Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computer simulations of biaxial nematics

Biaxial nematic (Nb) liquid crystals are a fascinating condensed matter phase that has baffled, for more than thirty years, scientists engaged in the challenge of demonstrating its actual existence, and which has only recently been experimentally found. During this period computer simulations of model Nb have played an important role, both in providing the basic physical properties to be expected from these systems, and in giving clues about the molecular features essential for the thermodynamic stability of Nb phases. However, simulation studies are expected to be even more crucial in the future for unravelling the structural features of biaxial mesogens at the molecular level, and for helping in the design and optimization of devices towards the technological deployment of Nb materials. This review article gives an overview of the simulation work performed so far, and relying on the recent experimental findings, focuses on the still unanswered questions which will determine the future challenges in the field.
Unity in Action: Explaining Alignment Behavior in the Middle East

Stephen Walt’s The Origin of Alliances is the most comprehensive, theoretically informed, and widely cited study to date of Middle East alignment behavior during and after the turbulent ‘Arab cold war’ period of the 1950s and 1960s. But Walt may have overstated the discordant character of inter-Arab behavior when he concludes that Arab states ‘balance’ more than they ‘bandwagon’. This study argues that the strength, duration, and ultimate impermanence of regional alignments against Israel indicate that they had a more important basis in ideology than Walt presumes or that realists can accept. Through a graphical portrayal of the results of a factor analysis performed on COPDAB (Conflict and Peace Data Bank) data for the 1948–78 period, and WEIS (World Event Interaction Survey) data for the 1966–93 period, this study establishes that, into the 1970s, the divisions implied by Walt never fully overshadowed the unity in opposition to Israel that was found among parties on the front lines of that confrontation. More specifically, it finds that concordance rather than division prevailed in relations among Israel’s principal adversaries, that concordance had an important basis in conflict with Israel, and that, by the late 1970s, regional politics were far less orderly. It supports a constructivist perspective by concluding that, as a focal point of Arab nationalism, the conflict with Israel imposed normative constraints upon the behavior of Arab leaders.
“Normal” in Catalonia: Standard language, enregisterment and the imagination of a national public

ABSTRACT Scholars have long noted that the imagination of a national public hinges on ideologies of standard language. This study uses ethnographic and media data from Catalonia to reflect on this relationship, focusing on language professionals, the stewards of Catalan’s standard register. The ideological portrait of Catalonia that emerges is one of a national public that is precarious because a standard register of the Catalan language is taken to be the whole language. It is argued that the imagined failings of a Catalan national public suggest conditions for the successful imagining of a national public more generally. In particular, the projection of a taken-for-granted national public appears to depend on a language imagined as standard and homogeneous when contrasted with other national languages but as internally variable when examined within the national context. At one taxonomic level, registers are erased in order for one register imagined as standard and homogeneous to count as the named language in contrast with other named national languages. At a lower recursive level, these registers must be imagined to exist in order for the language and its corresponding national public to be able to account for “everyone” in the projected national public. When these conditions are not met, as in the case of Catalonia, the national public is imagined as fragile. (Language ideology, standardization, publics, enregisterment)*
Women's Reports of Negative, Neutral, and Positive Effects of Growing up with Alcoholic Parents

Parental alcoholism does not necessarily result in negative outcomes for the offspring; we examined whether it would result in negative perceptions of the experience. Black women and White women with alcoholic parents (N = 126) rated and described the effect of parental alcoholism on them: 65% reported a negative effect, 26% reported a positive effect, and 7% reported a neutral effect. We examined these ratings in relation to the women's overall adult adjustment. More positive ratings were associated with being Black and with variables such as social support, experiencing lower family conflict, and having no alcohol problem oneself. Human service providers need greater access to research findings to see that children from these families will be diverse in their psychological and social functioning.
Life satisfaction of persons with spinal cord injury compared to a population group.

