Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EVIDENCE FOR BIOGENIC COPPER (HEMOCYANIN) IN THE MIDDLE CAMBRIAN ARTHROPOD MARRELLA FROM THE BURGESS SHALE

ABSTRACT Beginning with the discovery of the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale, the rare examples of exceptional preservation of soft tissues in fine-grained strata have been celebrated as windows into the diversity and complexity of ancient marine animal life. Even so, with the loss of original organic compounds, the physiological attributes of the fossils can be inferred only on the basis of modern descendants or sister groups among extant representatives that can serve as analogs. To test whether soft-bodied fossils from the Burgess Shale and similar Cambrian Lagerstätten could preserve chemical evidence of their original biology, a number of specimens from different groups were analyzed with synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence imaging to determine the spatial distribution of a range of elements, especially those in exceedingly trace amounts that cannot be detected by more conventional analytical methods. The relative distribution of common elements like Fe, K, Ti, and Ca is related to the composition of the host shale, abundance of pyrite, and presence or absence of preserved exoskeletal calcite. However, the black stain commonly preserved with the arthropod Marrella splendens is preferentially enriched in Cu due to localized residue in the carbon and minute crystals of chalcopyrite. This is interpreted as indicative of the original chemical composition of a primary biotic fluid, likely blood. Since modern-day arthropods generally utilize Cu-containing hemocyanin for oxygen transport, it is hypothesized that hemocyanin was the biogenic source of the observed Cu. This is the first chemical evidence for blood composition in the invertebrate fossil record. These observations reinforce the consensus molecular clock age for the hemocyanin gene family, which traces its origins back to the ‘Cambrian explosion’, thus providing evidence for the early origin of this oxygen carrier among some arthropod groups.
Moist convective clouds in Titan's atmosphere

We examine moist convection as a plausible mechanism for driving large vertical motions and mixing in the troposphere of Titan. The model used here is based on that of Stoker [1986] for Jupiter — a one dimensional diagnostic model of cumulus clouds developed to calculate cloud temperature and vertical velocity profiles - incorporating an improved treatment of the drag effect of condensate on the buoyancy of the plumes. We find that under conditions plausible for the near surface of Titan, moist convection can occur with vertical velocity in excess of 1–13 m/s but that such plumes occupy only a very small fraction of the surface area of Titan. Nonetheless, we also find that such plumes may be the primary means of moving methane and other trace species from the surface into Titan's upper troposphere.
Multiple Early-Exits Strategy for Distributed Deep Neural Network Inference

Existing work on multi-camera network mainly focused on centralized systems, the role of the cameras being limited to capture images and send them to the cloud. However, this approach is impractical when the network connection is limited or variable. Our methodology distributes DNN inference across multiple edge clients and the cloud using early-exits and bottlenecks for time and accuracy requirements. In limited communication scenarios like LoRa, our solution improves average latency by 80 % compared to traditional cloud solutions.
On the Migration of Reflection Time Contour MAPS

After the sampling of a reflection time contour map, i.e. after times and time gradients at the grid points of a square sampling grid have been determined, its conversion into true depth contours can be performed by normal incidence ray tracing. At each grid point the spatial orientation of the ray is uniquely defined by a corresponding time gradient vector, whereas its continuation into the subsurface is controlled by Snell's law. For arbitrarily orientated velocity interfaces the 3 – D ray tracing problem can systematically be solved with the aid of vector algebra, by expressing Snell's law as an equation of vector cross products. This allows to set up a computer algorithm for migration of contour maps. Reliable sampling of reflection time contour maps in the presence of faults is essential for the realization of a practical map migration system. A possible solution of the relevant sampling problem requires a special map editing and digitization procedure. Lateral migration shifts cause a translation and distortion of the original sampling grid. On the transformed grid the true positions of faults can be related to their apparent ones on the reflection time contour map. Errors in the time domain correlations or an incorrect velocity distribution or a combination of both these effects may cause migration failures due to total reflection and time deficiencies, or give rise to an anomalous distortion of grid cells, the latter signifying a violation of the maximum convexity condition. Emphasis is placed upon the significance of map migration as an interpretive tool for solving time to depth conversion problems in the presence of severely faulted or salt intruded overburdens.
Uncertainty Shocks and the Cross-Border Funding of Banks: Unmasking Heterogeneity.∗

This paper looks at the relation between uncertainty shocks and cross-border funding of banks through the lens of a new dataset. Our key innovation is to study the impact of uncertainty measures based on volatility, newspapers, and professional forecast surveys. We provide a comprehensive assessment of how cross-border liabilities in different banking systems respond to the uncertainty measure, funding sector, country, and period. We show that the contraction of bank funding can be large and quite different along these dimensions. Volatility-based uncertainty and non-bank funding display the strongest results, with news-based uncertainty mattering most outside the Global Financial Crisis.
Coherent atomic oscillations and resonances between coupled Bose-Einstein condensates with time-dependent trapping potential

