Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Discriminating between GCM Forcing Configurations Using Bayesian Reconstructions of Late-Holocene Temperatures*

AbstractSeveral climate modeling groups have recently generated ensembles of last-millennium climate simulations under different forcing scenarios. These experiments represent an ideal opportunity to establish the baseline feasibility of using proxy-based reconstructions of late-Holocene climate as out-of-calibration tests of the fidelity of the general circulation models used to project future climate. This paper develops a formal statistical model for assessing the agreement between members of an ensemble of climate simulations and the ensemble of possible climate histories produced from a hierarchical Bayesian climate reconstruction. As the internal variabilities of the simulated and reconstructed climate are decoupled from one another, the comparison is between the two latent, or unobserved, forced responses. Comparisons of the spatial average of a 600-yr high northern latitude temperature reconstruction to suites of last-millennium climate simulations from the GISS-E2 and CSIRO models, respectively, .
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE COLOUR OF THE LYCURGUS CUP BY ANALYTICAL TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY

The Lycurgus Cup (Figure 1) is an outstanding example of a late Roman cut glass cage cup. It is decorated in openwork with a frieze showing scenes of the myth of King Lycurgus. The cup, which is 165 mm high, was produced from a blown glass blank about 15 mm thick. The figures were cut and ground and are attached to the wall of the vessel by small glass bridges left by the cutter. It is dated to the fourth century A.D. on stylistic grounds, but is first recorded in 1845 and was acquired by the Rothschild family shortly after this date; its findspot is unknown (Harden and Toynbee 1959; Harden et al. 1987). In addition to the exceptional workmanship demonstrated by the cut decoration. the Lycurgus Cup is also noted for the unusual optical effects displayed by the glass. In transmitted light, the glass appears a deep wine-red, while in reflected light it is an opaque pea-green. Less than ten other examples of Roman glass showing this so-called ‘dichroic’ effect are known, but these are fragments. Furthermore, these other pieces show less intense colours than the Lycurgus Cup, or are brownish or amber in colour (Brill 1965; Harden et al. 1987). Chemical analyses of the glass of the cup were reported by Chirnside and Profitt ( 1 963 and 1965), Chirnside (1965) and Brill (1965). A composite of these analyses (mainly from Brill 1965) is given in Table 1. Brill also measured optical spectra of the glass and had a replica composition prepared. On the basis of these studies, Brill (1965) was able to conclude that the optical properties of the glass were caused by the presence of finely dispersed particles of gold, probably alloyed with silver. At the time of Brill’s study, it was necessary to infer the presence of the metallic particles by indirect means, since particles of the size postulated were then below the resolution limits for techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM). However, modern transmission electron microscopy (TEM) can resolve and determine the structure of metal particles with diameters N 10 nm (e.g. Marks and Smith 1982). Compositional information on slightly larger particles is readily obtained by energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectrometry in the TEM. Thus analytical TEM offers a more positive and detailed characterization of the phases responsible for the dichroic properties of the glass of the Lycurgus Cup. In view of the interest generated by this unique piece of glass, it was decided to use about
Transplantation site in ﬂ uences the phenotypic differentiation of dopamine neurons in ventral mesencephalic grafts in Parkinsonian rats

