Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the escape of water from Enceladus

[1] On 14 July 2005, Cassini passed within 175 km of Enceladus’ surface enabling a direct in situ measurement of water escaping from the surface by the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and the observation of a stellar occultation by the Ultraviolet Spectrometer (UVIS). We have developed a three-dimensional, Monte Carlo neutral model to simultaneously model the INMS and UVIS measurements of water gas density and column density, respectively. The data are consistent with a two-component atmosphere; the first with a weak, distributed source on the surface which, if global, has a source rate of ∼8 × 1025 H2O/s, and the second with a much larger source localized at the south pole with a source rate ∼1028 H2O/s. This latter source is possibly coincident with the “tiger stripe” series of fractures revealed by the Imaging Science Subsystem instrument where the ice was measured to be warmer than the surrounding regions by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer instrument. We estimate the plasma mass loading rate due to interaction between the plume and magnetospheric plasma is 2–3 kg/s for a plume source of 1028 H2O/s. Pickup of water group ions in the plume slows down the plasma to ∼10 km/s relative to Enceladus in the region of, and downstream of, the south polar plume. This is consistent with the mass loading rate inferred from magnetic field perturbations detected during the Cassini flyby and suggests an additional source may be needed to explain the plasma flow deflections detected by the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer.
MMSE transmit optimization with interference pre-compensation

We address the problem of nonlinear transmitter design for a point-to-multipoint wireless downlink, where the transmitter is equipped with multiple antennas and each of the independent receivers has a single antenna. We show that the downlink with perfect interference pre-compensation (IPC) has the same normalize MSE achievable region under a sum power constraint as an equivalent uplink with perfect successive interference cancellation (SlC). Based on this duality, we propose a nonlinear downlink transmit framework for joint MSE optimization. The strategy is equivalent to MMSE-DFE with perfect detection in terms of normalized MSE and SINR. As application examples, we solve the problem of minimizing the total transmit power while maintaining individual normalized MSE targets. For practical use, we propose a transmit scheme based on Tomlinson-Harashima-precoding (THP), which has a very simple structure and can be considered as the downlink counterpart of MMSE-DFE. Furthermore, in order to reduce the preceding loss, a strategy which combines THP with signal constellation shaping is utilized to compensate the power enhancement caused by interference pre-subtraction.
Quantification of the normal range of myocardial blood flow and flow reserve with 82rubidium versus 13N-ammonia PET

Coronary artery disease (CAD) can be diagnosed by comparing myocardial perfusion scans with a database defining the lower limit of normal myocardial blood flow and flow reserve (MFR). Both 13N-ammonia and 82rubidium tracers can be used to generate flow images, however only 13N-ammonia has been fully validated for quantifying blood flow and MFR using compartmental models. Normal databases have thus only been reported using 13N-ammonia PET and compartmental modeling. This study aimed to establish a lower limit of normal MFR for an 82Rb database using a compartmental model, and to determine if a simplified model would reduce the measured range of normal MFR for both tracers, improving identification of regional flow defects. 14 subjects with <5% risk of CAD underwent rest and dipyridamole stress 82Rb and 13N-ammonia dynamic PET imaging in a randomized order within a 2-week period. MBF was quantified using a one-compartment model for 82Rb, and a two- compartment model for 13N-ammonia. A simplified model was used to estimate the net retention rate for both tracers. Model- specific extraction functions were determined to obtain flow estimates. It was found that the retention reserve variability the was lowest and was equivalent for both tracers (plusmn 15% globally, plusmn 16% regionally) indicating that the retention model may be preferable for detection and localization of flow reductions. The two-compartment model for 13N-ammonia had the smallest normal MFR range (mean-2sd = 2.27 globally, 1.48 regionally) confirming its precision for absolute flow quantification.
Earlywood and latewood elastic properties in loblolly pine

Abstract The elastic properties of earlywood and latewood and their variability were measured in 388 specimens from six loblolly pine trees in a commercial plantation. Properties measured included longitudinal modulus of elasticity, shear modulus, specific gravity, microfibril angle and presence of compression wood. Novel testing procedures were developed to measure properties from specimens of 1 mm×1 mm×30 mm from earlywood or latewood. The elastic properties varied substantially circumferentially around a given ring and this variation was nearly as large as the variation across rings. The elastic properties varied by ring and height, but while the modulus of elasticity increased with height, the shear modulus decreased with height. A strong correlation was found between modulus of elasticity and shear modulus, but only at low heights and inner rings. Specific gravity and microfibril angle were the strongest predictors of elastic properties and explained 75% of the variation in modulus of elasticity for latewood. Despite being the best predictors in this study, these parameters accounted for less than half of the variability of earlywood modulus of elasticity, earlywood shear modulus and latewood shear modulus.
Invisible Inequality : Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families