Life satisfaction is thought to be the subjective part of quality of life, i.e. the feelings of the persons concerned about their functioning and circumstances. In this study, life satisfaction of spinal cord-injured persons living in the community is compared to life satisfaction of a population group. Respondents were a nationwide sample of 318 persons with spinal cord injury (response 60%) and 507 inhabitants of a large city in The Netherlands (response 42%). Life satisfaction was measured using the Life Satisfaction Questionnaire, containing one question about general life satisfaction and eight questions about domain-specific life satisfaction. Mean scores of general life satisfaction and of satisfaction with self-care ability, leisure situation, vocational situation and sexual life were lower in persons with spinal cord injury than in the population group, but satisfaction with family life was higher. However, differences in general life satisfaction, satisfaction with leisure situation and with vocational situation could be attributed to differences in the composition of both groups. Satisfaction with self-care ability was lower in persons with tetraplegia than in persons with paraplegia, but we found no differences in other questions. Several relationships between life satisfaction and age and marital status existed, but they were more pronounced in the population group than in the group of persons with spinal cord injury. Time after injury and cause of injury were not related to life satisfaction variables. Uniformity in measurement instruments would facilitate comparisons between studies.
Foreground Segmentation via Background Modeling on Riemannian Manifolds

Statistical modeling in color space is a widely used approach for background modeling to foreground segmentation. Nevertheless, sometimes computing such statistics directly on image values is not enough to achieve a good discrimination. Thus the image may be converted into a more information rich form, such as a tensor field, in which can be encoded color and gradients. In this paper, we exploit the theoretically well-founded differential geometrical properties of the Riemannian manifold where tensors lie. We propose a novel and efficient approach for foreground segmentation on tensor field based on data modeling by means of Gaussians mixtures (GMM) directly in the tensor domain. We introduced a Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the mixture parameters, and are proposed two algorithms based on an online K-means approximation of EM, in order to speed up the process. Theoretic analysis and experimental evaluations demonstrate the promise and effectiveness of the proposed framework.
Structure Characterization and Adhesive Ability of a Polysaccharide from Tendrils of Parthenocissus heterophylla

In order to reveal the structure of the polysaccharide and its contribution to the biological adhesion system of Parthenocissus heterophylla, a water-soluble polysaccharide (PT-A) was isolated from tendrils using DEAE-cellulose and Sephadex G-100 columns. PT-A mainly consisted of a backbone of (1→3)-linked-β-D-Galp residues and substituted at O-6 with side chains of (1→5)-linked-α-L-Araf residues and glucomannopyranosyl residues. Individual polysaccharide chains of PT-A with the approximately height of 0.75 nm were observed by AFM. The analysis of force curves indicated that PT-A was a kind of elastic polysaccharide with a maximum adhesion force of 279.98 nN, which could be applied as a potential bio-adhesive.
Aroma Profile of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Wine Fermented by Single and Co-culture Starters of Autochthonous Saccharomyces and Non-saccharomyces Yeasts

Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is a native grape variety of Vitis vinifera L. , grown in central Italy and used for production of high quality red wines. Limited studies have been carried out to improve its enological characteristics through the use of indigenous strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The main objective of the present work was to test two indigenous strains of S. cerevisiae (SRS1, RT73), a strain of Starmerella bacillaris (STS12), one of Hanseniaspora uvarum (STS45) and a co-culture of S. cerevisiae (SRS1) and S. bacillaris (STS12), in an experimental cellar to evaluate their role in the sensory characteristic of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo wine. A S. cerevisiae commercial strain was used. Fermentations were conducted under routine Montepulciano d'Abruzzo wine production, in which the main variables were the yeast strains used for fermentation. Basic winemaking parameters, some key chemical analysis and aroma compounds were considered. S. cerevisiae strain dynamics during fermentation were determined by molecular methods. The musts inoculated with the co-culture were characterized by a faster fermentation start and a higher content of glycerol after 3 days of fermentation, as well as the musts added with strains S. bacillaris (STS12) and H. uvarum (STS45). At the end of fermentation the parameters studied were quite similar in all the wines. Total biogenic amines (BA) content of all the wines was low. Ethanolamine was the predominant BA, with a concentration ranging from 21 to 24 mg/l. Wines were characterized by esters and alcohols. In particular, 2-phenylethanol, 3-methylbut-1-yl methanoate, and ethyl ethanoate were the major aroma volatile compounds in all wines. Statistical analysis highlighted the different role played by aroma compounds in the differentiation of wines, even if it was impossible to select a single class of compounds as the most important for a specific yeast. The present study represents a further step toward the use of tailored autochthonous strains to impart the specific characteristics of a given wine which are an expression of a specific terroir.
Mental health and health-related quality of life among adult Latino primary care patients living in the United States with previous exposure to political violence.