Foetal midbrain progenitors have been shown to survive, give rise to different classes of dopamine neurons and integrateintothehostbrainalleviatingParkinsoniansymptomsfollowingtransplantationinpatientsandanimal models of the disease. Dopamine neuron subpopulations in the midbrain, namely A9 and A10, can be identi ﬁ ed anatomically based on cell morphology and ascending axonal projections. G protein-gated inwardly rectifying potassium channel Girk2 and the calcium binding protein Calbindin are the two best available histochemical markers currently used to label (with some overlap) A9-and A10-like dopamine neuron subtypes, respectively, in tyrosine hydroxylase expressing neurons both in the midbrain and grafts. Both classes of dopamine neurons survive in grafts in the striatum and extend axonal projections to their normal dorsal and ventral striatal targets depending on phenotype. Nevertheless, grafts transplanted into the dorsal striatum, which is an A9 input nucleus, are enriched for dopamine neurons that express Girk2. It remains to be elucidated whether different transplantation sites favour the differential survival and/or development of concordant dopamine neuron subtypes within the grafts. Here we used rat foetal midbrain progenitors at two developmental stages corresponding to a peak in either A9 or A10 neurogenesis and examined their commitment to respective dopaminergic phenotypes by grafting cells into different forebrain regions that contain targets of either nigral A9 dopamine innervation (dorsal striatum), ventral tegmental area A10 dopamine innervation (nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex), or only sparse dopamine but rich noradrenaline innervation (hippocampus). We demonstrate that young (embryonic day, E12), but not older (E14), mesencephalic tissue and the transplant environment in ﬂ u-ence survival and functional integration of speci ﬁ c subtypes of dopamine neurons into the host brain. We also show that irrespective of donor age A9-like, Girk2-expressing neurons are more responsive to environmental cues in adopting a dopaminergic phenotype during differentiation post-grafting. These novel ﬁ ndings suggest that dopamine progenitors use targets of A9/A10 innervation in the transplantation site to complete maturation and the ef ﬁ cacy of foetal cell replacement therapy in patients may be improved by deriving midbrain tissue at earlier developmental stages than in current practice. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://
The Global Spike: Conserved Dendritic Properties Enable Unique Ca 2 (cid:2) Spike Generation in Low-Threshold Spiking Neurons

Low-threshold Ca 2 (cid:2) spikes (LTS) are an indispensible signaling mechanism for neurons in areas including the cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglia, and thalamus. They have critical physiological roles and have been strongly associated with disorders including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia. However, although dendritic T-type Ca 2 (cid:2) channels have been implicated in LTS generation, because the properties of low-threshold spiking neuron dendrites are unknown, the precise mechanism has remained elusive. Here, combining data from fluorescence-targeted dendritic recordings and Ca 2 (cid:2) imaging from low-threshold spiking cells in rat brain sliceswithcomputationalmodeling,thecellularmechanismresponsibleforLTSgenerationisestablished.Ourdatademonstratethatkey somatodendriticelectricalconductionpropertiesarehighlyconservedbetweenglutamatergicthalamocorticalneuronsandGABAergic thalamicreticularnucleusneuronsandthatthesepropertiesarecriticalforLTSgeneration.Inparticular,theefficiencyofsomato dendritevoltagetransferishighlyasymmetricinlow-thresholdspikingcells,andinthesomatofugaldirection,theseneuronsare particularlyelectrotonicallycompact.OurdatademonstratethatLTShaveremarkablysimilaramplitudesandoccursynchronously throughoutthedendritictree.Infact,theseCa 2 (cid:2) spikes cannot occur locally in any part of the cell, and hence we reveal that LTS are generated by a unique whole-cell mechanism that means they always occur as spatially global spikes. This all-or-none, global electrical and biochemical signaling mechanism clearly distinguishes LTS from other signals, including backpropagating action potentials and dendritic Ca 2 (cid:2) /NMDA spikes, and has important consequences for dendritic function in low-threshold spiking neurons
HIMALA: Climate Impacts on Glaciers, Snow, and Hydrology in the Himalayan Region

Abstract Glaciers are the largest reservoir of freshwater on Earth, supporting one third of the world's population. The Himalaya possess one of the largest resources of snow and ice, which act as a freshwater reservoir for more than 1.3 billion people. This article describes a new project called HIMALA, which focuses on utilizing satellite-based products for better understanding of hydrological processes of the river basins of the region. With support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), together with its partners and member countries, has been working on the application of satellite-based rainfall estimates for flood prediction. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) partners are working with ICIMOD to incorporate snowmelt and glacier melt into a widely used hydrological model. Thus, through improved modeling of the contribution of snow and ice meltwater to river flow in the region, the HIMALA project will improve the ability of ICIMOD and its partners to understand the impact of weather and climate on floods, droughts, and other water- and climate-induced natural hazards in the Himalayan region in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan.
Evidence for an early terrestrial food web: coprolites from the Early Devonian Rhynie chert

