Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structure of the crust and uppermost mantle beneath the western United States revealed by ambient noise and earthquake tomography

[1] Ambient noise tomography and multiple plane wave earthquake tomography are new methods of surface wave analysis that yield much more highly refined information about the crust and uppermost mantle than traditional surface wave techniques. Applied together to data observed at more than 300 broadband seismic stations from the Transportable Array component of the EarthScope USArray, these methods yield surface wave dispersion curves from 8 to 100 s period across the entire western United States with unprecedented resolution. We use the local Rayleigh wave phase speed curves to construct a unified isotropic 3-D Vs model to a depth of about 150 km. Crustal and uppermost mantle features that underlie the western United States are revealed in striking relief. As the USArray continues to sweep eastward across the United States, the substructure of the entire country will be unveiled.
Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems

Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems, by Didier Sornette, 2003, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press Consider the following events: a pressure tank within a rocket propulsion system fails during a launch; tectonic plates shift, causing the first significant earthquake in a locale for several decades; a stock market experiences a crash after a prolonged run-up in price levels. The commonality here is that all of these events are ultimately characterized by a "rupture" in the underlying system, following a buildup of "pressure" over a period of time. The recognition of certain engineering and geologic events as analogous in this way to financial market crashes was the impetus for the interesting and enjoyable new book Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems, by Didier Sornette. The major thesis of this book is that a stock market crash is not the result of short-term exogenous events, but rather involves a long-term endogenous buildup, with exogenous events acting merely as triggers. In particular, Sornette examines financial crashes within the framework of the "spontaneous emergence of extreme events in self-organizing systems," noting that "extreme events are characteristic of many. 'complex systems. '" The author employs mathematical tools-specifically, log-periodic power laws-to study the prebubble or precrash buildup in a financial system to its critical point. Efforts by nonfinancial people to analyze and explain financial phenomena using quantitative techniques from the hard and engineering sciences can be of tremendous use and interest to those of us in the financial community-provided that the mathematical techniques are applied by an author with an exposure to and understanding of the financial instruments, processes, and markets that are being analyzed. The author of Why Stock Markets Crash has done an admirable job of understanding and appreciating the financial world and its nuances. Didier Sornette is a professor of geophysics at UCLA, as well as a research director at the National Center of Scientific Research in France. He specializes in the prediction of catastrophic events within a complex system framework. In this book, as well as in a portion of his hundreds of journal articles, he takes his previous work in the physical and geological sciences and exports his mathematical modeling and prediction skills to the financial markets. In the first chapter, Sornette places historical extreme financial events-in particular, market crashes-in a complex, self-organizing system framework. This is followed by two chapters devoted, respectively, to the basic concepts and characteristics of financial markets, and to some statistical analyses demonstrating that financial crashes are essentially outliers. …
Embodiment of Evolutionary Computation in Network Agents

There is ongoing shift in the landscape of personal computation and telecommunication. Individuals are communicating with each other in increasingly complex ways. In the very near future, large number of software agents may be acting on behalf of any given individual. In the not-so-distant future, even relatively simple household appliances may interact in a massive, churning telecommunication network, filled with interacting agents.
AUXIN-BINDING-PROTEIN1 (ABP1) in phytochrome-B-controlled responses

The auxin receptor ABP1 directly regulates plasma membrane activities including the number of PIN-formed (PIN) proteins and auxin efflux transport. Red light (R) mediated by phytochromes regulates the steady-state level of ABP1 and auxin-inducible growth capacity in etiolated tissues but, until now, there has been no genetic proof that ABP1 and phytochrome regulation of elongation share a common mechanism for organ elongation. In far red (FR)-enriched light, hypocotyl lengths were larger in the abp1-5 and abp1/ABP1 mutants, but not in tir1-1, a null mutant of the TRANSPORT-INHIBITOR-RESPONSE1 auxin receptor. The polar auxin transport inhibitor naphthylphthalamic acid (NPA) decreased elongation in the low R:FR light-enriched white light (WL) condition more strongly than in the high red:FR light-enriched condition WL suggesting that auxin transport is an important condition for FR-induced elongation. The addition of NPA to hypocotyls grown in R- and FR-enriched light inhibited hypocotyl gravitropism to a greater extent in both abp1 mutants and in phyB-9 and phyA-211 than the wild-type hypocotyl, arguing for decreased phytochrome action in conjunction with auxin transport in abp1 mutants. Transcription of FR-enriched light-induced genes, including several genes regulated by auxin and shade, was reduced 3-5-fold in abp1-5 compared with Col and was very low in abp1/ABP1. In the phyB-9 mutant the expression of these reporter genes was 5–15-fold lower than in Col. In tir1-1 and the phyA-211 mutants shade-induced gene expression was greatly attenuated. Thus, ABP1 directly or indirectly participates in auxin and light signalling.
Imaging Comparison between 18F-FDG-PET/CT and 18F-Flouroethyl Choline PET/CT in Rare Case of Thymus Carcinoma Exhibiting a Positive Choline Uptake

