Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE ROLLING STOCK DYNAMICS ON THE INTENSITY OF USING THE RAILWAY TRACK ELEMENTS

Purpose . The main purpose of this work is to research deformability parameters of the railway track under various operating conditions as the initial data for the formation of forced oscillations of rolling stock and the trackform use intensity. Methodology . For the research, an original model of the trackform, described with using the basic concepts of the theory of elasticity and the propagation of elastic waves was developed. Findings . It has been established that the ratio between the intensity of work of elements and the trackform, as criteria for deformability, can be used as the estimated parameters of the functionally safe operation of the track. It can be the basis for the classification of critical track states under which it had to perform work to restore its working capacity in order to ensure the required level of efficiency of use construction during the service life. Originality . Trackform and parameters of the elements of the track superstructure and substructure can be described using the railway tracks deformability behaviour. In the future this conclusion will help to increase the efficiency of the dynamic properties of rolling stock when designing and maintain in readiness the infrastructure while in operation. Practical value. Changes in the regulatory framework of rail transport in recent years provide for the observance of its functional safety, therefore, the question of the need to assess the impact of rolling stock on the way to be regarded as a dynamic process with consideration to the deformability resistance track. This research provides a basis for record of the stiffness of deformation that allows creating the regulatory framework for safety and functional safety of the railway track in Ukraine.
THERMAL ANNEALING AND UV INDUCED EFFECTS ON THE STRUCTURAL AND OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF CAPPING FREE ZNS..

Capping free Zinc Sulphide nanoparticles were synth esis from aqueous solutions of Zinc Chloride (ZnCl 2) and Sodium Sulphide (Na 2S) in air at 70 C by co-precipitation method. The as-prepared and a ne led samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis ab sorption, scanning electron microscope (SEM), trans mis ion electron microscope (TEM) and selected area electron diffrac tion (SAED). Analysis of XRD pattern indicates that the as prepared and annealed samples up to 300 C ZnS nano-crystallites have cubic zinc blend struc ture. Furthermore, annealing at 550 C, results in partial conversion of the initially cubi c ZnS, to ZnS and ZnO Hexagonal phases as revealed by XRD patterns. SAED pattern for as-prepared ZnS reveals the polycr ystalline nature. Furthermore, the lattice paramete rs d termined from (XRD) and (SAED) patterns are in good agreement. An nealing of the ZnS nanoparticles in air in the temp rature range, 150 – 550C, leads to the increase in crystallite size from 2 . 14 to 18 nm accompanied by decrease in optical ban d g p (Eg ) from 3.98 to 3.3eV, for the as prepared and sampl e annealed at 550 C respectively. Analysis of TEM and SEM Images indicates that the ZnS nanoparticles tend to be nearly spherically shaped with narrow size dist ribu ion. Different times UV irradiation of ZnS aqueous solution result s in increase in optical energy gap with the irradi ation time. The observed photo brightening is explained in terms of the formation of ZnSO4 passivation layer via photon-assisted chemical reaction.
TUPA at MRP 2019: A Multi-Task Baseline System

This paper describes the TUPA system submission to the shared task on Cross-Framework Meaning Representation Parsing (MRP) at the 2019 Conference for Computational Language Learning (CoNLL). Because it was prepared by one of the task co-organizers, TUPA provides a baseline point of comparison and is not considered in the official ranking of participating systems. While originally developed for UCCA only, TUPA has been generalized to support all MRP frameworks included in the task, and trained using multi-task learning to parse them all with a shared model. It is a transition-based parser with a BiLSTM encoder, augmented with BERT contextualized embeddings.
A drop does not fall in a straight line: a rationale for the width of stalagmites

