Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cluster Structure of Optimal Solutions in Bipartitioning of Small Worlds

Using simulated annealing, we examine a bipartitioning of small worlds obtained by adding a fraction of randomly chosen links to a one-dimensional chain or a square lattice. Models defined on small worlds typically exhibit a mean-field behavior, regardless of the underlying lattice. Our work demonstrates that the bipartitioning of small worlds does depend on the underlying lattice. Simulations show that for one-dimensional small worlds, optimal partitions are finite size clusters for any fraction of additional links. In the two-dimensional case, we observe two regimes: when the fraction of additional links is sufficiently small, the optimal partitions have a stripe-like shape, which is lost for a larger number of additional links as optimal partitions become disordered. Some arguments, which interpret additional links as thermal excitations and refer to the thermodynamics of Ising models, suggest a qualitative explanation of such a behavior. The histogram of overlaps suggests that a replica symmetry is broken in a one-dimensional small world. In the two-dimensional case, the replica symmetry seems to hold, but with some additional degeneracy of stripe-like partitions.
Solving Footstep Planning as a Feasibility Problem Using L1-Norm Minimization

One challenge of legged locomotion on uneven terrains is to deal with both the <italic>discrete problem</italic> of selecting a contact surface for each footstep and the <italic>continuous problem</italic> of placing each footstep on the selected surface. Consequently, footstep planning can be addressed with a Mixed Integer Program (MIP), an elegant but computationally demanding method, which can make it unsuitable for online planning. We reformulate the MIP into a cardinality problem, then approximate it as a computationally efficient <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell 1$</tex-math></inline-formula>-norm minimisation, called SL1M. Moreover, we improve the performance and convergence of SL1M by combining it with a sampling-based root trajectory planner to prune irrelevant surface candidates. Our tests on the humanoid Talos in four representative scenarios show that SL1M always converges faster than MIP. For scenarios when the combinatorial complexity is small (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$< 10$</tex-math></inline-formula> surfaces per step), SL1M converges at least two times faster than MIP with no need for pruning. In more complex cases, SL1M converges up to 100 times faster than MIP with the help of pruning. Moreover, pruning can also improve the MIP computation time. The versatility of the framework is shown with additional tests on the quadruped robot ANYmal.
High-Throughput Approach to Modeling Healthcare Costs Using Electronic Healthcare Records

Accurate estimation of healthcare costs is crucial for healthcare systems to plan and effectively negotiate with insurance companies regarding the coverage of patient-care costs. Greater accuracy in estimating healthcare costs would provide mutual benefit for both health systems and the insurers that support these systems by better aligning payment models with patient-care costs. This study presents the results of a generalizable machine learning approach to predicting medical events built from 40 years of data from >860,000 patients pertaining to >6,700 prescription medications, courtesy of Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin. It was found that models built using this approach performed well when compared to similar studies predicting physician prescriptions of individual medications. In addition to providing a comprehensive predictive model for all drugs in a large healthcare system, the approach taken in this research benefits from potential applicability to a wide variety of other medical events.
Power in Management and Organization Science

This paper reviews and evaluates the concept of power in management and organization science. In order to organize the extant literature on this topic, we develop a framework that identifies four faces of power (i.e. coercion, manipulation, domination, and subjectification) and four sites of power (i.e. power enacted “in”, “through”, “over”, and “against” organizations). This allows us to evaluate assumptions both shared and contested in the field. Building on the review, the paper then points to potentially novel areas of research that may extend our understandings of organizational power in management and organization science.
“Give a Brotha a Break!”: The Experiences and Dilemmas of Middle-Class African American Male Students in White Suburban Schools

Background/Context Today, in the era of the first African American president, approximately one third of all African Americans live in suburban communities, and their children are attending suburban schools. Although most research on the education of African American students, particularly males, focuses on their plight in urban schooling, what occurs in suburban schools is also in need of examination. Purpose/Focus of Study This research focused on the lived experiences of 4 middle-class African American male students attending affluent White suburban schools. Through vignettes focusing on their various experiences and recollections, this study provides a preliminary snapshot, part of a larger study, of the schooling environments in the life stories of middle-class Black suburban youth. Research Design Qualitative methodology was used to explore the life histories of the 4 African American males. Each student participated in a tape-recorded interview to examine what it meant to grow up in White upper-middle-class suburban communities and to matriculate within suburban district schools from elementary through high school. Findings/Results The salient themes that emerged from the rich, interactive conversations and dialoguing address issues related to disillusionment and resilience; the presence or absence of racism; academic pressures; social bonding and identity development in racialized social and academic settings; and the gatekeeping role of athletics. Conclusions/Recommendations Suburban education may not be the panacea that African American families had hoped. The socioeconomic status of African American families who live in affluent White suburban communities may not be enough to mitigate against the situated “otherness” that Black students—in this case, males—experienced in affluent White suburban schools. More research is needed to understand the positionality of Black male students in suburban schools; relationships between suburban Black adolescent males and females; school life beyond athletics; the role of the family and community in combating racism and otherness; and how student agency can be a force for change.
Household and Socio-cultural factors in Maternal Health in Rural areas of Northern Cross River State, Nigeria

