Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decay rates of leaf litters from arbuscular mycorrhizal trees are more sensitive to soil effects than litters from ectomycorrhizal trees

While it is well established that leaf litter decomposition is controlled by climate and substrate quality at broad spatial scales, conceptual frameworks that consider how local‐scale factors affect litter decay in heterogeneous landscapes are generally lacking. A critical challenge in disentangling the relative impacts of and interactions among local‐scale factors is that these factors frequently covary due to feedbacks between plant and soil communities. For example, forest plots dominated by trees that associate with ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi often differ from those dominated by trees that associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in terms of their litter quality, microbial community structure and inorganic nutrient availability. Here, we evaluate the extent to which such factors alter leaf litter decomposition rates. To characterize variations in decomposition rates, we compared decay rates of high‐quality litter (maple; AM) and low‐quality litter (oak; ECM) across forest plots representing a gradient in litter matrix quality and nitrogen (N) availability driven by the relative proportions of AM and ECM trees in each plot. In experiment two, we added litter from two AM and three ECM tree species to forest plots with either a high‐quality litter matrix and high N availability (i.e. AM‐dominated plots) or a low‐quality litter matrix and low N availability (i.e. ECM‐dominated plots). In both experiments, we found that AM litter decomposed more rapidly than ECM litter, and this effect was enhanced in AM‐dominated plots. Then, to separate the contributions of litter matrix effects from N availability effects, we added N fertilizer to a subset of plots from experiment two. Nitrogen addition increased decay rates of high‐quality litter across all sites, but had no effect on low‐quality litter, suggesting that low N availability, not litter matrix quality, constrains decomposition of high‐quality litters. Hence, N availability appears to alter litter decomposition patterns independently of litter matrix properties. Synthesis. Our results indicate that shifts in the relative abundance of ECM‐ and AM‐associated trees in a plot or stand have the potential to affect litter decay rates through both changes in litter quality as well as through alterations of the local‐scale soil environment.
Accuracy of Inferior Vena Cava Ultrasound for Predicting Dehydration in Children with Acute Diarrhea in Resource-Limited Settings

Introduction Although dehydration from diarrhea is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children under five, existing methods of assessing dehydration status in children have limited accuracy. Objective To assess the accuracy of point-of-care ultrasound measurement of the aorta-to-IVC ratio as a predictor of dehydration in children. Methods A prospective cohort study of children under five years with acute diarrhea was conducted in the rehydration unit of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). Ultrasound measurements of aorta-to-IVC ratio and dehydrated weight were obtained on patient arrival. Percent weight change was monitored during rehydration to classify children as having “some dehydration” with weight change 3–9% or “severe dehydration” with weight change > 9%. Logistic regression analysis and Receiver-Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the accuracy of aorta-to-IVC ratio as a predictor of dehydration severity. Results 850 children were enrolled, of which 771 were included in the final analysis. Aorta to IVC ratio was a significant predictor of the percent dehydration in children with acute diarrhea, with each 1-point increase in the aorta to IVC ratio predicting a 1.1% increase in the percent dehydration of the child. However, the area under the ROC curve (0.60), sensitivity (67%), and specificity (49%), for predicting severe dehydration were all poor. Conclusions Point-of-care ultrasound of the aorta-to-IVC ratio was statistically associated with volume status, but was not accurate enough to be used as an independent screening tool for dehydration in children under five years presenting with acute diarrhea in a resource-limited setting.
“Being all alone makes me sad”: loneliness in older adults with depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT Background: The consequences of co-occurring persistent loneliness and late life depression are yet unknown. The aim of this study was to get a deeper insight into the mental health consequences of loneliness in older persons with depressive symptoms and their perspectives of emotional distress by using a mixed-methods study design. Methods: Two hundred and forty nine community-dwelling older persons with depressive symptoms according to the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (≥6) were included. A validated cut-off score on the Loneliness Scale was used to distinguish lonely elders from elders who were not lonely. Quantitative and qualitative data were used to examine differences in mental health and perspectives on emotional distress between lonely and not lonely older persons with depressive symptoms. Results: Loneliness was highly prevalent among older persons with depressive symptoms (87.8%). Lonely people suffered from worse mental ill-health (e.g., more severe depressive symptoms, more often a depressive disorder and a lower quality of life) compared to not lonely individuals. Depressive symptoms were regarded as a logical consequence of loneliness. Lonely people perceived little command over their situation: causes of loneliness were attributed externally to perceived deficits in their social networks and they mainly expressed the need to be listened to. Conclusion: Our findings underline the importance of paying considerable attention to (severe) loneliness in older adults with depressive symptoms given its high prevalence and serious mental health consequences. Future studies should look into whether addressing loneliness when discussing depressive symptoms in clinical practice may provide an opportunity to better adjust to older persons’ depression perceptions and might therefore improve care utilization.
Surface Reconstruction From Non‐parallel Curve Networks

