Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tibetan three-dimensional clouds fields derived from JICA data

Clouds highly impact the Earth's radiation budget. Their vertical distributions play key roles in the diabatic heating of the atmosphere. The spatial and temporal distributions of clouds over Tibetan Plateau make up an important part of the world hydrological cycle. Therefore, accurately estimation of clouds distributions over Tibetan Plateau is not only meaningful for our understanding of plateau climate systems, but also can improve accuracy of radiation budget and rainfall simulations in climate models. Using the data of Comprehensive observation Data on Tibetan plateau from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) China-Japan climate disasters mitigation project(JICA project), we simulated three-dimensional clouds with the aid of Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS). We further evaluated the importance of Tibetan comprehensive observations in the simulations of three-dimensional cloud distributions through following two schemes:1) with JICA AWX and sounding data ingested;2)with these data omitted. Our results show that Tibetan automatic weather station and sounding data can much improve the accuracy of simulated three-dimensional cloud distributions. Compared with Tibetan observation data omitted, the spatial distributions of simulated clouds with these observation data are much more consistent with those of satellite observations.
Temporal Modulation of an Autoprotease Is Crucial for Replication and Pathogenicity of an RNA Virus

ABSTRACT Pestiviruses belong to the family Flaviviridae, and their genome is a single-stranded RNA of positive polarity encoding one large polyprotein which is further processed into mature proteins. Noncytopathogenic (noncp) strains of the pestivirus bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) can establish persistent infection. In persistently infected animals, noncp BVDVs occasionally acquire mutations in viral nonstructural protein 2 (NS2) that give rise to cytopathogenic (cp) BVDV variants, and, eventually, lead to the onset of lethal disease. A molecular marker of cp BVDV infection is a high-level expression of the replicative NS3 protease/helicase that together with NS2 is derived from NS2-3. Here, we present evidence for NS2-3 autoprocessing by a newly identified cysteine protease in NS2 that is distantly related to the NS2-3 autoprotease of hepatitis C and GB viruses. The vital role of this autoprotease in BVDV infection was established, implying an essential function for NS3 in pestiviral RNA replication which cannot be supplied by its NS2-3 precursor. Accordingly, and contrary to a current paradigm, we detected almost complete cleavage of NS2-3 in noncp BVDV at early hours of infection. At 6 to 9 h postinfection, NS2-3 autoprocessing diminished to barely detectable levels for noncp BVDV but decreased only moderately for cp BVDV. Viral RNA synthesis rates strictly correlated with different NS3 levels in noncp and cp BVDV-infected cells, implicating the NS2 autoprotease in RNA replication control. The biotype-specific modulation of NS2-3 autoprocessing indicates a crucial role of the NS2 autoprotease in the pathogenicity of BVDV.
Web Spam Detection Using Machine Learning in Specific Domain Features

In the last few years, as Internet usage becomes the main artery of the life's daily activities, the problem of spam becomes very serious for internet community. Spam pages form a real threat for all types of users. This threat proved to evolve continuously without any clue to abate. Different forms of spam witnessed a dramatic increase in both size and negative impact. A large amount of E-mails and web pages are considered spam either in Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) or search engines. Many technical methods were proposed to approach the problem of spam. In E-mails spam detection, Bayesian Filters are widely and successfully applied for the sake of detecting and eliminating spam. The assumption that each term in the document contributes to the filtering task equally to other terms and the avoidance of user's feed back are major shortcomings that we attempt to overcome in this work. We propose an improved Naive Bayes Classifier that gives weight to the information fed by users and takes into consideration the existence of some domain specific features. Our results show that the improved Naive Bayes classifier outperforms the traditional one in terms of reducing the false positives and the false negatives and increasing the overall accuracy.
University Utrecht a Generalized Jacobi-davidson Iteration Method for Linear Eigenvalue Problems a Generalized Jacobi-davidson Iteration Method for Linear Eigenvalue Problems