Drops loaded in calcium ions detach from stalactites and impact the underlying stalagmites, thereby allowing these latter to grow through calcite precipitation. Nevertheless, little is known about the influence of the drop free fall and splash dynamics on stalagmite shape and width. Through high-speed imaging of impacting drops on stalagmites from several caves, we observed that the impact point position of the drops is scattered, sometimes over several centimetres. We show that this dispersal has no external cause and must, therefore, be self-induced. Using a Langevin-like equation, we then propose a prediction of the impact point dispersal as a function of the falling height travelled by the drops. We finally show that measured stalagmite widths are correlated to the dispersal in the impact point position of the drop.
Comparison Study of Computational Prediction Tools for Drug-Target Binding Affinities

The drug development is generally arduous, costly, and success rates are low. Thus, the identification of drug-target interactions (DTIs) has become a crucial step in early stages of drug discovery. Consequently, developing computational approaches capable of identifying potential DTIs with minimum error rate are increasingly being pursued. These computational approaches aim to narrow down the search space for novel DTIs and shed light on drug functioning context. Most methods developed to date use binary classification to predict if the interaction between a drug and its target exists or not. However, it is more informative but also more challenging to predict the strength of the binding between a drug and its target. If that strength is not sufficiently strong, such DTI may not be useful. Therefore, the methods developed to predict drug-target binding affinities (DTBA) are of great value. In this study, we provide a comprehensive overview of the existing methods that predict DTBA. We focus on the methods developed using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) approaches, as well as related benchmark datasets and databases. Furthermore, guidance and recommendations are provided that cover the gaps and directions of the upcoming work in this research area. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive comparison analysis of tools focused on DTBA with reference to AI/ML/DL.
Improving Multi-label Emotion Classification by Integrating both General and Domain-specific Knowledge

Deep learning based general language models have achieved state-of-the-art results in many popular tasks such as sentiment analysis and QA tasks. Text in domains like social media has its own salient characteristics. Domain knowledge should be helpful in domain relevant tasks. In this work, we devise a simple method to obtain domain knowledge and further propose a method to integrate domain knowledge with general knowledge based on deep language models to improve performance of emotion classification. Experiments on Twitter data show that even though a deep language model fine-tuned by a target domain data has attained comparable results to that of previous state-of-the-art models, this fine-tuned model can still benefit from our extracted domain knowledge to obtain more improvement. This highlights the importance of making use of domain knowledge in domain-specific applications.
Soil Nutrients Drive Function and Composition of phoC-Harboring Bacterial Community in Acidic Soils of Southern China

Phosphorus (P) deficiency is an important factor that limits the agricultural production potential in acidic soils. The bacterial phoC gene encodes non-specific acid phosphatase (ACP), which participates in the mineralization of soil organic P and is therefore important for the improvement of soil P availability. However, the function and community population of phoC-harboring bacteria and their driving factors in acidic soil remain largely unknown. For this study, 51 soil samples and 207 plant samples were collected from four locations in the acidic soil region of southern China. Quantitative PCR and high-throughput sequencing were employed to analyze abundance and community composition of phoC-harboring bacteria. The results showed that soil P availability was the important nutrient element limiting the growth of both plants and soil bacteria. Soil ACP activity was clearly higher than alkaline phosphatase, indicating the important effect of phoC-harboring bacteria in acidic soils. ACP activity and phoC gene abundance showed a significant positive correlation, and both were closely related to soil available P, total carbon, and total nitrogen. The dominant genera of phoC-harboring bacteria involved Cupriavidus, Stenotrophomonas, and Xanthomonas. Compared to land-use pattern, sampling location, and soil parent material, soil property played a more important role in affecting phoC-harboring bacterial community structure, where N-related variables including soil NO3- -N, NH4+ -N, and C/N ratio appeared to be the main factors. These findings suggest that phoC-harboring bacteria should provide an important contribution to soil P availability in acidic soil, and its function and community composition were strongly associated with soil nutrients.
Records of activity: radiocarbon and the structure of Iron Age settlement in Central Africa

