Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An in situ‐satellite blended analysis of global sea surface salinity

The blended monthly sea surface salinity (SSS) analysis, called the NOAA “Blended Analysis of Surface Salinity” (BASS), is constructed for the 4 year period from 2010 to 2013. Three data sets are employed as inputs to the blended analysis: in situ SSS measurements aggregated and quality controlled by NOAA/NODC, and passive microwave (PMW) retrievals from both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Aquarius/SAC-D and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Soil Moisture-Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellites. The blended analysis comprises two steps. First, the biases in the satellite retrievals are removed through probability distribution function (PDF) matching against temporally spatially colocated in situ measurements. The blended analysis is then achieved through optimal interpolation (OI), where the analysis for the previous time step is used as the first guess while the in situ measurements and bias-corrected satellite retrievals are employed as the observations to update the first guess. Cross validations illustrate improved quality of the blended analysis, with reduction in bias and random errors over most of the global oceans as compared to the individual inputs. Large uncertainty, however, remains in high-latitude oceans and coastal regions where the in situ networks are sparse and current-generation satellite retrievals have limitations. Our blended SSS analysis shows good agreements with the NODC in situ-based analysis over most of the tropical and subtropical oceans, but large differences are observed for high-latitude oceans and along coasts. In the tropical oceans, the BASS is shown to have coherent variability with precipitation and evaporation associated with the evolution of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The Sensitivity Analyses of Initial Condition and Data Assimilation for a Fog Event using the Mesoscale Meteorological Model

The accurate simulation of micro-scale weather phenomena such as fog using the mesoscale meteorological models is a very complex task. Especially, the uncertainty arisen from initial input data of the numerical models has a decisive effect on the accuracy of numerical models. The data assimilation is required to reduce the uncertainty of initial input data. In this study, the limitation of the mesoscale meteorological model was verified by WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model for a summer fog event around the Nakdong river in Korea. The sensitivity analyses of simulation accuracy from the numerical model were conducted using two different initial and boundary conditions: KLAPS (Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System) and LDAPS (Local Data Assimilation and Prediction System) data. In addition, the improvement of numerical model performance by FDDA (Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation) using the observational data from AWS (Automatic Weather System) was investigated. The result of sensitivity analysis showed that the accuracy of simulated air temperature, dew point temperature, and relative humidity with LDAPS data was higher than those of KLAPS, but the accuracy of the wind speed of LDAPS was lower than that of KLAPS. Significant difference was found in case of relative humidity where RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) for LDAPS and KLAPS was 15.7 and 35.6%, respectively. The RMSE for air temperature, wind speed, and relative humidity was improved by approximately , , and 2.2%, respectively after incorporating the FDDA.
Suﬀicient metric conditions for synchronization of leader-connected homogeneous nonlinear multi-agent systems

: We address the exponential synchronization problem of a leader-connected network of identical nonlinear systems. We suppose that each system can be made contractive by a static feedback law obtained via suﬃcient metric-based conditions. A distributed diﬀusive coupling feedback is then designed in order to solve the problem in two frameworks: the case of input-aﬃne systems allowed to exchange all the state information to its neighbour; and the case of nonlinear systems linear in the input allowed to exchange only a possibly nonlinear output.
Protein Phosphatase 2A Regulates Xanthine Oxidase-derived ROS Protein Phosphatase 2A Regulates Xanthine Oxidase-derived ROS Production in Macrophages and Influx of Inflammatory Production in Macrophages and Influx of Inflammatory Monocytes in a Murine Gout Model Monocytes in a Murine Gout Model