In this paper we study the Davidson method for the iterative computation of a few of the extremal eigenvalues of a symmetric matrix and their associated eigenvectors. The method is shown to have an interesting relation with an old method of Jacobi. This leads to a new method that has improved convergence properties and that may be used for general matrices. We also propose a variant of the new method that may be useful for the computation of non-extremal eigenvalues as well.
Reducing Stock-Outs of Life Saving Malaria Commodities Using Mobile Phone Text-Messaging: SMS for Life Study in Kenya

Background Health facility stock-outs of life saving malaria medicines are common across Africa. Innovative ways of addressing this problem are urgently required. We evaluated whether SMS based reporting of stocks of artemether-lumefantrine (AL) and rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) can result in reduction of stock-outs at peripheral facilities in Kenya. Methods/Findings All 87 public health facilities in five Kenyan districts were included in a 26 week project. Weekly facility stock counts of four AL packs and RDTs were sent via structured incentivized SMS communication process from health workers’ personal mobile phones to a web-based system accessed by district managers. The mean health facility response rate was 97% with a mean formatting error rate of 3%. Accuracy of stock count reports was 79% while accuracy of stock-out reports was 93%. District managers accessed the system 1,037 times at an average of eight times per week. The system was accessed in 82% of the study weeks. Comparing weeks 1 and 26, stock-out of one or more AL packs declined by 38 percentage-points. Total AL stock-out declined by 5 percentage-points and was eliminated by the end of the project. Stock-out declines of individual AL packs ranged from 14 to 32 percentage-points while decline in RDT stock-outs was 24 percentage-points. District managers responded to 44% of AL and 73% of RDT stock-out signals by redistributing commodities between facilities. In comparison with national trends, stock-out declines in study areas were greater, sharper and more sustained. Conclusions Use of simple SMS technology ensured high reporting rates of reasonably accurate, real-time facility stock data that were used by district managers to undertake corrective actions to reduce stock-outs. Future work on stock monitoring via SMS should focus on assessing response rates without use of incentives and demonstrating effectiveness of such interventions on a larger scale.
Urocortin 3 activates AMPK and AKT pathways and enhances glucose disposal in rat skeletal muscle

Insulin resistance (IR) in skeletal muscle is an important component of both type 2 diabetes and the syndrome of sarcopaenic obesity, for which there are no effective therapies. Urocortins (UCNs) are not only well established as neuropeptides but also have their roles in metabolism in peripheral tissues. We have shown recently that global overexpression of UCN3 resulted in muscular hypertrophy and resistance to the adverse metabolic effects of a high-fat diet. Herein, we aimed to establish whether short-term local UCN3 expression could enhance glucose disposal and insulin signalling in skeletal muscle. UCN3 was found to be expressed in right tibialis cranialis and extensor digitorum longus muscles of rats by in vivo electrotransfer and the effects studied vs the contralateral muscles after 1 week. No increase in muscle mass was detected, but test muscles showed 19% larger muscle fibre diameter (P=0.030), associated with increased IGF1 and IGF1 receptor mRNA and increased SER256 phosphorylation of forkhead transcription factor. Glucose clearance into the test muscles after an intraperitoneal glucose load was increased by 23% (P=0.018) per unit mass, associated with increased GLUT1 (34% increase; P=0.026) and GLUT4 (48% increase; P=0.0009) proteins, and significantly increased phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate-1, AKT, AKT substrate of 160 kDa, glycogen synthase kinase-3β, AMP-activated protein kinase and its substrate acetyl coA carboxylase. Thus, UCN3 expression enhances glucose disposal and signalling in muscle by an autocrine/paracrine mechanism that is separate from its pro-hypertrophic effects, implying that such a manipulation may have promised for the treatment of IR syndromes including sarcopaenic obesity.
Field Potential Signature of Distinct Multicellular Activity Patterns in the Mouse Hippocampus