Pointing to a “thin evidentiary base” for claims of social class differences in the interior of family life, Kingston also asserts that “class distinguishes neither distinctive parenting styles or distinctive involvement of kids” in specific behaviors (p. 134). One problem with many studies is that they are narrowly focused. Researchers look at the influence of parents’ education on parn recent decades, sociological knowledge about inequality in family life has increased dramatically. Yet, debate persists, especially about the transmission of class advantages to children. Kingston (2000) and others question whether disparate aspects of family life cohere in meaningful patterns. I
Evaluation Methods and Accuracy in Probabilistic Load Flow Solutions

This paper presents a new method for obtaining a probabilistic load flow solution using a discrete frequency domain convolution technique. It is shown that this method has greater accuracy while providing a breakthrough in computational speed. A detailed example compares the numerical results with a Monte Carlo simulation. The effects of nonlinearity in the network equations are discussed.
Fallacies and fantasies: the theoretical underpinnings of the Coexistence Approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction

Abstract. The Coexistence Approach has been used to infer palaeoclimates for many Eurasian fossil plant assemblages. However, the theory that underpins the method has never been examined in detail. Here we discuss acknowledged and implicit assumptions and assess the statistical nature and pseudo-logic of the method. We also compare the Coexistence Approach theory with the active field of species distribution modelling. We argue that the assumptions will inevitably be violated to some degree and that the method lacks any substantive means to identify or quantify these violations. The absence of a statistical framework makes the method highly vulnerable to the vagaries of statistical outliers and exotic elements. In addition, we find numerous logical inconsistencies, such as how climate shifts are quantified (the use of a "centre value" of a coexistence interval) and the ability to reconstruct "extinct" climates from modern plant distributions. Given the problems that have surfaced in species distribution modelling, accurate and precise quantitative reconstructions of palaeoclimates (or even climate shifts) using the nearest-living-relative principle and rectilinear niches (the basis of the method) will not be possible. The Coexistence Approach can be summarised as an exercise that shoehorns a plant fossil assemblage into coexistence and then assumes that this must be the climate. Given the theoretical issues and methodological issues highlighted elsewhere, we suggest that the method be discontinued and that all past reconstructions be disregarded and revisited using less fallacious methods. We outline six steps for (further) validation of available and future taxon-based methods and advocate developing (semi-quantitative) methods that prioritise robustness over precision.
Reference signal extraction for GSM passive coherent location

This paper investigates two equalization methods enabling the passive coherent location (PCL) system using GSM as illuminator of opportunity to eliminate the distortion of the reference signal. The first one is the Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) based on a blind method. The second one using the Viterbi Algorithm to decode the transmitted bits and to regenerate the reference signal.
Developmental neurotoxicity of persistent and non-persistent pollutants Behavioral and neurochemical assessments of a perfluorinated compound , pesticides and interaction effects

Lee, I. 2015. Developmental neurotoxicity of persistent and non-persistent pollutants. Behavioral and neurochemical assessments of a perfluorinated compound, pesticides and interaction effects. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1283. 68 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9326-4. The focus of this thesis was to investigate developmental neurotoxic effects of different persistent and non-persistent environmental pollutants, alone or in binary mixtures, when exposure occurs during a critical period of brain development, in mice. The compounds investigated included a perfluorinated compound, perfluorohexane sulphonate (PFHxS), and four different pesticides, endosulfan, cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos and carbaryl. Both persistent and non-persistent pollutants are detected in the environment and in humans, which shows that exposure to these compounds is occurring in real life. Humans can therefore be exposed to various pollutants during their whole lifetime, starting from the gestational period to adulthood. Furthermore, exposure to environmental pollutants is rarely exclusive to a single compound, but rather occurs through combinations of various pollutants present in the environment. Exposure to environmental pollutants during human brain development have been suggested to be a possible cause for neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Previous studies have shown that chemicals can induce irreversible disorders in brain function when exposure to these chemicals occurs during a critical defined period of the brain development known as the brain growth spurt (BGS). The BGS is characterized by a rapid growth and development of the immature brain. In humans, and mice, this period also overlaps the lactation period indicating that newborns and toddlers can be exposed via mothers’ milk as well. This thesis has shown that a single oral exposure to PFHxS, endosulfan, cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos or carbaryl can induce developmental neurotoxic effects in mice, when exposure occurs during a critical period of brain development. These effects are manifested as persistent altered adult spontaneous behavior in a novel home environment, modified habituation, altered susceptibility of the cholinergic system and changed levels of neuroproteins in the mouse brain. Furthermore, a single neonatal co-exposure to a binary mixture of carbaryl/chlorpyrifos or PFHxS/endosulfan can interact and exacerbate the adult behavioral effects. These effects were seen at dosages were the single compound did not elicit a response or induced a much weaker behavioral effect. This indicates that risk assessments conducted on single compounds might underestimate interaction effects of mixtures when co-exposed.
Unsupervised Abstractive Meeting Summarization with Multi-Sentence Compression and Budgeted Submodular Maximization

