Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study on the mechanism of coseismic groundwater changes: Interpretation by a groundwater model composed of multiple aquifers with different strain responses

In order to research the coseismic and postseismic groundwater changes for a groundwater system consisting of multiple aquifers we studied the mechanism of coseismic groundwater changes at Yudani hot spring, which is an artesian well supplied by at least three aquifers, in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. We observed the changes in discharge and water temperature at this site in response to earthquakes, tides, and atmospheric pressure changes. For the groundwater system of Yudani hot spring a realistic model composed of three aquifers having different frequency dependencies of groundwater responses to crustal strain and atmospheric pressure was adopted. The tidal and barometric responses of the discharges from the three aquifers, which were cyclic responses over a limited frequency band, were calculated, and the physical parameters of the three aquifers were estimated by fitting a theoretical model to the observed responses. Then, using the strain response over the whole frequency determined by the estimated physical parameters, the theoretical responses of the discharges from the three aquifers to step-like volumetric strain changes were calculated. As a result, the three-aquifer model with different frequency dependencies quantitatively explained the observed groundwater changes at Yudani hot spring due to earthquakes. In addition, the values of the coseismic volumetric strain steps were estimated based on groundwater changes at Yudani hot spring. These values did not agree with the theoretical coseismic volumetric strain changes at Yudani hot spring due to the earthquake fault slips, which were calculated under the assumption that the Earth's crust is a homogeneous elastic half-space medium. It is possible that a local strain release, such as aseismic slip at a fault near Yudani hot spring, might have caused the large strain changes estimated from the coseismic groundwater changes.
Informational Herding and Optimal Experimentation

We show that far from capturing a formally new phenomenon, informational herding is really a special case of single-person experimentation -- and 'bad herds' the typical failure of complete learning. We then analyze the analogous team equilibrium, where individuals maximize the present discounted welfare of posterity. To do so, we generalize Gittins indices to our non-bandit learning problem, and thereby characterize when contrarian behaviour arises: (i) While herds are still constrained efficient, they arise for a strictly smaller belief set. (ii) A log-concave log-likelihood ratio density robustly ensures that individuals should lean more against their myopic preference for an action the more popular it becomes.
Clostridium cadaveris bacteremia in a critically ill surgical patient with septic shock after total abdominal colectomy: a case report and review of literature

1Department of Pharmacy Services, UC Health – West Chester Hospital, West Chester Township, Ohio, USA 2Department of Pharmacy Services, UC Health – University of Cincinnati Medical Center Cincinnati, Ohio, USA 3University of Cincinnati James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA 4Department of Neurosurgery, The Christ Hospital Physicians, Cincinnati, Ohio,USA 5Department of Surgery – Division of Trauma, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA 6University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Decimal Sequence based Imperceptible Audio Watermarking

Digital watermarking has been proposed as a new, alternative method to enforce intellectual property rights and protect digital media from tempering. Digital watermarking is defined as imperceptible, robust and secure communication of data related to the host signal, which includes embedding into and extracted from the host signal. The main challenge in digital audio watermarking is that if the perceptual transmitter is fixed, the design of watermark system cannot obtain high watermark data rate and high robustness at the same time. The main objective of this paper is to development of an audio watermarking algorithm which obtain high watermark data rate and high quality of audio at the same time General Terms Decimal Sequence, Audio Watermarking.
The Structure and Dynamics of the Thin Near-bed Layer in a Complex Marine Environment: A Case Study in Beatrix Bay, New Zealand

Abstract The 1–3 cm thick near-bed layer at the interface between sea-water and the sea-bed was studied using two acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) deployments in Beatrix Bay (New Zealand), which relate to late autumn and early winter conditions. The data strongly support the multi-mechanism nature of the near-bed layer and show that the turbulent stresses and energy may be non-zero even at nearly zero or zero mean velocities. The turbulent fluctuations in the near-bed layer are highly intermittent and consist of two components: (1) low energy ‘background’ fluctuations; and (2) relatively rare high-energy events (HEE). The structure, dynamics, and influence of these components on bed erosion, particle aggregation and re-suspension are significantly different. Our results suggest that the revealed high-energy events are the main contributors to bed erosion and sediment re-suspension. The estimates of the local Reynolds number and other turbulence parameters show that HEE may change the near-bed flow regime from viscous or transitional at low-energy background conditions to fully turbulent during the high-energy events. Although the physical origin of HEE is not yet clear, most probably they are generated by intermittent highly-energetic internal waves or near-bed convective mixing, or both. These results provide a base for future research in this complex near-bed region.
Transpiration et photosynthèse du Pin maritime : aproches de modélisation au niveau de l'aiguille à l'échelle du couvert.

