Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Scintillation Detectors for PET

The focus of this thesis is on new detection technologies that can be used in advancing nuclear medicine modalities, particularly positron emission tomography (PET). Several detection technologies are covered in this thesis. First, new Ce3+ doped rare earth trihalide scintillators that can be used in advancing PET imaging are discussed. Here, the particular attention is paid to high light output and high proportionality to achieve high-energy resolution (for good scatter rejection) and fast response for high timing resolution along with possibility of providing time-of-flight data collection (to reduce randoms and to reduce noise in the reconstructed image). In addition to discussion of new scintillators for use in PET, two classes of new scintillators (Ce3+ doped elpasolites and Eu2+ doped alkaline earth halides) that provide high proportionality as well as energy resolution over a broad range of energies for use in single photon emission computed tomography (or SPECT) are also covered. In addition to new scintillators, two solid state photodetector technolgies are also covered in this thesis. This includes silicon avalanche photodiodes (APDs) and silicon based solid state photomultipliers (SSPMs). Standard as well as position sensitive versions of these photodetectors are covered with particular attention paid to the use of these new devices in small volume PET imaging. PET module designs with an ability to provide depth of interaction (in the scintillator element) in order to overcome parallax error in image reconstruction are discussed.
Stellar Synthesis of the Proton-Rich Heavy Elements

The proton-rich heavy nuclei are produced by proton-capture and/or photo-nuclear reactions starting with the products of neutron capture. The stellar conditions in which the proton-rich nuclei are produced must be such that the proton density Pp=10~102gcm-3, the neutron density Pn=10-5~10- 4 gcm-3 and the other matter density p:S 1Q-5gcm-3 at the temperature T= 2.5 -,3 X 109 °K. It is, however, difficult to explain the abundance of all proton-rich nuclei for the equal temperature. It is possible if there exist the regions of different temperature. To form these nuclei the nuclear for mation by the effective (jJ, r) reaction occurs in the higher temperature region and the nuclear formation by the effective ( r, n) reaction in the lower temperature region.
Clustering of Pre-Main-Sequence Stars in the Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Vela, and Lupus Star-forming Regions

We study clustering of pre-main-sequence stars in the Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Vela, and Lupus star-forming regions. We calculate the average surface density of companions, Σ(θ), as a function of angular distance, θ, from each star. We employ the method developed by Larson in a 1995 study for the calculation. In most of the regions studied, the function can be fitted by two power laws (Σ ∝ θγ) with a break as found by Larson for the Taurus star-forming region. The power index, γ, is smaller at small separations than at large separations. The power index at large separations shows significant variation from region to region (-0.8 < γ < -0.1), while the power index at small separations does not (γ ~ -2). The power index at large separations relates to the distribution of the nearest-neighbor distance. When the latter can be fitted by the Poisson distribution, the power index is close to 0. When the latter is broader than the Poisson distribution, the power index is negatively large. This correlation can be interpreted as the result of the variation in the surface density within the region. At large separations, the power-law fit may indicate star formation history in the region and not the spatial structure like the self-similar hierarchical, or fractal, one. Because of the velocity dispersion, stars move from their birthplaces, and the surface density of coeval stars decreases with their age. When a star-forming region contains several groups of stars with different ages, a power law may fit the average surface density of companions for it. The break of the power law is located around 0.01-0.1 pc. There is a clear correlation between the break position and the mean nearest-neighbor distance. The break position may reflect dispersal of newly formed stars.
The rPRRSV-E2 strain exhibited a low level of potential risk for virulence reversion

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) and Classical Swine Fever Virus (CSFV) are two important pathogens, which cause serious impact on swine industry worldwide. In our previous research, rPRRSV-E2, the recombinant PRRSV expressing CSFV E2 protein, could provide sufficient protection against the lethal challenge of highly pathogenic PRRSV and CSFV, and could maintained genetically stable in vitro. Here, to evaluate the virulence reversion potential risk, rPRRSV-E2 had been continuously passaged in vivo, the stability of E2 expression and virulence of the passage viruses were analyzed. The results showed that no clinical symptoms or pathological changes could be found in the inoculated groups, and there were no significant differences of viraemia among the test groups. Sequencing and IFA analysis showed that the coding gene of exogenous CSFV E2 protein existed in the passaged viruses without any sequence mutations, deletions or insertions, and could expressed steadily. It could be concluded that the foreign CSFV E2 gene in the genome of rPRRSV-E2 could be maintained genetically stable in vivo, and rPRRSV-E2 strain had relatively low level of potential risk for virulence reversion.
Articulation of fricatives: Evidence from X‐ray microbeam data

