant identiﬁcation task at ImageCLEF 2011, summarizes the retrieval approaches employed by the participating groups, and provides an analysis of the main evaluation results.
Erasing Bit Nodes on the Bipartite Graph for Enhanced Performance of LDPC Codes

The proposed work is based on the fact that the complete set of bit nodes for an LDPC code may not always be required at the receiving side for successful decoding. A corresponding strategy is therefore built up. In contrast to common practice, the total number of iterations available is shared among different sets. The first set runs the decoding algorithm with all its bit nodes. Successive sets (in case of decoding failure) runs each with a different selection of "erased" bit nodes, leading to an overall non-monotonic behavior. The end result is a system capable of effectively dealing with the problem of cycles and trapping sets without even being aware of their existence. Reported results show an important coding gain over conventional systems.
Investigation on horizontal and deviated wellbore cleanout by hole cleaning device using CFD approach

The application of the hole cleaning device in downhole is a new technology for removing cuttings bed, and it can increase the efficiency of cuttings transport. This paper mainly studies the effects of the helical angle and the rotational speed of the blade of the hole cleaning device on the swirl strength of decaying swirl flow and drilled cuttings deposition behavior. A three‐dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is established using the Eulerian‐Eulerian two‐fluid model, Realizable k‐ε turbulence model, and Sliding Mesh technique for simulating the two‐phase fluid flow. The results have been compared with available data in the literature, and a good agreement is found. In order to understand the decay behavior of the swirl flow along the flow direction, the initial swirl strength, the swirl number, and the decay rate of swirl are analyzed in detail in single phase. The effects of the swirl flow induced by the blade on the deposition behavior of drilled cuttings under different rotational speed and helical angle are studied. A new deposition index is used to evaluate the effective distance and hole cleaning efficiency of the swirl flow under various parameters. It has been observed that using the hole cleaning device can improve the hole cleaning performance. The research results of this paper is instructive to the design of the hole cleaning device using in the drilling engineering.
Surgical treatment of chronic anterior radial head dislocations in missed Monteggia lesions in children: A rationale for treatment and pearls and pitfalls of surgery

Introduction The treatment of chronic radial head dislocations after Monteggia lesions in children can be challenging. This article provides a detailed description of the most frequently performed surgical technique: an ulna osteotomy followed by annular ligament reconstruction. Accordingly, we present the clinical and radiological results of 10 paediatric cases. Material and methods All paediatric patients that had a corrective osteotomy of the ulna for a missed Monteggia lesion between 2008 and 2014 were evaluated with standard radiographs and clinical examination. A literature search was performed to identify the relevant pearls and pitfalls of surgery. Primary outcome was range of motion. Results We included 10 patients, with a mean follow-up of 2.5 years. Postoperative range of motion generally improved 30.7°. Even in a patient with obvious deformity of the radial head, range of motion improved after surgery, without residual dislocation of the radial head. Conclusion Corrective proximal ulna osteotomy with rigid plate fixation and annular ligament reconstruction yields good results in patients with chronic radial head dislocation following a Monteggia lesion. Surgery should be considered regardless of patient age or time since trauma. Given substantial arguments in literature, we discourage surgery if a CT scan shows dome-shaped radial head dysmorphic features in work-up to surgery.
A Proposal of Web Based SNMP Management for Embedded System Applying in Pattern Recognition Using Wavelet Transform

Nowadays, due to the great variety of resources applied for medicine and telemedicine applications available into clinical environment, mainly in biomedical signal processing ,it is been necessary to make use of management applications. In face the important tasks of management and monitoring of the acquisition and processing of biomedical signal, the present article proposes an integrated architecture of hardware and software, applied in research of pattern recognition methods through wavelet transforms in ECG processing signal.
The Effect of the Ionic Strength of Process Water on the Interaction of Talc and CMC: Implications of Recirculated Water on Floatable Gangue Depression

Previous studies speculate that hydroxo species present in flotation pulps at pH > 9, particularly those of polyvalent cations, selectively adsorb onto gangue minerals. Such species supposedly enhance the depressive action of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) onto gangue via an acid-base interaction between the positively charged mineral surface and the negatively charged CMC molecule. Thus, the hydrophilicity of gangue minerals is enhanced, preventing the dilution of the concentrate. However, as there is little evidence to support these claims for complex process waters of increasing ionic strength, it is important to investigate. Adsorption data and mineral surface charge analyses provide a fundamental understanding of how electrolytes and their ionic strengths affect gangue mineral-depressant adsorption. It is strongly anticipated that decoupling these effects will allow process operators to tailor their process water quality needs towards best flotation operating regimes and, in the long run, effect closed water circuits. Thus, using talc as a proxy for naturally floatable gangue common in sulfidic Cu–Ni–PGM ores, this work investigates the influence of the ionic strength of process water on the adsorption of CMC onto talc for a perspective on how saline water in sulfidic ores would affect the behavior and therefore management of floatable gangue. In the presence of CMC, the microflotation results showed that the rate of talc recovery decreased with increasing ionic strength of process water. Increases in ionic strength resulted in an increase in the adsorption of CMC onto talc. Talc particles proved to have been more coagulated at higher ionic strength since the settling time decreased with increasing ionic strength. Furthermore, the zeta potential of talc particles became less negative at higher ionic strengths of process water. It is thus proposed that increases in the ionic strength of process water increased the zeta potential of talc particles, enhancing the adsorption of CMC onto talc. This in turn created a more coagulated nature on talc particles, increasing their hydrophilicity and thereby retarding floatability.
Modelling Snapshot Isolation Performance

Snapshot Isolation (SI) level is extensively used in commercial database systems. We developed a simple SI implementation protocol for distributed DBMS and implemented it in the Apache HBase. The work presents the performance evaluation of the protocol. We have measured the performance of a single-node system and modeled the performance of a distributed HBase cluster.