It is of great value by using PET imaging in oncology to recognize any atypical uptake not related to the underlying disease. That helps in avoiding the false positive finding and may contribute in extending the application range of used radiopharmaceuticals in further disorders. It is well known that radiolabeled choline is an essential PET tracer used currently in prostate cancer. The physiological choline distribution was described. Nevertheless there is still a lack of studies, which describe this distribution in young patients; given that the radiolabeled choline is generally being used in the field of prostate cancer. Whether the thymus exhibits normally a positive choline uptake or not is still unknown. In particular, it is known that the lymphocytes express high affinity of choline transporter and enzymes involving its metabolism. Some cases of thymus carcinoma exhibiting a positive choline had been reported in the literature, however, mostly using 11C-choline. We report a rare case of metastatic thymic carcinoma detected incidentally using 18F-choline-PET in a 78-year-old male patient referred with elevation of prostate specific antigen. Moreover we present a comparison pattern with 18F-FDG-PET modality, in which 18F-choline-PET was turned out to be superior in tumor delineation.
Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Activates STAT Proteins in Aortic Endothelial Cells*

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) intracellular signaling in endothelial cells is initiated by the activation of distinct tyrosine kinase receptors, VEGFR1 (Flt-1) and VEGFR2 (Flk-1/KDR). Because the tyrosine kinase-dependent transcription factors known as STAT (signal transducers and activators of transcription) proteins are important modulators of cell growth responses induced by other growth factor receptors, we have determined the effects VEGF of on STAT activation in BAEC (bovine aortic endothelial cells). Here, we show that VEGF induces tyrosine phosphorylation and nuclear translocation of STAT1 and STAT6. VEGF also stimulates STAT3 tyrosine phosphorylation, but nuclear translocation does not occur. We found that placenta growth factor, which selectively activates VEGFR1, has no effect on the STATs. However, upon VEGF stimulation, STAT1 associates with the VEGFR2 in a tyrosine kinase-dependent manner, indicating that VEGF-induced STAT1 activation is mediated primarily by VEGFR2. Thus, our study shows for the first time that VEGF activates the STAT pathway through VEGFR2. Because the growth-promoting activity of VEGF depends upon VEGFR2 activation, these findings suggest a role for the STATs in the regulation of gene expression associated with the angiogenic effects of VEGF.
The Social Responsibility of Organizations And Stable Development

Huge industrial centers and organizations by their actions in addition to provide services for societies, caused to: water, air, soil pollution; soil destroying, surplus and waste distributions which have threatened human life. The issue of changing unstable development to stable development is changed the subject of social responsibility to a serious one so that social responsibility of companies is defined as commercial cooperation, business for existence, resistance and stability. Sometimes the concept of company social responsibility and stability use with similar interpretation so, it is a conception that companies combine environmental and social issues with commercial operation and communication with their participants. However, the nature of stable development is an expanded issue which cannot be achieved by social responsibility of companies only. For instance, the stable development take action more than voluntary strategies and it includes decision and operation which are supplied by governments and middle parts of governments.
On the Routing Problem in Disconnected Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Vehicular ad hoc wireless network (VANET) exhibits a bipolar behavior in terms of network topology: fully connected topology with high traffic volume or sparsely connected topology when traffic volume is low. In this work, we develop a statistical traffic model based on the data collected on 1-80 freeway in California in order to study key performance metrics of interest in disconnected VANETs, such as average re-healing time (or the network restoration time). Our results show that, depending on the sparsity of vehicles, the network re-healing time can vary from a few seconds to several minutes. This suggests that, a new ad hoc routing protocol will be needed as the conventional ad hoc routing protocols such as dynamic source routing (DSR) and ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing (AODV) will not work with such long re-healing times.
Capon multiuser receiver for CDMA systems with space-time coding

We present in this paper a linear blind multiuser receiver, referred to as the Capon receiver, for code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems utilizing multiple transmit antennas and space-time (ST) block coding. The Capon receiver is designed by exploiting signal structures imposed by both spreading and ST coding. We highlight the unique ST coding induced structure, which is shown to be critical in establishing several analytical results, including self-interference (i.e., spatially mixed signals of the same user) cancellation, receiver output signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR), and blind channel estimation of the Capon receiver. To resolve the scalar ambiguity intrinsic to all blind schemes, we propose a semi-blind implementation of the Capon receiver, which capitalizes on periodically inserted pilots and the interference suppression ability of the Capon filters, for (slowly) time-varying channels. Numerical examples are presented to compare the Capon receiver with several other training-assisted and (semi-)blind receivers and to illustrate the performance gain of ST-coded CDMA systems over those without ST coding.
Effects of Topical Bimatoprost 0.01% and Timolol 0.5% on Circadian IOP, Blood Pressure and Perfusion Pressure in Patients with Glaucoma or Ocular Hypertension: A Randomized, Double Masked, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial

Purpose To compare the 24-hour (24h) effects on intraocular pressure (IOP) and cardiovascular parameters of timolol 0.5% and bimatoprost 0.01% in open angle glaucoma and ocular hypertensive subjects. Methods In this prospective, randomized, double masked, crossover, clinical trial, after washout from previous medications enrolled subjects underwent 24h IOP, blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) measurements and were randomized to either topical bimatoprost 0.01% at night plus placebo in the morning or to timolol 0.5% bid. After 8 weeks of treatment a second 24h assessment of IOP, BP and HR was performed and then subjects switched to the opposite treatment for additional 8 weeks when a third 24h assessment was performed. The primary endpoint was the comparison of the mean 24h IOP after each treatment. Secondary endpoints included the comparisons of IOP at each timepoint of the 24h curve and the comparison of BP, HR, ocular perfusion pressure and tolerability. Results Mean untreated 24h IOP was 20.3 mmHg (95%CI 19.0 to 21.6). Mean 24h IOP was significantly lower after 8 weeks of treatment with bimatoprost 0.01% than after 8 weeks of treatment with timolol 0.5% bid (15.7 vs 16.8 mmHg, p = 0.0003). Mean IOP during the day hours was significantly reduced from baseline by both drugs while mean IOP during the night hours was reduced by -2.3 mmHg (p = 0.0002) by bimatoprost 0.01% plus placebo and by -1.1 mmHg by timolol 0.5% bid (p = 0.06). Timolol 0.5% significantly reduced the mean 24h systolic BP from baseline, the diastolic BP during the day hours, the HR during the night hours, and the mean 24h systolic ocular perfusion pressure. Conclusion Both Bimatoprost 0.01% and Timolol 0.5% are effective in reducing the mean 24h IOP from an untreated baseline but Bimatoprost 0.01% is more effective than timolol 0.5% throughout the 24h. Timolol 0.5% effect on IOP is reduced during the night hours and is associated with reduced BP, HR and ocular perfusion pressure. Trial Registration EU Clinical Trial Register and EudraCT# 2010-024272-26
The potential importance of grazing-resistant bacteria in planktonic systems

The paradigm of the 'microbial loop' has became increasingly important for understanding the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. Most of the microbial loop studies have focused on energy flow and nutrient cycling. Much less is known, however, about the importance of grazing as a force shaping the structure and community composition of planktonic bacteria. Theoretical considerations of predator-prey interactions suggest that predator evasion mechanisms should have evolved for bactena in the same way as in other predator-prey systems (e.g. zooplankton-phytoplankton). Consistent with this hypothesis, field data show that bacteria are often the most stable component of planktonic communities. Refuges from grazing are one of the possible mechanisms buffering bacterioplankton against strong seasonal fluctuations in abundance. Substantial direct and indirect evidence exists for the occurrence of grazing-resistant bacteria (GRB) in both marine and freshwater habitats. We summarize the potenbal mechanisms for grazing resistance, including morphological, chemcal and behavioral defenses as well as growth in spatial refuges. Cell size appears to be an important factor influencing susceptibility to grazing, with a refuge at the lower and upper ends of the bacterial size range. Thus, a relative grazing resistance can be assumed for the large number of ultramicrobactena as well as for morphologically complex growth forms such as filaments and aggregates. Besides morphological features, resistance may be achieved by other mechanisms for which, however, much less information is available. We describe how GRB can be included in conceptual models of the interactions among metazooplankton, bacterivorous protozoans and bacteria. It is suggested that the relative importance of GRB increases with increasing grazing pressure exerted by protozoans, whereas it decreases with increasing top-down control of protozoans by metazooplankton. GRB may reduce the productivity of planktonic systems through decreased trophic transfer efficiencies and reduced regeneration of bacterially bound nutrients.
From concepts to agents: towards a framework for multi-agent system modelling

Whilst tools assist the various tasks required to develop a multi-agent system (MAS), yet there still remains a gap between the generation of MAS models and program code. AUML development has enabled MAS designs to be specified in detail, including the complexities of agent communication protocols, which was a shortcoming of the Unified Modelling Language (UML) standard. However, the creation of MAS designs using AUML still requires a significant amount of design expertise on the part of the designer. We describe an approach to the development of a complex healthcare information system that defines specific steps along the path to MAS implementation. In particular we explore the use of conceptual knowledge modelling techniques by means of conceptual graphs and a transactions-based architecture for model verification during requirements gathering, together with a translation to AUML for design specification, proposing a framework to extend existing AOSE methodologies.
Identification of Transcriptional Regulatory Networks by Learning the Marginal Function of Outlier Sum Statistic