We study the quantum coherent tunneling between two Bose-Einstein condensates separated through an oscillating trap potential. The cases of slow and rapid varying in the time trap potential are considered. In the case of a slowly varying trap, we study the nonlinear resonances and chaos in the oscillations of the relative atomic population. Using the Melnikov function approach, we find the conditions for chaotic macroscopic quantum-tunneling phenomena to exist. Criteria for the onset of chaos are also given. We find the values of frequency and modulation amplitude which lead to chaos on oscillations in the relative population, for any given damping and the nonlinear atomic interaction. In the case of a rapidly varying trap, we use the multiscale expansion method in the parameter «51/V, where V is the frequency of modulations, and we derive the averaged system of equations for the modes. The analysis of this system shows that new macroscopic quantum self-trapping regions, in comparison with the constant trap case, exist.
Expanding the Dimensions of Early Agricultural Tells: The Podgoritsa Archaeological Project, Bulgaria

AbstractA single season of field work was carried out in 1995 at the Podgoritsa Tell, an Eneolithic (5th millennium B.C.) settlement mound located between the villages of Dralfa and Podgoritsa in the Turgovishte region of NE Bulgaria. Results provide significant new data about the physical and social dimensions of early agricultural settlement tells in SE Europe. Most important is the first discovery of architectural structures and activity areas located outside of the topographic circumference of an Eneolithic tell. Additional, and equally unprecedented, information from geophysical and soil coring investigations proves that the land around the Podgoritsa site went through cycles of use and disuse. These cycles were determined by variations in the level of the local water table. Evidence of a bank and ditch structure on the western edge of the tell raises the possibility that the site's inhabitants may have been actively managing local water supplies. The firm evidence for off-tell activity (which explod.
Seismic design of basement walls: evaluation of current practice in British Columbia

The current state of practice for the seismic design of basement walls in Vancouver is based on the Mononobe–Okabe (M–O) method using a peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.46g mandated by the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC). A series of dynamic numerical analyses are conducted to study the seismic performance of basement walls designed for the M–O earth pressures derived from different fractions of the current building code mandated PGA. The walls are subjected to seven ground motions spectrally matched to the uniform hazard spectrum (UHS) prescribed by the NBCC for Vancouver. The analyses show that current engineering practice for designing basement walls based on the M–O method and using a PGA of 0.46g is too conservative. The analyses suggest that a wall designed using a 50%–60% PGA will give an acceptable performance in terms of drift ratio. The results of sensitivity analyses on input parameters are also presented and discussed.
Trans-cleaving hammerhead ribozymes with tertiary stabilizing motifs: in vitro and in vivo activity against a structured viroid RNA

Trans-cleaving hammerheads with discontinuous or extended stem I and with tertiary stabilizing motifs (TSMs) have been tested previously against short RNA substrates in vitro at low Mg2+ concentration. However, the potential of these ribozymes for targeting longer and structured RNAs in vitro and in vivo has not been examined. Here, we report the in vitro cleavage of short RNAs and of a 464-nt highly structured RNA from potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) by hammerheads with discontinuous and extended formats at submillimolar Mg2+. Under these conditions, hammerheads derived from eggplant latent viroid and peach latent mosaic viroid (PLMVd) with discontinuous and extended formats, respectively, where the most active. Furthermore, a PLMVd-derived hammerhead with natural TSMs showed activity in vivo against the same long substrate and interfered with systemic PSTVd infection, thus reinforcing the idea that this class of ribozymes has potential to control pathogenic RNA replicons.
Towards enabling better understanding and performance for managed languages