Background: Gout is a common arthritis, due to deposition of monosodium urate (MSU) crystals which results in IL-1 β secretion by tissue-resident macrophages. Xanthine oxidase (XO) catalyzes uric acid (UA) production and in the process, reactive oxygen species (ROS) are generated which contributes to NLRP3 in ﬂ ammasome activation. Protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) may be involved in regulating in ﬂ ammatory pathways in macrophages. The objective of this study was to investigate whether PP2A regulates gout in ﬂ ammation, mediated by XO activity modulation. We studied UA and ROS generations in MSU stimulated murine bone marrow derived macrophages (BMDMs) in response to ﬁ ngolimod phosphate, a PP2A activator, and compared its anti-in ﬂ ammatory ef ﬁ cacy to that of an XO inhibitor, febuxostat. Methods: BMDMs were stimulated with MSU, GM-CSF/IL-1 β or nigericin ± ﬁ ngolimod (2.5 μ M) or febuxostat (200 μ M) and UA levels, ROS, XO, and PP2A activities, Xdh (XO) expression and secreted IL-1 β levels were determined. PP2A activity and IL-1 β in MSU stimulated BMDMs ± N-acetylcysteine (NAC) (10 μ M) ± okadaic acid (a PP2A inhibitor) were also determined. M1 polarization of BMDMs in response to MSU ± ﬁ ngolimod treatment was assessed by a combination of iNOS expression and multiplex cytokine assay. The in vivo ef ﬁ cacy of ﬁ ngolimod was assessed in a murine peritoneal model of acute gout where peritoneal lavages were studied for pro-in ﬂ ammatory classical monocytes (CMs), anti-in ﬂ ammatory nonclassical monocytes (NCMs) and neutrophils by ﬂ ow cytometry and IL-1 β by ELISA. Results: Fingolimod reduced intracellular and secreted UA levels ( p < 0.05 ), Xdh expression ( p < 0.001 ), XO activity ( p < 0.001 ), ROS generation ( p < 0.0001 ) and IL-1 β secretion ( p < 0.0001 ), whereas febuxostat enhanced PP2A activity ( p < 0.05 ). NAC treatment enhanced PP2A activity and reduced XO activity and PP2A restoration mediated NAC ’ s ef ﬁ cacy as co-treatment with okadaic acid increased IL-1 β secretion ( p < 0.05 ). Nigericin activated caspase-1 and reduced PP2A activity ( p < 0.001 ) and ﬁ ngolimod reduced caspase-1 activity in BMDMs ( p < 0.001 ). Fingolimod reduced iNOS expression ( p < 0.0001 ) and
Who Will Tame the Giants? An Investigation of Principalities and Powers in the Digital Age

BSTRACT This article investigates tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter in the light of the Pauline concepts of principalities and powers, using the theologians Amos Yong and Walter Wink as its main dialogue partners. It is argued that as people subjugate themselves to the digital frameworks of these modern giants, the way they perceive and interact with the world changes. Furthermore, individuals who live their lives according to the frameworks of these modern-day principalities become participating members of the giants’ bodies and are thus influenced by their telos . As people increasingly access the world through these placeless platforms and thereby giving sustenance to the principalities’ hollow bodies, their own existence becomes more and more disembodied. As modernity recedes, this kind of excarnation seems to have an accelerating effect on the shift in people’s worldview. The world which is formed by the tech giants’ frameworks is found to be less embodied and quite polytheistic. In a final discussion on whether it is possible to exorcise or redeem these online principalities and powers the concept of egregore , or shared thought form, is introduced. It is described how online activists try to manipulate these egregores through the reshaping of viral narratives by means of so-called “meme-magic”. It is concluded, however, that any attempt by the church to exor-cise these demonic egregores on their home turf seems to necessitate participation in the tech giants’ hollow bodies, which in turn might result in a sort of excarnation. A word of warning is therefore given against over-estimating one’s capacity to tame the tech giants through any form of social exorcism (Yong) or political action (Wink).
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EFL TEACHERS’ PARTICIPATION IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM AND TEACHING BEHAVIOUR