ABSTRACT Fossils in the Pragian Rhynie cherts, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, are preserved with exquisite cellular detail, and provide much information on Early Devonian terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. The fossils include abundant and diverse coprolites which demonstrate the existence of consumers differing in life-habit and diet. The coprolites are small (0.5–3 mm) and diverse in morphology and content, including groups of amorphous coprolites as well as coprolites with identifiable, particulate content. The present authors define three new ichnogenera to accommodate these coprolites: • Lancifaex encompasses elongate coprolites with particulate content, and includes three ichnospecies, distinguished on morphology, L. simplex, L. divisa and L. moniliforma. • Rotundafaex encompasses rotund coprolites with particulate content, and includes a single ichnospecies, R. aggregata. • Bacillafaex encompasses rod-shaped coprolites with amorphous content, and includes two ichnospecies, distinguished on size, B. constipatus and B. mina. Typically, plant spores do not dominate the content of these coprolites, but the population does include some spore-rich coprolites. The presence of spore-rich coprolites in this diverse assemblage adds evidence to the debate on spore-feeding as a nutritional strategy in early terrestrial ecosystems. The authors conclude that the coprolites described here indicate at least four types of consumer including detritivores and herbivores. Spore-rich coprolites might suggest sporivory; however, comparison with the faeces of modern millipedes demonstrates that they might equally well be the product of detritivores. The continuum observed here between spore-rich and spore-poor coprolites implies that, in this assemblage, spore-rich coprolites do not constitute a distinct group. Rather, they are part of a group of elongate, ellipsoidal coprolites with heterogeneous content that includes, at one extreme, coprolites which lack plant spores, and at the other, coprolites which contain abundant plant spores. Most coprolites in this group fall somewhere between the two extr
An Illumination and Background-Robust Hand Image Segmentation Method Based on the Dynamic Threshold Values

In this paper, we propose a hand image segmentation method using the dynamic threshold values on input images with various lighting and background attributes. First, a moving hand silhouette is extracted using the camera input difference images, Next, based on the R,G,B histogram analysis of the extracted hand silhouette area, the threshold interval for each R, G, and B is calculated on run-time. Finally, the hand area is segmented using the thresholding and then a morphology operation, a connected component analysis and a flood-fill operation are performed for the noise removal. Experimental results on various input images showed that our hand segmentation method provides high level of accuracy and relatively fast stable results without the need of the fixed threshold values. Proposed methods can be used in the user interface of mixed reality applications.
Lightweight Vision Transformer with Spatial and Channel Enhanced Self-Attention

Due to the large number of parameters and high computational complexity, Vision Transformer (ViT) is not suitable for deployment on mobile devices. As a result, the design of efficient vision transformer models has become the focus of many studies. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique called Spatial and Channel Enhanced Self-Attention (SCSA) for lightweight vision transformers. Specially, we utilize multi-head self-attention and convolutional attention in parallel to extract global spatial features and local spatial features, respectively. Subsequently, a fusion module based on channel attention effectively combines the extracted features from both global and local contexts. Based on SCSA, we introduce the Spatial and Channel enhanced Attention Transformer (SCAT). On the ImageNet-1k dataset, SCAT achieves a top-1 accuracy of 76.6% with approximately 4.9M parameters and 0.7G FLOPs, outperforming state-of-the-art Vision Transformer architectures when the number of parameters and FLOPs are similar.
The Influence of Short-Term Tillage, Compost, and Beneficial Microbes on Soil Properties and the Productivity of Wheat and Cowpea Crops