It is just under 30 years now that Manfred Eggert has been roaming the equatorial rainforests of Central Africa2, in pursuit of traces of early settlement which may throw light on the poorly known later prehistoric periods at, or close to, the ›Heart of Darkness‹. Three decades of devoted fieldwork under truly demanding conditions, along with outstandingly critical and reflected theoretical reasoning on issues no smaller than the problems of Stone Age rainforest hunter-gatherer ecology, Bantu expansion, ›neolithization‹, or Iron Age beginnings, to name but a few – time to lean back and take stock in between. However, watching Manfred carrying out as vigorously as ever his four-month field seasons in equatorial Africa (they even used to last six months in the early days), it would obviously be premature to try and strike a general balance of his admirable achievements in this field. And clearly, just a few pages would never be enough space to do justice to them. Instead, I will here take a fresh look at one specific element of his still growing Central African legacy: the radiocarbon dates. It is the aim of this study to find out what they may tell us when calibrated and analysed in sets rather than individually, and how they fit in with the wider Central African and, indeed, pan-African radiocarbon evidence for the same time periods.
Conventional inactivated bivalent H5/H7 vaccine prevents viral localisation in muscles of turkeys infected experimentally with LPAI and HPAI H7N1 isolates

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses cause viraemia and systemic infections, with virus replication in internal organs and muscles. In contrast low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) viruses produce mild infections with low mortality rates and local virus replication. There is little available information on the ability of LPAI viruses to cause viraemia or on the presence of AI viruses in general in the muscles of infected turkeys. The aim of this study was to determine the ability of LPAI and HPAI H7N1 viruses to reach muscle tissues following experimental infection, and the efficacy of vaccination in preventing viraemia and meat localisation. The potential of infective muscle tissue to act as a source of infection for susceptible turkeys by mimicking the practice of swill-feeding was also investigated. The HPAI virus was isolated from blood and muscle tissues of all unvaccinated turkeys. LPAI virus could be isolated only from blood of one bird, and could be detected only by RT-PCR in muscles. In contrast, in vaccinated/challenged turkeys, no viable virus or viral RNA could be detected in muscles indicating that in vaccinated birds viral localisation in muscle tissue is prevented. subtype virus from fluid collected post evisceration following internal body cavity wash. These findings suggest that contamination of the
Distortion-optimized Rate Shaping for TCP-friendly Video Streaming

In this paper, we propose a rate control algorithm, which determines the optimal packet scheduling for transmission, in order to minimize the overall expected distortion. We introduce a distortion estimation framework, which we use to estimate the damage that the loss of each single video packet will cause on the video quality. The packet distortion is estimated separately for base-layer and enhancement layer packets. We then present an algorithm to estimate the available rate of the channel based on RTCP feedback information. Finally, an algorithm to determine which packets to discard, in order to minimize the overall distortion while adhering to the estimated rate is described. We evaluate our algorithm through simulations using FGS layered MPEG-4 video sequences and show the significant improvements in video quality that can be achieved using distortion-based rate shaping.
PHONETIC REDUCTION AND ENHANCEMENT IN CONVERSATIONAL

Conversational speech has received considerable attention in recent years, but many instrumental studies have focused on heavily resourced languages and the phonetic reduction in conversation. To diversify and expand on conversational speech research, this study examines the unique system of stop contrast in Korean and their acoustic cues in spontaneous phone conversations. The study investigates some key acoustic properties of intervocalic Korean stops in casual speech, adding to the growing body of research on conversational speech. Korean stops from careful reading and casual conversation show greater acoustic variability in conversation, as previously noted. Despite the phonetic variability in acoustic signals, conversational Korean stops contrast with one another in three acoustic dimensions: intensity difference, VOT, and closure duration, allowing some cues to enhance the stop contrast in conversation. The findings point to manner-specific adjustments in spontaneous Korean stops, and suggest that variability in conversational speech yields both phonetic reduction and enhancement.
Ciglitazone—a human PPARγ agonist—disrupts dorsoventral patterning in zebrafish