The study investigates household and socio-cultural factors that predispose women to high morbidity and mortality in rural Northern Cross River State. The study design utilized the survey research approach involving a sample of 823 respondents drawn from an estimated total population of 842,561 women. Multi-staged sampling procedure was used to select sampling units. Data were subjected to chi-square and logistic regression analysis. The socio-economic status of women played a significant role in maternal health; ever married women had better health status than those that were single; women who had their first babies earlier than the age of 20 had poorer health status relative to those who had them later. Household sanitation and hygiene behaviour were significantly related to maternal health status. Households with poor waste disposal systems reported poorer health status relative to those with better waste disposal systems. Some cultural practices such as early marriage, patriarchy and exposure to intimate partner violence have significant negative relationship with maternal health. Maternal health is the result of cumulative effects of household factors, cultural practices, attitudes and behaviours; improving the household and communal environment could significantly improve maternal health. This could be enhanced through improvement of health services and dissemination of health information in the rural communities which will properly educate women and empower them to resist obnoxious culture-bound factors that undermine their health.
Multiple Firing Patterns in Coupled Hindmarsh-Rose Neurons with a Nonsmooth Memristor

A model is introduced by coupling two three-dimensional Hindmarsh-Rose models with the help of a nonsmooth memristor. The firing patterns dependent on the external forcing current are explored, which undergo a process from adding-period to chaos. The stability of equilibrium points of the considered model is investigated via qualitative analysis, from which it can be gained that the model has diversity in the number and stability of equilibrium points for different coupling coefficients. The coexistence of multiple firing patterns relative to initial values is revealed, which means that the referred model can appear various firing patterns with the change of the initial value. Multiple firing patterns of the addressed neuron model induced by different scales are uncovered, which suggests that the discussed model has a multiscale effect for the nonzero initial value.
Patients With Diabetes Mellitus Have a Higher Risk of Tendon Retear After Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repair: A Meta-analysis

Background: Retear of a repaired rotator cuff tendon is a major issue for shoulder surgeons. It is possible that diabetes mellitus (DM) is associated with a greater risk of tendon retear after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair. Purpose: To determine whether patients with DM have a higher tendon retear risk after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair. Study Design: Systematic review; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: A systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines using the Web of Science, PubMed, and Embase databases. Inclusion criteria were articles written in the English language that included patients undergoing arthroscopic rotator cuff repair surgeries, reported the numbers of patients with and those without DM, and reported the number of rotator cuff retears. Data relevant to this study were extracted and statistically analyzed. Random-effects models were used to generate pooled odds ratio estimates and CIs. Results: A total of 160 studies were identified from the initial search, and 5 of them met the inclusion criteria. A total of 1065 patients (207 patients with DM and 858 patients without DM) were included. The pooled results showed that the patients in the DM group had a significantly higher tendon retear risk than did those in the non-DM group (relative risk, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.14-4.45; P = .02). Conclusion: Patients with DM have a 2.25 times higher risk of tendon retear after arthroscopic rotator cuff repair compared with patients without DM.
Medical student Internet usage: is the literature correct to call it addiction? An opinion piece

Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of academic articles examining “Internet addiction” among medical students. This opinion piece views the Internet as a communication environment and a medical information tool within medical education. Within this context, the paper investigates the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and criteria used in those articles, and questions their assumptions and conclusions. It then argues that what is often viewed as “addiction” may actually be dedication to work.
Landscape pattern changes over 25 years across a hotspot zone in southern Brazil

