Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Categories and health impacts of intimate partner violence in the World Health Organization multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence.

BACKGROUND Intimate partner violence (IPV) damages health and is costly to families and society. Individuals experience different forms and combinations of IPV; better understanding of the respective health effects of these can help develop differentiated responses. This study explores the associations of different categories of IPV on women's mental and physical health. METHODS Using data from the World Health Organization (WHO) Multi-Country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence, multilevel mixed effects logistic regression modelling was used to analyse associations between categories of abuse (physical IPV alone, psychological IPV alone, sexual IPV alone, combined physical and psychological IPV, and combined sexual with psychological and/or physical IPV) with measures of physical and mental health, including self-reported symptoms, suicidal thoughts and attempts, and nights in hospital. RESULTS Countries varied in prevalence of different categories of IPV. All categories of IPV were associated with poorer health outcomes; the two combined abuse categories were the most damaging. The most common category was combined abuse involving sexual IPV, which was associated with the poorest health [attempted suicide: odds ratio (OR): 10.78, 95% confidence interval (CI) 8.37-13.89, thoughts of suicide: 8.47, 7.03-10.02, memory loss: 2.93, 2.41-3.56]. Combined psychological and physical IPV was associated with the next poorest outcomes (attempted suicide: 5.67, 4.23-7.60, thoughts of suicide: 4.41, 3.63-5.37, memory loss: 2.33, 1.88-2.87-). CONCLUSIONS Understanding the prevalence and health impact of different forms and categories of IPV is crucial to risk assessment, tailoring responses to individuals and planning services. Previous analyses that focused on singular forms of IPV likely underestimated the more harmful impacts of combined forms of abuse.
Xylanolytic psychrotrophs from andosolic sedge fens and moss heaths in Iceland

Nine xylanolytic bacterial strains were isolated from fen and heath soils in northern Iceland. They were found by 16S rRNA gene sequencing to belong to the genera Paenibacillus, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, and Stenotrophomonas. Using a simple, plate-based semiquantitative assay with azo-crosslinked xylan as the substrate, it was determined that although isolated from cold environments, most of the strains displayed greater xylanolytic activity under mesophilic conditions, with only the paenibacilli displaying markedly cold-active xylanolytic activity. Indeed, for one isolate, Paenibacillus castaneae OV2122, xylanolytic activity was only detected at 15°C and below under the conditions tested. Of the nine strains, Paenibacillus amylolyticus OV2121 displayed the greatest activity at 5°C. Glycohydrolase family-specific PCR indicated that the paenibacilli produced multiple xylanases of families 10 and 11, whereas a family 8 xylanase was detected in Pseudomonas kilonensis AL1515, and a family 11 xylanase in Stenotrophomonas rhizophila AL1610.
T-TER: Defeating A2 Trojans with Targeted Tamper-Evident Routing

Since the inception of the Integrated Circuit (IC), the size of the transistors used to construct them has continually shrunk. While this advancement significantly improves computing capability, fabrication costs have skyrocketed. As a result, most IC designers must now outsource fabrication. Outsourcing, however, presents a security threat: comprehensive post-fabrication inspection is infeasible given the size of modern ICs, so it is nearly impossible to know if the foundry has altered the original design during fabrication (i.e., inserted a hardware Trojan). Defending against a foundry-side adversary is challenging because—even with as few as two gates—hardware Trojans can completely undermine software security. Researchers have attempted to both detect and prevent foundry-side attacks, but all existing defenses are ineffective against additive Trojans with footprints of a few gates or less. We present Targeted Tamper-Evident Routing (T-TER), a layout-level defense against untrusted foundries, capable of thwarting the insertion of even the stealthiest hardware Trojans. T-TER is directed and routing-centric: it prevents foundry-side attackers from routing Trojan wires to, or directly adjacent to, security-critical wires by shielding them with guard wires. Unlike shield wires commonly deployed for cross-talk reduction, T-TER guard wires pose an additional technical challenge: they must be tamper-evident in both the digital (deletion attacks) and analog (move and jog attacks) domains. We address this challenge by developing a class of designed-in guard wires that are added to the design specifically to protect security-critical wires. T-TER’s guard wires incur minimal overhead, scale with design complexity, and provide tamper-evidence against attacks. We implement automated tools (on top of commercial CAD tools) for deploying guard wires around targeted nets within an open-source System-on-Chip. Lastly, using an existing IC threat assessment toolchain, we show T-TER defeats even the stealthiest known hardware Trojan, with ≈ 1% overhead.
New insights on the massive interacting binary UU Cassiopeiae