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) is a ligand-activated transcription factor that regulates lipid/glucose homeostasis and adipocyte differentiation. While the role of PPARγ in adipogenesis and diabetes has been extensively studied, little is known about PPARγ function during early embryonic development. Within zebrafish, maternally-loaded pparγ transcripts are present within the first 6 h post-fertilization (hpf), and de novo transcription of zygotic pparγ commences at ~48 hpf. Since maternal pparγ transcripts are elevated during a critical window of cell fate specification, the objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that PPARγ regulates gastrulation and dorsoventral patterning during zebrafish embryogenesis. To accomplish this objective, we relied on (1) ciglitazone as a potent PPARγ agonist and (2) a splice-blocking, pparγ-specific morpholino to knockdown pparγ. We found that initiation of ciglitazone—a potent human PPARγ agonist—exposure by 4 hpf resulted in concentration-dependent effects on dorsoventral patterning in the absence of epiboly defects during gastrulation, leading to ventralized embryos by 24 hpf. Interestingly, ciglitazone-induced ventralization was reversed by co-exposure with dorsomorphin, a bone morphogenetic protein signaling inhibitor that induces strong dorsalization within zebrafish embryos. Moreover, mRNA-sequencing revealed that lipid- and cholesterol-related processes were affected by exposure to ciglitazone. However, pparγ knockdown did not block ciglitazone-induced ventralization, suggesting that PPARγ is not required for dorsoventral patterning nor involved in ciglitazone-induced toxicity within zebrafish embryos. Our findings point to a novel, PPARγ-independent mechanism of action and phenotype following ciglitazone exposure during early embryonic development.
FORCED ALIGNMENT OF DIFFERENT LANGUAGE VARIETIES USING LABB-CAT

Large-scale phonetic study using speech corpora generally requires automated forced alignment of phones. When pre-trained acoustic models and pronunciation dictionaries are available for the language variety being studied, this is fairly straightforward. For other varieties, a number of other approaches can be used, including training acoustic models on the corpus data itself, adapting existing dictionaries, creating new ones, or inferring phonology from orthography. This paper describes a number of approaches that can be used to successfully force-align different varieties of English, and other languages for which models and pronunciation dictionaries are not easily available, using LaBB-CAT.
The Logic of Cosmology Revisited

In the last few decades, cosmology has become a central research area in fundamental physics. One reason for this shift in status is practical: although a variety of experimental results support the Standard Model of particle physics, the accelerators needed to test extensions of the Standard Model are beyond our technological and economic reach. In the big bang model, extrapolating backwards in time leads to higher temperatures and energies, and as a consequence the early universe serves as the “poor man’s accelerator. ” Physicists have increasingly relied on observational cosmology to provide an indirect source of evidence regarding high energy physics. A second reason for the shift in status is the vast increase of observational and theoretical sophistication within cosmology. In the early 60s, cosmology was characterized as a field with only two and a half facts, with some justification;1 today, by contrast, the big bang model is supported by a number of different lines of evidence, and cosmology is a field rich with new observations and further possibilities for observational work. The role of cosmology in contemporary physics is not limited to tightening the observational straightjacket on theorists’ imaginations; instead, a number of proposals for new fundamental physics have been inspired by problems in cosmology. This opens up the prospect of discovering laws of physics in cosmology. But can observational cosmology replace experimental practice as the basis for discovering and justifying new laws, or is the method of physics inappropriate for the study of a unique object, the universe? This shift in the status of cosmology lends new urgency to philosophical questions regarding the nature of our knowledge in this field. Cosmology is typically defined as the study of the large-scale structure of the universe and its evolution over time. But is the universe as a whole an appropriate object for scientific inquiry? Kant argued that attempts at scientific cosmology inevitably lead to antinomies because there is not an actual object corresponding to the idea of the “universe. ” A deracinated Kantian skepticism regarding cosmology still thrives in some parts of the intellectual landscape,
QM/MM Studies of CYP11A1-Catalyzed Biosynthesis of Pregnenolone from Cholesterol Reveal a C-C Bond Cleavage Reaction that Occurs by a Cpd I-mediated Electron Transfer.

