Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial Spillovers of Financial Risk and Their Dynamic Evolution: Evidence from Listed Financial Institutions in China

This paper investigates the multidimensional spatial effects of risk spillovers among Chinese financial institutions and the dynamic evolution of financial risk contagion in the tail risk correlation network over different time periods. We first measure risk spillovers from financial submarkets to the stock market, identifying five periods using structural breakpoint tests. Then, we construct a spatial error financial network panel model by combining complex network and spatial econometric theory to explore the spatial spillover variability. Finally, we calculate the Bonacich centrality of nodes in the tail risk network and analyze the dynamic evolution of the financial impact path during the different time periods. The results show that the multidimensional spatial spillovers of financial risk among financial institutions are obvious and time varying. The spatial spillovers of financial institutions are positively correlated with the turnover rate and negatively correlated with the exchange rate, interest rate and return volatility. Financial institutions of the same type in the tail risk network display intraindustry risk clustering, and the systemically important institutions identified based on Bonacich centrality differ significantly across time. Moreover, when risk spillovers increase, external shocks’ destructive power and speed of transmission to the network rise.
Measuring the ISW effect with next-generation radio surveys

The late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) signal in the CMB temperature anisotropies is an important probe of dark energy when it can be detected by cross-correlation with large-scale structure surveys. Because of their huge sky area, surveys in the radio are well-suited to ISW detection. We show that 21cm intensity mapping and radio continuum surveys with the SKA in Phase~1 promise a $\sim5\sigma$ detection if we use tomography, with a similar forecast for the precursor EMU survey. In SKA Phase~2, the 21cm galaxy redshift survey and the continuum survey could deliver a $\sim6\sigma$ detection. Our analysis of the radio surveys aims for theoretical accuracy on large scales. Firstly, we include all the effects on the radio surveys from observing on the past lightcone: redshift-space distortions and lensing magnification can have a significant impact on the ISW signal to noise ratio, while Doppler and other relativistic distortions are not significant. Secondly, we use the full information in the observable galaxy angular power spectra $C_\ell(z,z')$, by avoiding the Limber approximation and by including all cross-correlations between redshift bins in the covariance. Without these cross-bin correlations, the ISW signal to noise ratio is biased.
Analysis of Size-Dependent Linear Static Bending, Buckling, and Free Vibration Based on a Modified Couple Stress Theory

The purposes of this paper are to study bending, buckling, and vibration by considering micro-scale effects using the Kirchhoff thin-plate theory and to consider small deflections, neglecting higher-order nonlinear terms. The governing equations for the bending, buckling, and vibration of the system are obtained using the equilibrium method coupled with the Kirchhoff thin-plate theory and a modified couple stress theory (MCST). The concept of the equivalent bending stiffness (EBS) of micro-thin plates is proposed to describe the scale effect. The Navier method is used to obtain analytical solutions for the bending, buckling, and free vibration of thin plates under simply supported boundary conditions with scale effects. The numerical results are presented to investigate the influence of scale effects on deflection, critical buckling load, buckling topography, and thin-plate natural frequency. The results show that the scale effect increases the equivalent stiffness of the thin plate, which leads to a decrease in deflection, a larger critical buckling load, and an increase in natural frequency, but does not affect the buckling topography. The MSCT is invalid when the thickness is greater than 10 times the scale effect parameter, thus defining the scope of application of the scale effect. This research study may contribute to the design of micro-scale devices such as MEMSs/NEMSs.
Automated Bone Age Assessment: A New Three-Stage Assessment Method from Coarse to Fine

Bone age assessment (BAA) based on X-ray imaging of the left hand and wrist can accurately reflect the degree of the body’s physiological development and physical condition. However, the traditional manual evaluation method relies too much on inefficient specialist labor. In this paper, to propose automatic BAA, we introduce a hierarchical convolutional neural network to detect the regions of interest (ROI) and classify the bone grade. Firstly, we establish a dataset of children’s BAA containing 2518 left hand X-rays. Then, we use the fine-grained classification to obtain the grade of the region of interest via object detection. Specifically, fine-grained classifiers are based on context-aware attention pooling (CAP). Finally, we perform the model assessment of bone age using the third version of the Tanner–Whitehouse (TW3) methodology. The end-to-end BAA system provides bone age values, the detection results of 13 ROIs, and the bone maturity of the ROIs, which are convenient for doctors to obtain information for operation. Experimental results on the public dataset and clinical dataset show that the performance of the proposed method is competitive. The accuracy of bone grading is 86.93%, and the mean absolute error (MAE) of bone age is 7.68 months on the clinical dataset. On public dataset, the MAE is 6.53 months. The proposed method achieves good performance in bone age assessment and is superior to existing fine-grained image classification methods.
Component Reliability Estimations without Field Data

