Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effects of temperature‐ and pressure‐dependent viscosity on three‐dimensional passive flow of the mantle beneath a ridge‐transform System

To estimate the effects of temperature- and pressure-dependent viscosity on passive flow beneath midocean spreading centers, we have developed a numerical approach combining a finite element method to solve for the three-dimensional flow and a finite difference solution for temperatures. This numerical method is applied to study an idealized spreading center consisting of a 100-km transform fault offsetting two ridge segments. Viscosities are given according to the temperature and pressure dependence of thermally activated creep for Newtonian and non-Newtonian rheology. Melt production rates are calculated by using an adiabatic melt relation and our flow and temperature fields. The density variation of mantle due to thermal expansion is converted into gravity anomaly. The results are compared with those of a model with uniform viscosity. The thickening of the high-viscosity layer causes mantle upwelling in the variable-viscosity model to be stronger but narrower. Faster upwelling reduces heat loss to the surface during ascent, leading to greater melt production. Under the same boundary conditions, the variable-viscosity model creates thicker crust and the predicted thickness is more nearly independent of spreading rate. The zone of melt production is narrower and the rate of melt production decreases more abruptly near the transform fault. The gravity anomaly caused by the mantle thermal structure for the variable-viscosity model is similar to that of the constant-viscosity model with a maximum difference of a few milligal.
Prearrangement of the COSMO-CLM Model on the Chinese Region and Sensitivity Analysis

This report represents the description of the first activity performed within the work package 7.1. 6 of the "B action" in the Gemina project. The "B action" of the Gemina project concerns the consolidation and development of international scientific network. In particular the cooperation between China and Italy is focused on the development of regional climate scenarios and the analysis of impacts on coastal areas on the Chinese region. The main goal of the WP 7.1. 6. is to provide high climate simulation on the China region for the XXI century. In order to perform this activity, some preliminary simulations are requested, to find an optimal configuration for the high resolution climate model COSMO CLM. This report contains the description of the sensitivity analysis developed on a limited part of the Chinese region.
Tracking face poses toward meeting video analysis

We perform face tracking and pose estimation jointly within a mixed-state particle filter framework. Previous methods often used generative appearance models and naive prior state transition. We propose to use discriminating models, Adaboosted face detectors, to both measure observations and provide information for the proposal distribution which is combined with detection responses and prior transition model. Due to pose continuity, faces between discrete poses can be detected by neighboring pose-specific detectors and serve as importance samples. Thus continuous poses are obtained instead of discrete poses. Experiments show that our method is robust to large location and pose changes, partial occlusions and expressions.
Linear prediction modeling for signal selective DOA estimation based on higher-order statistics

The direction-finding approach for impinging signals is one of the most important issues in array processing. By exploiting the cyclic statistics and higher-order temporal properties of communication signals, cyclic higher-order statistics (CHOS) direction-finding approaches have been proposed for narrow-band non-Gaussian signals. However, conventional cumulant-based algorithms become very complicated and are computationally intensive when a cumulant higher than the forth-order is used. In this paper, by utilizing a linear prediction (LP) model of the sensor outputs, a new cyclic higher-order method is given to detect the signals of interest (SOI). The proposed method can not only reduce the computational load and completely exploit the CHOS temporal information, but can also correctly estimate the DOA of desired signals by suppressing undesired signals. We also show the effectiveness of the proposed method through simulation results.
The mechanism of inhibition of hepatitis B virus replication by the carbocyclic analog of 2′‐deoxyguanosine

The carbocyclic analog of deoxyguanosine inhibits hepatitis B virus replication by greater than 95% in the hepatitis B virus‐producing cell line (2.2.15) as monitored by decreases of secreted hepatitis B virus DNA, hepatitis B virus polymerase activity and intracellular episomal hepatitis B virus DNA. Transcription of hepatitis B virus RNA from chromosomally integrated hepatitis B virus DNA was unaffected. Radioactive carbocyclic 2′‐deoxyguanosine was directly phosphorylated within the 2.2. 15 cells and was incorporated exclusively into DNA. In contrast, radioactive deoxyguanosine was presumably metabolized through the “salvage” pathway in which the guanine was primarily incorporated into cellular RNAs. The rate of incorporation of carbocyclic 2′‐deoxyguanosine in 2.2. 15 cells was similar to that in the parental cell line (Hep G2), which does not contain hepatitis B virus sequences. Greater than 90% of the analog was present at internal sites within the DNA, indicating that the analog did not function as a DNA chain terminator. Kinetic analysis of the Km and Ki of dGTP and carbocyclic 2′‐deoxyguanosine 5′‐triphosphate, respectively, using both hepatitis B virus polymerase and DNA polymerase δ indicated that the analog is a competitive inhibitor for dGTP. Although both polymerases had similar Km's for dGTP, the Ki for carbocyclic 2′‐deoxyguanosine 5′‐triphosphate was about 6 times lower using the hepatitis B virus polymerase. This would indicate that, at low concentrations of intracellular carbocyclic 2′‐deoxyguanosine 5′‐triphosphate, the hepatitis B virus polymerase would be preferentially inhibited. We propose this to be the mechanism acting to inhibit preferentially hepatitis B virus replication in the tissue culture cells. (HEPATOLOGY 1992;16:8–12.)
Audio source separation based on independent component analysis

