Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An overview of NASA VCST SNPP VIIRS day-night band on-orbit calibration methodology

The Day-Night Band (DNB) on Suomi-NPP VIIRS is a visible/near-Infrared panchromatic band capable of observing the earth during both daytime and nighttime. The VIIRS DNB is the first in its class to have on-orbit radiometric calibration using on-board calibrators. This paper describe the DNB calibration methodology used by the NASA VIIRS Characterization Support Team (VCST), and the process to provide consistent calibration Look-Up-Tables (LUTs). The radiometric calibration processes include (1) using the Solar Diffuser observation of the Sun to determine the gain of the DNB’s low gain stage; (2) using the Solar Diffuser signals outside of direct Sun illumination to compute the gain ratios between DNB’s low-to-mid and mid-to-high gain stages; and (3) using the nighttime calibrator observations to track the dark offset drift. Time dependent modulated Relative Spectral Responses (RSRs) are used to correct the optical throughput change due to mirror darkening. The pitch maneuver’s deep space view is used to compute the airglow free HGS offset. DNB stray light is corrected based on a correction LUT estimated from dark surface during each month’s new moon.
Ocean Acidification Affects Prey Detection by a Predatory Reef Fish

Changes in olfactory-mediated behaviour caused by elevated CO2 levels in the ocean could affect recruitment to reef fish populations because larval fish become more vulnerable to predation. However, it is currently unclear how elevated CO2 will impact the other key part of the predator-prey interaction – the predators. We investigated the effects of elevated CO2 and reduced pH on olfactory preferences, activity levels and feeding behaviour of a common coral reef meso-predator, the brown dottyback (Pseudochromis fuscus). Predators were exposed to either current-day CO2 levels or one of two elevated CO2 levels (∼600 µatm or ∼950 µatm) that may occur by 2100 according to climate change predictions. Exposure to elevated CO2 and reduced pH caused a shift from preference to avoidance of the smell of injured prey, with CO2 treated predators spending approximately 20% less time in a water stream containing prey odour compared with controls. Furthermore, activity levels of fish was higher in the high CO2 treatment and feeding activity was lower for fish in the mid CO2 treatment; indicating that future conditions may potentially reduce the ability of the fish to respond rapidly to fluctuations in food availability. Elevated activity levels of predators in the high CO2 treatment, however, may compensate for reduced olfactory ability, as greater movement facilitated visual detection of food. Our findings show that, at least for the species tested to date, both parties in the predator-prey relationship may be affected by ocean acidification. Although impairment of olfactory-mediated behaviour of predators might reduce the risk of predation for larval fishes, the magnitude of the observed effects of elevated CO2 acidification appear to be more dramatic for prey compared to predators. Thus, it is unlikely that the altered behaviour of predators is sufficient to fully compensate for the effects of ocean acidification on prey mortality.
Quantum Supremacy and the Complexity of Random Circuit Sampling

A critical milestone on the path to useful quantum computers is quantum supremacy - a demonstration of a quantum computation that is prohibitively hard for classical computers. A leading near-term candidate, put forth by the Google/UCSB team, is sampling from the probability distributions of randomly chosen quantum circuits, which we call Random Circuit Sampling (RCS). In this paper we study both the hardness and verification of RCS. While RCS was defined with experimental realization in mind, we show complexity theoretic evidence of hardness that is on par with the strongest theoretical proposals for supremacy. Specifically, we show that RCS satisfies an average-case hardness condition - computing output probabilities of typical quantum circuits is as hard as computing them in the worst-case, and therefore #P-hard. Our reduction exploits the polynomial structure in the output amplitudes of random quantum circuits, enabled by the Feynman path integral. In addition, it follows from known results that RCS satisfies an anti-concentration property, making it the first supremacy proposal with both average-case hardness and anti-concentration.
Completed local structure patterns on three orthogonal planes for dynamic texture recognition