Maintenance activities in a large-scale engineering system are usually scheduled according to the lifetimes of various components in order to ensure the overall reliability of the system. Lifetimes of components can be deduced by the corresponding probability distributions with parameters estimated from past failure data. While failure data of the components is not always readily available, the engineers have to be content with the primitive information from the manufacturers only, such as the mean and standard deviation of lifetime, to plan for the maintenance activities. In this paper, the moment-based piecewise polynomial model (MPPM) are proposed to estimate the parameters of the reliability probability distribution of the products when only the mean and standard deviation of the product lifetime are known. This method employs a group of polynomial functions to estimate the two parameters of the Weibull Distribution according to the mathematical relationship between the shape parameter of two-parameters Weibull Distribution and the ratio of mean and standard deviation. Tests are carried out to evaluate the validity and accuracy of the proposed methods with discussions on its suitability of applications. The proposed method is particularly useful for reliability-critical systems, such as railway and power systems, in which the maintenance activities are scheduled according to the expected lifetimes of the system components.
Asymmetric and Symmetric Dimethylarginines as Renal Function Parameters in Paediatric Kidney Diseases: A Literature Review from 2003 to 2022

Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA), inhibitors of nitric oxide synthase, play important roles in many processes in the body. Most data in the literature concern their importance in adult chronic kidney disease (CKD). According to them, SDMA well reflects the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), and higher ADMA concentrations are associated with hypertension and higher mortality. In addition, both substances are recognised cardiovascular risk factors in CKD. The purpose of this review was to summarise the studies on dimethylarginines in renal diseases in children, about which we have much fewer data. The review focuses specifically on dimethylarginine’s relation to routinely used renal function parameters. Finally, we analysed 21 of the 55 articles published between 2003 and 2022 on dimethylarginines in kidney diseases in children (from birth to 18 years of age), obtained by searching PubMed/MEDLINE (search terms: “dimethylarginine” and “kidney”).
BCS-BEC crossover in a relativistic superfluid and its significance to quark matter

The character change of a superfluid state due to the variation of the attractive force is investigated in the relativistic framework with a massive fermion. Two crossovers are found. One is a crossover from the usual BCS state to the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of bound fermion pairs. The other is from the BEC to the relativistic Bose-Einstein condensation (RBEC) of nearly massless bound pairs where antiparticles as well as particles dominate the thermodynamics. Possible realization of the BEC and RBEC states in the quark matter is also pointed out.
Measuring the EoR Power Spectrum without Measuring the EoR Power Spectrum

The large-scale structure of the universe should soon be measured at high redshift during the epoch of reionization (EoR) through line-intensity mapping. A number of ongoing and planned surveys are using the 21 cm line to trace neutral hydrogen fluctuations in the intergalactic medium during the EoR. These may be fruitfully combined with separate efforts to measure large-scale emission fluctuations from galactic lines such as [ ], CO, H-α, and Lyα during the same epoch. The large-scale power spectrum of each line encodes important information about reionization, with the 21 cm power spectrum providing a relatively direct tracer of the ionization history. Here we show that the large-scale 21 cm power spectrum can be extracted using only cross-power spectra between the 21 cm fluctuations and each of two separate line-intensity mapping data cubes. This technique is more robust to residual foregrounds than the usual 21 cm auto-power spectrum measurements and so can help in verifying auto-spectrum detections. We characterize the accuracy of this method using numerical simulations and find that the large-scale 21 cm power spectrum can be inferred to a simulated accuracy of within 5% for most of the EoR. Our estimate of the 21 cm power spectrum reaches 0.6% accuracy on a scale of k ∼ 0.1 −1 at (z = 8.34 in our model). An extension from two to N additional lines would provide N(N − 1)/2 cross-checks on the large-scale 21 cm power spectrum. This work strongly motivates redundant line-intensity mapping surveys probing the same cosmological volumes.
Ellipsoidal deformation of vertical quantum dots

Addition energy spectra at 0 T of circular and ellipsoidally deformed few-electron vertical quantum dots are measured and compared to results of model calculations within spin-density-functional theory. Because of the rotational symmetry of the lateral harmonic confining potential, circular dots show a pronounced shell structure. With the lifting of the single-particle level degeneracies, even a small deformation is found to radically alter the shell structure leading to significant modifications in the addition energy spectra. Breaking the circular symmetry with deformation also induces changes in the total spin. This ``piezomagnetic'' behavior of quantum dots is discussed, and the addition energies for a set of realistic deformation parameters are provided. For the case of the four-electron ground state at 0 T, a spin-triplet to spin-singlet transition is predicted, i.e., Hund's first rule no longer applies. Application of a magnetic field parallel to the current confirms that this is the case, and also suggests that the anisotropy of an elliptical dot, in practice, may be higher than that suggested by the geometry of the device mesa in which the dot is located.
Formation of Galactic Prominence in the Galactic Central Region