Computer systems today are ubiquitous and come in variety of forms. On the low end, there are resource-constrained battery-powered handheld devices that are widely used such as smart phones, tablets and netbooks. On the high end, there are powerful highly parallel multi-core devices such as desktops, workstations and servers. However, the diversity of these devices and the the heterogeneity of their platforms complicate software development. Developers must possess knowledge of a variety of architectures, platforms and languages in order to build, optimize, tune, and deploy software efficiently. Fortunately, there are means to facilitate software development across platforms. Revision Control (RC) systems enable concurrent collaboration between many developers with different languages and platforms expertise. Additionally, automated software deployment is made easier via across-platform software repositories that provide updates, fixes and patches. Finally, advances in managed programming languages (e.g. Java, C#, Python, Ruby, JavaScript) and their managed runtime environments (MREs) simplify portable software development by abstracting the details of the target platforms. Despite their benefits, these remedies complicate understanding of software behavior and extracting performance. First, RC systems allow source code changes to be made in isolation with no regard to how different modifications interact to affect behavior and performance. Second, the ease of software deployment leads to different versions of the software being used by millions of users over diverse platforms making it difficult to reason about how the application will be used "in the wild". Third, MREs abstract the hardware, hinder performance understanding, and advanced MREs usually have high startup cost and footprint. They are also complex to build and maintain, particularly for Dynamic Scripting Languages (DSLs). In this dissertation, we investigate the question of whether we can devise novel profile analysis and collection techniques to address the above drawbacks and enable better understanding and improve performance of managed languages. We answer this question by exploring novel solutions that exploit the use of modern collaboration technologies, open source managed runtime systems, and popular software distribution mechanisms. Our techniques include a performance-aware RC system for Java programs, interpreter-based optimizations and remote compilation framework for DSLs. We describe each of our techniques in detail and present empirical evidence of its efficacy and potential.
Assessment and optimisation of 3D optical topography for brain imaging

Optical topography has recently evolved into a widespread research tool for non-invasively mapping blood flow and oxygenation changes in the adult and infant cortex. The work described in this thesis has focused on assessing the potential and limitations of this imaging technique, and developing means of obtaining images which are less artefactual and more quantitatively accurate. Due to the diffusive nature of biological tissue, the image reconstruction is an ill-posed problem, and typically under-determined, due to the limited number of optodes (sources and detectors). The problem must be regularised in order to provide meaningful solutions, and requires a regularisation parameter (\lambda), which has a large influence on the image quality. This work has focused on three-dimensional (3D) linear reconstruction using zero-order Tikhonov regularisation and analysis of different methods to select the regularisation parameter. The methods are summarised and applied to simulated data (deblurring problem) and experimental data obtained with the University College London (UCL) optical topography system. This thesis explores means of optimising the reconstruction algorithm to increase imaging performance by using spatially variant regularisation. The sensitivity and quantitative accuracy of the method is investigated using measurements on tissue-equivalent phantoms. Our optical topography system is based on continuous-wave (CW) measurements, and conventional image reconstruction methods cannot provide unique solutions, i.e., cannot separate tissue absorption and scattering simultaneously. Improved separation between absorption and scattering and between the contributions of different chromophores can be obtained by using multispectral image reconstruction. A method is proposed to select the optimal wavelength for optical topography based on the multispectral method that involves determining which wavelengths have overlapping sensitivities. Finally, we assess and validate the new three-dimensional imaging tools using in vivo measurements of evoked response in the infant brain.
Tobit or Not Tobit?

Time-use surveys collect very detailed information about individuals' activities over a short period of time, typically one day. As a result, a large fraction of observations have values of zero for the time spent in many activities, even for individuals who do the activity on a regular basis. For example, it is safe to assume that all parents do at least some childcare, but a relatively large fraction report no time spent in childcare on their diary day. Because of the large number of zeros Tobit would seem to be the natural approach. However, it is important to recognize that the zeros in time-use data arise from a mismatch between the reference period of the data (the diary day) and the period of interest, which is typically much longer. Thus it is not clear that Tobit is appropriate. In this study, I examine the bias associated with alternative estimation procedures for estimating the marginal effects of covariates on time use. I begin by adapting the infrequency of purchase model, which is typically used to analyze expenditures, to time-diary data and showing that OLS estimates are unbiased. Next, using simulated data, I examine the bias associated with three procedures that are commonly used to analyze time-diary data – Tobit, the Cragg (1971) two-part model, and OLS – under a number of alternative assumptions about the data-generating process. I find that the estimated marginal effects from Tobits are biased and that the extent of the bias varies with the fraction of zero-value observations. The two-part model performs significantly better, but generates biased estimated in certain circumstances. Only OLS generates unbiased estimates in all of the simulations considered here.
Unsourced Random Access for Heterogeneous Mobility

In this paper, we study the coded compressed sensing (CS) slotted unsourced random access (URA) for massive users with heterogeneous mobility, which is challenging due to different coherent time lengths. Concretely, the two-codebook aided URA scheme is proposed to service two classes of users, static users and mobile users, simultaneously. In the presented scheme, static users use one common codebook with a larger size while mobile users use the other common codebook with a smaller size in both the number of codewords and length of each codeword. At the base station (BS), two inner CS decoding methods are presented by employing the covariance based maximum-likelihood detection. Simulation results show that both static and mobile users can achieve good performance simultaneously in some scenarios, especially with a large number of BS antennas.
Symmetric Object Pose Estimation via Flexible Modular CNN