Cognitive functions go along with complex patterns of distributed activity in neuronal networks, thereby forming assemblies of selected neurons. To support memory processes, such assemblies have to be stabilized and reactivated in a highly reproducible way. The rodent hippocampus provides a well studied model system for network mechanisms underlying spatial memory formation. Assemblies of place-encoding cells are repeatedly activated during sleep-associated network states called sharp wave–ripple complexes (SPW-Rs). Behavioral studies suggest that at any time the hippocampus harbors a limited number of different assemblies that are transiently stabilized for memory consolidation. We hypothesized that the corresponding field potentials (sharp wave–ripple complexes) contain a specific signature of the underlying neuronal activity patterns. Hence, they should fall into a limited number of different waveforms. Application of unbiased sorting algorithms to sharp wave–ripple complexes in mouse hippocampal slices did indeed reveal the reliable recurrence of defined waveforms that were robust over prolonged recording periods. Single-unit discharges tended to fire selectively with certain SPW-R classes and were coupled above chance level. Thus, field SPW-Rs of different waveforms are directly related to the underlying multicellular activity patterns that recur with high fidelity. This direct relationship between the coordinated activity of distinct groups of neurons and macroscopic electrographic signals may be important for cognition-related physiological studies in humans and behaving animals.
Applying Data Mining Methodologies for Auditor Selection

Auditor selection can be regarded as a matter of audit quality. Research studies aiming to model the auditor choice employ statistical techniques. Here we employ three techniques derived from the Data Mining domain to build models capable of discriminating cases where companies choose a Big 4 or a Non-Big 4 auditor. Significant factors associated with the auditor choice are revealed. The three models are compared in terms of their performances. According to 10-fold cross validation bagging increases significantly the performance of one classifier.
An Analysis of Bid-Price Controls for Network Revenue Management

Bid-prices are becoming an increasingly popular method for controlling the sale of inventoryin revenue management applications. In this form of control, threshold-or "bid"-prices are set for the resources or units of inventory (seats on flight legs, hotel rooms on specific dates, etc.) and a product (a seat in a fare class on an itinerary or room for a sequence of dates) is sold only if the offered fare exceeds the sum of the threshold prices of all the resources needed to supply the product. This approach is appealing on intuitive and practical grounds, but the theory underlying it is not well developed. Moreover, the extent to which bid-price controls represent optimal or near optimal policies is not well understood. Using a general model of the demand process, we show that bid-price control is not optimal in general and analyze why bid-price schemes can fail to produce correct accept/deny decisions. However, we prove that when leg capacities and sales volumes are large, bid-price controls are asymptotically optimal, provided the right bid prices are used. We also provide analytical upper bounds on the optimal revenue. In addition, we analyze properties of the asymptotically optimal bid prices. For example, we show they are constant over time, even when demand is nonstationary, and that they may not be unique.
Antipsychotic drugs for psychosis and agitation in dementia: efficacy, safety, and a possible noradrenergic mechanism of action

The first patient described by Alzheimer in 1907 had both progressive cognitive deterioration and prominent comorbid signs and symptoms of psychosis and agitation (Alzheimer, 1907, 1987). In this editorial, we use “psychosis” to denote delusions and hallucinations and “agitation” to denote irritability, aggression, pressured motor activity, and active resistance to necessary care. Although advances have been made in the treatment of these non-cognitive symptoms, these psychosis and agitation symptoms continued to be burdensome and costly for dementia patients, caregivers, and society. Among the pharmacologic treatments available for psychosis and agitation, antipsychotic drugs are the drug class most consistently demonstrated effective for psychosis and agitation in dementia (Lyketsos et al., 2006; APA Work Group on Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias et al., 2007). These are widely prescribed for these behavioral problems, but their use remains controversial and their mechanism of action unclear.
Tightness of compact spaces is preserved by the $t$-equivalence relation

