Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sensory symptoms across the lifespan in people with cerebral palsy

AIM: To estimate prevalence of sensory symptoms in people with cerebral palsy (CP) across the lifespan. METHOD: In this cross-sectional study, the self-reported Sensory Processing Scale Inventory (SPS-I) was administered via REDCap between 2/1/22 and 8/15/22 to people with CP or their caregivers enrolled in the online MyCP Community Registry. We determined the association between SPS-I scores and age (Pearson correlation) and functional status as assessed using five validated functional classification systems for CP (ANOVA). We hypothesized that sensory symptoms would differ between younger and older individuals with CP. RESULTS: Of 155 responses (28% response rate, age 1-76 years, 34% male), 97% reported at least one bothersome sensory symptom. Total sensory symptoms decreased with age (R2=0.12, p<0.0001), driven by decreases in hyposensitivity symptoms (R2=0.32, p<0.0001), primarily tactile hyposensitivity (R2=0.29, p<0.0001). Sensory symptoms increased with greater functional impairment across all functional domains (ANOVA, p<0.0001). However, the age-specific decrease in hypo-sensitivities was most pronounced in people with the greatest gross motor functional impairment (R2=0.70, p=0.0004). INTERPRETATION: Our findings suggest that hypo-sensitivity, primarily tactile sensitivity, decreases with age in people with CP. Future work should assess whether decreased hyposensitivity contributes to other age-related changes in CP like increased pain.
Reactivation of herpesvirus type-6 and IgA/IgM-mediated responses to activin-A underpin Long COVID, including affective symptoms and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Background: Persistent infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), reactivation of dormant viruses, and immune-oxidative responses are involved in Long COVID. Objectives: To investigate whether Long COVID and depressive, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) symptoms, are associated with IgA/IgM/IgG to SARS-CoV-2, human Herpesvirus type 6 (HHV-6), Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), and immune-oxidative biomarkers. Methods: We examined 90 Long COVID patients and 90 healthy controls. We measured serum IgA/IgM/IgG against HHV-6 and EBV and their deoxyuridine 5'-triphosphate nucleotidohydrolase (duTPase), SARS-CoV-2, and activin-A, C-reactive protein (CRP), advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP), and insulin resistance (HOMA2-IR). Results: Long COVID patients showed significant elevations in IgG/IgM-SARS-CoV-2, IgG/IgM-HHV-6 and HHV-6-duTPase, IgA/IgM-activin-A, CRP, AOPP, and HOMA2-IR. Neural network analysis yielded a highly significant predictive accuracy of 80.6% for the Long COVID diagnosis (sensitivity: 78.9%, specificity: 81.8%, area under the ROC curve=0.876); the topmost predictors were: IGA-activin-A, IgG-HHV-6, IgM-HHV-6-duTPase, IgG-SARS-CoV-2, and IgM-HHV-6 (all positively) and a factor extracted from all IgA levels to all viral antigens (inversely). The top-5 predictors of affective symptoms due to Long COVID were: IgM-HHV-6-duTPase, IgG-HHV-6, CRP, education, IgA-activin-A (predictive accuracy of r=0.636). The top-5 predictors of CFS due to Long COVID were in descending order: CRP, IgG-HHV-6-duTPase, IgM-activin-A, IgM-SARS-CoV-2, and IgA-activin-A (predictive accuracy: r=0.709). Conclusion: Reactivation of HHV-6, SARS-CoV-2 persistence, and autoimmune reactions to activin-A combined with activated immune-oxidative pathways play a major role in the pathophysiology of Long COVID as well as the severity of affective symptoms and CFS due to Long COVID.
Postprocessing‐based interpolation schemes for nested Cartesian finite difference grids of different size

Nested Cartesian grid systems by design require interpolation of solution fields from coarser to finer grid systems. While several choices are available, preserving accuracy, stability, and efficiency at the same time require careful design of the interpolation schemes. Given this context, a series of interpolation algorithms based on postprocessing halo information on nested Cartesian finite difference grids of different size were developed and tested. The results obtained indicate that most of these do not yield the expected improvement, and some even tend to make the solver unstable. However, some third‐ and fourth‐order interpolation functions do yield considerable accuracy improvement, are stable, and are worth implementing.
Periodic Variation of the Winter Stratospheric Circulation and Intermittent Vertical Propagation