Articulatory changes in /s/ over time give rise to the onset and offset of turbulence noise, but the small tolerances involved make it difficult to separately consider the effects of movement, phonetic context, and subject variation. Aerodynamic estimates of the constriction area have been shown to demonstrate a marked asymmetry, with the /s/ onset more rapid than offset [C. Scully, Speech Commun. 11, 1992]. Previous articulatory studies led us to expect an invariant tongue tip position, with jaw raising dependent somewhat on the following vowel. In order to investigate the timing of the constriction formation in fricatives, X‐ray microbeam data [Westbury et al., 1994] for citation forms of /sVd/ for 15 vowels were studied. In fact, the tongue marker patterns during [s] vary both by following vowel and subject; subjects seem to have different apical‐laminal strategies. The jaw reaches maximum height during [s] for each subject studied; that height does not appreciably vary with vowel. This indicates that .
Speech error rates after a sports-related concussion

Background Alterations in speech have long been identified as indicators of various neurologic conditions including traumatic brain injury, neurodegenerative diseases, and stroke. The extent to which speech errors occur in milder brain injuries, such as sports-related concussions, is unknown. The present study examined speech error rates in student athletes after a sports-related concussion compared to pre-injury speech performance in order to determine the presence and relevant characteristics of changes in speech production in this less easily detected neurologic condition. Methods A within-subjects pre/post-injury design was used. A total of 359 Division I student athletes participated in pre-season baseline speech testing. Of these, 27 athletes (18–22 years) who sustained a concussion also participated in speech testing in the days immediately following diagnosis of concussion. Picture description tasks were utilized to prompt connected speech samples. These samples were recorded and then transcribed for identification of errors and disfluencies. These were coded by two trained raters using a 6-category system that included 14 types of error metrics. Results Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to compare the difference in error rates at baseline and post-concussion. Results revealed significant increases in the speech error categories of pauses and time fillers (interjections/fillers). Additionally, regression analysis showed that a different pattern of errors and disfluencies occur after a sports-related concussion (primarily time fillers) compared to pre-injury (primarily pauses). Conclusion Results demonstrate that speech error rates increase following even mild head injuries, in particular, sports-related concussion. Furthermore, the speech error patterns driving this increase in speech errors, rate of pauses and interjections, are distinct features of this neurological injury, which is in contrast with more severe injuries that are marked by articulation errors and an overall reduction in verbal output. Future studies should consider speech as a diagnostic tool for concussion.
Classifying Pedestrian Maneuver Types Using the Advanced Language Model

Pedestrians are the most vulnerable roadway user. While there is much emphasis on “green transportation,” a troubling fact emerges in the U.S.A. : pedestrian deaths are increasing significantly in comparison to motorist deaths, reaching nearly 6941 in 2020—the highest in over two decades. The Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Analysis Tool was developed to determine motorists and non-motorists’ actions before a crash to accurately define the sequence of events and precipitating actions leading to traffic crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians or bicyclists. Police report traffic crash data and crash narrative reports undoubtedly play a major role in decision-making for the safety engineers. Using crash data from three major cities in Texas (2018–2020), this study assessed the data quality of text narratives in police reports of pedestrian crashes. The objective of this study was to develop a framework for applying advanced language models to classify pedestrian maneuver types from unstructured textual content. The results show that although natural language processing models are promising as crash typing tools, narration inconsistency, data imbalance, and small sample sizes are holding back progress in this area. The framework demonstrated high accuracy for the binary classification task, but it was inconsistent for the more complex multiclass task. This framework provides the basis for applying advanced language models such as the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers model in identifying pedestrian maneuver types associated with pedestrian crashes.
Correlation of tumor mutational burden with prognosis and immune infiltration in lung adenocarcinoma

Background Tumor mutational burden (TMB) plays an important role in the evaluation of immunotherapy efficacy in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Objective To improve the clinical management of LUAD by investigating the prognostic value of TMB and the relationship between TMB and immune infiltration. Methods TMB scores were calculated from the mutation data of 587 LUAD samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and patients were divided into low-TMB and high-TMB groups based on the quartiles of the TMB score. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs), immune cell infiltration and survival analysis were compared between the low-TMB and high-TMB groups. We queried the expression of genes in lung cancer tissues through the GEPIA online database and performed experimental validation of the function of aberrant genes expressed in lung cancer tissues. Results We obtained sample information from TCGA for 587 LUAD patients, and the results of survival analysis for the high- and low- TMB groups suggested that patients in the high-TMB group had lower survival rates than those in the low-TMB group. A total of 756 DEGs were identified in the study, and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) showed that DEGs in the low-TMB group were enriched in immune-related pathways. Among the differentially expressed genes obtained, 15 immune-related key genes were screened with the help of ImmPort database, including 5 prognosis-related genes (CD274, PDCD1, CTLA4, LAG3, TIGIT). No difference in the expression of PDCD1, CTLA4, LAG3, TIGIT in lung cancer tissues and differential expression of CD274 in lung cancer tissues. Conclusions The survival rate of LUAD patients with low TMB was better than that of LUAD patients with high TMB. CD274 expression was down regulated in human LUAD cell lines H1299, PC-9, A549 and SPC-A1, which inhibited malignant progression of A549 cells.
Determinant Factors of Financial Inclusion

