Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Apparent and Measured Rates of Nitrification in the Hypolimnion of a Mesotrophic Lake

Three distinct phases were observed in the change of dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentrations in the hypolimnion of Grasmere. The second phase of decreasing ammonia and increasing nitrate concentrations was typical of the nitrification process. Observations on nitrate concentration gradients between surface sediments and the water column and experiments using the nitrification inhibitor N-Serve indicated the in situ activity of chemolithotrophic nitrifying organisms. Nitrification rates were estimated throughout the period of stratification by using the N-Serve and [14C]bicarbonate uptake method. Comparison of the field nitrate concentrations with the predicted nitrate concentrations (from estimates of the nitrification rate) indicated that the method underestimated the true rate of nitrification. Possible reasons for this are discussed.
Why is Pollution from U.S. Manufacturing Declining? The Roles of Trade, Regulation, Productivity, and Preferences

Between 1990 and 2008, emissions of the most common air pollutants from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent, even as real U.S. manufacturing output grew substantially. This paper develops a quantitative model to explain how changes in trade, environmental regulation, productivity, and consumer preferences have contributed to these reductions in pollution emissions. We estimate the model's key parameters using administrative data on plant-level production and pollution decisions. We then combine these estimates with detailed historical data to provide a model-driven decomposition of the causes of the observed pollution changes. Finally, we compare the model-driven decomposition to a statistical decomposition. The model and data suggest three findings. First, the fall in pollution emissions is due to decreasing pollution per unit output within narrowly defined products, rather than to changes in the types of products produced or changes to the total quantity of manufacturing output. Second, the implicit pollution tax that rationalizes firm production and abatement behavior more than doubled between 1990 and 2008. Third, environmental regulation explains 75 percent or more of the observed reduction in pollution emissions from manufacturing.
Gauss-Newton-type techniques for robustly fitting implicitly defined curves and surfaces to unorganized data points

We describe Gauss-Newton type methods for fitting implicitly defined curves and surfaces to given unorganized data points. The methods can deal with general error functions, such as approximations to the l1 or linfin norm of the vector of residuals. Depending on the definition of the residuals, we distinguish between direct and data-based methods. In addition, we show that these methods can either be seen as (discrete) iterative methods, where an update of the unknown shape parameters is computed in each step, or as continuous evolution processes, that generate a time-dependent family of curves or surfaces, which converges towards the final result. It is shown that the data-based methods - which are less costly, as they work without the need of computing the closest points - can efficiently deal with error functions that are adapted to noisy and uncertain data. In addition, we observe that the interpretation as evolution process allows to deal with the issues of regularization and with additional constraints.
Scropolioside B Inhibits IL-1β and Cytokines Expression through NF-κB and Inflammasome NLRP3 Pathways

Chronic inflammation is associated with various chronic illnesses including immunity disorders, cancer, neurodegeneration, and vascular diseases. Iridoids are compounds with anti-inflammatory properties. However their anti-inflammatory mechanism remains unclear. Here, we report that scropolioside B, isolated from a Tibetan medicine (Scrophularia dentata Royle ex Benth.), blocked expressions of TNF, IL-1, and IL-32 through NF-κB pathway. Scropolioside B inhibited NF-κB activity in a dose-dependent manner with IC50 values of 1.02 μmol/L. However, catalpol, similar to scropolioside B, was not effective in inhibiting NF-κB activity. Interestingly, scropolioside B and catalpol decreased the expression of NLRP3 and cardiolipin synthetase at both the mRNA and protein level. Our results showed that scropolioside B is superior in inhibiting the expression, maturation, and secretion of IL-1β compared to catalpol. These observations provide further understanding of the anti-inflammatory effects of iridoids and highlight scropolioside B as a potential drug for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and atherosclerosis.
Reference Selection for Hybrid TOA/RSS Linear Least Squares Localization

Linear least squares (LLS) estimation is a suboptimum but low-complexity localization method based on measurements of location-related parameters. It has been proved that selection of the reference anchor influences the LLS localization accuracy. In addition, hybridization of different types of measurements can fix the deficiencies of one type of measurements. In this paper, we proposed a new reference selection criterion for the hybrid TOA/RSS LLS localization technique (called H-LLSRS), which considers both measured ranges and the information about their coarse variances. Moreover, we consider a general scenario that variances of range measurements are different, and derive a weighted LLS (WLLS) estimator for hybrid TOA/RSS localization according to the information about the accurate ranging variances and the correlations among the observations. Simulation results show that if the RSS-based ranging variances are considerably larger than the TOA-based ranging variances, the H-LLS-RS localization technique yields better accuracy than the conventional LLS localization techniques. Furthermore, reference selection has no effect on the accuracy of WLLS localization technique.
Social Aware Assisted Transmission in MANET