Analyses of day to day variations of planetary waves and those of the mean zonal wind in the stratosphere are made throughout the period of five winters from 1963 to 1967 based on the gridpoint data of 30 mb geopotential height together with the stratospheric synoptic charts. The monthly mean structure of planetary waves suggests the upward propagation of wave energy from the troposphere into the stratosphere. Day to day variations of the polar-night westerlies and those of the amplitude of wave number one at the 30-mb level show a periodicity of about two weeks, and a significant negative correlation is found between these two quantities. It is found that the wave amplification propagates upward when the mean zonal wind is relatively weak westerly. This suggests that the periodic variation of planetary waves is caused by the "time -dependent" energy propagation from the troposphere in response to the time change of the mean zonal wind in the stratosphere. Although the divergence of horizontal momentum transport due to the planetary waves is not always in good agreement with the time change of the polar-night westerlies, we may expect a possibility of the existence of an "index cycle" caused by the wave-zonal flow coupling for the stratospheric circulation.
Numerical modeling of active response of arteries

Even though many studies have been conducted to understand and model the passive response of arteries, very few studies have been performed to develop constitutive equation for the active response of arteries and to perform numerical simulations. In this paper, the diffusion of the neurotransmitter, for example noradrenaline, is combined with the anisotropic constitutive model to describe the temporal contraction of the smooth muscle cells in the artery wall. (© 2017 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Multiloop atom interferometer measurements of chameleon dark energy in microgravity

Chameleon ﬁeld is one of the promising candidates of dark energy scalar ﬁelds. As in all viable candidate ﬁeld theories, a screening mechanism is implemented to be consistent with all existing tests of general relativity. The screening eﬀect in the chameleon theory manifests its inﬂuence limited only to the thin outer layer of a bulk object, thus producing extra forces orders of magnitude weaker than that of the gravitational force of the bulk. For point-like particles such as atoms, the depth of screening is larger than the size of the particle, such that the screening mechanism is ineﬀective and the chameleon force is fully expressed on the atomic test particles. Extra force measurements using atom interferometry are thus much more sensitive than bulk mass based measurements, and indeed have placed the most stringent constraints on the parameters characterizing chameleon ﬁeld. In this paper, we present a conceptual measurement approach for chameleon force detection using atom interferometry in microgravity, in which multi-loop atom interferometers exploit specially designed periodic modulation of chameleon ﬁelds. We show that major systematics of the dark energy force measurements, i.e., eﬀects of gravitational forces and their gradients, can be suppressed below all hypothetical chameleon signals in the parameter space of interest.
Smoothing via elliptic operators with application to edge detection

Abstract We propose a new regularization scheme for stable numerical differentiation of noisy data defined on a bounded domain with . The method generates a sequence of smoothed (regularized) data obtained by solving a perturbed elliptic boundary-value problem. Assuming the measured data are in and the true underlying data are sufficiently smooth, we prove convergence results in the -norm, provided the noisy data converge to true data in the sense. Using the finite element method, we derive error bounds and prove convergence theorems in the case of discrete data. Numerical examples indicate noteworthy results and shed light on some possible applications in image processing and computer vision.
Robust simulation of continuous‐time systems with rational dynamics

This paper concerns the simulation of a class of nonlinear continuous‐time systems under a set of initial conditions described by an ellipsoid. By getting inspiration from Lyapunov theory, we show that it is possible to derive a procedure allowing the computation of a bounding ellipsoidal envelope, which will enclose all the states that can be reached from the set of initial conditions. This numerical procedure is based on convex optimization, and it makes it possible to set a guaranteed hard bound on the evolution of the state of the system for all the possible initial conditions. At the end of the paper, we show an application of the method through an academic example. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Friedmann Equation in Codimension-two Braneworlds

We study the expansion of the universe on a deSitter 3-brane in a warped codimensiontwo brane model. We use analytical and numerical methods to solve the jump conditions and quantify the deviations of the Friedmann equation from its standard form. The radion must be stabilized in this model, and it is shown that the magnitude of the deviations is controlled by the radion mass, though in a quantitatively different way from codimension-one brane models. We also examine the effect of the modified expansion rate on inflation driven by fields on the brane.
Probing dark matter with strong gravitational lensing