CONTEXT Although political violence continues in parts of Central America, South America, and Mexico, little is known about its relationship to the health of Latino immigrants living in the United States. OBJECTIVE To determine (1) rates of exposure to political violence among Latino adult primary care patients who have immigrated to the United States from Central America, South America, and Mexico and its impact on mental health and health-related quality of life and (2) frequency of disclosure of political violence to primary care clinicians. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Two-stage cluster design survey of a systematic sample of Latino immigrant adults in 3 community-based primary care clinics in Los Angeles, conducted from July 2001 to February 2002. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Reports of exposure to political violence in home country before immigrating to the United States and communication with clinicians about political violence; self-reported measures of health-related quality of life using the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (MOS SF-36); symptoms of depression, anxiety, and alcohol disorders using the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD); and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C). RESULTS A total of 638 (69%) of 919 eligible patients participated. The nonresponse rates did not differ by age, sex, recruitment sites, or clinic sessions. In weighted analyses, 54% of participants reported political violence experiences in their home countries, including 8% who reported torture. Of those exposed to political violence, 36% had symptoms of depression and 18% had symptoms of PTSD vs 20% and 8%, respectively, among those not exposed to political violence. Controlling for age, sex, country, years lived in the United States, acculturation, income, health insurance status, and recruitment site in a subsample of 512 participants (56%), those who reported political violence exposure were more likely to meet symptom criteria for PTSD (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 3.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4-8.4) and to have symptoms of depression (AOR, 2.8; 95% CI, 1.4-5.4) and symptoms of panic disorder (AOR, 4.8; 95% CI, 1.6-14.4) than participants not reporting political violence. Those exposed to political violence reported more chronic pain and role limitations due to physical problems, as well as worse physical functioning and lower perceptions of general health than those who were not exposed to political violence. Only 3% of the 267 patients who had experienced political violence reported ever telling a clinician about it after immigrating; none reported their current physician asking about political violence. CONCLUSION Latino immigrants in primary care in Los Angeles have a high prevalence of exposure to political violence before immigrating to the United States and associated impairments in mental health and health-related quality of life.
Visual Psychophysics and Physiological Optics SyntEyes : A Higher-Order Statistical Eye Model for Healthy Eyes

Citation: Rozema JJ, Rodriguez P, Navarro R, Tassignon M-J. SyntEyes: a higher order statistical eye model for healthy eyes. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2016;57:683–691. DOI:10.1167/ iovs.15-18067 PURPOSE. Stochastic eye models are a method to generate random biometry data with the variability found in the general population for use in optical calculations. This work improves the accuracy of a previous model by including the higher-order shape parameters of the cornea.
Saccharification of steam‐exploded poplar wood

Effects of time, temperature, and pH during the steam explosion of poplar wood were studied with the aim of optimize both pentoses recovery and enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency. Steam explosion of acid impregnated wood chips allowed the recovery of 70% of potential xylose as monomers (217°C, 120 s) Enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated fiber with Trichoderma reesei CL‐847 cellulase system increased progressively with the severity of the steam treatment conditions. The best yield in term of glucose recovery after 24 h of enzymatic hydrolysis was 70% of potential glucose (225°C, 120 s). Deactivation by adsorption on lignin of Trichoderma reesei cellulases and inhibition of these enzymes by low‐molecular‐weight phenols and trihydroxybutyric acids were noticed.
D-Code: An Efficient RAID-6 Code to Optimize I/O Loads and Read Performance

With the reliability requirement increasingly important, RAID-6, which can tolerate any two concurrent disk failures, has been widely used in various storage systems. One class of typical RAID-6 implementations is to use Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) erasure codes. However, most existing RAID-6 MDS codes suffer from unbalanced I/O or high I/O cost, and cannot provide satisfied read performance on both normal mode and degraded mode. All these metrics are important in modern storage systems. In this paper, we propose a new RAID-6 MDS code termed D-Code to address these problems. D-Code uses a new kind of horizontal parities to increase the possibility of continuous data elements sharing the common parities in order to provide low I/O cost and good degraded read performance, while uses deployment parities to assure all parities can be evenly distributed in the last two rows in order to achieve good load balancing and good normal read performance. Our evaluations and experiments show that D-Code not only provides good load balancing and low I/O cost under different workloads, but also achieves good performance on both normal reads and degraded reads. E.g., D-Code achieves up to 21.3% and 13.5% higher read speed than RDP code and H-Code in normal mode, while gains up to 26.0% higher read speed than X-Code in degraded mode.
State dependent mode transition probabilities

A multiple model filter similar to the IMM filter is developed for tracking of maneuvering targets. The mode transition probabilities are modeled as dependent on the state. This allows using information about the mode of a target that is contained in the state. Thus, better estimates of the mode can be obtained. Convergence of the mode estimates occurs more quickly. As an application, choosing acceleration dependent mode transitions in a scenario using constant velocity motion and coordinated turn motion is discussed.
Evaluation of iris functional capillary density in experimental local and systemic inflammation

