Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mixed quantum-classical dynamics with time-dependent external fields: A time-dependent density-functional-theory approach

A mixed quantum-classical method aimed at the study of nonadiabatic dynamics in the presence of external electromagnetic fields is developed within the framework of time-dependent density functional theory. To this end, we use a trajectory-based description of the quantum nature of the nuclear degrees of freedom according to Tully's fewest switches trajectories surface hopping, where both the nonadiabatic coupling elements between the different potential energy surfaces, and the coupling with the external field are given as functionals of the ground-state electron density or, equivalently, of the corresponding Kohn-Sham orbitals. The method is applied to the study of the photodissociation dynamics of some simple molecules in gas phase.
Size-dependent photoabsorption and photoemission of small metal particles.

The dynamical electronic response properties of small metal particles are calculated within the frame of the self-consistent spherical jellium model. The method used is the TDLDA (time-dependent local-density approximation) with the inclusion of exchange and correlation. In this way we obtain for the first time insight into the nonlocal electronic response properties at a strictly microscopic level. The size dependence of photoabsorption, photoemission, and of the static polarizability, is discussed in detail. The emergence of the collective volume mode (the volume plasmon) as a function of the numbers of electrons is shown here for the first time. Likewise, the size-dependent Landau damping of these modes is obtained in a quantitative fashion. Compared with the results of any non-self-consistent model, we conclude that only a self-consistent theory like the TDLDA (or an improvement of it) is able to account for all the complexity of the electronic response in small dimensions.
Exploring the Visualization of Schemas for Aggregate-Oriented NoSQL Databases

The lack of an explicit data schema (schemaless) is one of the most attractive NoSQL database features for developers. Being schemaless, these databases provide a greater flexibility, as data with different structure can be stored for the same entity type, which in turn eases data evolution. This flexibility, however, should not be obtained at the expense of losing the benefits provided by having schemas: When writing code that deals with NoSQL databases, developers need to keep in mind at any moment some kind of schema. Also, database tools usually require the knowledge of a schema to implement their functionality. Several approaches to infer an implicit schema from NoSQL data have been proposed recently, and some utilities that take advantage of inferred schemas are emerging. In this article we focus on the requisites for the visualization of schemas for aggregate-oriented NoSQL Databases. Schema diagrams have proven useful in designing and understanding databases. Plenty of tools are available to visualize relational schemas, but the visualization of NoSQL schemas (and the variation that they allow) is still in an immature state, and a great R&D effort is required to achieve tools with the desired capabilities. Here, we study the main challenges to be addressed, and propose some visual representations. Moreover, we outline the desired features to be supported by visualization tools.
Chromosome numbers in some cacti of western North America

Documented chromosome numbers and meiotic behavior were recorded for 23 taxa of 18 species of Cactaceae of south-western United States and adjacent Mexico. All taxa are diploid (n = 11) or polyploid (n = 22, 33, 44), and with regular meiotic behavior.
Is Malaysia Facing Negative Deindustrialization

This paper seeks to examine whether Malaysia is facing negative de-industrialization by examining value-added, trade, and productivity trends over the period 1990-2005. The evidence produced in the paper is concrete enough to confirm that Malaysia is facing negative de-industrialization. While it is typical, as part of the process of structural change, to see a rise and fall in the share occupied by manufacturing in the GDP, the evidence shows that Malaysia is indeed facing premature de-industrialization, with a trend slowdown in manufacturing value-added, trade performance, and productivity since 2000. Not only has the trade performance of manufacturing been falling, manufacturing labor productivity has also slowed down; with the key sectors, such as electric-electronics, textiles, and transport equipment; showing either negative or low productivity growth since 2000. Malaysian industrial policies have been fairly successful in connecting with the global value chains of multinationals and in developing resource-based industries, but have not achieved the same success in stimulating their transformation to high value-added activities. The lack of effective institutional change, partly explained by ethnic policies, is advanced as the prime reason for the setting in of negative de-industrialization in Malaysia.
Fast and Effective Background Subtraction Based on ELBP

Background subtraction is an important component of many com-puter vision systems. In this paper, we present a fast and efficient texture-based method for background subtraction in a video se-quence. At first, a novel LBP (Local Binary Pattern) operator called eLBP is applied to extract the local description of each pixel. Then, the kernel of background subtraction is performed based on two principle phases, i.e. the background building phase and the fore-ground detection phase. In the former phase, the probability that a pixel belongs to foreground is calculated based on the difference between the current eLBP and the adaptive mean eLBP. In the later phase, a thresholding operator is applied on the probability to determine whether a pixel can be classified as foreground, and the adaptive mean eLBP is updated by a user-settable learning rate. Finally, our approach is evaluated against several video sequences compared with the traditional MoG model. Experiments show that our method is suitable for various scenes and is appealing with respect to robustness.
Modeling, Analysis and Control of a Chain Cell Converter

