Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
3 0 M ar 2 01 5 Nuclear force and the EMC e ff ct

A linear correlation is shown quantitatively between the ma gnitude of the EMC e ffect measured in electron deep inelastic scattering (DIS) and the nuclear residual strong interaction energy (R SIE) obtained from nuclear binding energy subtracting the C oulomb energy contribution. This phenomenological relationship is used to extract the size of in-medium correction (IMC) e ffect on deuteron and to predict the EMC slopes |dREMC/dx| of various nuclei. We further investigate the correlations between RSIE and other quantities which are related to the EMC e ffect. The observed correlations among RSIE, EMC slope and SRC ratio R2N Ntotal/Nnp(3S 1) imply that the local nuclear environment drives the modifica tion of quark distributions.
Towards Robust Malware Detection by Alex Yangyang Huang

A central challenge of malware detection using machine learning methods is the presence of adversarial variants, small changes to detectable malware that allow it to evade a model (i.e. be classified as benign). We take inspiration from adversarial variant generation methods in the continuous-valued image domain to introduce methods for malware in the binarydomain. We incorporate these methods in the training of hardened models towards the goal of robustness against adversarial variants. Additionally, we provide visualization tools for analysis of hardened models. Our tools illustrate the difference in loss behavior between models trained with different methods, the effect of adversarial learning on the loss landscape of a model, and the effect of adversarial learning on the decision map of a model. The adversarial learning framework and the visualization tools in combination allow for the creation and understanding of robust models.
A Texture Synthesis Model Based on Semi-Discrete Optimal Transport in Patch Space

Exemplar-based texture synthesis consists in producing new synthetic images which have the same perceptual characteristics than a given texture sample while exhibiting sufficient innovation (to avoid verbatim copy). In this paper, we propose to address this problem with a model obtained as local transformations of Gaussian random fields. The local transformations operate on 3x3 patches and are designed to solve a semi-discrete optimal transport problem in order to reimpose the patch distribution of the exemplar texture. The semi-discrete optimal transport problem is solved with a stochastic gradient algorithm, whose convergence speed is evaluated on several practical transport cases.After studying the properties of such transformed Gaussian random fields, we propose a multiscale extension of the model which aims at preserving the patch distribution of the exemplar texture at multiple scales. Experiments demonstrate that this multiscale model is able to synthesize structured textures while keeping several mathematical guarantees, and with low requirements in synthesis time and memory storage. In particular, a single patch optimal transport map is shown to be better than iterated nearest neighbor assignments in terms of statistical guarantees. Besides, once the model is estimated, the resulting synthesis algorithm is fast and highly parallel since it amounts to perform weighted nearest neighbor patch assignments at each scale.
Low Population Differentiation but High Phenotypic Plasticity of European Beech in Germany

Drought is increasingly impairing the vitality of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) in several regions of its distribution range. In times of climate change, adaptive traits such as plant phenology and frost tolerance are also becoming more important. Adaptive patterns of European beech seem to be complex, as contrasting results regarding the relative effect of phenotypic plasticity and genetic variation in trait variation have been reported. Here, we used a large translocation experiment comprising more than 15,500 seedlings in three regions of Germany to investigate local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in beech. We found low population differentiation regarding plant survival, and plant height increment, but high phenotypic plasticity for these traits. Survival showed a positive correlation with temperature variables and a less pronounced and negative correlation with precipitation-related variables. This suggests a predominant effect of temperature and growing degree days on the survival of beech seedlings under moderate drought stress. The high phenotypic plasticity may help beech to cope with changing environmental conditions, albeit increasing drought stress may make adaptive changes necessary in the long term.
Magnolol, A Novel Antagonist of Thrombin and PAR-1, Inhibits Thrombin-Induced Connective Tissue Growth Factor (CTGF) Expression in Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells and Ameliorate Pathogenesis of Restenosis in Rats

Restenosis and destructive vascular remodeling are the main reasons for treatment failure in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). In this study, we explored the efficacy of magnolol (a traditional Chinese medicine) in the treatment of restenosis. The results of this study showed that the activities of thrombin and PAR-1 (protease-activated receptor 1) were significantly decreased by the treatment of magnolol. Based on protein docking analysis, magnolol exhibits its potential to bind to the PAR-1 active site. In addition, thrombin-induced connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) expression and the upstream of CTGF such as JNK-1 (but not JNK-2), c-Jun, and AP-1 were distinctly inhibited by magnolol (50 μM) in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC). For the functional assay, magnolol (50 μM) significantly inhibited the migration of VSMC, and rats treated with magnolol (13 mg/kg/day) after balloon angioplasty has observed a significant reduction in the formation of common arterial neointima. In conclusion, we identified a novel mechanism by which magnolol acts as the thrombin activity inhibitor and may be the PAR-1 antagonist. In accordance with these functions, magnolol could decrease thrombin-induced CTGF expression in VSMCs via PAR-1/JNK-1/AP-1 signaling.
Green Credit and Company R&D Level: Empirical Research Based on Threshold Effects