Network component analysis (NCA) and other methods based on the NCA model have become powerful bioinformatics tools to reconstruct underlying regulatory networks and recover hidden biological processes. However, due to the existence of experimental noises in micro array data and false information in network connectivity data (e.g., ChIP-on-chip binding data, motif information, etc.), it still remains challenging to reconstruct gene regulatory networks for real biomedical applications such as human cancer studies. In this paper, we model the relationship between the genes that share the same transcription factors (TF) from the angle of regression. We propose a statistic called outlier sum testing the conditional significance of the target genes. A Gibbs strategy is utilized in order to estimate the marginal value of outlier sum from its conditional function. Based on the outlier sum statistic we are able to extract the true target genes that carry information about transcription factor activities (TFAs) from the whole population. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrated the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method on both simulation data and yeast cell cycle data.
Job satisfaction and employee perception of the learning environment in the health care industry

The researcher's purpose in conducting this study was to examine the relationship between job satisfaction and perception of the learning environment of administrative employees. Another objective was to distinguish whether or not relationships exist between job satisfaction and perceptions of the learning environment and between facets of job satisfaction and facets of the learning environment. Administrative employee attitudes were examined to discover whether or not demographic variables such as age, education, ethnicity, gender, location, marital status, position classification, and years of service were related to job satisfaction. The population of this study consisted of 480 administrative employees of a national health care management organization. A total of 261 participants (55%) responded to a demographics questionnaire, the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) fo� measuring job satisfaction, and to the Leaming Environment Survey (LES) for measuring the learning environment Data analysis included frequencies, analysis of variance on each hypothesis, and multivariate analysis of variance on subscales when differences occurred. Tukey's HSD post hoc tests were run for significance. Pearson r tests were run to test relationships between total JSS and total LES and total JSS and subscales of the LES. Significant relationships were found for five out of six hypotheses. Major :findings of this study revealed that minority and billing center location participants were dissatisfied with overall job satisfaction; non-exempt participants were dissatisfied with pay and contingent rewards; and older participants perceived the organization was less tolerant of errors and perceived that the organization provided
Serotonin Transporter Gene (SLC6A4) Polymorphism and Mucosal Serotonin Levels in Southeastern Iranian Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

BACKGROUND Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a digestive system disorder with an unknown etiology. Serotonin has a key role in the secretion and motility of the intestine. Polymorphism in serotonin re-uptake transporter (SERT or SLC6A4) gene may have a functional role in the gut of patients with IBS. The aims of the present study were to investigate the association between SLC6A4 gene polymorphism and IBS and to detect the correlation between rectal serotonin levels and IBS sub-types. METHODS SLC6A4 gene polymorphism in 131 patients with IBS and 211 healthy controls were analysed using the quantitative polymerase chain reaction high-resolution melting (qPCR-HRM) curve technique. Serotonin was measured in rectal biopsies of patients with IBS using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method. RESULTS The patients were categorized into three groups: IBS with diarrhoea (IBS-D): 70 patients, IBS with constipation (IBS-C): 18 patients, and IBS with mixed symptoms (IBS-M): 43 patients. The frequency of SLC6A4 s/s and l/s genotypes was significantly higher in IBS-C than IBS-D, IBS-M, and controls (p=0.036). Serotonin levels were similar in IBS sub-types. CONCLUSION SLC6A4 polymorphism is a possible candidate gene associated with the pathogenesis of IBS-C. Although serotonin levels did not differ in rectal biopsies of IBS sub-types, further investigation is recommended.
CORONAL TEMPERATURE AS AN AGE INDICATOR

The X-ray spectra of late type stars can generally be well fitted by a two temperature component model of the corona. We find that the temperatures of both components are strong functions of stellar age, although the temperature of the hotter plasma in the corona shows a larger scatter and is probably affected by the activity of stars, such as flares. We confirm the power-law decay of the temperature of the hot plasma, but the temperature of the cool plasma component decays linearly with log(age).
Ergodic MDPs Admit Self-Optimising Policies

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are an important class of dynamic systems with many applications. Intuitively it seems clear that if an MDP is ergodic then it should admit self-optimising policies. This is because ergodicity ensures that an MDP’s statetransition space can be freely explored which should allow a sufficiently accurate model of the MDP to be constructed. In this paper we prove that this intuition is indeed correct, though the full analysis is surprisingly complex.