Chain cell converter as a shunt connected, multilevel voltage source converter has been proposed for static VAR compensation. This converter consists of identical H-bridge building blocks (HBBBs) connected in series in each phase. Chain cell converter synthesizes a desired ac waveform from several levels of DC voltages provided by the DC capacitors with only one switching per cycle. The transient model of the converter is developed considering a three phase three wire system. The analysis and design of converter controls is presented. DC voltage balancing strategy which involves pulse swapping is implemented. Simulations are carried out for the performance evaluation of converter controls. Chain cell converter is also tested, when connected in a distribution system, as a STATCOM to compensate the voltage flicker due to an arc furnace load.
Increase in Psychotropic Drug Deliveries after the Xynthia Storm, France, 2010

Abstract Introduction During the night of February 27 and the early morning of February 28, 2010, 15 coastal municipalities situated in two French departments, Vendée and Charente-Maritime, were violently stricken by a severe windstorm named “Xynthia. ” This storm caused the death of 12 individuals in Charente-Maritime and 29 people in Vendée. Houses, agricultural fields, and shellfish companies were severely flooded with seawater. Several thousand people temporarily had to leave their homes. The objective of this study was to estimate the short-term mental health impact of Xynthia, in terms of psychotropic drug delivery, on the resident population of the 15 coastal municipalities severely hit by the flooding. Methods The French national health insurance database was used to calculate a daily number of new psychotropic treatments from September 1, 2008 through December 24, 2010. New treatments were calculated for each of the following European Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Association (EphMRA) classes: tranquilizers (N05C), hypnotics (N05B), and antidepressants (N06A). A period of three weeks following the storm was defined as the exposure period. A generalized additive model with a Poisson distribution that allows for over-dispersion was used to analyze the correlation between the Xynthia variable and the number of new psychotropic treatments. Results With a relative risk (RR) of 1.54 (95% CI, 1.39-1.62) corresponding to an estimate of 409 new deliveries of psychotropic drugs during the three weeks following the storm, this study confirms the importance of the psychological impact of Xynthia. This impact is seen on all three classes of psychotropic drugs studied. The impact is greater for tranquilizers (RR of 1.78; 95% CI, 1.59-1.89) than for hypnotics (RR of 1.53; 95% CI, 1.31-1.67) and antidepressants (RR of 1.26; 95% CI, 1.06-1.40). The RR was higher for females than for males. Conclusion This study shows the importance of the psychological impact of the storm as observed clinically by health workers who intervened in the field during the aftermath of Xynthia. It confirms that administrative databases can be used to show a health impact of a disaster even at a local level. This is one more step in the direction of a comprehensive strategy of collecting information to allow the assessment of the health impact of an extreme event, the detection of vulnerable populations, and the orientation of the short-, mid- and long-term public health response. MotreffY, PirardP, GoriaS, LabradorB, Gourier-FréryC, NicolauJ, Le TertreA, Chan-CheeC. Increase in psychotropic drug deliveries after the Xynthia storm, France, 2010. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2013;28(5):1-6.
Expression of Malus xiaojinensis IRT1 (MxIRT1) protein in transgenic yeast cells leads to degradation through autophagy in the presence of excessive iron