Dynamic texture (DT) is a challenging problem in computer vision because of the chaotic motion of textures. We address in this paper a new dynamic texture operator by considering local structure patterns (LSP) and completed local binary patterns (CLBP) for static images in three orthogonal planes to capture spatial-temporal texture structures. Since the typical operator of local binary patterns (LBP), which uses center pixel for thresholding, has some limitations such as sensitivity to noise and near uniform regions, the proposed approach can deal with these drawbacks by using global and local texture information for adaptive thresholding and CLBP for exploiting complementary texture information in three orthogonal planes. Evaluations on different datasets of dynamic textures (UCLA, DynTex, DynTex++) show that our proposal significantly outperforms recent results in the state-of-the-art approaches.
Intent to quit, quit attempts, and perceived health risk reduction among African American, Latino, and White nondaily and daily smokers in the United States

ABSTRACT Objective: Ethnic and racial differences in smoking patterns and behaviors have been well documented and most African American and Latino smokers are nondaily or light smokers. However, differences within smoking levels are understudied. Our primary aim was to determine whether there are racial and ethnic differences among African American, Latino, and White nondaily, light daily, and moderate to heavy daily smokers on (1) perceived health risk reduction, (2) intentions to quit, and (3) past year quit attempts. Design: Smokers were recruited through an online research panel for a cross-sectional survey (n = 2376). Sampling quotas were used to obtain equal numbers of African American, Latino, and White nondaily and daily smokers. Results: African American (59.6%) and Latino (54%) nondaily smokers were more likely than White nondaily smokers (45%) to currently limit their cigarettes per day (cpd) as a perceived health risk reduction strategy (p < 0.05). African American nondaily smokers were more likely than Latino and White nondaily smokers (p < 0.05) to limit their smoking in the past year as a perceived health risk reduction strategy (range: 0 ‘never’ to 5 ‘always’; Means = 3.2, 2.9, 3.0, standard deviations [SD] = 1.1, 1.1, 1.2, respectively). African American nondaily smokers (15%) were more likely than either Latinos (7.8%) or Whites (8.5%) to intend to quit in the next 30 days (p < 0.01). African American (61.6%) and Latino (60.3%) nondaily smokers were more likely than Whites (49%) to have made a quit attempt in the past year (p < 0.01). Fewer racial and ethnic differences were found among daily smokers. Conclusions: Racial and ethnic group differences were more pronounced among nondaily smokers compared to light daily smoker and moderate to heavy daily smokers. Smoking level is an important consideration in understanding racial and ethnic variation in perceived health risk reduction and cessation-related behaviors.
Implementation of a performance optimized database join operation on FPGA-GPU platforms using OpenCL

The growing trend toward heterogeneous platforms is crucial to meet time and power consumption constraints for high-performance computing applications. The OpenCL parallel programming language and framework enable programming CPU, GPU and recently FPGAs using the same source code. This eases software developers to implement applications on various devices supported by heterogeneous HPC platforms. This work presents two very different FPGA implementations of a database join operation, one using a direct O(n2) algorithm, and the other using a bitonic sort network to speed up the join operation. Comparison of performance and energy consumption for both FPGA and GPUs is provided which suggests a 40% performance/watt improvement by using an FPGA instead of a GPU.
H2S production by reactive oxygen species in the carotid body triggers hypertension in a rodent model of sleep apnea