Commercial banks follow sustainable development strategies to provide green credit for companies. As the main target for banks to issue green credit, environmental protection companies carry out research and development (R&D) activities for the purposes of protecting the environment and sustainable development. Therefore, the R&D level of environmental protection companies is a measure of whether the green credit policy meets its purpose. Therefore, it is particularly important to study green credit from a company perspective. This paper used panel data from 24 environmental protection companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2017 and adopted a threshold model to examine the relationship between green credit and company R&D level. The results indicate that there is a positive but nonlinear relationship between green credit and company R&D levels. The empirical analysis through the threshold model shows that a threshold effect remains on the relationship and this threshold effect is caused by the levels of firm size, bank lending, and government subsidies.
Sea State and Rain: A Second Take on Dual-Frequency Altimetry

TOPEX and Jason were the first two dual-frequency altimeters in space, with both operating at Ku- and C-band. Thus, each gives two measurements of the normalized backscatter, σ0, (from which wind speed is calculated) and two estimates of wave height. Departures from a well-defined relationship between the Ku- and C-band σ0 values give an indication of rain. This study investigates differences between the two instruments using data from Jason's verification phase. Jason's Ku-band estimates of wave height are ∼1.8% less than TOPEX's, whereas its σ0 values are higher. When these effects have been removed the root mean square (rms) mismatch between TOPEX and Jason's Ku-band observations is close to that for TOPEX's observations at its two frequencies, and the changes in σ0 with varying wave height conditions are the same for the two altimeters. Rain flagging and quantitative estimates of rain rate are both based on the atmospheric attenuation derived from the σ0 measurements at the two frequencies. The attenuation estimates of TOPEX and Jason agree very well, and a threshold of−0.5 dB is effective at removing the majority of spurious data records from the Jason GDRs. In the high σ0 regime, anomalous data can be caused by processes other than rain. Consequently, for these low wind conditions, neither can reliable rain detection be based on altimetry alone, nor can a generic rain flag be expected to remove all suspect data.
Protein profile of the cysts of Taenia hydatigena, Taenia saginata, Echinococcus granulosus and Taenia ovis

1Sameh Abuseir, 2Uschi Nagel-Kohl, 3Christina Strube 1Department of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, An-Najah National University, Nablus, West Bank, Palestine. 2Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, Veterinary Institute, Hanover, Germany. 3Institute for Parasitology, Center for Infection Medicine, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Hanover, Germany.
A factorisation algorithm in Adiabatic Quantum Computation

The problem of factorising positive integer N into two integer factors x and y is first reformulated as an optimisation problem over the positive integer domain of either of the Diophantine polynomials Q N ( x , y ) = N 2 N − xy 2 + x x − y 2 or R N ( x , y ) = N 2 N − xy 2 + x − y 2 + x , of each of which the optimal solution is unique with x ≤ N ≤ y , and x = 1 if and only if N is prime. An algorithm in the context of Adiabatic Quantum Computation is then proposed for the general factorisation problem.
Advances in La-Based High-k Dielectrics for MOS Applications

This paper reviews the studies on La-based high-k dielectrics for metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) applications in recent years. According to the analyses of the physical and chemical characteristics of La2O3, its hygroscopicity and defects (oxygen vacancies, oxygen interstitials, interface states, and grain boundary states) are the main problems for high-performance devices. Reports show that post-deposition treatments (high temperature, laser), nitrogen incorporation and doping by other high-k material are capable of solving these problems. On the other hand, doping La into other high-k oxides can effectively passivate their oxygen vacancies and improve the threshold voltages of relevant MOS devices, thus improving the device performance. Investigations on MOS devices including non-volatile memory, MOS field-effect transistor, thin-film transistor, and novel devices (FinFET and nanowire-based transistor) suggest that La-based high-k dielectrics have high potential to fulfill the high-performance requirements in future MOS applications.
EVALUATION OF GROUND MOTION INTENSITIES FROM INDUCED EARTHQUAKES USING “DID YOU FEEL IT?” DATA