This paper introduces the blind source separation (BSS) of convolutive mixtures of acoustic signals, especially speech. A statistical and computational technique, called independent component analysis (ICA), is examined. By achieving nonlinear decorrelation, nonstationary decorrelation, or time-delayed decorrelation, we can find source signals only from observed mixed signals. Particular attention is paid to the physical interpretation of BSS from the acoustical signal processing point of view. Frequency-domain BSS is shown to be equivalent to two sets of frequency domain adaptive microphone arrays, i.e., adaptive beamformers (ABFs). Although BSS can reduce reverberant sounds to some extent in the same way as ABF, it mainly removes the sound from the jammer direction. This is why BSS has difficulties with long reverberation in the real world. If sources are not "independent," the dependence results in bias noise when obtaining the correct unmixing filter coefficients. Therefore, the performance of BSS is limited by that of ABF. Although BSS is upper bounded by ABF, BSS has a strong advantage over ABF. BSS can be regarded as an intelligent version of ABF in the sense that it can adapt without any information on the array manifold or the target direction, and sources can be simultaneously active in BSS.
Revised correlations in the early Precambrian Hamersley Basin based on a horizon of resedimented impact spherules

The Early Precambrian Hamersley Group of Western Australia contains two thick packages of carbonate strata: the Paraburdoo Member of the Wittenoom Formation and the Carawine Dolomite. The Carawine Dolomite has long been viewed as a shallow‐water stratigraphic equivalent of the deeper water Wittenoom Formation because the two units occupy mutually exclusive areas within the Hamersley Basin and the former contains some platformal deposits whereas the latter consists exclusively of basinal deposits. The Carawine Dolomite and the Wittenoom Formation each contain a single layer partially composed of distinctive sand‐size spherules that have the characteristics of microkrystites (silicate melt droplets ejected during large bolide impacts). In the Carawine Dolomite, the microkrystites are restricted to a dolomitic debris‐flow deposit (the dolomixtite) which is 24.7 m thick and located ∼60 m above the basal contact. In the Wittenoom Formation, the microkrystites are restricted to a low‐density turbidite known as .
Queuetrak: Automated Line Length Detection Using a Wireless Sensor Network

We describe QueueTrak, an automated wireless sensor system designed to detect and report the length of lines in retail environments. QueueTrak has two components. First, it uses a series of custom active infrared sensors to detect the length of a line in a store or restaurant. Second, a web interface publishes the data, at the discretion of the shopkeeper, for use by customers, city planners, and other shopkeepers. We empirically evaluate the system design and find that it can accurately estimate line length despite noise caused by variations in natural sunlight or moving people and furniture in the store. 1. INTRODUCTION Long lines in stores and restaurants are a problem for owners and customers alike. Although a small number of venues such as night clubs and restaurants use long lines to advertise their popularity, customers do not like to waste time waiting in lines and, in general, make fewer purchases at locations with long lines. People often forgo purchases in a retail store or choose to eat at a different restaurant in order to avoid long lines. People sometimes avoid a venue altogether if it is known to occasionally have very long waiting times, particularly when under a time constraint such as a lunch break during the work week. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of QueueTrak, a sensor network that measures the length of lines at the door or cash register. It then uses wireless networking to update estimates of line length on a Web server in real time. If deployed widely, this system would allow customers to make informed decisions about where to shop or eat based on waiting times. For example, we envision information from multiple QueueTrak sensors in a town being integrated in a smart phone application that lists a person's favorite lunch venues in the order of increasing waiting times. QueueTrak also aims to deliver numerous benefits to retail owners and management. For example, long-term data analysis could help optimize staff scheduling to better manage peak seasons, days, or hours, and this could in turn lead to faster, more efficient service and increased revenue. Line analysis could also reveal inefficiencies in a retail system. Finally, by publishing the QueueTrak data, a store or restaurant can attract customers when lines are short and can avoid making customers unhappy when lines are long. One goal of QueueTrak is to be a self-financing sensor …
Speckle Reduction via Higher Order Total Variation Approach