La photosynthese est le processus par lequel l’arbre acquiert et assimile l’energie et le carbone necessaires a son metabolisme et a sa croissance. La photosynthese des vegetaux terrestres est etroitement couplee a leur fonctionnement hydrique, la diffusion de la vapeur et du dioxyde de carbone entre l’atmosphere externe et l’interieur de la feuille s’effectuant par un point de passage commun, le pore stomatique. De plus, les reactions biochimiques de la photosynthese et de la respiration sont sensibles a la temperature de la feuille qui depend de son bilan d’energie et de sa transpiration. Le bilan d’energie, la transpiration et la photosynthese sont controles par des facteurs externes, comme la temperature ou l’humidite de l’air, et des facteurs internes lies a l’etat physiologique de la plante : stress hydrique, nutrition azotee, etc. Representer ces processus et ses principales regulations de facon simple, ce que nous designons sous le terme de “modelisation”, repond a differents objectifs :
F0 Estimation Method for Singing Voice in Polyphonic Audio Signal Based on Statistical Vocal Model and Viterbi Search

This paper describes a method for estimating F0s of vocal from polyphonic audio signals. Because melody is sung by a singer in many musical pieces, the estimation of F0s of the vocal part is useful for many applications. Based on existing multiple-F0 estimation method, we evaluate the vocal probabilities of the harmonic structure of each F0 candidate. In order to calculate the vocal probabilities of the harmonic structure, we extract and resynthesize the harmonic structure by using a sinusoidal model and extract feature vectors. Then, we evaluate the vocal probability by using vocal and non-vocal Gaussian mixture models (GMMs). Finally, we track F0 trajectories using these probabilities based on Viterbi search. Experimental results show that our method improves estimation accuracy from 78.1% to 84.3%, which is 28.3% reduction of misestimation
Estimating Document Similarity using Auxiliary Category Information

We have developed a novel approach to determine the similarity of documents using probabilistic latent semantic indexing. For each document a probability vector of latent factors is estimated which on the one hand takes into account the distribution of words in the text and on the other hand the distribution of category values. The emphasis can be freely shifted between both aspects and therefore the method allows to select a similarity measure which is more appropriate to the domain. In a preliminary evaluation we determined articles which are most similar to a target document. In spite of the small training set the groups of similar articles exhibits a remarkable coherence.
Low-frequency circulation on the Texas-Louisiana continental shelf

For the Texas-Louisiana coast west of 92.5°W, long series of data from near Freeport, Texas, together with shorter series from other locations, show strong response of coastal current to wind stress in agreement with coastal jet concepts. We infer from coastal winds, scattered current measurements, and distributions of sea-surface salinity and geopotential that a cyclonic gyre elongated along the shelf is the dominant feature of the prevailing shelf circulation. The inshore limb of the gyre is the coastal jet driven by wind with a west or southward (downcoast) component which prevails along much of the coast except in July-August. Because the coast is concave, the shoreward prevailing wind results in a convergence of coastal currents, which marks the downcoast extent of the gyre. Corresponding to the convergence is a seaward flow which forms the southwest limb of the gyre. A prevailing countercurrent (north or eastward flow) along the shelf break includes the outer limb of the gyre. The eastern, shoreward-flowing limb of the gyre corresponds to divergence along the coast centered near 92.5°W. The convergence at the western or southern end of the gyre migrates seasonally with the direction of the prevailing wind, reaching south of the Rio Grande mouth in fall and the Cameron offing in July. The gyre is normally absent in July, but reappears in August-September when a downcoast wind component develops.
The rise of meso government in Europe

The European Meso - L J Sharpe An Appraisal Belgium - Frank Delmartino In Search of the Meso Level Developments at the French Meso Level - Sonia Mazey Modernizing the French State The Meso Level in Italy - Sabino Cassese and Luisa Torchia Dutch Provinces and the Struggle for the Meso - Theo A J Toonen Intermediate-Level Reforms and the Development of the Norwegian Welfare State - Tore Hansen The Polish Palatinatus - Antoni Kukli[ac]nski and Pawel Swianiewicz Experiences and Prospects The Autonomous Communities as the Spanish Meso - Montserrat Cuchillo The United Kingdom - L J Sharpe The Disjointed Meso The Continental Meso - Michael Keating Regions in the European Community Appendix - Tore Hansen Meso Government in Denmark and Sweden
Dynamic reorganization of Eg5 in the mammalian spindle throughout mitosis requires dynein and TPX2

The kinesin Eg5 moves toward minus ends of astral microtubules in early mitosis, switching to plus-end motion in anaphase. Dynein is required for minus-end motion; depletion of TPX2 results in a switch to plus-end motion. On midzone microtubules, Eg5 moves in both directions. Our results explain the redistribution of Eg5 throughout mitosis.
Testing 3D stacked ICs for post-bond partial/complete stack