Iron is essential for plants, but highly toxic when present in excess. Consequently, iron uptake by root transporters must be finely tuned to avoid excess uptake from soil under iron excess. The iron‐regulated transporter of Malus xiaojinensis (MxIRT1), induced in roots under iron deficiency, is a highly effective iron(II) transporter. Here, we investigated how the presence of excessive iron leads to MxIRT1 degradation in yeast expressing this plant iron transporter protein. To determine the relationship between iron abundance and MxIRT1 degradation, relative levels of autophagy‐related gene‐8 (ATG8) mRNA and the active ATG8–phosphatidylethanolamine‐conjugated (PE) protein were measured in wild‐type yeast and the autophagic mutant strains atg1∆, atg5∆, atg7∆, ypt7∆ and tor1∆ under normal and excessive iron conditions. The data showed that the exposure of MxIRT1–eGFP‐transformed wild‐type and tor1∆ strains to excessive iron led to significantly increased levels of ATG8 transcript and ATG8–PE protein, which resulted in enhanced MxIRT1 degradation. Co‐localization of mCherry‐ATG8 and MxIRT1–eGFP provided evidence that these proteins interact during autophagy in yeast. While inhibition of autophagic initiation, autophagosome formation and vacuole fusion all decreased MxIRT1 degradation. PMSF inhibition of autophagy prevented degradation, leading to the accumulation of MxIRT1‐containing vesicles in the vacuoles. MxIRT1‐vesicles were sorted into autophagosomes for iron‐induced degradation in yeast, whereas the endogenous iron(II) transporter Fet4 was degraded in an autophagy‐independent manner. Moreover, immunoprecipitation showed that multimono‐ubiquitins provided MxIRT1 with the ubiquitination signal. Together, three factors, iron excess, autophagy and mono‐ubiquitination, affect the functional activity and stability of exogenous MxIRT1 in yeast, thereby preventing iron uptake via this root transporter. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Catalytic Activities of Ribozymes and DNAzymes in Water and Mixed Aqueous Media

Catalytic nucleic acids are regarded as potential therapeutic agents and biosensors. The catalytic activities of nucleic acid enzymes are usually investigated in dilute aqueous solutions, although the physical properties of the reaction environment inside living cells and that in the area proximal to the surface of biosensors in which they operate are quite different from those of pure water. The effect of the molecular environment is also an important focus of research aimed at improving and expanding nucleic acid function by addition of organic solvents to aqueous solutions. In this study, the catalytic activities of RNA and DNA enzymes (hammerhead ribozyme, 17E DNAzyme, R3C ribozyme, and 9DB1 DNAzyme) were investigated using 21 different mixed aqueous solutions comprising organic compounds. Kinetic measurements indicated that these enzymes can display enhanced catalytic activity in mixed solutions with respect to the solution containing no organic additives. Correlation analyses revealed that the turnover rate of the reaction catalyzed by hammerhead ribozyme increased in a medium with a lower dielectric constant than water, and the turnover rate of the reaction catalyzed by 17E DNAzyme increased in conditions that increased the strength of DNA interactions. On the other hand, R3C ribozyme and 9DB1 DNAzyme displayed no significant turnover activity, but their single-turnover rates increased in many mixed solutions. Our data provide insight into the activity of catalytic nucleic acids under various conditions that are applicable to the medical and technology fields, such as in living cells and in biosensors.
Jumping translocations are common in solid tumor cell lines and result in recurrent fusions of whole chromosome arms

Jumping translocations (JTs) and segmental jumping translocations (SJTs) are unbalanced translocations involving a donor chromosome arm or chromosome segment that has fused to multiple recipient chromosomes. In leukemia, where JTs have been predominantly observed, the donor segment (usually 1q) preferentially fuses to the telomere regions of recipient chromosomes. In this study, spectral karyotyping (SKY) and FISH analysis revealed 188 JTs and SJTs in 10 cell lines derived from carcinomas of the bladder, prostate, breast, cervix, and pancreas. Multiple JTs and SJTs were detected in each cell line and contributed to recurrent unbalanced whole‐arm translocations involving chromosome arms 5p, 14q, 15q, 20q, and 21q. Sixty percent (113/188) of JT breakpoints occurred within centromere or pericentromeric regions of the recipient chromosomes, whereas only 12% of the breakpoints were located in the telomere regions. JT breakpoints of both donor and recipient chromosomes coincided with numerous fragile sites as well as viral integration sites for human DNA viruses. The JTs within each tumor cell line promoted clonal progression, leading to the acquisition of extra copies of the donated chromosome segments that often contained oncogenes (MYC, ABL, HER2/NEU, etc.), consequently resulting in tumor‐specific genomic imbalances. Published 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Secure and verifiable outsourcing protocol for non-negative matrix factorisation

With the rapid development of cloud computing services, resource-constrained clients can outsource their expensive computation tasks, such as scientific computations, to untrusted cloud servers. Furthermore, it is essential for these clients to protect their sensitive data and verify the validity of the returned computation results. In this paper, we focus on outsourcing protocol of non-negative matrix factorisation, which is an expensive computation task and has been widely applied to image processing, face recognition, text analysis, and so on. The permutation technique is employed to transform the original problem into a new one in our proposed protocol so as to protect the privacy, and the matrix 1-norm technique is utilised to verify the result returned from the cloud server in order to reduce the verification cost. Based on these two techniques, we construct a secure and verifiable outsourcing protocol for non-negative matrix factorisation. Moreover, the theoretical analysis and the experimental results show that our proposed protocol brings great computation savings for resource-constrained clients and fulfills the goals of correctness, security, verifiability and high efficiency.
Optimal power and cost on placement of Wind turbines using Firefly Algorithm