Multiplicative noise (also known as speckle) reduction is a prerequisite for many image-processing tasks in coherent imaging systems, such as the synthetic aperture radar. One approach extensively used in this area is based on total variation (TV) regularization, which can recover significantly sharp edges of an image, but suffers from the staircase-like artifacts. In order to overcome the undesirable deficiency, we propose two novel models for removing multiplicative noise based on total generalized variation (TGV) penalty. The TGV regularization has been mathematically proven to be able to eliminate the staircasing artifacts by being aware of higher order smoothness. Furthermore, an efficient algorithm is developed for solving the TGV-based optimization problems. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our proposed methods achieve state-of-the-art results, both visually and quantitatively. In particular, when the image has some higher order smoothness, our methods outperform the TV-based algorithms.
AERONET observations of direct and indirect aerosol effects over a South European conurbation

Sun photometer measurements over the Thessaloniki AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) site were conducted during 2005–2007 and provide a method for determining the temporal variability of aerosol optical properties. Monthly mean aerosol optical thickness (AOT) showed higher values during the warmer months and lower values during the colder months. The single scattering albedo (SSA) and also the imaginary part of the refractive index (k) indicate more absorbing particles during autumn/winter than summer/spring. Aerosol direct radiative forcing measurements are also presented. The monthly change in aerosol radiative forcing was examined at the top of the atmosphere (TOA; from −8.0 to −28.0 W m−2), at the bottom of the atmosphere (BOA; from −19.0 to −55.0 W m−2) and within the atmosphere (ATM; from 11.0 to 35.0 W m−2); the ATM is affected by both the SSA and k. We also investigated the interaction between aerosol optical properties over Thessaloniki and cloud parameters over a region of the Northern Aegean. For the autumn and spring mean monthly values, high correlation coefficients were found between AOT and cloud fraction, the SSA and cloud fraction, AOT and cloud condensation nuclei per square centimetre (CCN/cm2), and cloud optical depth and AOT, and finally a negative correlation was found between AOT and cloud effective radius.
Beyond White: Ground Truth Colors for Color Constancy Correction

A limitation in color constancy research is the inability to establish ground truth colors for evaluating corrected images. Many existing datasets contain images of scenes with a color chart included, however, only the chart's neutral colors (grayscale patches) are used to provide the ground truth for illumination estimation and correction. This is because the corrected neutral colors are known to lie along the achromatic line in the camera's color space (i.e. R=G=B), the correct RGB values of the other color patches are not known. As a result, most methods estimate a 3*3 diagonal matrix that ensures only the neutral colors are correct. In this paper, we describe how to overcome this limitation. Specifically, we show that under certain illuminations, a diagonal 3*3 matrix is capable of correcting not only neutral colors, but all the colors in a scene. This finding allows us to find the ground truth RGB values for the color chart in the camera's color space. We show how to use this information to correct all the images in existing datasets to have correct colors. Working from these new color corrected datasets, we describe how to modify existing color constancy algorithms to perform better image correction.
Dynamic user-defined similarity searching in semi-structured text retrieval

Modern text retrieval systems often provide a similarity search utility, that allows the user to find efficiently a fixed number h of documents in the data set that are the most similar to a given query (here a query is either a simple sequence of keywords or a full document). We consider the case of a textual database made of semi-structured documents. For example, in a corpus of bibliographic records any record may be structured into three fields: title, authors and abstract, where each field is an unstructured free text. Each field, in turns, may be modelled with a specific vector space. The problem is more complex when we also allow users to associate at query time to each vector space a weight influencing its contribution to the overall dynamic aggregated and weighted similarity. We investigate the use of metric k-center clustering to prune the search space at query time. The embedding of the weights in the data structure is investigated with the purpose of allowing users query customization without any data replication. The validity of our approach is demonstrated experimentally by showing significant quality/time performance improvements over two state of the art methods. We also speed up the pre-processing time by a factor at least thirty with respect to a method based on k-means clustering.
B7-H4 Expression Is Associated with Tumor Progression and Prognosis in Patients with Osteosarcoma

