Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The MoEDAL-MAPP Experiment - The Continuation of the LHC’s 1st Dedicated Search Experiment

The MoEDAL experiment deployed at IP8 on the LHC ring was the ﬁrst dedicated search experiment to take data at the LHC in 2010. It was designed to search for Highly Ionizing Particle (HIP) avatars of new physics such as magnetic monopoles, dyons, Q-balls, multiply charged particles, massive slowly moving charged particles and long-lived massive charged SUSY particles. We shall report on our search at LHC’s Run-2 for Magnetic monopoles and dyons produced in p-p and photon-fusion. We will also provide our most recent result in this arena: the search for magnetic monopoles via the Schwinger Mechanism in Pb-Pb collisions; and, the search for Highly Electrically Charged Objects (HECOS). The MoEDAL detector will be reinstalled for LHC’s Run-3 to continue the search for electrically and magnetically charged HIPs. As part of this eﬀort we will initiate the search for massive very long-lived charged particles as well as multiply charged particles with charge less that ten times the electron charge. An upgrade to MoEDAL, the MoEDAL Apparatus for Penetrating Particles (MAPP), approved by CERN’s Research Board is now the LHC’s newest detector. The MAPP detector, positioned in UA83, expands the physics reach of MoEDAL to include sensitivity to feebly-charged particles with charge, or eﬀective charge, as low as ∼ 10 − 3 e (where e is the electron charge). Also, the MAPP detector in conjunction with MoEDAL’s trapping detector gives us a unique sensitivity to extremely long-lived charged particles. MAPP also has some sensitivity to long-lived neutral particles. Additionally, we will very brieﬂy report on the plans for the MAPP-2 upgrade to the MoEDAL-MAPP experiment for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). We envisage that this detector will be deployed in the UGC1 gallery near to IP8. This phase of the experiment is designed to maximize MoEDAL-MAPP’s sensitivity to very long-lived neutral messengers of physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM)
ZoneLife: How to Utilize Data Lifetime Semantics to Make SSDs Smarter

From cloud databases to large-scale data analytics, modern applications exploit solid state drives (SSD)’s low latency to write an enormous amount of short-lived data. These data do not require the strong data protection typical SSDs use to reliably store data for a guaranteed period. In recent years, SSD’s density has been growing rapidly at the cost of degraded reliability, forcing SSD vendors to trade endurance and performance for stronger error protection. An intuitive question to ask is, “What if the SSD can identify these short-lived data to save the tax of over-protection? ” In this article, we answer affirmatively with a novel co-design called, ZoneLife, which exposes the data lifetime semantics from applications to the SSD. ZoneLife enables the SSD to select the optimal error-correction code (ECC) out of multiple codes of different strengths. As a result, the SSD can store short-lived data with significantly less resources. ZoneLife efficiently translates the data addresses of different lifetimes with a multigranularity flash-translation-layer (FTL). Existing systems can easily adopt ZoneLife with localized modifications because ZoneLife’s host driver API generalizes Linux’s write hint interface, and its device firmware utilizes the popular Zone Namespace interface. ZoneLife is evaluated with several representative database and cloud workloads, and the results show noticeable improvements in SSD’s endurance and write throughput.
SAFETY CHALLENGES WHEN MANAGING SHIFT WORK IN THE SWEDISH FOREST INDUSTRY: SOLUTIONS BASED ON MORE THAN 700 YEARS OF WORK EXPERIENCE