Building surfaces from cross‐section curves has wide applications including bio‐medical modeling. Previous work in this area has mostly focused on connecting simple closed curves on parallel cross‐sections. Here we consider the more general problem where input data may lie on non‐parallel cross‐sections and consist of curve networks that represent the segmentation of the underlying object by different material or tissue types (e.g., skin, muscle, bone, etc.) on each cross‐section. The desired output is a surface network that models both the exterior surface and the internal partitioning of the object. We introduce an algorithm that is capable of handling curve networks of arbitrary shape and topology on cross‐section planes with arbitrary orientations. Our algorithm is simple to implement and is guaranteed to produce a closed surface network that interpolates the curve network on each cross‐section. Our method is demonstrated on both synthetic and bio‐medical examples.
Scalable Model Checking Beyond Safety - A Communication Fabric Perspective

Author(s): Ray, Sayak | Advisor(s): Brayton, Robert K. | Abstract: In this research, we have developed symbolic algorithms and their open-source implemen-tations that effectively solve liveness verification problem for industrially relevant hardwaresystems. In principle, our tool-suite works on any sequential hardware circuit and for thewhole family of ω-regular properties. Practicality and effectiveness of our tool-suite havebeen demonstrated in the context of proving response properties (a very common and impor-tant liveness property) of on-chip communication fabrics.
Quantum XOR Games

We introduce quantum XOR games, a model of two-player one-round games that extends the model of XOR games by allowing the referee's questions to the players to be quantum states. We give examples showing that quantum XOR games exhibit a wide range of behaviors that are known not to exist for standard XOR games, such as cases in which the use of entanglement leads to an arbitrarily large advantage over the use of no entanglement. By invoking two deep extensions of Grothendieck's inequality, we present an efficient algorithm that gives a constant-factor approximation to the best performance players can obtain in a given game, both in case they have no shared entanglement and in case they share unlimited entanglement. As a byproduct of the algorithm we prove some additional interesting properties of quantum XOR games, such as the fact that sharing a maximally entangled state of arbitrary dimension gives only a small advantage over having no entanglement at all.
Identification of a T cell receptor beta chain variable region, V beta 20, that is differentially expressed in various strains of mice

A cDNA library of TCR beta chain transcripts from BALB/c thymocytes was constructed using anchored polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Screening of this library led to the identification of a V beta gene segment, V beta 20, structurally related to V beta 3 and V beta 17. Genomic analysis of mice displaying deletions in their V beta loci, together with mapping of cosmid clones, situated V beta 20 2.5 kb beside V beta 17. The expression of V beta 20 was estimated by PCR in mice of different H-2 and Mls types. Peripheral T cells from H-2k and H-2d mice did not express V beta 20, whereas in I-E-negative mice (C57Bl/6 and SJL), V beta 20 transcripts were detected. The lack of V beta 20 transcripts in (C57Bl/6 x CBA/J)F1, (C57Bl/6 x BALB/c)F1, and in congenic B6.H-2k mice suggests that the differential use of V beta 20 is due to an I-E-mediated clonal deletion process. The involvement of the Mls super antigens was excluded by analysis of all Mls type combinations. The nature of the V beta 20-deleting element(s) is discussed in the context of the I-E/superantigen systems controlling the expression of V beta 11 and V beta 17.
Gait pattern generation for a power-assist device of paraplegic gait

We address a gait pattern generation on a legged locomotor device (WPAL: Wearable Power-Assist Locomotor) for paraplegics. In the gait movement with WPAL, a backward falling is a considerable problem, and a foot-floor collision during a swing movement would induce a loss of balance. In addition, adjustability of the gait parameters, such as stride length, gait cycle and maximum hight of the toe clearance, would be required for an individual paraplegic according to the degrees of his disabilities and skills. In this paper, we propose a gait pattern generation method considering the requirements of the stability and the adjustability. First, the trajectories of toe position, horizontal hip position, and foot plantar angle are calculated using a minimum jerk trajectory with the constraints of the position and velocity at via points. Second, the desired trajectories of joint angles are determined from the calculated trajectories by inverse kinematic equations. We demonstrate that generated desired trajectories for various gait parameter values and boundary conditions were satisfied with the required stability conditions.
Lily results on SEALS platform for OAEI 2011