The Central and Eastern United States has recently experienced a large number of earthquakes that are suspected of being induced by anthropogenic activities. Seismic risk assessment is known to be sensitive to ground motion predictions, so it is important to understand whether the intensity of ground shaking produced by those earthquakes differs relative to motions from comparable natural earthquakes. Unfortunately, due to sparse instrumentation in this area, we have limited recorded strong motion data and thus the question has not been resolved definitively. Here we attempt to address this question using U.S. Geological Survey “Did You Feel It? ” (DYFI) data. Using a large set of DYFI survey responses (each with an inferred Macroseismic Intensity and a corresponding earthquake magnitude and distance), we evaluate differences between responses to natural and induced earthquakes. We find a trend that induced earthquakes produce comparable or possibly larger intensities at close distances to the causal earthquake, but that these intensities attenuate faster than natural earthquakes. This finding is consistent with previous literature on the topic, which infers that this effect is due to induced earthquakes being shallow but having relatively low stress drops. Further we find that the deviations cannot be explained by underlying factors such as differences in exposed populations, survey response rates, or deviations in responses after a sequence of felt earthquakes. This work lends further credibility to the hypothesis that induced earthquakes are capable of producing strong near-fault ground shaking. Future work will investigate the impact of this phenomenon on seismic risk in the Central and Eastern United States. induced earthquakes. Similar rolling average plots for magnitude-dependent residuals, computed over 0.8-wide magnitude bins, are smaller in absolute value for our model than for AWW14 over 87.1% of binned magnitudes in the case of naturally occurring earthquakes and over 100% of binned magnitudes in the case of potentially induced earthquakes. The maximum deviation of these plots from zero is 1.08 times larger for AWW14 in the case of naturally occurring earthquakes (0.59 compared to 0.55) and 2.76 times larger for AWW14 in the case of potentially induced earthquakes (0.96 compared to 0.35).
Propofol increases Bcl-2 Levels to protect cell from death

Bcl-2 is an important gene of apoptosis research, during the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between Bcl-2 and the apoptosis, but only a few studies talk about the relationship between Bcl-2 and propofol, which is a wild use narcotic that can protect cells against various injuries. In the present study, we showed that propofol could down-regulate miR-297a-5p to increased Bcl-2 level. We think this might be a possible mechanism of propofol protecting cell from death. Furthermore, we use an apoptotic drug staurosporine to further improve the propofol’s cell protecting function by showing that propofol prevented neurons against staurosporine. Our study supplies a possible mechanism that propofol could regulating Bcl-2 level through miRNA to protect cells.
Accuracy of Imputation of Microsatellite Markers from an SNP50K Chip in Spanish Assaf Sheep

Background: Traditional and new genotyping technologies must be combined by applying bridge methodologies that avoid double genotyping costs. This study aims to identify and evaluate a reliable approach to precisely impute microsatellite markers from SNP-chip panels to perform parental verifications in sheep. Moreover, we will assess the optimum number of SNPs necessary to accurately impute microsatellite markers to develop a low-density SNP chip for parentage verification in the Assaf sheep breed.Results: A total of 4,423 animals belonging to the Spanish Assaf sheep breed were genotyped for 19 microsatellites and an ovine custom 49,897 SNP array. The accuracy of microsatellite marker imputation, performed with BEAGLE v5.1 software, was assessed with three metrics, namely, genotype concordance (C), genotype dosage (length r2), and allelic dosage (allelic r2), for all imputation scenarios tested (0.5-10 Mb microsatellite flanking SNP windows). The accuracy of our imputation results for the three metrics analyzed for all haplotype lengths tested was higher than 0.90 (C), 0.80 (length r2), and 0.75 (allelic r2). Considering that the objective of the study was to assess a SNP window length that provides the best accuracy for the microsatellite imputation procedure to design an affordable low-density SNP chip for parentage testing, we considered 2 Mb to be the best SNP haplotype length for further analyses (SNPs/window =74.05, C= 0.970; length r2= 0.952, allelic r2=0.899). We additionally evaluated imputation performance under two null models, naive and random, which showed weak genotype concordance averages in comparison with imputed microsatellites (0.41 and 0.15, respectively). Conclusions: We presented for the first time a precise methodology in dairy sheep to impute multiallelic microsatellite genotypes from biallelic SNP markers. The use of a 2 Mb SNP flanking window for each microsatellite has been shown to achieve high accuracy in the imputation procedure while providing a low-density SNP chip that could be cost-effective. The results from this study will undoubtedly have a significant impact on sheep breeders overcoming the problem of parentage verification when different genotyping platforms have been used across generations.
Towards an Architecture for Discovering Domain Dynamics : Affordances , Causal Laws , and Executability Conditions

Robots assisting humans in complex domains often have to reason with different descriptions of incomplete domain knowledge. It is difficult to equip such robots with comprehensive knowledge about the domain and axioms governing the domain dynamics. This paper presents a combined architecture that enables interactive and cumulative discovery of axioms governing action capabilities, and the preconditions and effects of actions in the domain. Specifically, Answer Set Prolog is used to represent the incomplete domain knowledge, and to reason with this knowledge for planning and diagnostics. Unexpected outcomes observed during plan execution trigger reinforcement learning to interactively discover specific instances of previously unknown axioms and to revise the existing axioms. Furthermore, a decision tree induction approach based on the relational domain representation constructs generic versions of the discovered axioms, which are then used for subsequent reasoning. The architecture’s capabilities are illustrated and evaluated in a simulated domain of a robot moving objects to specific places or people in an indoor domain.
Microbiome in Acute Exacerbation and Stable Phase of COPD: A Descriptive and Comparative Study of 16s rRNA Sequencing and Metagenomic Sequencing