The purpose of this study is to explore the safety challenges managing shift work in the Swedish forest industry. There are several factors that can affect safety in working life. In general, previous research shows that managerial and leadership behaviours affect safety and well-being regardless of the type of industry. A leadership with a focus on safety affects the safety climate and the outcome in the form of accidents in an organisation. The interaction between managers and employees regarding safety issues also has a positive effect on safety. Leaders who are instead passive regarding safety issues have significant negative effects on safety, contribute to an increased number of accidents and reduce safety-related behaviour in the organisation. This means that employees with passive leaders themselves become less interested in engaging in safety activities. Shift work has also been shown to affect the health and safety of employees. For example, studies show that higher sickness absence is associated with three-shift rotation compared to two-shift rotation and that fatigue and insomnia may be an effect of shift work. Further, research also shows a link between fatigue and a higher frequency of accidents. In this paper, we use a co-creation approach to capture the safety challenges related to shift work. The overall methodological approach in this study is action-oriented research. The empirical data is collected with interviews and focus groups which altogether include 56 respondents with more than 700 years of joint work experiences from shift work in the forest industry. Preliminary results show the importance of creating a safety culture where both the management and the employees take active part and responsibility in solutions. The managers have the formal responsibility, including law and regulation related to safety aspects. The employees in turn have the responsibility for their own choices and behaviours not least related to food, sleep, and training.
The parsec-scale jet of PKS 0637-752

Chandra observations of the quasar PKS 0637-752 during its checkout phase resulted in the unexpected detection of a luminous kiloparsec-scale X-ray jet. The apparent superluminal speed of this jet on the parsec-scale, based on two VSOP and four ground-based observations, has proven crucial to understanding the X-ray production in the arcsec-scale jet. We present here for the first time the full details of the ground-based observations used to determine the parsec-scale jet speed, describe the results of a third VSOP observation, and examine the reported jet speed in the light of more recent ground-based VLBI observations. We find some evidence of increased source activity coincident with extrapolated epochs of jet component ejection, although the monitoring of the source is relatively sparse and the ejection epochs are not tightly constrained. We also construct the spectral energy distribution for the nucleus of PKS 0637-752 and show that it can be modelled well in terms of a one-zone synchrotron self-Compton model of an electron-positron jet with a Doppler factor of ∼ 10, consistent with the results of the VLBI observations. © 2006. Astronomical Society of Japan.
Evolution of Spin Period and Magnetic Field of the Crab Pulsar: Decay of the Braking Index by the Particle Wind Flow Torque

The evolutions of a neutron star’s rotation and magnetic field (B-field) have remained unsolved puzzles for over half a century. We ascribe the rotational braking torques of pulsar to both components, the standard magnetic dipole radiation (MDR) and particle wind flow (MDR + Wind, hereafter named MDRW), which we apply to the Crab pulsar (B0531 + 21), the only source with a known age and long-term continuous monitoring by radio telescope. Based on the above presumed simple spin-down torques, we obtain the exact analytic solution on the rotation evolution of the Crab pulsar, together with the related outcomes as described below: (1) unlike the constant characteristic B-field suggested by the MDR model, this value for the Crab pulsar increases by a hundred times in 50 kyr while its real B-field has no change; (2) the rotational braking index evolves from ∼3 to 1 in the long-term, however, it drops from 2.51 to 2.50 in ∼45 years at the present stage, while the particle flow contributes approximately 25% of the total rotational energy loss rate; (3) strikingly, the characteristic age has the maximum limit of ∼10 kyr, meaning that it is not always a good indicator of a real age. Furthermore, we discussed the evolutionary path of the Crab pulsar from the MDR to the wind domination by comparing with the possible wind braking candidate pulsar PSR J1734-3333.
Remittance and its Effect on Poverty and Inequality: A Case of Nepal

This paper examines the impact of remittance on poverty and income inequality in the context of Nepal using cross-sectional national survey- Nepal Living Standard Survey, third edition (NLSS3) of 2010-11. We employ a Heckman two-step estimation model with instrumental variables and constructed counterfactual income to investigate the real impact of remittances. We find that remittance has helped in the reduction of poverty ratio by 5.3% but deepened the poverty gap by 7.37% and severity by 9.25%. In terms of inequality, remittance has helped to reduce inequality within the remittance receiving group, however, it also contributed to rising income inequality when compared to non- remittance receiving group.
Extraction of Winter-Wheat Planting Areas Using a Combination of U-Net and CBAM