This paper presents the alignment results of Lily on SEALS platform for the ontology alignment contest OAEI 2011. Lily is an ontology matching system. In OAEI 2011, Lily submited the results for three matching tasks on the SEALS platform: benchmark, anatomy, conference. The specific techniques used by Lily are introduced. The matching results of Lily are also discussed.
Cross-Domain Internet of Things Application Development: M3 Framework and Evaluation

Internet of Things (IoT) applications are becoming more and more popular but not interoperable with each other. In this paper, we propose the Machine-to-Machine Measurement (M3) framework to: (1) build IoT applications, (2) assist users in interpreting sensor measurements, and (3) combine domains with each other. The M3 framework is based on semantic web technologies to explicitly describe the meaning of sensor measurements in an unified way to ease the interpretation of sensor data and to combine domains.
Quantitative Predictions of Dead Layers Induced by Surface Roughness in Isotropic Type II Superconductors

In type II superconductors where the coherence length ξ is small compared to the London penetration depth λ, the London equation is valid and it predicts that magnetic fields decay exponentially in magnitude with the depth into the superconductor with a length scale λ, provided the interface is flat. Various direct measurements of λ using low energy μSR on superconductors such as Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide measure field profiles that differ from the anticipated exponential decay. There seems to be a dead layer, a distance δ over which the magnetic field magnitude does not decay, and some speculation has been made that this dead layer may be due to a suppression of the order parameter that causes the decay of a magnetic field, or surface roughness. A model of surface roughness has been studied for the case of a sinusoidally modulated surface roughness on an isotropic superconductor showing that in some cases the profiles resulting from surface roughness may be qualitatively similar to the dead layer phenomena in that the field magnitude decay rate may be slowed near the surface relative to a flat interface but that for modest roughness, the quantitative value of the dead layer is much smaller than the experiments measure. In this paper we extend this work in two directions: firstly, by using Atomic Force Microscopy data of Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide crystals, we predict the field profiles the crystals could produce within the context of the isotropic London model of superconductivity given their actual surface geometry; and secondly, we consider how surface roughness could affect experimental values for λ and δ. Our work suggests that roughness within an isotropic model cannot produce the dead layers found in experiments on YBCO and that perhaps roughness must be combined with an anisotropy to yield the experimental dead layers; that the measurement of λ may be influenced by the presence of roughness; and that the local field orientation does change slightly with respect to the direction of the applied field.
Contemporary constructions of English texts: a departmental case study of secondary English domains

The content and purpose/s of secondary English curriculum in the United States continue to be difficult to generalize. Over the past twenty years, two collective attempts– the English Coalition Conference in 1987, and the IRA/NCTE Standards project in 1996– failed to articulate a cohesive domain. This research project explores, in the form of a departmental case study, how teachers in one secondary English department conceptualize, negotiate, and construct their subject—particularly the role of literature— over the course of an academic semester. Methodologically, this project draws from ethnographic methods in folklore and anthropology including observation, interviews, and archival research, employing grounded theory in order to understand how English texts are conceived and constructed by secondary English teachers in one high school department, and to explore the purposes, domains, and curricular tensions secondary English teachers ascribe to their text practices. The study reveals shifting text positions based on teacher modality assumptions, and department coherence based on both curriculum content and foundational paradigms of knowledge and power. This research contributes to research gaps in English education, media education, and department studies, where only a small body of scholarship addresses how teachers conceptualize English in curriculum and practice, or how a variety texts are positioned and circulate (or do not) in and across English classrooms and within departments.
The Literary Inquisition: The Persecution of Intellectuals and Human Capital Accumulation in China

Imperial China used an empire-wide system of examinations to select civil servants. Using a semiparametric matching-based difference-in-differences estimator, we show that the persecution of scholar-officials led to a decline in the number of examinees at the provincial and prefectural level. To explore the long-run impact of literary inquisitions we employ a model to show that persecutions could reduce the provision of basic education and have a lasting effect on human capital accumulation. Using the 1982 census we find that literary inquisitions reduced literacy by between 2.25 and 4 percentage points at a prefectural level in the early 20th century. This corresponds to a 69% increase in the probability of an individual being illiterate. Prefectures affected by the literary inquisition had a higher proportion of workers in agriculture until the 1990s.
Breaking the sticks: a hierarchical change‐point model for estimating ontogenetic shifts with stable isotope data