This paper proposes a placement technique of wind turbines to optimize the total output power and cost in a wind farm using firefly algorithm. The research considered the wake effect of wind turbines and was run for 3 cases: constant wind speed and constant wind direction, constant wind speed and variable wind direction, variable wind speed and variable wind direction. It focused on finding the best position of each turbine in wind farm to minimize the impact of a turbine on others in term of harnessing the power. The simulation shows that the best position was achieved when 73 turbines are installed in Wind Farm with total power 37,611 kW ( 518.4 kW each) and 2 kilometers square length of area when wind speed 12 m/s and wind direction constant.
The Benefit of Chemotherapy in Esophageal Cancer Patients With Residual Disease After Trimodality Therapy

Introduction:The objective of this retrospective study was to determine the potential benefits of chemotherapy in esophageal cancer patients treated with chemoradiation followed by surgery. Materials and Methods:At our institution, 145 patients completed trimodality therapy from 1993 to 2009. Neoadjuvant treatment predominantly consisted of 5-fluorouracil and cisplatin with a concurrent median radiation dose of 50.4 Gy. Sixty-two patients received chemotherapy postoperatively. The majority (49/62) received 3 cycles of docetaxel. Results:Within the entire cohort, a 5-year overall survival (OS) benefit was found in those who received postoperative chemotherapy, OS 37.1% versus 18.0% (P=0.024). The response after neoadjuvant chemoradiation was as follows: 33.8% had a pathologic complete response and 62.8% with residual disease. A 5-year OS and cause-specific survival (CSS) advantage were associated with postoperative chemotherapy among those with macroscopic residual disease after neoadjuvant therapy: OS 38.7% versus 13.9% (P=0.016), CSS 42.8% versus 18.8% (P=0.048). This benefit was not seen in those with a pathologic complete response or those with microscopic residual. A stepwise multivariate Cox regression model evaluating the partial response group revealed that postoperative chemotherapy and M stage were independent predictors of overall and CSS. Conclusions:This analysis revealed that patients with gross residual disease after trimodality therapy for esophageal cancer who received postoperative chemotherapy had an improved overall and CSS. These data suggest that patients with residual disease after trimodality therapy and a reasonable performance status may benefit from postoperative chemotherapy. Prospective trials are needed to confirm these results to define the role of postoperative treatment after trimodality therapy.
Perceptual Defenses and Self-Rated Personality Disorders: A Multivariate Analysis

The relationships between defense mechanisms and personality disorders were explored by means of the Defense Mechanism Test and Millon's Inventory-II in a group of 100 psychiatric nonpsychotic outpatients. Only few significant positive nonparametric correlations were found, concerning barrier isolation, intro-aggression, and lack or lateness of the threat. Also a multiple regression analysis evidenced few significant results and mostly in the negative direction. The unpredicted findings may have been partly determined by a general elevation of personality scale scores (due to the emotional distress of psychiatric patients), leading to a loss of interindividual differences.
Identifying Risk-Based Factors

Existing studies find that size, book-to-market, and momentum explain the cross-section of average returns. Some studies also report evidence that suggests that liquidity risk is priced. There is an ongoing debate about whether these factors are related to fundamental risks. We propose a new test that examines whether a candidate variable meets a necessary condition to be considered a risk-based factor. We demonstrate that there must be a relationship between the conditional mean and conditional variance of the return on any factor-mimicking portfolio if the factor is a priced risk. In addition, the sign of the relation between the conditional mean and variance is given by the sign of the risk premium of the factor-mimicking portfolio. For a number of factors, including SMB, HML, UMD, and a liquidity factor, we test whether there is a reliable relation between the factor-mimicking portfolio's conditional variance and conditional mean. Our results suggest that the size and liquidity factors pass this 'necessary condition' to be considered a priced risk; the book-to-market factor passes the hurdle only during the latter part of the sample period (1963-2003). We find strong evidence that the variance of the momentum factor varies through time, but the relation between conditional variance and conditional mean is of the wrong sign. Thus, the evidence for momentum is not consistent with a risk-based explanation in the mean-variance setting.