Professional Development Program (PDP) is essential for effective education, especially for teachers. This study aimed to determine the relationship between PDP and teaching behaviour. 101 EFL teachers were involved in the study. This study used a quantitative method approach, and the data were collected by using Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) questionnaire from Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). They were analyzed with descriptive and correlational statistics approach to finding out about PDP activities that EFL teachers had engaged in and Pearson product-moment correlation test to determine the relationship between PDP and teaching behaviour. This study found that EFL teachers had engaged in various PDP activities, such as participating in workshops and seminars, taking part in induction programs and mentoring activities, and many more. In addition, this study showed a positive relationship between PDP and teaching behaviour by having a 0.557 correlation value and 0.000 significant value. This study also included implications for future researchers.
Electronic materials with nanoscale curved geometries

thickness t increases (Fig. 1a). This different scaling can be exploited in curved metallic nanochannels with engineered local thickness of a few tens of nanometres when used as pure spin transport channels 7–9 . Metallic materials form the basis of current spintronic technologies. In addition, the dominant spin relaxation mechanism corresponds to the so-called Elliot–Yafet mechanism 10,11 . This dictates that the spin
An ampli ﬁ cation-free ultra-sensitive electrochemical CRISPR/Cas biosensor for drug-resistant bacteria detection †

Continued development of high-performance and cost-e ﬀ ective in vitro diagnostic tools is vital for improving infectious disease treatment and transmission control. For nucleic acid diagnostics, moving beyond enzyme-mediated ampli ﬁ cation assays will be critical in reducing the time and complexity of diagnostic technologies. Further, an emerging area of threat, in which in vitro diagnostics will play an increasingly important role, is antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacterial infections. Herein, we present an ampli ﬁ cation-free electrochemical CRISPR/Cas biosensor utilizing silver metallization (termed E-Si-CRISPR) to detect methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using a custom-designed guide RNA (gRNA) targeting the mecA gene of MRSA, the Cas12a enzyme allows highly sensitive and speci ﬁ c detection when employed with silver metallization and square wave voltammetry (SWV). Our biosensor exhibits excellent analytical performance, with detection and quantitation limits of 3.5 and 10 fM, respectively, and linearity over ﬁ ve orders of magnitude (from 10 fM to 0.1 nM). Importantly, we observe no degradation in performance when moving from bu ﬀ er to human serum samples, and achieve excellent selectivity for MRSA in human serum in the presence of other common bacteria. The E-Si-CRISPR method shows signi ﬁ cant promise as an ultrasensitive ﬁ eld-deployable device for nucleic acid-based diagnostics, without requiring nucleic acid ampli ﬁ cation. Finally, adjustment to a di ﬀ erent disease target can be achieved by simple modi ﬁ cation of the gRNA protospacer.
University of Birmingham A biomimetic tumor tissue phantom for validating diffusion-weighted MRI measurements

Purpose: To develop a biomimetic tumor tissue phantom which more closely reflects water diffusion in biological tissue than previously used phantoms, and to evaluate the stability of the phantom and its potential as a tool for validating diffusion-weighted (DW) MRI measurements. Methods: Coaxial-electrospraying was used to generate micron-sized hollow polymer spheres, which mimic cells. The bulk structure was immersed in water, providing a DW-MRI phantom whose apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and micro- structural properties were evaluated over a period of 10 months. Independent characterization of the phantom’s microstructure was performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The repeatability of the construction process was investigated by generating a second phantom, which underwent high resolution synchrotron-CT as well as SEM and MR scans. Results: ADC values were stable (coefficients of variation (CoVs) < 5%), and varied with diffusion time, with average values of 1.44 6 0.03 m m 2 /ms ( D ¼ 12 ms) and 1.20 6 0.05 m m 2 /ms ( D ¼ 45 ms). Microstructural parameters showed greater variabil- ity (CoVs up to 13%), with evidence of bias in sphere size estimates. Similar trends were observed in the second phantom. Conclusion: A novel biomimetic phantom has been developed and shown to be stable over 10 months. It is envisaged that such phantoms will be used for further investigation of microstructural models relevant to characterizing tumor tissue, and may also find application in evaluating acquisition protocols and comparing DW-MRI-derived biomarkers obtained from different scanners at different sites. Magn Reson Med 000:000–000, 2017. V C 2017 The Authors Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Inc. on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, pro- vided the original work is properly cited.
Fundus Autofluorescence in Age-related Macular Degeneration