We present the results of our study of the close binary UU Cassiopeiae based on previously published multiwavelength photometric and spectroscopic data. Based on eclipse timings from the last 117 years, we find an improved orbital period of Po = 8.d519296(8). In addition, we find a long cycle of length T ∼ 270 d in the Ic-band data. There is no evidence for orbital period change over the last century, suggesting that the rate of mass loss from the system or mass exchange between the stars is small. Sporadic and rapid brightness drops of up to ΔV = 0.3 mag are detected throughout the orbital cycle, and infrared photometry clearly suggests the presence of circumstellar matter. We model the orbital light curve of 11 published datasets, fixing the mass ratio and cooler star temperature from previous spectroscopic work: q = 0.52 and Tc = 22 700 K. We find a system seen at an angle of 74° with a stellar separation of 52 R⊙, a temperature for the hotter star of Th = 30 200 K and, for the hotter and cooler stars, respectively, stellar masses of 17.4 and 9 M⊙, radii of 7.0 and 16.9 R⊙, and surface gravities log g = 3.98 and 2.94. We find an accretion disk surrounding the more massive star that has a radius of 21 R⊙ and a vertical thickness at its outer edge of 6.5 R⊙; the disk nearly occults the hotter star. Two active regions hotter than the surrounding disk are found, one located roughly in the expected position where the stream impacts the disk and the other on the opposite side of the disk. Changes are observed in parameters of the disk and spots in different datasets.
Deep reinforcement learning for automated stock trading: an ensemble strategy

Stock trading strategies play a critical role in investment. However, it is challenging to design a profitable strategy in a complex and dynamic stock market. In this paper, we propose an ensemble strategy that employs deep reinforcement schemes to learn a stock trading strategy by maximizing investment return. We train a deep reinforcement learning agent and obtain an ensemble trading strategy using three actor-critic based algorithms: Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Advantage Actor Critic (A2C), and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG). The ensemble strategy inherits and integrates the best features of the three algorithms, thereby robustly adjusting to different market situations. In order to avoid the large memory consumption in training networks with continuous action space, we employ a load-on-demand technique for processing very large data. We test our algorithms on the 30 Dow Jones stocks that have adequate liquidity. The performance of the trading agent with different reinforcement learning algorithms is evaluated and compared with both the Dow Jones Industrial Average index and the traditional min-variance portfolio allocation strategy. The proposed deep ensemble strategy is shown to outperform the three individual algorithms and two baselines in terms of the risk-adjusted return measured by the Sharpe ratio.
Expression of the aldehyde oxidase 3, ent-copalyl diphosphate synthase, and VIVIPAROUS 1 genes in wheat cultivars differing in their susceptibility to pre-harvest sprouting

The quality of wheat grains is often negatively affected by pre-harvest sprouting (PHS), a complex trait with a poorly understood genetic background. In this study two wheat cultivars differing in their susceptibility to PHS were used to investigate expression of three genes: AAO3 , CPS3 and VP1 . AAO3 is coding for aldehyde oxidase 3, an enzyme involved in the synthesis of abscisic acid. CPS3 codes for ent-copalyl diphosphate synthase which belongs to the pathway of gibberellic acid synthesis. The product of VP1 (VIVIPAROUS 1 ) is a transcription factor which controls expression of the former two genes. The study was carried out using both developing and sprouting-induced grains. In Piko, a wheat cultivar susceptible to PHS, accumulation of the AAO3 transcript was significantly decreased, during the last stages of grain development, in comparison to Slawa, a cultivar tolerant to PHS. In case of the CPS3 and VP1 transcripts, the differences between cultivars were especially evident from 17 th to 31 st day after pollination. In turn, after induction of sprouting within spikes, accumulation of the AAO3 and VP1 mRNA in the Slawa grains was lower in comparison to that observed in the Piko grains. Moreover, accumulation of the CPS3 transcript was significantly higher for Piko than for Slawa, both in sprouting and non-sprouting grains. According to our knowledge this report provides the first description of the AAO3 and CPS3 expression in the context of PHS, and in the future it would be valuable to correlate this information with the data on the accumulation of ABA and GA 3 .
Exploring the Chemistry Induced by Energetic Processing of the H2-bearing, CO-rich Apolar Ice Layer