We prove that if there is an open mapping from a subspace of $C_p(X)$ onto $C_p(Y)$, then $Y$ is a countable union of images of closed subspaces of finite powers of $X$ under finite-valued upper semicontinuous mappings. This allows, in particular, to prove that if $X$ and $Y$ are $t$-equivalent compact spaces, then $X$ and $Y$ have the same tightness, and that, assuming $2^{\frak t}>\frak c$, if $X$ and $Y$ are $t$-equivalent compact spaces and $X$ is sequential, then $Y$ is sequential.
Wages of Mexican American women: Beyond human capital

Wages of Mexican American Women: Beyond Human Capital Elizabeth L. Embry, Ph.D. Mentor: Robyn L. Driskell, Ph.D. Labor force participation of Mexican American women, like the labor force participation of all women, has been increasing in recent years. Due to the increase in the labor force participation of Mexican American women, their wages and the employment opportunities available to these women merit further attention. Typically, variations in the wages of Mexican American women are attributed to differing human capital characteristics among these women. This study extends upon the human capital research by looking at the effect of citizenship status and failure to naturalize on Mexican women; and by using hierarchical modeling to examine the contextual effects of the labor market that these women work in on their human capital characteristics.
Improved circuit of the switched coupled-inductor cell for dc-dc converters with very large conversion ratio

By replacing the inductor in a basic boost converter by a multiple-coupled-inductor, and adding two diodes and a capacitor, a new converter with a large conversion ratio and low stresses on the switches is obtained. The additional diode helps to circulate the leakage inductance energy to the load in a non-oscillatory manner. The transistor turns on/off with soft-switching. The diodes turn on with zero-voltage switching and turn off with zero-current-switching, their reverse-recovery problem is alleviated. The voltage stress on both the transistor and diodes is less than the output voltage. Computer simulation and experimental results confirmed the theoretical expectations.
b-Bit Minwise Hashing for Large-Scale Linear SVM

In this paper, we propose to (seamlessly) integrate b-bit minwise hashing with linear SVM to substantially improve the training (and testing) efficiency using much smaller memory, with essentially no loss of accuracy. Theoretically, we prove that the resemblance matrix, the minwise hashing matrix, and the b-bit minwise hashing matrix are all positive definite matrices (kernels). Interestingly, our proof for the positive definiteness of the b-bit minwise hashing kernel naturally suggests a simple strategy to integrate b-bit hashing with linear SVM. Our technique is particularly useful when the data can not fit in memory, which is an increasingly critical issue in large-scale machine learning. Our preliminary experimental results on a publicly available webspam dataset (350K samples and 16 million dimensions) verified the effectiveness of our algorithm. For example, the training time was reduced to merely a few seconds. In addition, our technique can be easily extended to many other linear and nonlinear machine learning applications such as logistic regression.
The Effects of Intracerebroventricular Leptin on Milk Availability in Lactating Rats

Reports have linked energy balance along with adipocyte derived leptin action to improved fertility. Recent evidence indicates that leptin hormone is present in breast milk and leptin receptors are well expressed in mammary epithelial cells. The hypothesis that insufficiency of leptin restraint in the hypothalamus may underlie infertility in rodents and the failure of lactating breast to express adequate amount of milk was tested. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were injected leptin through intracerebroventricular cannulation (ICVC) of the third ventricle. Female rats were mated with stud males and observed throughout gestation. Compared to the control groups, leptin treatment increased prolactin levels in the dams and increased milk transfer to pup. Hypothalamic mRNA leptin levels and brain size in the offspring from leptin treated dams were significantly higher than the control. These findings support the involvement of leptin in reproduction and could lead to better understanding of leptin transfer from dam to offspring.
FreshML: programming with binders made simple