With the coming of information era, our lives have been filled with varied mobile devices. Due to the popularity of mobile devices, Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) has been widespread more than ever. However, "how to obtain trustworthy information from trusty nodes through social network " is a significant issue. This research gears toward social aware assisted transmission in MANET. In this paper, social network analysis techniques are employed to analyze the relationship among users to select appropriate node for message forwarding. We propose an Ego-Centric Social Network Routing (ECSNR) method, which stems from the concept of ego network. ECSNR considers those neighbor nodes of either social aware or non-social aware nodes within its communication range for message forwarding. ECSNR uses degree centrality, betweenness centrality, interest similarity, and friend diversity to accelerate message transmission and enhance successful message delivery. Besides, ECSNR has built-in redundant plan for overloaded nodes. The plan uses candidate list, recommended list, and interest-similar list to help select alternative nodes without having to waste time in recalculating new delivery path. ECSNR is compared with SANE [3] through simulations. Simulation results show that ECSNR outperforms SANE in packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and average hop count.
Variability of planar Ultra-Thin Body and Buried oxide (UTBB) FDSOI MOSFETs

We show that planar Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FDSOI) technology allows improving the threshold voltage V<sub>T</sub> variability of CMOS devices in comparison to standard bulk CMOS devices. Moreover, integrated on Ultra-Thin Body and Buried oxide (UTBB), it enables the use of standard power management techniques (Reverse or Forward Back Biasing) without V<sub>T</sub> variability penalty. Drain current I<sub>D</sub> mismatch variations (σ<sub>ID</sub>) are found to be correlated with both threshold voltage (V<sub>T</sub>) and ON-state resistance (R<sub>ON</sub>) fluctuations. Additionally, the impact of R<sub>ON</sub> and V<sub>T</sub> variations is significantly reduced by their advantageous correlation, while σ<sub>ΔVT</sub> remains the major σ<sub>ID</sub> contributor. Finally, we demonstrate that SiGe channel could be used to improve global V<sub>T</sub> variability of short channel pMOS devices in addition to enhanced performances.
Inside the Hybrid Organization: Selective Coupling as a Response to Competing Institutional Logics

This article explores how hybrid organizations, which incorporate competing institutional logics, internally manage the logics that they embody. Relying on an inductive comparative case study of four work integration social enterprises embedded in competing social welfare and commercial logics, we show that, instead of adopting strategies of decoupling or compromising, as the literature typically suggests, these organizations selectively coupled intact elements prescribed by each logic. This strategy allowed them to project legitimacy to external stakeholders without having to engage in costly deceptions or negotiations. We further identify a specific hybridization pattern that we refer to as "Trojan horse," whereby organizations that entered the work integration field with low legitimacy because of their embeddedness in the commercial logic strategically incorporated elements from the social welfare logic in an attempt to gain legitimacy and acceptance. Surprisingly, they did so more than comparable organizations originating from the social welfare logic. These findings suggest that, when lacking legitimacy in a given field, hybrids may manipulate the templates provided by the multiple logics in which they are embedded in an attempt to gain acceptance. Overall, our findings contribute to a better understanding of how organizations can survive and thrive when embedded in pluralistic institutional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Surveillance of hospitalized farm injuries in Canada

Objective—To provide an overview of hospital admissions for the treatment of farm injuries. Methods—Design: descriptive analysis of data from the Canadian Agricultural Injury Surveillance Program (CAISP). Population: persons experiencing a farm injury requiring hospitalization, April 1991 to March 1995. Access to hospital separation data was negotiated within Canadian provinces. Individual cases were verified by medical records personnel and supplemental data describing injury circumstances were obtained. Analysis: descriptive analyses characterizing farm injuries by: persons involved, mechanisms, primary diagnoses, and agents of injury. Results—Data from 8/10 Canadian provinces representing 98% of the farm population were obtained. A total of 8263 farm injuries were verified. Adults aged 60 years and older were over-represented in these injuries. Leading external causes of agricultural machinery injury included entanglements, being pinned/struck by machinery, falls, and runovers. Non-machinery causes included falls from heights, animal related trauma, and being struck/by against objects. Leading diagnoses varied by age group, but included: limb fractures/open wounds, intracranial injuries, skull fractures, and spinal/truncal fractures. Conclusions—CAISP is a new agricultural injury surveillance program in Canada. Data from this system are actively used to inform prevention initiatives, and to indicate priorities for etiological and experimental research in the Canadian agricultural setting.
Unsupervised Segmentation for Digital Matting