Financial inclusion is a process of involving people who do not have access to formal financial services. When a country is financially inclusive, economic activity in a country can depend on banking transactions and have greater financial sustainability and more effective monetary policy. The main objective of this research is to identify the factors that determine the level of financial inclusion in Indonesia and to suggest policy measures to increase the level of inclusion. This research uses the method Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) on 14 sharia banks full-fledge and Islamic bank units in Indonesia in the period 2010 to 2019. The results of this study found that bank size and deposit rates had a positive effect on the level of financial inclusion. Empirical findings also show that inflation has a negative and significant effect on financial inclusion.
Tunable resonant frequencies for determining Young's moduli of nanowires

Measuring the electric-field-induced resonance frequency of nanowires and nanotubes as cantilever beams has become a popular method to derive their elastic modulus. However, this method is sensitive to the experimental uncertainties of the clamp point conditions. In a preceding paper, we found that such uncertainty could lead to 30%–70% errors of the derived elastic modulus and then we proposed a tunable resonance method as a remedy. In this paper, we implement the tunable resonance method in experiment. The fundamental resonant frequencies of a Si nanowire cantilever stimulated in an electrical field are measured with an extra support localized at different positions along the nanowire. Our results show that based on this set of measured frequencies, the uncertainties of the clamp boundary condition can be easily identified and filtered out and thus the deduced Young’s modulus is more reliable.
Is global burned area declining due to cropland expansion? How much do we know based on remotely sensed data?

ABSTRACT The global extent of the amount of burned area seems to have changed substantially in the last two decades. Discussions regarding the main force behind the current trends have dominated research in recent years, with several studies attributing the global decline in wildfires to socio-economic and land-use changes. This review discusses the uncertainties and limitations of remotely sensed data used to determine global trends in burned areas and changes in their potential drivers. In particular, we quantify changes in the amount of burned area and cropland area and illustrate the lack of consistency in the direction and magnitude of the trend in cropland land cover type specifically within sub-Saharan Africa, the region where data show a strong trend in the amount of burned area. We state the limitations of remote-sensed fire and land cover products. We end by demonstrating that based on the currently available data and research methods applied in the literature, it is not possible to unequivocally determine that cropland expansion is the primary driver of the decline in fire activity.
Study on Sensitivities and Fire Area Errors in WRF-Fire Simulation to Different Resolution Data Set of Fuel and Terrain, and Surface Wind

This study conducted WRF-Fire simulations in order to investigate sensitivities of the resolution of fire fuel and terrain data sets, and the surface wind to simulated fire area. The sensitivity simulations were consisted of 8 different WRF-Fire runs, each of which used different combination of data sets of fire fuel and terrain with different resolution. From the results it was turned out that the surface wind was most sensitive. The next was fire fuel and then fire terrain. Unfortunately, every run produced too much fire area. In other words no simulations succeeded in simulating such proper fire area so as for the WRF-Fire to be used realistically. It was verified that the errors of fire area from each runs were contributed by 41%, 53%, and 6% from surface wind, fire fuel, and fire terrain, respectively. Finally this study suggested that the selection of Anderson fuel category in the area of interest seemed to be very critical in the performance of WRF-Fire simulations.
Reprise of the Supershells

Abstract Neutral hydrogen cavities have been detected in the Milky Way for decades and more recently in other nearby star-forming galaxies. It has been suggested that at least a fraction of them may be expanding supershells driven by the combined mechanical feedback from multiple supernovae occurring in an OB association. Yet most extragalactic cavities had neither a demonstrated expansion velocity nor an identified OB association inside them. In this presentation, we will outline how new multiwavelength observations are providing us with systems to test the theory of supershells driven by the mechanical feedback from multiple supernovae. We shall also discuss the consequences of these recent results in the context of supernova feedback, propagating star formation and particle acceleration.
NONLINEAR DYNAMICS AND CHAOS PART II: ERGODIC APPROACH