Suppressing hydrogen sulfide production in the carotid body may prevent the hypertension associated with sleep apnea. Sleeping with lower blood pressure Individuals with sleep apnea periodically stop breathing or breathe more shallowly while sleeping. The resulting intermittent decreases in blood oxygen concentrations or hypoxia activates an organ called the carotid body, which sends out signals to increase breathing, but these signals also increase blood pressure and can lead to hypertension. Yuan et al. found that exposure of rodents to bouts of intermittent hypoxia similar to that seen in sleep apnea triggered the production of reactive oxygen species in the carotid body. These reactive oxygen species increased the generation of the gasotransmitter hydrogen sulfide, which stimulates carotid body activity. Inhibiting the enzyme that generates hydrogen sulfide prevented the development of high blood pressure in this rodent model of sleep apnea. Thus, inhibitors of the enzyme that produces hydrogen sulfide could be used to prevent the hypertension associated with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a prevalent respiratory disease in which episodic cessation of breathing causes intermittent hypoxia. Patients with sleep apnea and rodents exposed to intermittent hypoxia exhibit hypertension. The carotid body senses changes in blood O2 concentrations, and an enhanced carotid body chemosensory reflex contributes to hypertension in sleep apnea patients. A rodent model of intermittent hypoxia that mimics blood O2 saturation profiles of patients with sleep apnea has shown that increased generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the carotid body enhances the chemosensory reflex and triggers hypertension. CO generated by heme oxygenase-2 (HO-2) induces a signaling pathway that inhibits hydrogen sulfide (H2S) production by cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE), leading to suppression of carotid body activity. We found that ROS inhibited CO generation by HO-2 in the carotid body and liver through a mechanism that required Cys265 in the heme regulatory motif of heterologously expressed HO-2. We showed that ROS induced by intermittent hypoxia inhibited CO production and increased H2S concentrations in the carotid body, which stimulated its neural activity. In rodents, blockade of H2S synthesis by CSE, by either pharmacologic or genetic approaches, inhibited carotid body activation and hypertension induced by intermittent hypoxia. Thus, our results indicate that oxidant-induced inactivation of HO-2, which leads to increased CSE-dependent H2S production in the carotid body, is a critical trigger of hypertension in rodents exposed to intermittent hypoxia.
Lateral cerebellum is preferentially sensitive to high sonic hedgehog signaling and medulloblastoma formation

Significance Cerebellar tumor medulloblastoma (MB) is no longer considered a single disease as it has been separated into four subgroups with further subdivisions based on genomic and clinical data. Mechanistic understandings of the stratification within subgroups should allow for better-targeted treatments. We redefined the main cell of origin by showing that granule cell precursors (GCPs) are heterogeneous with molecularly distinct populations based on their location. As a consequence, GCPs respond differentially to two driver mutations, and a subset of GCPs is more susceptible to Sonic hedgehog (SHH) pathway elevation and forms tumors more readily. These results provide insights into the preferential location of human SHH-MBs in the lateral cerebellum and the cellular and genetic factors influencing SHH-MB progression. The main cell of origin of the Sonic hedgehog (SHH) subgroup of medulloblastoma (MB) is granule cell precursors (GCPs), a SHH-dependent transient amplifying population in the developing cerebellum. SHH-MBs can be further subdivided based on molecular and clinical parameters, as well as location because SHH-MBs occur preferentially in the lateral cerebellum (hemispheres). Our analysis of adult patient data suggests that tumors with Smoothened (SMO) mutations form more specifically in the hemispheres than those with Patched 1 (PTCH1) mutations. Using sporadic mouse models of SHH-MB with the two mutations commonly seen in adult MB, constitutive activation of Smo (SmoM2) or loss-of-Ptch1, we found that regardless of timing of induction or type of mutation, tumors developed primarily in the hemispheres, with SmoM2-mutants indeed showing a stronger specificity. We further uncovered that GCPs in the hemispheres are more susceptible to high-level SHH signaling compared with GCPs in the medial cerebellum (vermis), as more SmoM2 or Ptch1-mutant hemisphere cells remain undifferentiated and show increased tumorigenicity when transplanted. Finally, we identified location-specific GCP gene-expression profiles, and found that deletion of the genes most highly expressed in the hemispheres (Nr2f2) or vermis (Engrailed1) showed opposing effects on GCP differentiation. Our studies thus provide insights into intrinsic differences within GCPs that impact on SHH-MB progression.
Obesity and Breastfeeding: Exploring the Relationship.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and throughout much of the developing world. In the United States, 40.4% of women, 35% of men, and 17% of children and adolescents have obesity. With the high proportion of individuals who struggle with obesity, we seek to find strategies to mitigate the high prevalence of this disease. Yet, before we delve into the current literature that explores the relationship between obesity and breastfeeding, we must understand the complexity of obesity. Obesity is a multifactorial disease in which genetics, behavior, environment, and development play a role in a person’s likelihood of developing obesity. There are a host of factors that influence energy balance. Although many factors have yet to be elucidated, we are aware that there are many potential contributors to obesity, which include biological/ medical, environmental pressures on physical activity, economic, food, and beverage behavior and environment, social, psychological, and maternal/developmental. In addition, we are aware that there are a host of hormonal factors that regulate food intake. In persons with genetic susceptibility to obesity, there is a biological defense of an elevated body fat mass, which is likely secondary to interactions between brain reward and homeostatic circuits.
Sample-Relaxed Two-Dimensional Color Principal Component Analysis for Face Recognition and Image Reconstruction