Digital matting consists in extracting a foreground element from a background image. Besides the image, usual matting methods need to be initialized with two disjoint regions : the set of foreground only pixels and the set of background only pixels. Pixels belonging to none of these two regions are considered as an undetermined blending between the foreground and the background. Here, one has to estimate the opacity (alpha channel) and the original foreground and background colors that have been blended. Initialization is a crucial step for these methods, and usually one has to specify accurate initial regions, leaving undetermined as few pixels as possible. This is especially true for recent methods that use local models. This paper proposes an unsupervised segmentation scheme that initializes any matting method by extracting the foreground and background regions from just a small subset of them. Standard statistical models are used for the foreground and background regions, while a specific one is design for the blended region. The three regions are determined simultaneously using a level set method implementation. Results show that our method works in various conditions, simplifying as much as possible the user’s job. Even when a sufficient but non perfect initialization is given to the matting algorithm, it turns out that using our method as a first step significantly improves the final matting result.
Algumas observaçoes sobre a margem de contribuiçao

The paper analyzes some concepts in the field of Financiai and Management Accounting that are well known by economists. The concept of contribution margin adds new notions in the computation of the break-even point. The relevant range of the data is important to avoid absurd prospections. Thefallacy of the analysis of total costs, where the fixed costs, as they are allocated show difterent total costs, is also indicated. Finnaly, it is shwon a chart where the relevance of the contribution margin can be seen.
ESTADO DE ÁNIMO Y SESGOS EN EL RECUERDO: PAPEL DEL AFECTO

El presente trabajo consiste en un experimento en el que se inducen estados de animo mediante la exposicion a unas peliculas (una alegre y otra triste) sin instrucciones concretas por parte de los experimentadores y se realizan pruebas de memoria inmediata de listas que contenian palabras neutras, con connotaciones alegres y con connotaciones tristes. Los resultados indican que mientras el efecto de la exposicion a las peliculas sobre el recuerdo de palabras fue claro y consistente, los cambios subjetivos del estado de animo fueron debiles, sin que ambos efectos mostraran ningun tipo de correlacion. Estos resultados son mas favorables a la hipotesis que destaca el papel de la preparacion cognitiva que a la basada en el estado afectivo. Mood state and recall biases: the role of affect.In this experiment, mood states were induced by exposure to two films, one happy and another sad, without any specific verbal instruction from experimenters. Afterwards, tests of immediate memory were performed. Subjects had to remember lists of positive, negative of neutral words. Results show that film watch produces a reliable and strong bias on remembering but a slighter effect on verbal expression of mood. Moreover verbal affect expression and biased remembering were unrelated. These results are more favourable to a cognitive priming hypothesis than an affective state-dependent one.
Integrating protein annotation resources through the Distributed Annotation System

Using the Distributed Annotation System (DAS) we have created a protein annotation resource available at our web page: , as a part of the BioSapiens Network of Excellence EU FP6 project. The DAS protocol allows us to gather layers of annotation data for a given sequence and thereby gain an overview of the sequence's features. A user-friendly graphical client has also been developed (), which demonstrates the possibility of integrating DAS annotation data from multiple sources into a simple graphical view. The client displays protein feature annotations from the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis as well as from the BioSapiens reference UniProt server () at the European Bioinformatics Institute. Other DAS data sources for protein annotation will be added as they become available.
Investigational drugs for the management of Huntington’s disease: are we there yet?

Introduction: Huntington’s disease is a hereditary neurodegenerative disease. It is designated as a rare disease in the US, which means there are < 200,000 patients in the country who suffer from it. The drugs that are currently used to treat this disease were not designed specifically for it but developed for other diseases. Presently, two classes of drugs are being developed; those that provide symptomatic relief and those that may modify course of the disease. Areas covered: This review is focused on seven selected drugs currently in clinical testing and describes their progress. Five of the seven drugs that are reviewed here, can be categorized as ‘symptomatic’ drugs, and, selisistat and PBT-2 are amongst the ones that would qualify as ‘disease modifying’ drugs. Expert opinion: The authors believe that the future treatment paradigm for this disease is best met by using a disease-modifying drug that can be administered together with symptomatic drugs. Towards that end, it is important for the industry to focus on disease-modifying drugs by targeting unique pathways and targets. Furthermore, they propose that neuroprotective drugs, that is, drugs that directly work by preserving neuronal health and function is an opportunity for such disease-modifying drugs.
Reading comprehension system based on knowledge structures