Forest fragmentation caused by human activities has many implications for natural landscapes, such as habitat reduction and the loss of biodiversity. This study investigated the temporal fragmentation process of forest remnants in a strongly agro-industrialised region in southern Brazil over 25 years. The studied watershed area hosts two important typologies of the Atlantic Forest biome as well as Quaternary remnants of the Brazilian Savanna biome, which are considered hotspots of biodiversity and reflect the intense process of forest fragmentation caused by Brazilian urban and agro-industrial development. Thus, studies encompassing multitemporal scales are paramount to understanding changes in forest patterns and are fundamental for trend predictions of landscape dynamics. To perform the calculation of the mean normalised difference vegetation index, Landsat satellite images from 1991 to 2016 were processed using SPRING® software. Subsequently, FRAGSTATS® software was used to calculate landscape metrics. A reduction in the number of forest fragments since 1991 was observed, with a maximum amount of 5 243 fragments in 1993 that declined to 4 015 fragments in 2016. Although the number of fragments in the watershed decreased, the mean area increased by 72.9% and the mean of the shape index increased from 1.3 in 1991 to 1.5 in 2016. In addition, there was a 64.7% increase in the edge density and a reduction of 35.6 m in the isolation between the nearest neighbours. The degree of isolation of the fragments underwent a process of expansion and reduction when compared to 1991, presenting results that support the hypothesis that the Atlantic Forest is in a process of stabilisation and forest restoration.
Thermographic Images to Measure Health Risks of Workers Exposed to Artificially Refrigerated Environments

Thermography generates high-resolution imagery in real time and is a non-invasive and painless technique devoid of physical contact or exposure to any type of radiation. This technique has been successfully applied to different areas, such as healthand safetyrelated applications, to control cold risk in workers exposed to lowtemperature environments. Thus, this study aims to analyze skin temperature variations in three body parts of the upper limbs (fingers, the center of the hands and wrists on both the left and right sides of the body) caused by exposure to low temperatures in air-conditioned and artificially controlled work environments. The objective is to assess thermography’s adequacy in controlling workers’ health risks. This study used environmental monitoring equipment and infrared radiation detection cameras to capture images of the body parts that were evaluated. The research was conducted on 20 workers from two sectors of a poultry slaughterhouse. Among the three body parts evaluated, the lowest temperatures occurred in the workers’ fingertips, which averaged 16.86oC. This fact may relate to discomfort, pain, decreased performance, functional imbalance and cold-related diseases caused by faulty conditions and/or the equipment used to ensure the workers’ thermal comfort. It was concluded that the thermographic evaluation of activities that involve exposure to the cold is efficient, as well as feasible, when quantifying the potential threats of environmental cold to workers’ health.
gFACs: Filtering, analysis, and conversion to unify genome annotations across alignment and gene prediction frameworks

Motivation Published genome annotations are filled with erroneous gene models that represent issues associated with frame, start side identification, splice sites, and related structural features. The source of these inconsistencies can often be traced to translated text file formats designed to describe long read alignments and predicted gene structures. The majority of gene prediction frameworks do not provide downstream filtering to remove problematic gene annotations, nor do they represent these annotations in a format consistent with current file standards. In addition, these frameworks lack consideration for functional attributes, such as the presence or absence of protein domains which can be used for gene model validation. Summary To provide oversight to the increasing number of published genome annotations, we present gFACs as a software package to filter, analyze, and convert predicted gene models and alignments. gFACs operates across a wide range of alignment, analysis, and gene prediction software inputs with a flexible framework for defining gene models with reliable structural and functional attributes. gFACs supports common downstream applications, including genome browsers and generates extensive details on the filtering process, including distributions that can be visualized to further assess the proposed gene space. Availability and Implementation gFACs is freely available and implemented in Perl with support from BioPerl libraries: https://gitlab.com/PlantGenomicsLab/gFACs Contact Corresponding Authors: Madison.Caballero@uconn.edu and jill.wegrzyn@uconn.edu Supplementary data Supplemental table 1 and supplemental figure 1.
Thermophilic Solid-State Anaerobic Digestion of Corn Straw, Cattle Manure, and Vegetable Waste: Effect of Temperature, Total Solid Content, and C/N Ratio

Thermophilic solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) of agricultural wastes, i.e., corn straw, cattle manure, and vegetable waste, was carried out in this study. The effects of temperature (40-60°C), initial solid content (ISC, 17.5-32.5%), and C/N ratio (15-32 : 1) on biogas production were evaluated using a Box-Behnken experimental design (BBD) combined with response surface methodology (RSM). The results showed that optimization of process parameters is important to promote the SS-AD performance. All the factors, including interactive terms (except the ISC), were significant in the quadratic model for biogas production with SS-AD. Among the three operation parameters, the C/N ratio had the largest effect on biogas production, followed by temperature, and a maximum biogas yield of 241.4 mL gVS−1 could be achieved at 47.3°C, ISC = 24.81%, and C/N = 22.35. After 20 d of SS-AD, the microbial community structure under different conditions was characterized by high-throughput sequencing, showing that Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, Synergistetes, and Proteobacteria dominated the bacterial community, and that Firmicutes had a competitive advantage over Bacteroidetes at elevated temperatures. The biogas production values and relative abundance of OPB54 and Bacteroidia after 20 d of SS-AD can be fitted well using a quadratic model, implying that OPB54 and Bacteroidia play important roles in the methanogenic metabolism for agricultural waste thermophilic SS-AD.
Nature reclaiming its territory in urban areas. Case study: Vacaresti nature Park, Bucharest, Romania