FreshML extends ML with elegant and practical constructs for declaring and manipulating syntactical data involving statically scoped binding operations. User-declared FreshML datatypes involving binders are concrete, in the sense that values of these types can be deconstructed by matching against patterns naming bound variables explicitly. This may have the computational effect of swapping bound names with freshly generated ones; previous work on FreshML used a complicated static type system inferring information about the 'freshness' of names for expressions in order to tame this effect. The main contribution of this paper is to show (perhaps surprisingly) that a standard type system without freshness inference, coupled with a conventional treatment of fresh name generation, suffices for FreshML's crucial correctness property that values of datatypes involving binders are operationally equivalent if and only if they represent a-equivalent pieces of object-level syntax. This is established via a novel denotational semantics. FreshML without static freshness inference is no more impure than ML and experience with it shows that it supports a programming style pleasingly close to informal practice when it comes to dealing with object-level syntax modulo a-equivalence.
Consumer preferences for front-of-pack calories labelling

Abstract Objective In light of the emerging obesity pandemic, front-of-pack calories labels may be an important tool to assist consumers in making informed healthier food choices. However, there is little prior research to guide key decisions on whether caloric content should be expressed in absolute terms or relative to recommended daily intake, whether it should be expressed in per serving or per 100 g and whether the information should be further brought alive for consumers in terms of what the extra calorie intake implies in relation to activity levels. The present study aimed at providing more insight into consumers’ appreciation of front-of-pack labelling of caloric content of food products and their specific preferences for alternative execution formats for such information in Europe. Design For this purpose, eight executions of front-of-pack calorie flags were designed and their appeal and information value were extensively discussed with consumers through qualitative research in four different countries (Germany, The Netherlands, France and the UK). Results The results show that calories are well-understood and that participants were generally positive about front-of-pack flags, particularly when flags are uniform across products. The most liked flags are the simpler flags depicting only the number of calories per serving or per 100 g, while more complex flags including references to daily needs or exercise and the flag including a phrase referring to balanced lifestyle were least preferred. Some relevant differences between countries were observed. Although participants seem to be familiar with the notion of calories, they do not seem to fully understand how to apply them. Conclusion From the results, managerial implications for the design and implementation of front-of-pack calorie labelling as well as important directions for future research are discussed.
Q A ] 2 5 A pr 2 00 5 The H-Covariant Strong Picard Groupoid

The notion of H-covariant strong Morita equivalence is introduced for ∗-algebras over C = R(i) with an ordered ring R which are equipped with a ∗-action of a Hopf ∗-algebra H . This defines a corresponding H-covariant strong Picard groupoid which encodes the entire Morita theory. Dropping the positivity conditions one obtains H-covariant ∗-Morita equivalence with its H-covariant ∗-Picard groupoid. We discuss various groupoid morphisms between the corresponding notions of the Picard groupoids. Moreover, we realize several Morita invariants in this context as arising from actions of the H-covariant strong Picard groupoid. Crossed products and their Morita theory are investigated using a groupoid morphism from the H-covariant strong Picard groupoid into the strong Picard groupoid of the crossed products. E-mail: Stefan.Jansen@physik.uni-freiburg.de E-mail: Stefan.Waldmann@physik.uni-freiburg.de
Multi-view reconstruction for projector camera systems based on bundle adjustment

Range scanners using projector-camera systems have been studied actively in recent years as methods for measuring 3D shapes accurately and cost-effectively. To acquire an entire 3D shape of an object with such systems, the shape of the object should be captured from multiple directions and the set of captured shapes should be aligned using algorithms such as ICPs. Then, the aligned shapes are integrated into a single 3D shape model. However, the captured shapes are often distorted due to errors of intrinsic or extrinsic parameters of the camera and the projector. Because of these distortions, gaps between overlapped surfaces remain even after aligning the 3D shapes. In this paper, we propose a new method to capture an entire shape with high precision using an active stereo range scanner which consists of a projector and a camera with fixed relative positions. In the proposed method, minimization of calibration errors of the projector-camera pair and registration errors between 3D shapes from different viewpoints are simultaneously achieved. The proposed method can be considered as a variation of bundle adjustment techniques adapted to projector-camera systems. Since acquisition of correspondences between different views is not easy for projector-camera systems, a solution for the problem is also presented.