ABSTRACT Fundus autofluorescence (FAF) provides detailed insight into the health of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). This is highly valuable in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) as RPE damage is a hallmark of the disease. The purpose of this paper is to critically appraise current clinical descriptions regarding the appearance of AMD using FAF and to integrate these findings into a chair-side reference. A wide variety of FAF patterns have been described in AMD, which is consistent with the clinical heterogeneity of the disease. In particular, FAF imaging in early to intermediate AMD has the capacity to reveal RPE alterations in areas that appear normal on funduscopy, which aids in the stratification of cases and may have visually significant prognostic implications. It can assist in differential diagnoses and also represents a reliable, sensitive method for distinguishing reticular pseudodrusen. FAF is especially valuable in the detection, evaluation, and monitoring of geographic atrophy and has been used as an endpoint in clinical trials. In neovascular AMD, FAF reveals distinct patterns of classic choroidal neovascularization noninvasively and may be especially useful for determining which eyes are likely to benefit from therapeutic intervention. FAF represents a rapid, effective, noninvasive imaging method that has been underutilized, and incorporation into the routine assessment of AMD cases should be considered. However, the practicing clinician should also be aware of the limitations of the modality, such as in the detection of foveal involvement and in the distinction of phenotypes (hypo-autofluorescent drusen from small areas of geographic atrophy).
Identity-based Encryption with Eﬃcient Revocation

Identity-based encryption (IBE) is an exciting alternative to public-key encryption, as IBE eliminates the need for a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Any setting, PKI-or identity-based, must provide a means to revoke users from the system. Eﬃcient revocation is a well-studied problem in the traditional PKI setting. However in the setting of IBE, there has been little work on studying the revocation mechanisms. The most practical solution requires the senders to also use time periods when encrypting, and all the receivers (regardless of whether their keys have been compromised or not) to update their private keys regularly by contacting the trusted authority. We note that this solution does not scale well – as the number of users increases, the work on key updates becomes a bottleneck. We propose an IBE scheme that signiﬁcantly improves key-update eﬃciency on the side of the trusted party (from linear to logarithmic in the number of users), while staying eﬃcient for the users. Our scheme builds on the ideas of the Fuzzy IBE primitive and binary tree data structure, and is provably secure.
Dietary shifts and niche partitioning throughout ontogeny reduce intraspecific competition in a pelagic generalist predator

: Patterns of feeding strategy change throughout ontogeny according to size-specific abilities and requirements. Characterizing the extent and potential repeated occurrence of dietary differences within the population can improve understanding of the intraspecific predation regime and population dynamics. Here, we investigated size-related feeding habits and trophic niche partitioning of an iconic pelagic generalist predator, the jumbo squid Dosidicus gigas , by a combined analysis of morphologic indicators of feeding capability (fin and feeding apparatuses), trophic biochemical tracers (stable isotopes and fatty acids), and stomach contents. Results showed significant variation in prey composition, isotopic values, and fatty acid profiles with size. D. gigas exhibited a shift in diet at approximately 250 mm mantle length (ML). The trophic niche of small (ML ≤ 250 mm) and large (ML > 250 mm) squid revealed low potential for resource overlap, suggesting segregation in terms of spatial and food resources of different size groups. Large individuals tend to feed deeper and on smaller prey to optimize food capture costs and energy benefits. This feeding strategy is likely related to variability in the development of feeding capacity, increasing swimming ability, and metabolic demand as squid grow and may reduce intraspecific competition to improve survival. These results highlight the dietary flexibility of D. gigas and demonstrate that niche differentiation acts as a major factor in a cohort, which may have important implications for their population dynamics and management. In addition, this study demonstrates that using multiple diet tracers can highlight subtle differentiations in diet correlated to growth in a pelagic generalist predator.
Cumulative Difference Learning VAE for Time-Series with Temporally Correlated Inflow-Outflow