Interstellar ice mantles on the surfaces of dust grains are thought to have a bilayered structure, with a H2O-rich polar layer, covered by a CO-rich apolar layer that probably harbors H2 and other volatiles such as N2. In this work, we explore the chemistry induced by 2 keV electrons and Lyα photons in H2:CO:15N2 ice analogs of the CO-rich layer when exposed to similar fluences to those expected from the cosmic-ray-induced secondary electrons and UV photons during the typical lifetime of dense clouds. Six products were identified upon 2 keV electron irradiation: CO2, C2O (and other carbon chain oxides), CH4, H2CO, H2C2O, and H15NCO. The total product abundances corresponded to 5%−10% of the initial CO molecules exposed to electron irradiation. Lyα photon irradiation delivered one to two orders of magnitude lower yields with a similar product branching ratio, which may be due to the low UV-photon absorption cross section of the ice sample at this wavelength. Formation of additional N-bearing species, namely C215N2 and 15NH3, was only observed in the absence of H2 and CO molecules, respectively, suggesting that reactants derived from H2 and CO molecules preferentially react with each other instead of with 15N2 and its dissociation products. In summary, ice chemistry induced by energetic processing of the CO-rich apolar ice layer provides alternative formation pathways for several species detected in the interstellar medium, including some related to the complex organic molecule chemistry. Further quantification of these pathways will help astrochemical models constrain their relative contribution to the interstellar budget of, especially, the organic species H2CO and HNCO.
Etude des mécanismes de régulation du métabolisme secondaire chez Botrytis cinerea.

Botrytis cinerea est un champignon necrotrophe et polyphage capable de provoquer la pourriture grise sur plusieurs centaines d’especes vegetales. Les pertes engendrees par cette maladie sont importantes a travers le monde notamment sur des especes economiquement importantes comme la tomate, la fraise ou encore la vigne. Parmi les facteurs de virulence identifies chez B. cinerea se trouvent deux toxines non-hote specifiques. Il s'agit du sesquiterpene botrydial et du polycetide acide botcinique. Meme si leur role redondant dans la necrotrophie a ete demontre, les mecanismes qui gouvernent l’expression des clusters responsables de leur synthese (respectivement BOT et BOA) restent inconnus. Dans ce contexte, l’objectif de mon projet de these etait de caracteriser les differents mecanismes qui regulent le metabolisme secondaire chez B. cinerea. Je me suis particulierement interesse aux clusters BOT et BOA ainsi qu’a un troisieme cluster (PKS7) qui, d’apres le phenotype d’un mutant d’insertion (ADN-T), pourrait etre implique dans la necrotrophie. Grâce a la disponibilite du nouvel assemblage du genome de la souche modele B05.10, un gene candidat codant un facteur de transcription (FT) putatif a pu etre identifie a proximite du cluster BOT. La caracterisation de ce gene a permis de demontrer le role majeur de la proteine (BcBot6) dans l’activation des genes Bcbot et la production subsequente de botrydial. De meme, la caracterisation de Bcboa13, un gene codant un FT putatif present au sein du cluster BOA, a permis de demontrer le role de regulateur positif de BcBoa13 envers les genes Bcboa. A la difference des clusters BOT et BOA, le cluster PKS7 ne contient pas de gene codant pour un potentiel FT specifique. Afin de confirmer le role du metabolite putatif produit par ce cluster et d’identifier sa structure chimique, l’inactivation du gene cle codant une PKS-NRPS (Bcpks7) a ete realisee et des analyses metaboliques ont ete initiees. Finalement, la presence au sein des clusters BOT et BOA de nombreux transposons ayant subi des mutations de type RIP (Repeat-Induced Point mutations) ainsi que la position sub-telomerique des clusters BOA et PKS7 nous a amene a nous interesser au role de la structure chromatinienne dans la regulation de ces clusters. Dans ce cadre, trois mutants deletes dans des genes codant des modificateurs chromatiniens putatifs (les histones methyltransferases BcDim-5 et BcKmt6 et la proteine heterochromatinienne BcHp1) ont ete generes. L’expression des genes cles des clusters BOT, BOA et PKS7 chez les mutants Bcdim-5, Bchp1 et Bckmt6 suggere que differents mecanismes chromatiniens interviennent pour le controle des clusters BOT et BOA d’une part et du cluster PKS7 d’autre part. L’ensemble des resultats obtenus pendant cette these apporte une contribution majeure a la comprehension des mecanismes de regulation specifiques mais aussi de ceux en lien avec la structure chromatinienne de la production de metabolites phytotoxiques impliques dans la necrotrophie chez B. cinerea.
Dual Channel Attention Networks