The ocular microcirculation represents an important target to treat inflammatory diseases of eye, where impairment of microvascular blood flow plays key role as, for example, in anterior uveitis. To evaluate novel interventions targeting the microcirculation, appropriate and reliable tools to study this particular microvascular bed are needed. Intravital microscopy (IVM) belongs to several methods allowing evaluation of microcirculation experimentally, even in small animals. The aim of our study was to examine the iridial microcirculation (IMIC) in uveitis induced by local or systemic endotoxin administration in rats and mice by IVM and to propose new parameters to quantify the changes within the IMIC. Systemic inflammation was induced in rats by intravenous endotoxin administration, control group received normal saline intravenously. Local inflammation was induced in mice by intravitreal endotoxin administration, the control group received normal saline intravitreally. IVM of IMIC was performed in animals receiving systemic endotoxin prior injection and 1 and 2 h afterwards, respectively, in animals receiving intravitreal endotoxin/saline prior local injection and 5 h afterwards. Obtained video recordings were analyzed off‐line. Functional capillary density (FCD) and dysfunctional capillary density (DCD) were evaluated for description of IMIC, and calculation of FCD/DCD ratio was performed. In systemic inflammation, FCD was significantly decreased compared to control animals. In local inflammation, the number of functional capillaries in the IMIC was significantly reduced following the endotoxin challenge. Analysis of the DCD revealed a significant increase in capillaries with reduced perfusion after intravitreal endotoxin administration and right shift of the FCD/DCD ratio was observed after endotoxin local injection. Detecting and quantifying changes in IMIC during systemic or local inflammation in experimental animals by IVM was feasible. Therefore, IVM of the IMIC represents a valuable tool to evaluate and quantify inflammatory changes in experimental eye disease.
Usefulness of a newly designed plastic stent for endoscopic re-intervention in patients with malignant hilar biliary obstruction

Abstract Background and study aims We designed a new 7-Fr plastic stent for treating self-expandable metal stent (SEMS) obstruction in patients with malignant hilar biliary obstruction (MHBO) via endoscopic re-intervention with the stent-in-stent (SIS) method and evaluated its efficacy. Patients and methods A total of 33 consecutive patients who underwent endoscopic re-intervention for metal stent obstruction after multi-branched SEMS placement were enrolled. The initial SEMSs were placed in two or three biliary branches in 14 and 19 patients, respectively. We retrospectively evaluated the technical and clinical success, and adverse events. Technical success was defined as successful plastic stent placement into all target branches through the lumen of the SEMS. Results The technical success rates were 85.7 % (12/14) and 78.9 % (15/19) in patients who underwent two- or three-branched biliary drainage, respectively. The clinical success rate was 100 % in the 27 patients in whom technical success was achieved. We achieved successful plastic stent placement in more than two branches, using the new plastic stent combined with a conventional plastic stent, in 97.0 % (32/33). Conclusions This new plastic stent was technically feasible for treating stent obstruction via re-intervention with SIS methods.
Characterization of polymorphic microsatellite markers for Primula sikkimensis (Primulaceae) using a 454 sequencing approach

Premise of the study: Microsatellite markers from Primula sikkimensis (Primulaceae) were developed for testing deep lineage divergence and speciation events. Methods and Results: A total of 3112 microsatellites were identified from 61,755 unique reads though 454 pyrosequencing technology. Twenty-nine microsatellite loci were selected for PCR amplification and polymorphic analyses. Among the 29 tested markers, 17 microsatellite loci were further used for genotyping in three wild P. sikkimensis populations. The number of alleles varied from one to eight, and the observed heterozygosity ranged from 0.111 to 1.000. Ten simple sequence repeat loci could be successfully cross-amplified in two Primula species. The transferability values were 76.5% in P. florindae and 58.8% in P. alpicola, respectively. Conclusions: These microsatellite markers will be valuable for testing the hypothesis of lineage divergence, genetic introgression, and cryptic speciation events between P. sikkimensis and its closely related taxa.
Large-scale capacitance calculation

We describe a new method for accurate large-scale capacitance calculations. The algorithm uses an integral equation formulation, but with a new representation for charge distributions that decouples charge variation from conductor geometry. This separation significantly reduces the problem size compared to a traditional discretization, resulting in a large speed increase. The full capacitance matrix of typical interconnect problems with thousands of nets can be computed in a few hours.