Winter wheat is one of the most important food crops in China, and it is of great significance to ensure national food security. The accurate extraction of wheat-growing areas is a prerequisite for growth assessments, stress monitoring, and yield assessments. In this study, GF-6 (8 m resolution) and Sentinel-2 (10 m resolution) remote sensing images were used to create datasets for the accurate extraction of winter-wheat growing areas by improving the U-Net model. First, U-Net was used as the base network to extract features, and then the convolutional block attention module (CBAM) was embedded in the basic convolutional units in the coding and decoding layers of the network to enhance or suppress the features to improve the feature-expression capability of the model, and to finally complete the end-to-end winter-wheat planting-area extraction. SegNet, DeepLabV3+, and U-Net-CBAM were selected as the comparison models, and they were tested using the test set in the Sentinel-2 dataset. The precision of the U-Net-CBAM model trained on the GF-6 dataset was 84.92%, the MIoU was 77.1%, the recall was 88.28%, the overall precision (OA) was 91.64%, and the F1 was 86.45%. For training on Sentinel-2 dataset, those values were: 90.06% for precision, 83.18% for MIoU, 90.78% for recall, 93.93% for OA, and 90.52% for F1, which showed significantly better results than those of the comparison models, indicating that U-Net-CBAM improved the accuracy of winter-wheat area extraction. It also showed that the segmentation performance of the training and test sets from different datasets was much lower than the segmentation performance from the same dataset.
State Dependent Sampling: an LMI Based Mapping Approach ⋆,⋆⋆

Abstract The uprising use of embedded systems and Networked Control Systems (NCS) requires reductions of the use of processor and network loads. In this work, we present a state dependent sampling control that maximizes the sampling intervals of state feedback control. We consider linear time invariant systems and guarantee the exponential stability of the system origin for a chosen decay rate α. The proof of the α-stability is based on a quadratic Lyapunov function which is computed, thanks to LMIs, so as to optimize some performance criterion on the sampling intervals. A mapping of the state space is then designed offline: it computes for each state of the state space the maximum allowable sampling interval, which makes it possible to reduce the number of actuations during the real-time control of the system.
Detonation Synthesis Nanodiamond Soot as a Promising Filler for Polymer Composites

In this work, the results of a complex investigation of structure and properties of nanodiamond soot (NDS) of detonation synthesis are presented. Size distribution of NDS particles, dispersed in different liquid media, was investigated using dynamic light scattering and laser diffraction analysis methods. The results of the investigation, as well as the results of zeta-potential measurements, allowed us to characterize the agglomeration process of the NDS particles as independent of the medium, making NDS a good model filler for research of composite-modified nanosized particles. Additional data obtained using scanning electron microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy, demonstrated that in NDS the spherical nanodiamond (ND) particles with diameter ~5 nm are densely packed into strong-coupled aggregates with diameter ~300 nm, surrounded by graphite nanoribbons. X-ray diffraction analysis estimated the volume fraction of NDs in NDS as ~45 vol.%, simultaneously showing that the graphite is not defective, which was confirmed with the electron diffraction method. It was demonstrated that this structure of NDS allows to efficiently use NDS as a filler for polymer composites to increase polymer characteristics such as electrical conductivity or tribological characteristics, similarly to conventionally applied fillers such as carbon black.
The geometry of inner spanning trees for planar polygons

We study the geometry of minimal inner spanning trees for planar polygons (that is, spanning trees whose edge-intervals lie in these polygons). We construct analogues of Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations, prove that every minimal inner spanning tree is a subgraph of an appropriate Delaunay triangulation, and describe the possible structure of the cells of such triangulations.
Comparative Analysis of Biological Activities and Phenolic Content between Fresh and Steamed Sargassum fusiforme in Different Extraction Solvents