A sample-relaxed two-dimensional color principal component analysis (SR-2DCPCA) approach is presented for face recognition and image reconstruction based on quaternion models. A relaxation vector is automatically generated according to the variances of training color face images with the same label. A sample-relaxed, low-dimensional covariance matrix is constructed based on all the training samples relaxed by a relaxation vector, and its eigenvectors corresponding to the $r$ largest eigenvalues are defined as the optimal projection. The SR-2DCPCA aims to enlarge the global variance rather than to maximize the variance of the projected training samples. The numerical results based on real face data sets validate that SR-2DCPCA has a higher recognition rate than state-of-the-art methods and is efficient in image reconstruction.
Gender as a Moderator of Descriptive Norms and Substance Use among Latino College Students

ABSTRACT This study addresses gaps in the literature by testing gender differences in the associations between substance use norms and substance use among Latino college students. Secondary data analysis was conducted using data from the 2009 National College Health Assessment. Participants selected for this study were 4,336 Latino undergraduates. Linear mixed modeling was used to test gender as a moderator of the relationship between alcohol use norms and alcohol use as well as marijuana use norms and marijuana use. Results indicated that the strength of the relationships between norms and substance use was stronger for males than for females. Substance use rates and gender roles differ for Latinos and Latinas and may partially account for the stronger relationship between these constructs for males. Implications for future research and prevention are discussed.
Investigating Interactions for Text Recognition using a Vibrotactile Wearable Display

Vibrotactile skin-reading uses wearable vibrotactile displays to convey dynamically generated textual information. Such wearable displays have potential to be used in a broad range of applications. Nevertheless, the reading process is passive, and users have no control over the reading flow. To compensate for such drawback, this paper investigates what kind of interactions are necessary for vibrotactile skin reading and the modalities of such interactions. An interaction concept for skin reading was designed by taking into account the reading as a process. We performed a formative study with 22 participants to assess reading behaviour in word and sentence reading using a six-channel wearable vibrotactile display. Our study shows that word based interactions in sentence reading are more often used and preferred by users compared to character-based interactions and that users prefer gesture-based interaction for skin reading. Finally, we discuss how such wearable vibrotactile displays could be extended with sensors that would enable recognition of such gesture-based interaction. This paper contributes a set of guidelines for the design of wearable haptic displays for text communication.
Diffusion media materials and characterisation

Gas-diffusion media (also known as gas diffusers and gas-diffusion backings) are required in most polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) designs. Their function is to provide uniform reactant (H2, O2, and electrons) access to and product (H2O) removal from the electrodes, efficient heat removal from the membrane electrode assembly (MEA), and mechanical support to the MEA. The vast majority of gas-diffusion media are based on carbon-fiber materials; a variety of forms are used, with carbon-fiber paper and carbon cloth receiving widest application. This chapter describes the production and properties of currently available and emerging materials. Commonly employed treatments and coatings used to tailor the wicking and hydrophobic properties of diffusion media for efficient water removal are discussed. Finally, ex-situ and in-situ methods for characterizing diffusion media are described. Keywords: gas-diffusion media; gas-diffusion layer; gas-diffusion backing; polyacrylonitrile-precursed-carbon fibers; carbon-fiber paper; carbon cloth; microporous layer; pore size distribution; hydrophobicity; contact angle; flooding
Archaeal RNA polymerase arrests transcription at DNA lesions