We explore here a longstanding mechanistic question, by using quantum-mechanical/molecular-mechanical (QM/MM) methodology. The question concerns the mechanism of steroid hormone biosynthesis, whereby the P450 enzyme, CYP11A1, catalyzes the C20-C22 bond-cleavage in the 20,22-hydroxylated cholesterol, 20R,22R-DiOHCH, leading to pregnenolone which is critical for the subsequent production of all steroid hormones. This is an unusual feat whereby the P450 enzyme breaks two O-H and one C-C bonds, while making two C=O bonds. How does the enzyme perform such a complex and highly energy-demanding reaction? Our computational results rule out the previously proposed Compound I (Cpd I) electrophilic-attack mechanism via the formation of a peroxide intermediate as well as the H-abstraction mediated C-C cleavage mechanism. Notably, oxygen-rebound cannot transpire, despite of the fact that the classical active species, Cpd I, participates in the catalytic process. Our findings reveal a mechanism whereby C-C bond-cleavage is mediated by an electron-transfer (ET) from the C22-OH deprotonated substrate to Cpd I. As such, our QM/MM calculations demonstrate that Cpd I acts as an electron sink that facilitates the C-C bond cleavage.
Deciphering Molecular Mechanism of the Neuropharmacological Action of Fucosterol through Integrated System Pharmacology and In Silico Analysis

Fucosterol is an algae-derived unique phytosterol having several medicinal properties, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticholinesterase, neuroprotective, and so on. Accumulated evidence suggests a therapeutic promise of fucosterol in neurodegeneration; however, the in-depth pharmacological mechanism of its neuroprotection is poorly understood. Here, we employed system pharmacology and in silico analysis to elucidate the underlying mechanism of neuropharmacological action of fucosterol against neurodegenerative disorders (NDD). Network pharmacology revealed that fucosterol targets signaling molecules, receptors, enzymes, transporters, transcription factors, cytoskeletal, and various other proteins of cellular pathways, including tumor necrosis factor (TNF), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt), neurotrophin, and toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling, which are intimately associated with neuronal survival, immune response, and inflammation. Moreover, the molecular simulation study further verified that fucosterol exhibited a significant binding affinity to some of the vital targets, including liver X-receptor-beta (LXR-β), glucocorticoid receptor (GR), tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB), toll-like receptor 2/4 (TLR2/4), and β-secretase (BACE1), which are the crucial regulators of molecular and cellular processes associated with NDD. Together, the present system pharmacology and in silico findings demonstrate that fucosterol might play a significant role in modulating NDD-pathobiology, supporting its therapeutic application for the prevention and treatment of NDD.
EPOXIDISED NATURAL RUBBER-ALUMINA NANOPARTICLE COMPOSITES (ENRAN): EFFECT OF FILLER LOADING ON THE TENSILE PROPERTIES

Epoxidised natural rubber (ENR)-alumina nanoparticle composites (ENRAN) were produced by melt compounding followed by sulphur curing. Alumina nanoparticles were introduced in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 parts per hundred rubbers (phr) in the formulations to study the effect of filler loading on the tensile properties. The fracture surfaces of ENRANs were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The increase in alumina nanoparticles content in the ENR matrices resulted in the decrease of the tensile strength and the elongation at break (EB) but increased the tensile modulus compared to unfilled ENRs. The reinforcement of alumina nanoparticles in ENR matrices is evident by the increase of crosslink density and glass transition temperature, Tg with increasing alumina nanoparticles content. The SEM micrographs showed the ENRANs were failed in primarily brittle mode when loaded with high filler loading. The alumina particles were observed to be uniformly distributed in the matrices which contributed to the enhancement of the tensile modulus. When present in the matrix, the particles formed spheres of agglomerates thereby enhancing filler-matrix interaction which also contributed to the reinforcement effect.