Tillage systems comprise physical, chemical, and biological modification processes that influence soil properties. Soil cultivation aims to create favorable conditions for the development and growth of crops, as evident in their yields. Three growing seasons (winter 2019/2020 (wheat), summer 2020 (cowpea), and winter 2020/2021 (wheat)) were studied in field experiments in Sidi Salem, Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt, to investigate the effects of soil tillage and the application of organic and beneficial microbes on various biological, chemical, and physical properties of soil and its productivity. Three replicates of the experimental treatments were set up in a split-plot design, in which there were four main plots: conventional soil tillage (ST) treatment for all three seasons (ST1); tillage in the first and second seasons (ST2); tillage only in the first season (ST3); and no tillage for all three seasons (ST4). However, the subplots (soil additives) were conditioned as follows: without treatment (control, T1); compost (C, T2); beneficial microorganisms (BM, T3); and combination (C + BM, T4). The biological property results showed that ST4T4 treatment produced high levels of microbial communities (bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes), as well as high levels of soil enzyme activity (dehydrogenase, urease, and phosphatase), during the three growing seasons. However, the second season produced high numbers and dry weights of cowpea plants’ nodules. Additionally, changes in the chemical and physical properties showed that the application of various soil tillage treatments during the examined seasons led to significant increases in electrical conductivity (ECe, dSm−1), bulk density (BD, kg m−3), and soil infiltration rate (IR, cm h−1), following the trend of ST4 > ST3 > ST2 > ST1. In contrast, the results revealed decreases in the exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP, %), porosity (PO, %), soil aggregates (stable aggregates and optimal-sized aggregates, %), and soil penetration resistance (SPRa, Mpa). The combination treatment (ST4T4) provided the best yields, with grain yields of 4.991 and 5.325 tons ha−1 and straw yields of 5.214 and 5.338 tons ha−1 in the first and third seasons (wheat), respectively. Cowpea plants showed the same pattern in the second season. Therefore, improvements in soil properties and enhancements in biological activity help maintain its productivity and fertility through simplified tillage processes that reduce interference with the soil surface layer.
TravInfo Evaluation: Traveler Response Element Broad Area Study: Phase 2 Results Analysis of Wave-2 Survey

TravInfo was a Field Operational Test (FOT) sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and California Department of Transportation. It aimed to develop a multi-modal traveler information system for the San Francisco Bay Area, combining public and private sector talents. The Broad Area Study was part of the TravInfo FOT evaluation. It addressed issues on how travelers obtain traffic/transit information and how the information influences travel behavior. Two waves of telephone surveys of Bay Area households were conducted, one prior to and one after the Field Operational Test. The initial survey was conducted in November 1995, eight months prior to when the TravInfo FOT began; the final survey was conducted in November 1998, three months after the FOT was ended. The purposes of the Broad Area study were to establish a baseline traveler behavior of Bay Area households based on traveler information and to assess the impact of traveler information on the entire Bay Area traveling population. The surveys showed that there was little change in the way people obtain traveler information, but more people modified their travel behavior in 1998 than did in 1995 based on the traffic information. As shown in the 1995 survey, most people changed departure time or took an alternate route. Mode shift was fairly negligible in both surveys. Keywords: TravInfo traveler information travel behavior
Computations of bed deformation and sediment sorting in meander channel using depth-averaged morphodyamic model