Advancement of VLSI technology helps semiconductor industry to manufacture Through-silicon-via (TSV) based 3D stacked ICs (SICs). During 3D assembly, multiple partial stack tests are necessary. In this paper, we address test architecture optimization for 3D stacked ICs implemented with hard dies. We consider two different test sets and derive optimal solutions to minimize over all test time when complete stack and multiple partial stacks, need to be tested. Results are performed for two handcrafted 3D SICs comprising of various SoCs from ITC'02 SoC test benchmarks. In this work we consider the test architecture optimization for 3D SIC where the die level test architecture is fixed and each die consists of one SoC. We show that decrease in total test length with the increasing number of test pins is more than increase in the number of test TSVs. Furthermore, we also present test schedules and corresponding test lengths for every multiple insertions.
Automatic Recognition and Generation of Affective Movements

Body movements are an important non-verbal communication medium through which affective states of the demonstrator can be discerned. For machines, the capability to recognize affective expressions of their users and generate appropriate actuated responses with recognizable affective content has the potential to improve their life-like attributes and to create an engaging, entertaining, and empathic human-machine interaction. This thesis develops approaches to systematically identify movement features most salient to affective expressions and to exploit these features to design computational models for automatic recognition and generation of affective movements. The proposed approaches enable 1) identifying which features of movement convey affective expressions, 2) the automatic recognition of affective expressions from movements, 3) understanding the impact of kinematic embodiment on the perception of affective movements, and 4) adapting pre-defined motion paths in order to “overlay” specific affective content. Statistical learning and stochastic modeling approaches are leveraged, extended, and adapted to derive a concise representation of the movements that isolates movement features salient to affective expressions and enables efficient and accurate affective movement recognition and generation. In particular, the thesis presents two new approaches to fixedlength affective movement representation based on 1) functional feature transformation, and 2) stochastic feature transformation (Fisher scores). The resulting representations are then exploited for recognition of affective expressions in movements and for salient movement feature identification. For functional representation, the thesis adapts dimensionality reduction techniques (namely, principal component analysis (PCA), Fisher discriminant analysis, Isomap) for functional datasets and applies the resulting reduction techniques to extract a minimal set of features along which affect-specific movements are best separable. Furthermore, the centroids of affect-specific clusters of movements in the resulting functional PCA subspace along with the inverse mapping of functional PCA are used to generate prototypical movements for each affective expression. The functional discriminative modeling is however limited to cases where affect-specific movements also have similar kinematic trajectories and does not address the interpersonal and stochastic variations inherent to bodily expression of affect. To account for these variations, the thesis presents a novel affective movement representation in terms of stochastically-transformed features referred to as Fisher scores. The Fisher scores are derived from affect-specific hidden Markov model encoding of the movements and exploited to discriminate between different affective expressions using a support vector machine (SVM) classification. Furthermore, the thesis presents a new approach for systematic identification of a minimal set of movement features most salient to discriminating between different
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game-Induced Seizures: A Neglected Health Problem in Internet Addiction

As the Internet has become rapidly and widely integrated into society, Internet addiction has become a growing psychosocial problem. However, epileptic seizure, another out-of-the-ordinary health problem, is often neglected in this regard. Ten patients who experienced epileptic seizures while playing the newest genre of electronic games -- Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) -- were investigated. Patients were predominantly male young adults, and most of the events were generalized tonic-clonic seizures, myoclonic seizures, and absences. These patients should be categorized into idiopathic generalized epilepsies. Even though photosensitivity was an important factor, behavioral and higher mental activities also seemed to be significant seizure precipitants. Results demonstrated that MMORPG-induced seizures were not analogous to the ordinary video game-induced seizures. Significantly, an epileptic seizure warning did not always appear on the websites of MMORPGs and instructions for the software. While the prevalence of MMORPG-induced seizures remains unknown, it may exceed our expectations and impact our society. Not only for clinical neurologists but also for the primary physicians, educators, sociologists, and global online game publishers, there should be an awareness of this special form of reflex seizures in order to provide an appropriate health warning to MMORPG players.
Novel receptor tyrosine kinase targeted combination therapies for imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST)