This is the second part of a two-part survey of the modern theory of nonlinear dynamical systems. We focus on the study of statistical properties of orbits generated by maps, a field of research known as ergodic theory. After introducing some basic concepts of measure theory, we discuss the notions of invariant and ergodic measures and provide examples of economic applications. The question of attractiveness and observability, already considered in Part I, is revisited and the concept of natural, or physical, measure is explained. This theoretical apparatus then is applied to the question of predictability of dynamical systems, and the notion of metric entropy is discussed. Finally, we consider the class of Bernoulli dynamical systems and discuss the possibility of distinguishing orbits of deterministic chaotic systems and realizations of stochastic processes.
Household Composition and Inequalities in COVID-19 Vaccination in Wales, UK

The uptake of COVID-19 vaccination in Wales is high at a population level but many inequalities exist. Household composition may be an important factor in COVID-19 vaccination uptake due to the practical, social, and psychological implications associated with different living arrangements. In this study, the role of household composition in the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination in Wales was examined with the aim of identifying areas for intervention to address inequalities. Records within the Wales Immunisation System (WIS) COVID-19 vaccination register were linked to the Welsh Demographic Service Dataset (WDSD; a population register for Wales) held within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank. Eight household types were defined based on household size, the presence or absence of children, and the presence of single or multiple generations. Uptake of the second dose of any COVID-19 vaccine was analysed using logistic regression. Gender, age group, health board, rural/urban residential classification, ethnic group, and deprivation quintile were included as covariates for multivariable regression. Compared to two-adult households, all other household types were associated with lower uptake. The most significantly reduced uptake was observed for large, multigenerational, adult group households (aOR 0.45, 95%CI 0.43–0.46). Comparing multivariable regression with and without incorporation of household composition as a variable produced significant differences in odds of vaccination for health board, age group, and ethnic group categories. These results indicate that household composition is an important factor for the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination and consideration of differences in household composition is necessary to mitigate vaccination inequalities.
A node‐centred finite volume formulation for the solution of two‐phase flows in non‐homogeneous porous media

The simulation of two‐phase flow of oil and water in inhomogeneous porous media represents a great challenge because rock properties such as porosity and permeability can change abruptly throughout the reservoir. This fact can produce velocities which vary several orders of magnitude within very short distances. The presence of complex geometrical features such as faults and deviated wells is quite common in reservoir modelling, and unstructured mesh procedures, such as finite elements (FE) and finite volume (FV) methods can offer advantages relative to standard finite differences (FD) due to their ability to deal with complex geometries and the easiness of incorporating mesh adaptation procedures. In fluid flow problems FV formulations are particularly attractive as they are naturally conservative in a local basis. In this paper, we present an unstructured edge‐based finite volume formulation which is used to solve the partial differential equations resulting from the modelling of the immiscible displacement of oil by water in inhomogeneous porous media. This FV formulation is similar to the edge‐based finite element formulation when linear triangular elements are employed. Flow equations are modelled using a fractional flux approach in a segregated manner through an IMplicit Pressure‐Explicit Saturation (IMPES) procedure. The elliptic pressure equation is solved using a two‐step approach and the hyperbolic saturation equation is approximated through an artificial diffusion method adapted for use on unstructured meshes. Some representative examples are shown in order to illustrate the potential of the method to solve fluid flows in porous media with highly discontinuous properties. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Can mirror matter solve the the cosmological lithium problem

The abundance of lithium-7 confronts cosmology with a long lasting inconsistency between the predictions of standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with the baryonic density determined from the Cosmic Microwave Background observations on the one hand, and the spectroscopic determination of the lithium-7 abundance on the other hand. We investigated the influence of the existence of a mirror world, focusing on models in which mirror neutrons can oscillate into ordinary neutrons. Such a mechanism allows for an effective late time neutron injection, which induces an increase of the destruction of beryllium-7and thus a lower final lithium-7 abundance.
Robust fault-tolerant full-order and reduced-order observer synchronization for differential inclusion chaotic systems with unknown disturbances and parameters

Within the drive-response configuration, this paper deals with the problem of fault-tolerant full-order and reduced-order observer synchronization for differential inclusion chaotic systems with unknown disturbances and parameters. Even if there are unknown disturbances and parameters in the drive system, a robust fault-tolerant adaptive full-order observer can be used to realize chaos synchronization with the response system for some assumptions whether or not fault occurs. What’s more, a reduced-order observer differential inclusion response system which can synchronize part states of the drive system is developed for the same assumptions. Finally, some numerical simulations for Lorenz chaotic systems with differential inclusion are designed and the simulation results are analyzed in detail.