We introduce a novel graph-based framework for abstractive meeting speech summarization that is fully unsupervised and does not rely on any annotations. Our work combines the strengths of multiple recent approaches while addressing their weaknesses. Moreover, we leverage recent advances in word embeddings and graph degeneracy applied to NLP to take exterior semantic knowledge into account, and to design custom diversity and informativeness measures. Experiments on the AMI and ICSI corpus show that our system improves on the state-of-the-art. Code and data are publicly available, and our system can be interactively tested.
A Fully Integrated 2.4GHz IEEE 802.15.4 Compliant Transceiver for ZigBee Applications

A 0.18mum CMOS low-IF transceiver with integrated baseband processing according to IEEE 802.15. 4 is described. The 5.77mm2 die draws 14.7mA (RX) and 15.7mA (TX) while achieving -102dBm RX sensitivity and 3dBm TX power. The differential input 2.4mA RX RF-frontend provides 5.7dB system noise figure
Write disturb analyses on half-selected cells of cross-point RRAM arrays

Write disturb on half-selected (HS) cells is investigated through electrical measurements and large-scale array simulations. The experimental results collected from the individual devices under constant stress voltage and consecutive pulse operation are correlated with the HS cells in large-scale arrays based on a physics-based SPICE compact model. The impact of write/read disturb on the HS cells at different locations of the arrays is analyzed. Design guidelines for the optimized array size based on the experimental data and HSPICE simulations are presented: e.g., a 16 kb array can maintain its stored data pattern for 5×106 pulses and will have 164 false bits among half-selected cells after write disturb.
Polymorphisms in XRCC 1 Modify the Association between Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon-DNA Adducts , Cigarette Smoking , Dietary Antioxidants , and Breast Cancer Risk

The variability in DNA repair capacity of the general population may depend in part upon common variants in DNA repair genes. X-ray repair cross complementing group 1 (XRCC1) is an important DNA base excision repair gene and exhibits polymorphic variation. Using the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, a population-based casecontrol study, we evaluated the hypothesis that two common single nucleotide polymorphisms of XRCC1 (codon 194 Arg! Trp and 399 Arg! Gln) influence breast cancer susceptibility and interact with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)-DNA adducts, cigarette smoking, and intake of fruits and vegetables and antioxidants. The available sample for genotyping included 1,067 cases and 1,110 controls. Genotyping was done by a high-throughput single-nucleotide extension assay with fluorescence polarization detection of the incorporated nucleotide. We observed no significant increases in risk among all subjects who were carriers of XRCC1 194Trp or 399Gln alleles. Among never smokers, we observed an increased risk of breast cancer in 399Gln carriers [odds ratio (OR), 1.3; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.0-1.7). Further analysis indicated a suggestive weak additive interaction between the 399Gln allele and detectable PAH-DNA adducts (OR for exposure with mutant genotype, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.2-3.1). The estimated age-adjusted interaction contrast ratio (ICR) and 95% CI (ICR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.32 to 1.10) indicated that the departure from additivity was not statistically significant, but that there was some suggestion of a relative excess risk due to the interaction. In subjects with at least one copy of XRCC1 194Trp allele, there was a moderate interaction with high intake of fruits and vegetables (z35 half-cup servings per week of any fruits, fruit juices, and vegetables, OR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.38-0.89; ICR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.03 to 0.95), and dietary plus supplement antioxidant intake with 33% to 42% decreases in breast cancer risk compared with those with the Arg194Arg genotype and low-intake individuals. These results do not show that the two genetic polymorphisms of XRCC1 independently influence breast cancer risk. However, there is evidence for interactions between the two XRCC1 single nucleotide polymorphisms and PAH-DNA adducts or fruit and vegetable and antioxidant intake on breast cancer risk. Further understanding of the biological function of XRCC1 variants and their interactions with PAH-DNA adducts, antioxidants, and other genes in the pathway are needed. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2005;14(2):336–42)
Detection of ictal patterns in electroencephalogram signals using 3D phase trajectories