We carried out 2.5-dimensional resistive MHD simulations to study the formation mechanism of molecular loops observed by Fukui et al. in the Galactic central region. Since it is hard to form molecular loops by lifting up dense molecular gas, we study the formation mechanism of molecular gas in rising magnetic arcades. This model is based on the in situ formation model of solar prominences, in which prominences are formed by cooling instability in helical magnetic flux ropes formed by imposing converging and shearing motion at footpoints of the magnetic arch anchored to the solar surface. We extended this model to Galactic center scale (a few hundreds of parsecs). Numerical results indicate that magnetic reconnection taking place in the current sheet that formed inside the rising magnetic arcade creates dense blobs confined by the rising helical magnetic flux ropes. Thermal instability taking place in the flux ropes forms dense molecular filaments floating at high Galactic latitude. The mass of the filament increases with time and can exceed 10 5 M ⊙ .
Quasistationary solutions of scalar fields around collapsing self-interacting boson stars

There is increasing numerical evidence that scalar fields can form long-lived quasi-bound states around black holes. Recent perturbative and numerical relativity calculations have provided further confirmation in a variety of physical systems, including both static and accreting black holes, and collapsing fermionic stars. In this work we investigate this issue yet again in the context of gravitationally unstable boson stars leading to black hole formation. We build a large sample of spherically symmetric initial models, both stable and unstable, incorporating a self-interaction potential with a quartic term. The three different outcomes of unstable models, namely migration to the stable branch, total dispersion, and collapse to a black hole, are also present for self-interacting boson stars. Our simulations show that for black-hole-forming models, a scalar-field remnant is found outside the black-hole horizon, oscillating at a different frequency than that of the original boson star. This result is in good agreement with recent spherically symmetric simulations of unstable Proca stars collapsing to black holes.
Digital technology for facilitating inquiry-based learning during the COVID pandemic for human anatomy course

BACKGROUND: Linking anatomy with the clinical approach for creating an inquisitive mind for a millennium via the digital platform is the need of the hour. Traditional lecturing makes students have rote memorization of the human anatomy. The inquiry-based project will allow undergraduate medical students to have a deeper understanding of human anatomy along with team building and interpersonal skill development. This approach of teaching would allow students to link the content taught for human anatomy with its clinical applicability and probably generate inquisitiveness for further exploring the course content. The study aimed to appraise and assess the perception of medical students and faculty about the inquiry-based digitalized project presentation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted for inquiry-based project presentation where students were divided into 15 groups with 15 inquiries, which were presented as projects on a digital platform under the guidance of the facilitator. The perception of students and faculty for the inquiry-based approach was collected using a validated survey questionnaire. The quantitative data were analyzed by SPSS-version 15, using descriptive statistics, Friedman's rank, and thematic analysis for qualitative data. RESULT: In total, 117 students participated in the pre-test and 129 in the post-test part of the study. Also, 79.1% of students appreciated that the inquiry-based project presentation approach allowed them to link anatomy with different courses; 73.6% agreed that this approach has a positive impact on their attitude toward learning anatomy. Then, 75.2% students appreciated of learning new skills using the digital platform. They agreed to have developed leadership (65.1%) and team-building skills (83.7%) and self-directed learning (SDL) improvement (71.3%). However, some students (9.3%) and faculty (16.7%) had been ostracized for presenting their inquiry-based projects on a digital platform, whereas 65.1% of students appreciated this approach. CONCLUSION: Inquiry-based learning approach would allow students to have a deeper understanding of the subject knowledge and skills for the SDL and learn strategies for the usage of virtual technology for literature search.
Moving Beyond Formal Truth Practices and Forensic Truth in the Syrian Conflict: How Informal Truth Practices Contribute to Thicker Understandings of Truth

Truth is a central concept in the struggle for justice for Syrians. Many justice actors have turned to the tools and rhetoric of transitional justice to further the quest for justice and truth. Yet, while doing so has allowed them to generate some international attention for victims, the transitional justice paradigm has several pitfalls. For one, the dominant understanding of truth and truth-seeking embraced in formal mechanisms tends to be narrowly defined as forensic truth. We argue on the basis of interviews with Syrian justice actors and artists that informal, including artistic, practices can entail a thicker understanding of truth. They have the potential to disrupt several shortcomings of forensic understanding of truth and formal practices. They can ‘presence’ experiences of harm, accommodate multivocal truths, and enable epistemic resistance. Therefore, we consider how transitional justice as a field of scholarship and practice could better engage with truth-seeking in inconclusive contexts where formal truth mechanisms may be unavailable.
Light curve variation caused by accretion column switching stellar hemispheres