The standard cosmological model is based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, dark matter, dark energy and inflation. To date, the physical origin of several of these ingredients remains a mystery. The aim of this thesis is to test this model by studying the nature of dark matter through its effects on small cosmological scales. As a first step, we construct a phenomenological description of the relationship between dark matter halos and the normal visible matter in galaxies. This is done by incorporating a prescription of baryonic physics into a dark matter merger tree. We then probe the physical properties of dark matter on sub-galactic scales using strong gravitational lensing. We develop a new method based on versatile basis sets to accurately model complex lensing and source structures. For the strong lens system RXJ1131-1231 this allows us to reconstruct a reliable high resolution image of the source. We also develop a new treatment of the mass-sheet degeneracy inherent in gravitational lensing. We use this to revisit the estimate of the Hubble constant from time-delay strong lensing. We find that the Hubble parameter H0 estimate of the lens system RXJ1131-1231 is strongly sensitive to the dynamical model and the source scale prior and that it is consistent with current cosmic microwave background experiments. Refining our model further, we develop a new approximation scheme that enables an effective treatment of line-of-sight structures. This allows us to further constrain the connection between dark and visible matter. In addition, it yields constraints on the external shear around strong lensing system to sub-percent level precision. To probe the small scale structure formation and the nature of dark matter, we analyze the substructure content of strong lenses statistically through extensive forward modeling. We find that the abundance of substructure in the strong lens RXJ1131-1231 is consistent with a cold dark matter particle scenario. A lower bound on the free streaming mass of a possible dark matter particle can be set to about 2keV. The precision gain by these new techniques and results shed new light on the distribution of dark matter, its physical nature and its relation to visible matter. These results, combined with the upcoming high resolution instruments, offer great prospects for the high-precision study of dark matter and other sectors of the standard cosmological model with strong lensing.
The turbulent boundary layer studied using novel numerical frameworks

We begin with the framework that forms the basis for the other studies that follow it: a direct numerical simulation (DNS) investigation of the incompressible temporally developing turbulent boundary layer. The approach is inspired by temporal simulations of flows which are generally thought of as developing in space, such as wakes and mixing layers. Compressible boundary layers have previously been studied in this manner yet the temporal approach appears to be under-exploited in the literature concerning incompressible boundary layers. The flow is the turbulent counterpart to the laminar Rayleigh problem or Stokes’ first problem, in which a fluid at rest is set into motion by a wall moving at constant velocity. A systematic trip study reveals that as the ratio of momentum thickness to trip-wire diameter approaches unity, our flow approaches a state free from the effects of its starting trip Reynolds number. The transport of a passive scalar by this flow is also simulated. The role played by domain size is investigated with two boxes, sized to accommodate two chosen final Reynolds numbers. Comparisons of the skin friction coefficient, velocity and scalar statistics demonstrate that the temporally developing boundary layer is a good model for the spatially developing boundary layer once initial conditions can be neglected. Analysis of similarity solutions suggests such a rapprochement of the spatial and temporal boundary layers may be expected at high Reynolds numbers given that the only terms that asymptotically persist are those common to both cases. If one seeks statistics for the turbulent boundary layer, the temporal boundary layer is therefore a viable method if modest convergence is sufficient. The term ‘fully developed’ is commonly applied to channel and pipe flows that are statistically stationary in time and no longer exhibit streamwise development. Having already removed streamwise development with periodic boundary conditions for our previous investigation of the temporal boundary layer, we now remove the remaining development in time, giving a turbulent boundary layer that is ‘fully developed’ at finite Reynolds numbers. This is achieved by rescaling in the wall-normal direction and assuming arrested boundary-layer growth, motivated by a large-eddy turnover time estimated to be much shorter than the growth rate of the boundary layer. The present model requires the addition of only a single term to the Navier–Stokes equations to be solved by direct numerical simulation. Analysis of outer-layer similarity shows that this idealised, but non-physical, setup recovers the dominant balance equivalent to the high-Reynolds number asymptotics for both the spatially and temporally developing turbulent boundary layers. The close agreement of the temporal boundary layer to the spatially developing case was previously attributed to the preservation of this dominant balance. Beyond providing a method by which to obtain converged statistics, this study
Creation and Detection of a 1D Optical Lattice of 85 Rb Atoms Using a Low-Cost Camera and Imaging System

CREATION AND DETECTION OF A 1D OPTICAL LATTICE OF Rb ATOMS USING A LOW-COST CAMERA AND IMAGING SYSTEM by Andrew Justin Hachtel In this thesis we will introduce some of the theory for laser cooling and trapping and optical lattices, including the AC Stark effect (or light-shifts), polarization gradients, and Sisyphus cooling. We then present the technological advancements in our laboratory including a synopsis of home-built, inexpensive, fast imaging system and laser amplifier system which are on par with costly commercial systems and a home-built radio frequency amplifier system for driving acousto-optic modulators. We will present data that shows compelling preliminary evidence for the presence of a 1D optical lattice. We will discuss future experiments on optical ratchets. CREATION AND DETECTION OF A 1D OPTICAL LATTICE OF Rb ATOMS USING A LOW-COST CAMERA AND IMAGING SYSTEM A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Department of Physics by Andrew Justin Hachtel Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014 Advisor Dr. Samir Bali Reader Dr. Perry Rice Reader Dr. Paul Urayama
A flexible natural coordinates formulation (FNCF) for the efficient simulation of small‐deformation multibody systems