Sargassum fusiforme (SF), a perennial brown, is often steamed for consumption. SF contains many bioactive compounds; however, the effect of steaming these compounds is unknown. This study investigates phenolic component contents and antioxidant and antiaging activities of fresh (SF) and steamed (SSF) extracts in different solvents (95% ethanol, 95% methanol, hot water). Total polyphenol and flavonoid content was highest in SSF methanol (9.76 mg TAN/g) and SF methanol extracts (13.42 mg QUE/g). The DPPH radical scavenging activity was highest in SF methanol extracts (IC50 = 5.83 μg/μL), whereas the FRAP activity was higher in SSF extracts. Methanol SSF extract exhibited higher SOD, CAT, and APX activities. Collagenase inhibition activity was higher in all SSF extracts, whilst tyrosinase inhibition activity was highest in SSF methanol extract (30.5%). Analysis of phenolic compound contents revealed that 4-hydroxybenzoic acid content was highest in SF methanol extract, whilst steaming increased naringenin and naringin contents in ethanol extracts. Finally, antioxidant activity of both extracts showed a positive correlation with polyphenol content. Overall, these results suggested that SSF ethanol and methanol extract had higher phenolic component content and antioxidant and antiaging activities. Thus, SSF can be potentially used in health functional foods and cosmetic products.
Immune Response and Outcome of High-Risk Neuroblastoma Patients Immunized with Anti-Idiotypic Antibody Ganglidiomab: Results from Compassionate-Use Treatments

Simple Summary The treatment of high-risk neuroblastoma patients with anti-GD2 antibodies has improved survival, and it is an established treatment strategy; however, many patients still experience a late relapse. One disadvantage of passive immunotherapy is the absence of a memory response. Therefore, developing an active immunotherapy leading to a sustained immune response may provide a solution and prevent the occurrence of late relapses following anti-GD2 antibody therapy. Here, we describe the first-in-man compassionate use of the ganglidiomab vaccine following passive immunotherapy with an anti-GD2 antibody (dinutuximab beta) in seven neuroblastoma patients. The vaccine was well-tolerated, and all patients not pre-treated by haploidentical transplantation developed vaccine-specific immune responses. Abstract (1) Background: High-risk neuroblastoma (HR-NB) is associated with a poor prognosis despite a multimodal high-intensity treatment regimen, including immunotherapy with anti-GD2 monoclonal antibodies (mAb). Here, we investigated the effects of an anti-idiotypic vaccine based on the mAb ganglidiomab that structurally mimics GD2. (2) Methods: Patients with HR-NB treated with anti-GD2 mAb dinutuximab beta and who achieved complete remission after frontline or salvage therapy were offered the vaccine (0.5 mg ganglidiomab adsorbed to Alhydrogel®). Side effects (CTCAE v4.03) and immune responses were determined on each visit. We also evaluated the time to relapse or progression until the last follow-up. (3) Results: Seven HR-NB patients (five frontlines, two relapsed) received 6–22 subcutaneous injections every two weeks. Six of the seven patients showed an immune response. The non-responding patient had a haploidentical stem cell transplantation as part of the previous treatment. No fever, pain, neuropathy, or toxicities ≥ grade 3 occurred during or post-treatment. All immunized patients did not experience relapses or progressions of their neuroblastoma. (4) Conclusions: This is the first-in-man use of the ganglidiomab vaccine, which was well-tolerated, and all patients not pre-treated by haploidentical transplantation developed vaccine-specific immune responses. These findings provide an important basis for the design of prospective clinical trials.
Remarkable Remission Rate and Long-Term Efficacy of Upfront Metronomic Chemotherapy in Elderly and Frail Patients, with Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma

The upfront treatment of very elderly and frail patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is still a matter of debate. Herein, we report results of the metronomic all-oral DEVEC [prednisolone/deltacortene®, vinorelbine (VNR), etoposide (ETO), cyclophosphamide] combined with i.v. rituximab (R). This schedule was administered as a first line therapy in 22 elderly/frail DLBCL subjects (median age = 84.5 years). In 17/22 (77%) patients, the Elderly-IPI-score was high. After a median follow-up of 24 months, 15 patients had died: seven (50%) for causes unrelated to DLBCL or its treatment, six (40%) for progression, and two (13%) for multiorgan failure. Six treatment-pertinent serious-adverse-events occurred. At the end of induction, 14/22 (64%) achieved complete remission; overall survival and event-free survival at 24 months were both 54% (95% CI = 32–72%), while the time to progression was 74% (95% CI = 48–88%). Furthermore, antiproliferative and proapoptotic assays were performed on DLBCL/OCI-LY3 cell-line using metronomic VNR and ETO and their combination. Both metronomic VNR and ETO had concentration-dependent antiproliferative (IC50 = 0.036 ± 0.01 nM and 7.9 ± 3.6 nM, respectively), and proapoptotic activities in DLBCL cells. Co-administration of the two drugs showed a strong synergism (combination index < 1 and dose reduction index > 1) against cell proliferation and survival. This low-dose schedule seems to compare favourably with intravenous-CHEMO protocols used in the same subset. Indeed, the high synergism shown by metronomic VRN+ETO in in vitro studies, explains the remarkable clinical responses and it allows significant dose reductions.
Robust matching of SIFT keypoints via adaptive distance ratio thresholding

This paper presents a robust method to search for the correct SIFT keypoint matches with adaptive distance ratio threshold. Firstly, the reference image is analyzed by extracting some characteristics of its SIFT keypoints, such as their distance to the object boundary and the number of their neighborhood keypoints. The matching credit of each keypoint is evaluated based on its characteristics. Secondly, an adaptive distance ratio threshold for the keypoint is determined based on its matching credit to identify the correctness of its best match in the source image. The adaptive threshold loosens the matching conditions for keypoints of high matching credits and tightens the conditions for those of low matching credits. Our approach improves the scheme of SIFT keypoint matching by applying adaptive distance ratio threshold rather than global threshold that ignores different matching credits of various keypoints. The experiment results show that our algorithm outperforms the standard SIFT matching method in some complicated cases of object recognition, in which it discards more false matches as well as preserves more correct matches.
Effects of Vocational Rehabilitation on the Use of Health Care Services in Finland: A Propensity Score Analysis

Vocational rehabilitation may affect the frequency of health care use by improving the access or reducing the need for health care. We examined whether participation in rehabilitation effects the healthcare services use. Register-based data was utilized on all individuals aged 15–60 living in the city of Oulu, Finland, who started vocational rehabilitation in 2014–2015 (N = 784). We examined the use of outpatient health care services from 1.5 years before to 1.5 years after the start of rehabilitation and 1.5 years after the end of rehabilitation, and compared it to the propensity score matched controls. Rehabilitees had on average 1.5 visits to outpatient health care services in the 6th quarter before the start of rehabilitation. In the 4th quarter before the start of rehabilitation, that number increased to 1.8. After the rehabilitation period, the quarterly number of visits returned to the same level as at the beginning of the follow-up. The biggest changes were in the use of occupational health services. Compared to the propensity score matched controls, vocational rehabilitation did not appear to affect the use of health care services. Vocational rehabilitation seems to replace need for other services but not to affect the need to receive treatment for the underlying disease.
Stress Distribution with Different Angulation of Implant with or without Cantilever Extension: A Systematic Review

Introduction: To systematically review the literature on stress distribution of implants with different angulation and the effect of cantilever prosthesis. Study Design: The three major electronic databases were screened: MEDLINE (via PubMed), and Scopus and Elsevier. Review: Methodological quality assessment showed sample size calculation to be reported by only one study, and follow-up did not include a large number of participants - a fact that may introduce bias and lead to misleading interpretations of the study results. Conclusions: A systematic review of the current literature showed only in vitro evidence that there is no consensus on the advantage of using an offset configuration implant compared to those in straight-line configuration, well some studies shows significant improvement of bone stress distribution when an angulated implant is under oblique loading.