We investigate switching of the accretion column between the stellar hemispheres in the magnetosphere of a star with the dipole magnetic field aligned with the stellar rotation axis. We show that such switching can produce “hiccups” in the observed lightcurves. The intensity of emitted radiation from the stellar surface as seen by distant observers is computed from our two dimensional axisymmetric viscous and resistive magnetohydrodynamic numerical simulations. This result is used to construct a three-dimensional model of a star with the ring-shaped hot spots from the accretion columns at the stellar surface. We compute the intensity from such hot spots. To obtain a non-axisymmetric model with arc-shaped hot spots, we remove a ring section in the azimuthal direction from the hot-spots and compute the intensity of the radiated emission. Such models can be used to relate physical parameters in the simulations to the observations. We show an example with the intensity computed from our model compared to observational light curve.
Distribution of Viral Respiratory Infections during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using the FilmArray Respiratory Panel

This study was conducted to evaluate the distribution of respiratory viral pathogens in the emergency department during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Between May 2020 and September 2022, patients aged between 0.1 and 98 years arrived at the emergency department of Asia University Hospital, and samples from nasopharyngeal swabs were tested by the FilmArrayTM Respiratory Panel (RP). SARS-CoV-2 positivity was subsequently retested by the cobas Liat system. There were 804 patients for whom the FilmArrayTM RP was tested, and 225 (27.9%) of them had positive results for respiratory viruses. Rhinovirus/enterovirus was the most commonly detected pathogen, with 170 (61.8%) cases, followed by adenovirus with 38 (13.8%), SARS-CoV-2 with 16 (5.8%) cases, and coronavirus 229E, with 16 (5.8%) cases. SARS-CoV-2 PCR results were positive in 16 (5.8%) cases, and there were two coinfections of SARS-CoV-2 with adenovirus and rhinovirus/enterovirus. A total of 43 (5.3%) patients were coinfected; the most coinfection was adenovirus plus rhinovirus/enterovirus, which was detectable in 18 (41.9%) cases. No atypical pathogens were found in this study. Intriguingly, our results showed that there was prefect agreement between the detection of SARS-CoV-2 conducted with the cobas Liat SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A/B nucleic acid test and the FilmArrayTM RP. Therefore, the FilmArrayTM RP assay is a reliable and feasible method for the detection of SARS-CoV-2. In summary, FilmArrayTM RP significantly broadens our capability to detect multiple respiratory infections due to viruses and atypical bacteria. It provides a prompt evaluation of pathogens to enhance patient care and clinical selection strategies in emergency departments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Pathway Model to Understand the Evolution of Spike Protein Binding to ACE2 in SARS-CoV-2 Variants

After the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan variant that gave rise to the pandemic, other variants named Delta, Omicron, and Omicron-2 sequentially became prevalent, with mutations spread around the viral genome, including on the spike (S) protein; in order to understand the resultant in gains in infectivity, we interrogated in silico both the equilibrium binding and the binding pathway of the virus’ receptor-binding domain (RBD) to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor. We interrogated the molecular recognition between the RBD of different variants and ACE2 through supervised molecular dynamics (SuMD) and classic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to address the effect of mutations on the possible S protein binding pathways. Our results indicate that compensation between binding pathway efficiency and stability of the complex exists for the Omicron BA.1 receptor binding domain, while Omicron BA.2′s mutations putatively improved the dynamic recognition of the ACE2 receptor, suggesting an evolutionary advantage over the previous strains.
Bow-shock chemistry in the interstellar medium

Stars are bad neighbors: they often disturb their surroundings. They sometimes travel very fast through the interstellar medium (ISM). They frequently undergo violent ejection events which leave an imprint on their neighborhood (jets, winds, supernovae). These supersonic flows generate shocks both in the ejected material (bow shock) and in the stellar environment (termination shock). The global purpose of this thesis is to link the properties of stars and the ISM by studying these shocks. We model them with the Paris-Durham planar shock code, which incorporates a wealth of micro-physics and chemical processes relevant to the magnetized ISM. In the first part, we model 3D magnetized axisymmetric bow shock by a statistical distribution of 1D planar shocks computed with the Paris-Durham model. For the first time, we examine systematically the effect of the geometry, age, and various other parameters on the H2 excitation diagram and emission line profiles. Then, we will show that this 3D bow shock model unprecedentedly improves interpretations of the H2 observations in Orion BNKL and BHR71, and show how spectrally resolved H2 line emission profiles on the Herbig-Haro object HH54 can be used to extract a wealth of dynamical information. In the second part, we model 1D steady stellar winds from AGB stars, which trigger the termination shock, by including relevant physical and chemical ingredients in the Paris-Durham code. For the first time, we examine the timedependent conversion of atomic to molecular hydrogen along the wind trajectories of “hot” and “cold” AGB stars. We suggest that the low abundance of HI inferred from observations is due to hydrogen locked in its molecular form. Then, we try to reproduce HI 21-cm line profile in a “hot” AGB (called Y Cvn) and a “cold” AGB (called CW Leo).