This paper describes initial work on an automated reading comprehension system that accepts arbitrary text input and generates answers to the questions about the text. An approach to implement reading comprehension system is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the article will be decomposed according to paragraph, sentence and phrase. Every sentence will be compared with the knowledge node, and then append the knowledge representation to the knowledge model. Finally, the answer is generated for the questions. With the experimental corpus the precision of knowledge matching is 65.0%, and precision of question answering is 81.5% with the system knowledge model.
Mental representations from an intergenerational cognitive science perspective

It is a privilege, even if an awesome one, to discuss the «position statements» of two psychoanalytic scholars who have both contributed more than most others to the paradigm shift in psychoanalytic views of development in general, and the weltanschauung of mental representations in particular. I will start my discussion by sketching some important aspects of the scientific context for this debate, then examine a few of the many important ideas set out in these two excellent papers, and finally conclude with some suggestions for further development in this field. The emerging field of developmental psychopathology (Cicchetti, 1990a) has brought psychoanalysis and developmental psychology into close contact. The developmental approach to psychopathology, which is the traditonal framework of psychoanalysis (see Tyson & Tyson, 1990) aims to uncover the developmental course of different disorders of childhood and adulthood, their developmental patterns in a potentially therapeutic way (Sroufe, 1990; Sroufe, Egeland & Kreutzer, 1990)
Genome-Wide Linkage and Association Scans for Quantitative Trait Loci of Serum Lactate Dehydrogenase—The Framingham Heart Study

Serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) is used in diagnosing many diseases and is significantly determined by genetic factors. Three genes coding for LDH isoenzymes were mapped to chromosome 11q15 and 12p12. We used 330 Framingham Heart Study largest families for microsatellite linkage scan and 100K SNPs association scan to determine quantitative trait loci of LDH level. We estimated the heritability at 41%. Our genome-wide linkage analysis yielded several chromosomal regions, other than 11q and 12p, with LOD scores between 1 and 2.5. None of the 100K SNPs with a P-value <10−4 in our genome-wide association study was close to the chromosomal regions where the LDH genes reside. Our study demonstrated a strong genetic effect on the variation of LDH levels. There may not be a single gene with a large effect, instead may be several genes with small effects in controlling the variation of serum LDH. Those genes may be located on chromosomal regions that differ from where the genes encoding LDH isoenzymes reside.
Eco-Sociology: inside and outside of the cocoon

Abstract The present article examines how American and German sociological theories deal with the concept of nature and with environmental problems. The results of an analysis of professional sociological publications are presented. Various conceptions of sociological theorists are discussed focussing on nature and environmental problems. It is argued that the social sciences and the mass media are becoming more and more intertwined, increasingly coming to comprise ‘parallel systems of meaning production’ (Gamson and Modgliani, 1989). The basic cultural orientations (subsystems) determine how the concept of nature is discussed. It is suggested to investigate how different conceptions of nature are used in social actions and social situations.
An Architectural Framework of a Crawler for Retrieving Highly Relevant Web Documents by Filtering Replicated Web Collections

As the Web continues to grow, it has become a difficult task to search for the relevant information using traditional search engines. There are many index based web search engines to search information in various domains on the Web. By using such search engines the retrieved documents (URLs) related to the searched topic are of poor quality also as the amount of Web pages is growing at a rapid speed, the issue of devising a personalized Web search is of great importance. This paper proposes a method to reduce the time spend on browsing search results by providing a personalized Web Search Agent (MetaCrawler). In the proposed technique of personalized Web searching, Web pages relevant to user interests will be ranked in the front of the result list, thus facilitating the user to get a quick to get access those links ranked in the front of the list. An experiment was designed and conducted to test the performance of proposed Web-Filtering approach. The experimental results suggest substantial improvement in the crawling strategy, especially when the search strings are small.
Units of Visual Individuation in Rhesus Macaques: Objects or Unbound Features?

Vision begins with the processing of unbound visual features, which must eventually be bound together into object representations. Such feature binding is required for coherent visual perception, and accordingly has received a considerable amount of study in several domains. Neurophysiological work, often in monkeys, has revealed the details of how and where feature binding occurs in the brain, but methodological limitations have not allowed this research to elucidate just how feature binding operates spontaneously in real-world situations. In contrast, behavioral work with human infants has demonstrated how we use simpler unbound features to individuate and identify objects over time and occlusion in many types of events, but this work has not typically been able to isolate the role of feature binding in such processing. Here we provide a method for assessing the spontaneity and fidelity of feature binding in non-human primates, as this process is utilized in real-world situations, including simple foraging behaviors. Using both looking-time and manual-search measures in a natural environment, we show that free-ranging rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) spontaneously bind features in order to individuate objects across time and occlusion in dynamic events. This pattern of results demonstrates that feature binding is used in subtle ways to guide ecologically relevant behavior in a non-human animal, spontaneously and reliably, in its natural environment.