Channel attention is currently widely used in Computer Vision. Most existing channel attention networks are proposed based on Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks (SE- Net),which can obtain excellent performance by designing complex structures, however, they also has more additional network parameters and higher floating point operations per second (FLOPs). We propose a novel lightweight attention structure called Dual Channel Attention Networks (DCA-Net). By introducing the channel attention preprocessing module and using 1-D convolution with K=1, DCA-Net has a more straightforward and delicate structure. We add DCA-Net to ResNet and perform image classification experiments on CIFAR-100 dataset, object detection and instance segmentation experiments on MS-COCO dataset. Experimental results show that our DCA-Net achieves better results than the existing attention networks, such as SE-Net, ECA-Net and so on. For example, in the image classification task on CIFAR-100, the parameter amount of DCA-Net using ResNet-50 decreases by 50.03 compared to SE-Net using ResNet-101, and decreases by 44.48 compared to ECA-Net using ResNet-101, GFLOPs decreased by 48.41 and 48.21, respectively. At the same time, the Top-1 accuracy of DCA-Net using ResNet-50 is 0.3 higher than that of SE-Net using ResNet-101, and 0.86 higher than that of ECA-Net using ResNet-101.
Future Warming and Intensification of Precipitation Extremes: A “Double Whammy” Leading to Increasing Flood Risk in California

This study focuses on quantifying future anthropogenic changes in surface runoff associated with extreme precipitation in California's Sierra Nevada. The method involves driving a land surface model with output from a high resolution regional atmospheric simulation of the most extreme atmospheric rivers (ARs). AR events were selected from an ensemble of global climate model simulations of historical and late 21st century climate under the “high‐emission” RCP8.5 scenario. Average precipitation during the future ARs increases by ~25% but a much lower proportion falls as snow. The resulting future runoff increase is dramatic—nearly 50%, reflecting both the precipitation increase and simultaneous conversion of snow to rain. The “double whammy” impact on runoff is largest in the 2,000–2,500 m elevation band, where the snowfall loss and precipitation increase are both especially large. This huge increase in runoff during the most extreme AR events could present major flood control challenges for the region.
A distance-independent individual-tree growth model to simulate management regimes in native Araucaria forests

ABSTRACT Unfettered exploitation of Brazilian forests over the past century, through conversion to cropping and pasture lands and commercial tree plantations, has reduced native Araucaria forests to fragments, restricted largely to small landholdings and protected areas. To encourage sustainable forestry activity in smallholdings and stimulate the expansion of Araucaria natural forests, we developed a distance-independent individual-tree growth model designed to simulate management regimes in native Araucaria forests. The model was constructed with data collected from 25 contiguous 1-ha permanent plots established in the Irati National Forest in southern Brazil. Because native Araucaria forests are comprised of hundreds of species, we parameterized diameter increment, survival, and recruitment models for six ecological species groups: understory, subcanopy, upper canopy shade-tolerant, upper canopy light-demanding, pioneer, and emergent. The observed and estimated stand volumes were very similar (R2 = 0.97) using independent data. Simulations using a plot with an average density were performed to present the model outputs, including harvest simulations. The constructed model may be suitable for exploring management regimes in smallholdings and predicting aboveground biomass.
Genetic population structure of blue sea star Linckia laevigata