This paper discusses the bed evolution and the grain sorting process in meandering channel by using a two-dimensional (2D) based morphodyamic model. In river bends, secondary currents, which are three-dimensional (3D) flow structures caused by a balance between centrifugal force and pressure gradient, has important roles for flow structure and the sediment transport. Therefore, a numerical model, which can reproduce this 3D flow structure, is required to describe the morphodynamic phenomena in meandering rivers. This study employed the depth-averaged 2D shallow water equations' integrated effect of secondary currents of the first kind for flow calculations. This flow model can consider the effect of lag between the developments of secondary current and streamline curvatures. In addition, we employed the equilibrium sediment transport model and a multiple layer model for simulating the sediment transport and sorting phenomena due to non-uniform sediments. This study applied the different kind of model for evaluating the secondary current and sediment transport to a meandering channel with simple-rectangular sine-generated curve. We examined the applicability of models and morphodynamic process in a meandering channel through the comparison between the experimental and numerical results. The result shows that the correlation for secondary currents for flow structures and sediment transport is important to reproduce the bed evolution and sorting phenomena in river bends.
Simplified and effective RNA interference and CRISPR‐Cas9 systems for Cryptococcus neoformans

The 3,4‐dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) melanin is one of the important virulence factors for Cryptococcus neoformans, which may trigger immune responses in the host. While the production of DOPA melanin is catalyzed by laccase that is predominantly encoded by LAC1 gene. Therefore, regulating the genetic expression of C. neoformans is conducive to exploring the impact of interested molecules on the host. In this work, we established two systems that were constructed quickly and easily for the knock‐down/knock‐out of LAC1 gene: RNA interference (RNAi) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats CRISPR‐Cas9. The RNAi system was constructed by pSilencer 4.1‐CMV neo plasmid and short hairpin RNA to achieve effective transcriptional suppression. The CRISPR‐Cas9 system was used the PNK003 vectors to obtain a stable albino mutant strain. The results of phenotype, quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction, transmission electron microscope, and spectrophotometry were used to assess the ability of melanin production. As a result, the RNAi system displayed attenuation of transcriptional suppression when the transformants continuously passed on new plates. However, the transcriptional suppression of long loop in short hairpin RNA was more powerful and lasted longer. An albino strain produced by CRISPR‐Cas9 was completely unable to synthesize melanin. In conclusion, strains with different capacities of melanin production were obtained by RNAi and CRISPR‐Cas9 systems, which might be useful for exploring the linear relation between melanin and immunoreaction of the host. In addition, the two systems in this article might be convenient to quickly screen the possible trait‐regulating genes of other serotypes of C. neoformans.
Minimax Pac Bounds on the Sample Complexity of Reinforcement Learning with a Generative Model

We consider the problem of learning the optimal action-value function in discounted-reward Markov decision processes (MDPs). We prove new PAC bounds on the sample-complexity of two well-known model-based reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in the presence of a generative model of the MDP: value iteration and policy iteration. The first result indicates that for an MDP with N state-action pairs and the discount factor γ ∈ [0, 1) only O N log(N/δ)/ (1 − γ) 3 ε 2 state-transition samples are required to find an ε-optimal estimation of the action-value function with the probability (w.p.) 1 − δ. Further, we prove that, for small values of ε, an order of O N log(N/δ)/ (1 − γ) 3 ε 2 samples is required to find an ε-optimal policy w.p. 1 − δ. We also prove a matching lower bound of Θ N log(N/δ)/ (1 − γ) 3 ε 2 on the sample complexity of estimating the optimal action-value function. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first minimax result on the sample complexity of RL: The upper bound matches the lower bound in terms of N , ε, δ and 1/(1 − γ) up to a constant factor. Also, both our lower bound and upper bound improve on the state-of-the-art in terms of their dependence on 1/(1 − γ). Author manuscript, published in "Machine Learning (2013)-" 2 Mohammad Gheshlaghi Azar et al.
Automatic Identification of Corrosion in Marine Vessels Using Decision-Tree Imaging Hierarchies

We propose an unsupervised method for eigen tree hierarchies and quantisation group association for segmentation of corrosion in marine vessel hull inspection via camera images. Our unsupervised approach produces image segments that are examined to decide on defect recognition. The method generates a binary decision tree, which, by means of bottom-up pruning, is revised, and dominant leaf nodes predict the areas of interest. Our method is compared with other techniques, and the results indicate that it achieves better performance for true- vs. false-positive area against ideal (ground truth) coverage.