Background: The role of bacteria in different courses of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has not been very clarified. In this study, sputum samples from patients at different courses of COPD were collected to analyze the differences of the structure and function of respiratory microbiome in different courses of COPD.Results: Our study involved 38 patients with acute exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD). Among them, 42 sputum samples were collected from the acute exacerbation of COPD (Of these 38 patients, 4 patients also collected sputum from the second acute exacerbation phase), and 12 sputum samples were collected from the stable phase of COPD (6 of the above 38 patients). Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria dominated the phylum in all the COPD samples, while Streptococcus, Neisseria, Haemophilus and Prevotella is the top 4 species in the cohort. Salmonella, Salmonella, Pseudomonas and Proteobacteria achieved higher abundance in AECOPD group. Samples from AECOPD patients showed higher α diversity. Moreover, genes annotated to K07481(the function is related to transposase) and K16087(the function is related to hemoglobin/transferrin/lactoferrin receptor protein) in stable subgroup showed higher abundance than that in acute exacerbation subgroup. Compared to samples from stable COPD, Proteobacteria contributed the most antibiotic resistance genes. Conclusions: There are differences in the function and metabolism of respiratory microbiome in patients with different course of COPD. Word count: 218/350
Drivers of people's preferences for spatial proximity to energy infrastructure technologies: a cross-country analysis

Many countries plan to decarbonise their energy systems by increasing energy efficiency and expanding the use of renewable energy sources (RES). Such actions require significant investments in new energy infrastructures. While people are generally accepting of these infrastructures, opposition sometimes arises when these developments are sited at close proximity to people's residences. Therefore, it is important to understand what actually drives people's preferences for spatial proximity to different energy infrastructure technologies. This study examines the factors influencing people's proximity preferences to different energy technologies using a cross-country econometric analysis of the stated preference data from an unprecedented survey conducted on nationally representative samples of the population in Ireland, the US and Germany. The survey involved more than 4,500 participants in total. This paper presents the data and selected results from a generalised ordered logit model for each energy technology surveyed. These are; wind turbines, solar power technology, biomass power plant, coal-red power plant and natural gas power plant. The results show that, in general, German and Irish citizens are willing to accept energy infrastructures at smaller distances to their homes than their US counterparts. Moreover, attitudinal factors are found to shape people's preferences more consistently than any of the socio-demographic characteristics. *Corresponding Author: jason.harold@esri.ie
A Blockchain-Based Solution to High-Volume Web Scraping With Smart Contracts on Ethereum

Since it is difficult to protect servers from high-volume scraping, a new way to reduce excessive requests is needed. Using rougher methods such as rate limit or IP control mechanisms are not sufficient. In this report we propose a new solution to counter high-volume web scraping with blockchain technology. We create a cryptographic algorithm and use it on a mobile device to communicate with an Ethereum network with the purpose to control server access. Our studies seem to indicate that blockchain technology on mobile devices has potential to limit the way information is accessed. Furthermore, blockchains have potential to act as an additional security layer rather than simply a network solution. To determine the practical effectiveness of this solution, more studies are needed.
Wastewater Treatment by Biological Processes

The presence of different organic and inorganic pollutants in wastewater treatment plant is the most important and environmental issue for the last few decades due to the toxicity of the contaminants for humans as well as for the environment. Different methods have been applied for developing wastewater treatment plants. Anaerobic–aerobic treatment methods receive great attention due to their numerous advantages such as low energy consumption, less chemical requirement, low sludge production, vast potential of resource recovery and less requirement of equipment. Aerobic wastewater treatments are being used for industrial as well as municipal wastewater treatment plants. Anaerobic treatment systems are also applied for the treatment of sewage wastewater. Cost effective technologies with high removal efficiency are required to develop for the treatment of high organic industrial and municipal wastewater. However, there is need to implement environmental laws and policies for the discharge of toxic pollutants in water bodies.
Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Metabolites Predict Tissue Loss after Experimental Acute Traumatic Brain Injury

Similar injuries among patients with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) can lead to a wide variety of pathological and clinical outcomes. Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (1H-MRS) can provide a metabolic profile that correlates with injury severity and cognitive outcomes in chronic human TBI. Experimental models of acute TBI have shown heterogeneity with regards to tissue loss measured using T2-weighted MRI and histopathology despite the same experimental parameters. Our goal was to determine whether an early 1H-MRS spectroscopic profile could predict the subsequent volume of tissue loss after experimental acute TBI.