The blue sea star, Linckia laevigata, is commonly found in shallow water reef flats throughout the Philippine archipelago. Though it is characterised as being rather sedentary in its adult phase, it has a long planktonic larval duration (PLD) of 22-28 days (Yamagutchi, 1977). Therefore, it has a great potential for large distance dispersal, which is expected to be associated with high gene flow and a shallow genetic population structure. To test this hypothesis, this study investigates its genetic population structure and connectivity pattern in the islands of the Eastern Visayas (Philippines) by using partial sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene (COI) as genetic marker. In July and August 2010, 151 L. laevigata tissue samples were collected at five sampling stations: San Jose, Northern Samar; Almagro, Western Samar; Marabut, Western Samar; Salcedo, Eastern Samar; and Merida, Leyte. Samples were preserved in absolute ethanol, which was replaced after 24 hours. Then, the samples were stored at 4°C (Kochzius et al., 2009). Molecular genetic analysis will be done in the Plant Biology and Nature Management (APNA) Laboratory at the VUB Etterbeek campus from November 2010 – April 2011.
Cryptobiometrics for the Generation of Cancellable Symmetric and Asymmetric Ciphers with Perfect Secrecy

Security objectives are the triad of confidentiality, integrity, and authentication, which may be extended with availability, utility, and control. In order to achieve these goals, cryptobiometrics is essential. It is desirable that a number of characteristics are further met, such as cancellation, irrevocability, unlinkability, irreversibility, variability, reliability, and biometric bit-length. To this end, we designed a cryptobiometrics system featuring the above-mentioned characteristics, in order to generate cryptographic keys and the rest of the elements of cryptographic schemes—both symmetric and asymmetric—from a biometric pattern or template, no matter the origin (i.e., face, fingerprint, voice, gait, behaviour, and so on). This system uses perfect substitution and transposition encryption, showing that there exist two systems with these features, not just one (i.e., the Vernam substitution cipher). We offer a practical application using voice biometrics by means of the Welch periodogram, in which we achieved the remarkable result of an equal error rate of (0.0631, 0.9361). Furthermore, by means of a constructed template, we were able to generate the prime value which specifies the elliptic curve describing all other data of the cryptographic scheme, including the private and public key, as well as the symmetric AES key shared between the templates of two users.
Production technology of late Roman decorated tableware from the Vesuvius environs: Evidence from Pollena Trocchia (Campania region, Italy)

The northern slope of Mt. Vesuvius contains some interesting archaeological sites, including the site discovered in the town of Pollena Trocchia, where the remains, dated to between the 79 and 472 CE eruptions, document the transition from the Roman to late Roman cultural and socioeconomic settings. Profound changes occurred in this time interval, which can be inferred from changes in the ceramic manufacturing processes. Common wares, as the most widespread ceramic class in the archaeological record, are a useful example that illustrates this technological transformation. Seventeen samples of tableware, distinguished into three ceramic classes according to the method of slip application (i.e., Slipped Ware, Painted Ware “a straccio,” and Painted Ware), were analyzed. The results highlight the use of high‐CaO clayey raw materials compositionally similar to Apennine clayey deposits. The clay bodies were occasionally tempered with sandy‐silt materials composed of volcanic grains with lesser amounts of siliciclastic fragments. Firing temperatures ranged from 800 to 950°C, as suggested by quantitative X‐ray powder diffraction and microstructural analyses combined with colorimetric measurements of the ceramic bodies. Micro‐Raman analyses performed on slips revealed the use of ochre for decorating the vessels; it was applied in a different way, representing an actual technological change.