This paper introduces the novel flexible natural coordinates formulation to model small‐deformation multibody dynamics. The main contribution of this work is its resulting constant mass matrix and quadratic constraint equations devoid of any other nonlinearities. These properties are similar to those of a natural coordinates formulation for rigid multibody systems with the addition of constant damping and stiffness matrices to model the flexibility under the assumption of small deformations. As such, it is a straightforward extension to natural coordinates while maintaining its beneficial properties. The main concept of the current approach is to introduce ample redundancy in the set of generalized coordinates to simplify the kinematics ensuring the aforementioned properties and the similarity to a natural coordinates approach. This is not achievable by standard techniques that introduce redundancy. Not only does this offer a very simple equation structure but also interesting properties toward the development of system‐level model order reduction techniques for flexible multibody systems as well as a straightforward parameter gradient extraction. The formulation accuracy is validated with a floating frame of reference implementation.
Computer algebra experimentation with Higmanian rank 5 association schemes on 40 vertices and related combinatorial objects

Paying our tribute to the mathematical heritage of D. G. Higman we investigate imprimitive association schemes on 40 points with 4 classes which belong to proper class II in a sense of [Hig95]. Considering four possible sets of intersection numbers, corresponding to a parabolic of type 10 ◦K4, we enumerate all 15 schemes for the first case, discover schemes covering second and third parameter sets, proving that second case is unique up to isomorphism, while the fourth parameter set is easily discarded. Though most of the obtained results are essentially computer dependent, finally for many constructed structures a computer free interpretation is presented. Section 2 provides a short introduction to the concepts of coherent coniguration and association scheme. Following to a spirit of H. S. M. Coxeter, a number of nice auxiliary objects (including cages on 40 and 50 vertices) are inspected in Section 3, enjoying all opportunities provided by the use of modern computer algebra techniques. In Section 4 a new concept of a total graph coherent configuration suggested by the authors is investigated. Exceptional mergings which appear from such configuration on 40 points serve as a motivation for the whole project. This in particular implies interest to Higman’s classification of rank 5 imprimitive association schemes which is briefly discussed in Section 5 and to the consideration of the classical Deza graph (a generalization of
A Note on Computing the Standard Errors of Estimate of Composite Index

Abstract. This short note proposes working out of the standard errors of estimate of composite indices when they are constructed by using intrinsically derived weights. It illustrates the proposed method, using the jackknife re-sampling technique, by an example that relates to crime of different types in Uttar Pradesh (India). Improvements are suggested through bootstrapping. Keywords. Composite index, Standard error of estimate, Jackknife resampling, Crime data, Uttar Pradesh, India. JEL. C43, C61, C71.
Three-dimensional image reconstruction for time-domain fluorescence molecular tomography based on generalized pulse spectrum technique

A linear generalized pulse spectrum technique for image reconstruction of fluorescence molecular tomography is proposed. The algorithm employs a finite element method solution to the Laplace-transformed coupled diffusion equations and can simultaneously reconstruct both fluorescent yield and lifetime images of fluorophores. The proposed algorithm was validated using simulated data for 3D phantoms. We investigated the ability of the algorithm to reconstruct the fluorescent yield and lifetime at different region, contrasted the imaging quality of different target lifetime and proved the noise-robustness by using noisy data with different signal-to-noise ratio. The results show that the approach accurately retrieves the position and shape of the target and prove the effectiveness of the methodology.
Analysis of semiparametric regression models for the cumulative incidence functions under the two-phase sampling designs

Competing risks often arise where a subject may be exposed to two or more mutually exclusive causes of failure. In the competing risks setting, the effects of covariates on the semiparametric model for cumulative incidence function can be assessed by using the direct binomial regression approach. In epidemiologic cohort studies, case-cohort study designs have been widely used to evaluate the effects of covariates on failure times when the occurrence of the failure event is rare. In this dissertation, we study estimating procedures for the cumulative incidence function based on competing risks data under case-cohort/two-phase sampling designs. First, we introduce the semiparametric model for the cumulative incidence function with missing data. The estimation procedure is based on the direct binomial regression model, which enables us to evaluate the effects of the covariates directly when there exists competing risks. We develop an estimating equation for the missing model by using the inverse probability weighting of the complete case method. However, the IPW method loses the efficiency because it uses only complete data of subjects. To overcome this inefficiency, we also propose an estimating equation for the semiparametric model by using augmented inverse probability of complete case method. The AIPW method is doubly robust and it can improve efficiency. The asymptotic properties of the proposed IPW and AIPW estimators are established. The finite-sample properties of those estimators are investigated by the simulation studies. The proposed estimating methods are applied to analyze data from the RV144 vaccine efficacy trial. Department of Mathematics, UNC Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223