Epilepsy is one of the most common brain disorder. Its diagnosis is generally performed using electroencephalography (EEG). But, the process of visually inspecting the EEG signals to trance out the seizure patterns has always been very time consuming and difficult. Researchers have continuously tried to automate the process of recognizing ictal patterns. But, the complexity and high erroneous outcomes from most of the deployed expert systems continues to limit practical realization. In this study, authors have presented a simple yet novel methodology to detect ictal patterns in EEG signals. The proposed model used intrinsic mode functions to plot 3D phase trajectories. The mean values of Euclidean distances calculated from these trajectories were used as input feature vectors to probabilistic neural network classifier. The outcomes from the classifier discriminated between the seizure and seizure-free patterns with ~98 % accuracy. The model achieved similar statistical performance in <; 0.03 s. Thus, attesting the design for application in practical settings.
Current Spreading and Blocking Designs for Improving Light Output Power from the Vertical-Structured GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

In this work, use of localized Ti deposition associated with a transparent indium-zinc-oxide (IZO) layer is proposed to serve as Schottky current blocking and current spreading layer, respectively. In addition, an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mesa etching on the surface layer (n-GaN) of regular vertical-conducting metal-substrate GaN-based light-emitting diodes (VM-LEDs) is also proposed to further enhance current spreading of the device. Through a two-dimensional device simulator, the calculated results indicate that significant avoidance of the current-crowding effect under cathode contact pad could be obtained once the n-GaN layer etching depth and width, IZO thickness, and Schottky current blocking width have been optimized. In experiments, 1000 m 1000 m GaN-based blue LEDs with an ICP mesa etching of 250 m in width and 2 m in depth on the surface n-GaN layer, 200 m in Schottky current blocking width, and a 300-nm-thick IZO layer have the been successfully fabricated. As compared to the regular VM-LEDs without the use of the present technology, typical improvement in light emission uniformity and light output power by about 6% and 38% at an injection current of 350 mA have been obtained.
Feature Fusion for Road Extraction in SAR Scenes

In this paper we propose a novel procedure for urban road network extraction in high resolution SAR images. It is based on a multi-scale detection step including fusion of multiple features aimed at considering spatial high resolution as well as the spectral characteristics of the SAR images. Advantages over existing and previous extraction procedures are proved by comparison using data from different sensors and different test areas. I. INTRODUCTION High resolution SAR by Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites is going to have a deep impact on remote sensing data availability both because of the very short time between acquisitions and the spatial resolution, fine enough to monitor artificial structures. In turn, this will require more precise and efficient algorithms for the interpretation of this kind of SAR data. In fact, at high and very high resolution, natural and artificial objects must be individuated exploiting both their geometrical and spectral features, which show peculiar behaviors in SAR data. Following this idea, in this work we develop a decision fu- sion approach based on different detectors specifically tailored for road extraction from high resolution SAR data of urban areas. The approach exploits geometric a priori knowledge as well as spectral information about road materials. Street and roads in coarse SAR images may appear as dark or bright features, depending on their orientation. This is less true for high resolution SAR images, where roads are more-than-one-pixel wide: they most likely appear as dark, elongated areas, possibly with very bright sides. As a result, we may approach their detection and extraction by using geometrical analysis (1), looking for long edges, or by exploiting simpler multiple thresholding approaches (2), searching for dark, homogeneous areas. The proposed algorithm integrates both these approaches into a multi-scale feature fusion framework. Road candidate extraction in high resolution imagery usu- ally starts with road area detection, which of course may be obtained in optical images by looking for the spectral response of road materials. However, road class recognition in high resolution SAR data would imply complex segmentation algorithms based on data statistics. In this paper it is preferred to prove that multiple detectors may be enough to obtain good results. Therefore, in this paper a new extraction method is proposed, based on multiple feature detection and fusion , designed to be as automatic as possible and aimed at optimal junction preservation. The algorithm exploits spatial
Indicators of Marital Satisfaction of Batangueño Couples: Components of Love and the Other External Factors in Marriage

This study dealt with the correlation between the levels of Sternberg's components of love (intimacy, passion and commitment) and the level of marital satisfaction of selected married couples in Batangas. Moreover, the levels of components of love and levels of marital satisfaction based on the varying profile of the respondents are compared. A survey method using questionnaires (Triangular Theory of Love Scale (TTLS) and Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI-32)) translated in Filipino language were used to collect the data. There were 400 married couples who participated in the study. The result of the correlational analysis revealed a very strong positive and significant relationship between the level of intimacy and marital satisfaction of both male and female respondents, while strong positive and significant relationships on levels of passion and commitment and level of marital satisfaction of the male and female respondents. Furthermore, several significant differences are enumerated: a) on the level of intimacy of the male respondents when they were grouped according to their age of marriage; b) on the level of passion of the male respondents when they were grouped according to their employment status; c) on the level of commitment of the respondents based on educational attainment of female respondents and employment status of both male and female respondents; and d) on the level of marital satisfaction of the male respondents when they were grouped according to their employment status. Practical implications of the findings were discussed.