Increasing evidences have demonstrated that B7-H4 is associated with tumor development and prognosis. However, the clinical significance of B7-H4 expression in human osteosarcoma (OS) remains unclear. The aim of present study was to examine the B7-H4 expression and to explore its contribution in OS. B7-H4 expression in OS tissues was examined by immunohistochemistry. Soluble B7-H4 (sB7-H4) levels in blood were examined by ELISA. The association of B7-H4 expression with clinicopathological factors or prognosis was statistically analyzed. Our findings demonstrated that B7-H4 expression in OS tissues was significantly higher than those in paired normal bone tissues (P < 0.001). sB7-H4 level in OS serum samples was significantly higher than that in healthy controls (P = 0.005). High B7-H4 expression in tissues and sB7-H4 level were both correlated with advanced tumor stage (P < 0.001, P = 0.017, resp.) and distant metastasis (P = 0.034, P = 0.021, resp.). Additionally, high B7-H4 expression or serum sB7-H4 levels were significantly related to poor overall survival (P = 0.028, P = 0.005, resp.). B7-H4 in tissues and serum samples were an independent factor for affecting the survival time of OS patients (P = 0.004, P = 0.041, resp.). Collectively, our data suggest that the evaluation of B7-H4 expression in tissues and blood is a useful tool for predicting the progression of osteosarcoma and prognosis.
Understanding Performance in Human Development: A Cross-National Study

This paper introduces a new and comprehensive Human Development Index (HDI) trends dataset for 135 countries and 40 years of annual data. We apply this dataset to answer several empirical questions related to the evolution of human development over the last 40 years. The data reveal overall global improvements, yet significant variability across all regions. While we confirm the existence of continued divergence in per capita income, we find the inverse for HDI. We find no statistically significant correlation between growth and non-income HDI improvements over a forty year period. We also examine some basic correlates that are associated with countries performance in HDI.
Black Cohosh Does Not Exert an Estrogenic Effect on the Breast

Abstract Women's Health Initiative findings indicate that hormone replacement therapy may increase breast cancer and cardiovascular disease risk. Black cohosh extract (BCE) is a popular alternative that reduced menopausal symptoms in several clinical trials. Preclinical studies have addressed the estrogenic properties of BCE, with conflicting results. The estrogenic influence of BCE on the breast has not been investigated. Black cohosh is standardized to triterpenes, but the activity and mechanism of action of these compounds are unknown. The study goals were to determine 1) triterpene content of 2 commercially available BCE preparations and 2) the effect of BCE on circulating and breast-specific estrogenic markers. Two black cohosh preparations were analyzed for triterpene content. Postmenopausal women took BCE for 12 wk followed by a 12-wk washout. One BCE preparation contained trace amounts and another contained 2.5% triterpenes. Women taking BCE with 2.5% triterpenes experienced relief of menopausal symptoms, with reversion toward baseline after washout. BCE had no effect on estrogenic markers in serum and no effect on pS2 or cellular morphology in nipple aspirate fluid. Triterpene content in commercially available black cohosh preparations varies. BCE standardized to 2.5% triterpenes relieved menopausal symptoms without systemic or breast-specific estrogenic effects.
A Resource-Poor Approach for Linking Ontology Classes to Wikipedia Articles

The applicability of ontologies for natural language processing depends on the ability to link ontological concepts and relations to their realisations in texts. We present a general, resource-poor account to create such a linking automatically by extracting Wikipedia articles corresponding to ontology classes. We evaluate our approach in an experiment with the Music Ontology. We consider linking as a promising starting point for subsequent steps of information extraction.
Endovascular renal denervation: a novel sympatholytic with relevance to chronic kidney disease

Endovascular renal denervation (sympathectomy) is a novel procedure developed for the treatment of resistant hypertension. Evidence suggests that it reduces both afferent and efferent sympathetic nerve activity, which may offer clinical benefit over and above any blood pressure-lowering effect. Studies have shown objective improvements in left ventricular mass, ventricular function, central arterial stiffness, central haemodynamics, baroreflex sensitivity and arrhythmia frequency. Benefits have also been seen in insulin resistance, microalbuminuria and glomerular filtration rate. In chronic kidney disease, elevated sympathetic activity has been causally linked to disease progression and cardiovascular sequelae. Effecting a marked reduction in sympathetic hyperactivity may herald a significant step in the management of this and other conditions. In this in-depth review, the pathophysiology and clinical significance of the sympatholytic effects of endovascular renal denervation are discussed.