Time-series generation has crucial practical significance for decision-making under uncertainty. Existing methods have various limitations like accumulating errors over time, significantly impacting downstream tasks. We develop a novel generation method, DT-VAE, that incorporates generalizable domain knowledge, is mathematically justified, and significantly outperforms existing methods by mitigating error accumulation through a cumulative difference learning mechanism. We evaluate the performance of DT-VAE on several downstream tasks using both semi-synthetic and real time-series datasets, including benchmark datasets and our newly curated COVID-19 hospitalization datasets. The COVID-19 datasets enrich existing resources for time-series analysis. Additionally, we introduce Diverse Trend Preserving (DTP), a time-series clustering-based evaluation for direct and interpretable assessments of generated samples, serving as a valuable tool for evaluating time-series generative models.
The physiological profile of male competitive and recreational surfers

18 Surfing consists of both high and low intensity paddling of varying durations, utilizing both 19 the aerobic and anaerobic systems. Surf specific physiological studies lack adequate group 20 sample sizes and VO2peak values are yet to determine differences between competitive and 21 recreational surfers. The purpose of this study was therefore to provide a comprehensive 22 physiological profile of both recreational and competitive surfers. This multi-site study 23 involved 62 male surfers, recreational (n = 47) and competitive (n = 15). Anthropometric 24 measurements were conducted followed by DEXA, anaerobic testing and finally aerobic 25 testing. VO2peak was significantly greater in competitive compared to recreational surfers (M 26 = 40.71 ± 3.28 vs. 31.25 ± 6.31 ml/kg/min, p < .001). This was also paralleled for anaerobic 27 power (M = 303.93 vs. 264.58 W) for competitive surfers. Arm span and lean total muscle 28 mass was significantly (p ≤ .01) correlated with key performance variables (VO2peak and 29 anaerobic power). No significant (p ≥ .05) correlations were revealed between season rank 30 and each of the variables of interest (V02peak and anaerobic power). Key performance 31 variables (VO2peak and anaerobic power) are significantly higher in competitive surfers 32 indicating this is both an adaptation and requirement in this cohort. This battery of 33 physiological tests could be used as a screening tool to identify an athlete’s weaknesses or 34 strengths. Coaches and clinicians could then select appropriate training regimes to address 35 weaknesses. 36
Diversiﬁed Third-Party Library Prediction for Mobile App Development

—The rapid growth of mobile apps has signiﬁcantly promoted the use of third-party libraries in mobile app development. However, mobile app developers are now facing the challenge of ﬁnding useful third-party libraries for improving their apps, e.g., to enhance user interfaces, to add social features, etc. An effective approach is to leverage collaborative ﬁltering (CF) to predict useful third-party libraries for developers. We employed Matrix Factorization (MF) approaches - the classic CF-based prediction approaches - to make the predictions based on a total of 31,432 Android apps from Google Play. However, our investigation shows that there is a signiﬁcant lack of diversity in the prediction results - a small fraction of popular third-party libraries dominate the prediction results while most other libraries are ill-served. The low diversity in the prediction results limits the usefulness of the prediction because it lacks novelty and serendipity which are much appreciated by mobile app developers. In order to increase the diversity in the prediction results, we designed an innovative MF-based approach, namely LibSeek, speciﬁcally for predicting useful third-party libraries for mobile apps. It employs an adaptive weighting mechanism to neutralize the bias caused by the popularity of third-party libraries. In addition, it introduces neighborhood information, i.e., information about similar apps and similar third-party libraries, to personalize the predictions for individual apps. The experimental results show that LibSeek can signiﬁcantly diversify the prediction results, and in the meantime, increase the prediction accuracy.