The floristic research carried out at “Balta Văcăreşti”, Bucharest, provided the scientific foundation for the establishment of the Văcăreşti Nature Park in 2016. Between 2012 and 2016 a total of 331 species and subspecies were identified in the researched area. Around 80% of the plants are native (including archaeophytes), while 20% are aliens, some of them being recognised as invasive species (Elodea nuttallii, Azolla filiculoides, Ailanthus altissima, Acer negundo, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Fraxinus pennsylvanica, Parthenocissus inserta, Elaeagnus angustifolia, etc.). A large number of plants with Least Concern and Data Deficient status in the IUCN Red List was noted, most of which are aquatic and paluster species currently threatened due to the reduction or even loss of their habitat (Cyperus fuscus, Cyperus glomeratus, Lemna trisulca, Hydrocharis morsus-ranae, Persicaria amphibia, Sparganium erectum, Typha laxmannii, Utricularia vulgaris). As regards species threatened at national level, Wolffia arrhiza and Utricularia vulgaris were inventoried at “Balta Văcăreşti”.
Establishment and Validation of a Prognostic Risk Model for Autophagy-Related Genes in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Background Autophagy plays an essential role in tumorigenesis. At present, due to the unclear role of autophagy in renal clear cell carcinoma, we studied the potential value of autophagy-related genes (ARGs) in renal clear cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Methods We obtained all ccRCC data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We extracted the expression data of ARGs for difference analysis and carried out biological function analysis on the different results. The autophagy risk model was constructed. The 5-year survival rate was assessed using the model, and the predictive power of the model was evaluated from multiple perspectives. Cox regression analysis was use to assess whether the model could be an independent prognostic factor. Finally, the correlation between the model and clinical indicators is analyzed. Results The patients were divided into the high-risk group and low-risk group according to the median of autophagy risk score, and the results showed that the prognosis of the low-risk group was better than that of a high-risk group. The validation results of external data sets show that our model has good predictive value for ccRCC patients. The model can be an independent prognostic factor. Finally, the results show that our model has a stable predictive ability. Conclusion The autophagy gene model we constructed can be used as an excellent prognostic indicator for ccRCC. Our study provides the possibility of individualized and precise treatment for ccRCC patients.
Contribution of non‐native plants to the phylogenetic homogenization of U.S. yard floras

Cultivation and spread of non‐native plant species may result in either phylogenetic homogenization (increasing similarity) or differentiation (decreasing similarity) of urban floras. However, it is unknown how non‐native species influence homogenization of cultivated versus spontaneously occurring species in cities, and which traits are associated with species that promote homogenization versus differentiation. In this study, we compared homogenization effects of cultivated and spontaneous non‐native species in yard floras across and within seven widely distributed U.S. cities. Additionally, we explored which traits explained their particular contribution to homogenization. We recorded plant presence/absence in 178 private yards distributed among seven metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. We compared phylogenetic homogenization effects of non‐native species within both the cultivated and spontaneous species pools using phylogenetic dissimilarities and the homogenization index. Then, we expressed contributions of non‐native species to the homogenization of each pool as a function of two different sets of plant functional traits using phylogenetic generalized least square (PGLS) models across and within cities. Across cities, spontaneous non‐native species homogenized, and cultivated non‐native species differentiated, yard floras. Within the spontaneous pool, short, small‐seeded non‐native plants and non‐native grasses significantly homogenized yard floras. Within the cultivated pool, species contribution to homogenization was best predicted by plant height, presence of showy flowers, and growth form, with non‐native grasses significantly homogenizing cultivated yard floras. Within cities, non‐native species—whether they were cultivated or spontaneous—consistently homogenized yard floras of the three northern cities and differentiated yard floras of three of the four southern cities, suggesting that homogenization processes are context‐ and scale‐dependent. Likewise, traits explaining homogenization differed substantially among cities. The inconsistent patterns among cities in the plant traits that promoted homogenization of both cultivated and spontaneous species suggest that local environmental and anthropogenic conditions of individual cities imposed strong constraints on trait selection. Linking plant functional traits that promote homogenization with residents’ preferences for vegetation may further enhance understanding of how yard plant communities assemble at regional and local scales.