Object pose estimation is a crucial task in various applications, including human-robot interaction, mobile robotics, and augmented reality. It involves determining the position and orientation of an object relative to a reference frame. This is a challenging task due to the need for accurate object detection and recognition, as well as understanding its geometry and the surrounding environment. Depending on the application and available resources, this task can be performed using Lidars, as in autonomous driving, or smaller RGBD cameras, as in mobile robotics. This work proposes an innovative convolutional neural network (CNN) for object pose estimation from RGBD data. The model is designed to have two separate branches, one for estimating the object's position and one for estimating the orientation, to facilitate the training process without loss in performance. Moreover, our approach emphasizes the problem of symmetric object pose estimation, for which we designed a new loss function to better represent the rotation error. The proposed model, with the newly introduced loss function, outperforms state of the art models on public datasets for object pose estimate, both for standard asymmetric objects and symmetric ones.
Effects of copper on gill structure and physiology in Carcinus maenas

The effects of sublethal copper exposure at three levels of biological organisation were studied in the common shore crab Carcinus maenas (L.) (Crustacea, Decapoda). The three levels included the ultrastructure of respiratory and osmoregulatory gill tissues; ventilatory physiology (scaphognathite activity); and tissue metallothionein levels. Respiratory gill epithelia were more sensitive to sublethal copper exposure than osmoregulatory gill tissues. The cellular damage observed included severe epithelial necrosis and vacuolation, hyperplasia and haemocyte infiltration. In the respiratory gills, these changes were first present following exposure to 100 J.l. g Cu L·l At 500 J.l. g Cu L" , there was complete degeneration of the epithelia. In osmoregulatory gills, lipofuscin granules were formed at 300 J.l. g Cu L-. Signs of cellular damage (as observed in respiratory gills) appeared in the osmoregulatory gills only following exposure to 500 J.l. g Cu L-, and were restricted to areas proximal to the marginal canal. Copper concentrations below I 00 J.l. g Cu L" had no effect on gill tissues. This result is discussed with reference to previous studies, and related to inter-population differences and exposure techniques. Gill ultrastructural differences were observed in crabs from two estuaries with different levels of water-borne trace metals, and in crabs transplanted from the cleaner to the more polluted site. Differences included . varying densities of plasmalemma! folds and frequencies of cellular vacuolation, as well as composition and thickness of algal surface layers on the gill cuticle. Following laboratory copper exposures (500 J.l.g Cu L"), gill ultrastructural "damage" and tissue metallothionein levels were related to changes in scaphognathite activity. Physiological effects, including changes in scaphognathite rate and periods of apnoea, were exacerbated by increased temperature and hypoxia. Changes in scaphognathite activity and metallothionein levels were not consistent following several exposures to the same level of copper; results are discussed in relation to physiological influences. In contrast, gill ultrastructure showed consistent deterioration following exposure to 500 J.l. g Cu L·'. Gill ultrastructure represents a reliable indicator of exposure to copper at this concentration compared to both scaphognathite activity and metallothionein concentrations. When the war between the frogs and the mice was going in favour of the mice, and it seemed that the frogs would be defeated, Zeus sent help to the frogs: "There came suddenly the shield backs, the hook lips, the side walkers, the twisted, the nipper-mouthed, bone-skinned, bone-like, broad-backed, with gleaming shoulders, the bowed-legged, the tight-lipped, seeing from their chests, eight-footed, double-headed, handless, who are called the crabs, who struck the mice on their tails and their feet and their hands with their mouthsand thus put the mice to flight. " [From "Batrachomyomachia" ("Battle of the frogs and the mice") Homer, Opera, Vol. 5, Oxford Uni. Press]
Land suitability location analysis for housing development using GIS

Application and implementation of location suitability analyses are powered through the use of GIS along with spatial analysis component, which enables the creation of buffers, overlay, termination, proximity analysis, spatial unity, map algebra, reclassification of raster and other operations. In terms of land suitability, GIS helps the user to define which locations are most appropriate or inappropriate for certain developments. Consequently, GIS as a tool becomes more important to provide support for decision makers. This analysis takes into account environmental and socio-economic factors as determinant of urban land development. This analysis requires first finding spatial, environmental and socio-economic constraints and then finding the land suitable for development of residential areas according to specified criteria’s. Hence, two preliminary results derive mainly from this analysis, such as composite (raster) map of restrictions for housing developments, and composite (raster) map of suitability housing development. Once these two composite maps are completed using specified GIS operations and functions, it is created the final map of site suitability for housing development. In creating the final map several factors had been used in total to establish the restriction model and also many criteria’s divided into five classes for establishing a map of land suitability for residential development in Prishtina city, namely in the study area.