Background: c-Kit/α-PDGFR targeted therapies are effective for gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), but, >50% develop drug resistance. Methods: RTK expression (c-Kit, c-Met, AXL, HER-1, HER-2, IGF-1R) in pre-/post-imatinib (IM) GIST patient samples (n=16) and 4 GIST cell lines were examined for RTK inhibitor activity. GIST-882 cells were cultured in IM every other day, cells collected (1 week to 6 months) and analyzed by qRT-PCR and Western blotting. Results: Immunohistochemistry pre-/post-IM demonstrated continued expression of c-Kit and HER1, while a subset expressed IGF-1R, c-Met and AXL. In GIST cells (GIST-882, GIST430/654, GIST48) c-Kit, HER1 and c-Met are co-expressed. Acute IM over-express c-Kit while chronic IM, lose c-Kit and HER-1 in GIST882 cells. GIST882 and GIST430/654 cells have an IC50 0.077 and 0.59 μM to IM respectively. GIST48 have an IC50 0.66 μM to IM, 0.91 μM to amuvatinib [AMU] and 0.67 μM to erlotinib (Erl). Synergistic combinations: GIST882, AMU + Erl (CI 0.20); IM + AMU (CI 0.50), GIST430/654, IM + afatinib (CI 0.39); IM + AMU (CI 0.42), GIST48, IM + afatinib (CI 0.03); IM + AMU (CI 0.04); AMU + afatinib (CI 0.36); IM + Erl (CI 0.63). Conclusion: Targeting c-Kit plus HER1 or AXL/c-Met abrogates IM resistance in GIST.
Postural Sway during Dual Tasks in Young and Elderly Adults

Background: Previous studies have shown that healthy young adults are able to decrease their standing postural sway when an additional postural visual task, such as reading, is performed. Objective: In this study, we investigated postural sway during dual tasks in young and elderly adults. Methods: Twelve healthy active elderly adults (aged 65–75 years) and 12 healthy young adults (aged 22–39 years) participated in the study. The subjects performed different visual tasks while standing on a force plate. We varied the nature of the visual tasks (looking at a blank target versus a visual search task) and the distance of visual targets (near versus far). Center of pressure displacement obtained from the force plate data and kinematics of body segments obtained from a video analysis system were investigated. Results: Both groups presented significantly larger postural sway in the mediolateral direction during the eyes-closed condition as compared with the eyes-open condition. In the anteroposterior direction, this effect was observed only for the elderly group. Both groups had the same percentage correct in counting letters, but the elderly adults were significantly slower as compared with the young adults. The amplitude of postural sway was greater for the elderly adults than for the young adults in all conditions. However, both the young and the elderly adults exhibited significant reductions in sway during performance of the search task relative to sway during viewing of a blank target. The sway was also reduced for both groups during viewing a near target when compared to a distant target. Conclusions: The results suggest that, despite the overall increase in postural sway with aging, subtle integration of visual information by the postural control system is not affected by aging. The present results support the idea that dual tasks do not necessarily lead to an increase in postural sway. This effect, found here in elderly adults, raises questions about widely held views in which age-related changes in postural sway are related to competition between postural control and other activities for central processing resources.
Prioritization of online instructor roles: implications for competency‐based teacher education programs

Online instructors need to take on a multi‐dimensional role and to be an effective online educator they are required to possess a varied and wider range of competencies. Preparing teachers for online education involves preparing them for a wide variety of roles and developing related competencies. However, the extent of emphasis required to be placed on each of these roles or competencies during a teacher training program may vary according to its culture and the context. The investigation reported in this article obtained expert opinions with regard to the priority and criticality of eight online instructor roles identified in earlier research on online education. Pedagogical roles received the highest priority by the respondents, followed by professional, evaluator, social facilitator, technologist, advisor, administrator, and researcher roles. These results have implications for teacher education and further research pertaining to the context in India.
Finding Botnets Using Minimal Graph Clusterings

We study the problem of identifying botnets and the IP addresses which they comprise, based on the observation of a fraction of the global email spam traffic. Observed mailing campaigns constitute evidence for joint botnet membership, they are represented by cliques in the graph of all messages. No evidence against an association of nodes is ever available. We reduce the problem of identifying botnets to a problem of finding a minimal clustering of the graph of messages. We directly model the distribution of clusterings given the input graph; this avoids potential errors caused by distributional assumptions of a generative model. We report on a case study in which we evaluate the model by its ability to predict the spam campaign that a given IP address is going to participate in.
Exploiting dendritic cells in the development of cancer vaccines

Due to their central role in priming and modulating the immune response, dendritic cells (DCs) represent an ideal instrument for the design of effective immunotherapeutic strategies for cancer patients. Recent advancement on the knowledge of the numerous DC subtypes, their functions and T-cell polarizing abilities has led to the development of several protocols for the ex vivo differentiation of autologous DCs and their loading with tumor-associated antigens. Moreover, novel strategies for the in vivo targeting of tumor antigens and adjuvants to natural DC subsets have been developed. Despite the large number of clinical studies carried out in cancer patients, a consensus on the optimal treatment modalities has not been reached yet. In this review, we summarize our current knowledge on DC biology and on DC use in clinical trials. Special attention is given to the many open issues regarding DC-based vaccination to sensitize researchers in the field to the compelling need of conducting comparative studies systematically addressing the still unresolved problems.