1. Stable isotopes are increasingly used in ecology to investigate ontogenetic shifts in foraging habitat (via δ13C) and in trophic level (via δ15N). These shifts are in essence an individual‐level phenomenon, requiring repeated measures throughout the life of individuals, i.e. longitudinal data. Longitudinal data require in turn specifying an appropriate covariance structure. Here we present a hierarchical model to jointly investigate individual ontogenetic shifts in δ13C and δ15N values.
SNIF: A Comprehensive Tool for Passive Inspection of Sensor Networks

Deployment of sensor networks in real-world settings is a laborintensive and cumbersome task: environmental influences often trigger problems that are difficult to track down due to limited visibility of the network state. In this extended abstract, we summarize our ongoing efforts to develop a tool for passive inspection of sensor networks, where the network state can be inferred without instrumentation of sensor nodes. We also discuss next steps to make this tool applicable to a larger class of applications.
A File System for Mobile Computing

The recent proliferation of portable computers, the advent of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and continuing advances in computer networking all point to a future in which mobility of both users and computing system elements will be standard. However, these developments also invalidate many of the assumptions made by current system software, which has been built for stationary systems and users. An important component of system software that needs to looked at afresh is the file system. A user should be able to access the files he or she needs regardless of location. Although existing research efforts do provide some support for this, there are significant deficiencies that need to be remedied. We propose two related designs to address these problems. The first exploits the unique property of a PDA that it can accompany its owner at all times by using it to carry files of most immediate need to him or her. The second makes use of the recently proposed idea of a computing
Conditional Random Fields and Support Vector Machines: A Hybrid Approach

We propose a novel hybrid loss for multiclass and structured prediction problems that is a convex combination of log loss for Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) and a multiclass hinge loss for Support Vector Machines (SVMs). We provide a sufficient condition for when the hybrid loss is Fisher consistent for classification. This condition depends on a measure of dominance between labels - specifically, the gap in per observation probabilities between the most likely labels. We also prove Fisher consistency is necessary for parametric consistency when learning models such as CRFs. We demonstrate empirically that the hybrid loss typically performs as least as well as - and often better than - both of its constituent losses on variety of tasks. In doing so we also provide an empirical comparison of the efficacy of probabilistic and margin based approaches to multiclass and structured prediction and the effects of label dominance on these results.
Development of Performance Management Systems

In the paper basic principles and general approach to development of Performance Management Systems (PMSs) are discussed. It is considered that development of PMSs should rely on certain principles, each of them is described in details. Finally, a two-level managerial approach to PMS design and development planning is proposed. The top level, related with PMS in whole, is considered within the bounds of three generic stages -- functional modeling, dynamic modeling and finalizing.
DistR: A Distributed Method for the Reachability Query over Large Uncertain Graphs

Among uncertain graph queries, reachability, i.e., the probability that one vertex is reachable from another, is likely the most fundamental one. Although this problem has been studied within the field of network reliability, solutions are implemented on a single computer and can only handle small graphs. However, as the size of graph applications continually increases, the corresponding graph data can no longer fit within a single computer's memory and must therefore be distributed across several machines. Furthermore, the computation of probabilistic reachability queries is #P-complete making it very expensive even on small graphs. In this paper, we develop an efficient distributed strategy, called DistR, to solve the problem of reachability query over large uncertain graphs. Specifically, we perform the task in two steps: distributed graph reduction and distributed consolidation. In the distributed graph reduction step, we find all of the maximal subgraphs of the original graph, whose reachability probabilities can be calculated in polynomial time, compute them and reduce the graph accordingly. After this step, only a small graph remains. In the distributed consolidation step, we transform the problem into a relational join process and provide an approximate answer to the #P-complete reachability query. Extensive experimental studies show that our distributed approach is efficient in terms of both computational and communication costs, and has high accuracy.
Developing Reading Skills Using Sight Word Reading Strategy through Interactive Mobile Game-Based Learning for Dyslexic Children

Reading skill is crucial in our daily activities. On the other hand, there are some people who experience difficulties in reading. This is due to the way they see things are different than normal people. This learning disability is known as dyslexia. The symptoms started from young. Children with dyslexia use all of their senses to interact with their surroundings. They are easily attracted to pictures rather than words and are highly imaginative. In this project, a mobile application to help children with dyslexia to develop reading skills is proposed. This paper will discuss about the development of the mobile application. The methodology used in this project will be discussed along with the implementation and testing. The results have shown that respondents gave positive feedbacks prove that the application is effective in developing reading and spelling among dyslexic children. Lastly, limitations, future works and conclusion of the overall project will be discussed. The mobile application is named as “Mr Read”.