ABSTRACT Transcription elongation is not uniform and transcription is often hindered by protein-bound factors or DNA lesions that limit translocation and impair catalysis. Despite the high degree of sequence and structural homology of the multi-subunit RNA polymerases (RNAP), substantial differences in response to DNA lesions have been reported. Archaea encode only a single RNAP with striking structural conservation with eukaryotic RNAP II (Pol II). Here, we demonstrate that the archaeal RNAP from Thermococcus kodakarensis is sensitive to a variety of DNA lesions that pause and arrest RNAP at or adjacent to the site of DNA damage. DNA damage only halts elongation when present in the template strand, and the damage often results in RNAP arresting such that the lesion would be encapsulated with the transcription elongation complex. The strand-specific halt to archaeal transcription elongation on modified templates is supportive of RNAP recognizing DNA damage and potentially initiating DNA repair through a process akin to the well-described transcription-coupled DNA repair (TCR) pathways in Bacteria and Eukarya.
TFG facilitates outer coat disassembly on COPII transport carriers to promote tethering and fusion with ER–Golgi intermediate compartments

Significance The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) serves as a platform for the packaging of most secretory proteins into conserved coat protein complex II (COPII)-coated transport carriers destined for ER–Golgi intermediate compartments (ERGIC) in animal cells. In this work, we demonstrate that Trk-fused gene (TFG), a protein implicated in multiple neurodegenerative diseases and oncogenesis, functions in this pathway by interacting directly with the COPII protein Sec23. Specifically, we show that TFG outcompetes interactions between the inner and outer layers of the COPII coat, indicating that TFG promotes the uncoating process after transport carriers undergo scission from the ER. Moreover, we demonstrate that TFG simultaneously captures and concentrates COPII transport carriers at the ER/ERGIC interface to enable the rapid movement of secretory cargoes to the ERGIC. The conserved coat protein complex II (COPII) mediates the initial steps of secretory protein trafficking by assembling onto subdomains of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in two layers to generate cargo-laden transport carriers that ultimately fuse with an adjacent ER–Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC). Here, we demonstrate that Trk-fused gene (TFG) binds directly to the inner layer of the COPII coat. Specifically, the TFG C terminus interacts with Sec23 through a shared interface with the outer COPII coat and the cargo receptor Tango1/cTAGE5. Our findings indicate that TFG binding to Sec23 outcompetes these other associations in a concentration-dependent manner and ultimately promotes outer coat dissociation. Additionally, we demonstrate that TFG tethers vesicles harboring the inner COPII coat, which contributes to their clustering between the ER and ERGIC in cells. Together, our studies define a mechanism by which COPII transport carriers are retained locally at the ER/ERGIC interface after outer coat disassembly, which is a prerequisite for fusion with ERGIC membranes.
Pre-treatment with oral hydroxyurea prior to intensive chemotherapy improves early survival of patients with high hyperleukocytosis in acute myeloid leukemia

Abstract Acute myeloid leukemia with high white blood cell count (WBC) is a medical emergency. A reduction of tumor burden with hydroxyurea may prevent life-threatening complications induced by straight chemotherapy. To evaluate this strategy, we reviewed medical charts of adult patients admitted to our institution from 1997 to 2011 with non-promyelocytic AML and WBC over 50 G/L. One hundred and sixty patients were included with a median WBC of 120 G/L (range 50–450), 107 patients received hydroxyurea prior to chemotherapy, and 53 received emergency induction chemotherapy (CT). Hospital mortality was lower for patients treated with hydroxyurea (34% versus 19%, p = 0.047) even after adjusting for age (p < 0.01) and initial WBC count (p = 0.02). No evidence of any difference between treatment groups in terms of WBC decline kinetics and disease free survival (p = 0.87) was found. Oral hydroxyurea prior to chemotherapy seems a safe and efficient strategy to reduce early death of hyperleukocytic AML patients.