Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two-dimensional, periodic mushroomlike nanostructures for SERS applications

Two-dimensional, large-area, periodic mushroomlike metallodielectric nanostructures have been simulated, fabricated, and characterized for biosensing applications. Simulations show high electrical field around the tips of the structure. The fabrication process consists of using holographic lithography to create 2-D periodic nanohole array. Subsequently, oblique metal deposition on the nanohole array results in mushroomlike nanostructure with a cavity underneath the void space. The precise geometry of the nanocavity is dependent on the deposition time (thickness). The periodicity of the array was designed to excite propagating surface plasmon resonance (SPR) modes, while the geometric shape of the nanostructure excites localized plasmons on its edges. The coupling between these two phenomena results in higher electric field and thus higher enhancement factor than conventional nanohole array over the whole substrate area ( > 4 cm2). By analyzing the Raman mode of the adsorbed benzenethiol on the surface, the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement factor of greater than 106 has been measured. Due to its moderately-high enhancement factor, large-area array, and low-cost fabrication method, this nanostructure can be used for future SERS biosensing applications.
DisCoHead: Audio-and-Video-Driven Talking Head Generation by Disentangled Control of Head Pose and Facial Expressions

For realistic talking head generation, creating natural head motion while maintaining accurate lip synchronization is essential. To fulfill this challenging task, we propose DisCoHead, a novel method to disentangle and control head pose and facial expressions without supervision. DisCoHead uses a single geometric transformation as a bottleneck to isolate and extract head motion from a head-driving video. Either an affine or a thin-plate spline transformation can be used and both work well as geometric bottlenecks. We enhance the efficiency of DisCoHead by integrating a dense motion estimator and the encoder of a generator which are originally separate modules. Taking a step further, we also propose a neural mix approach where dense motion is estimated and applied implicitly by the encoder. After applying the disentangled head motion to a source identity, DisCoHead controls the mouth region according to speech audio, and it blinks eyes and moves eyebrows following a separate driving video of the eye region, via the weight modulation of convolutional neural networks. The experiments using multiple datasets show that DisCoHead successfully generates realistic audio-and-video-driven talking heads and outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Project page: https://deepbrainai-research.github. io/discohead/
Galactic Structure Surveys and the Evolution of the Milky Way

Much of galactic research is directed at the determination of those global properties of stellar populations that bear directly on models of formation. This review investigates the evolution of the Milky Way from the per­ spective afforded by surveys of Galactic stellar populations. I concentrate primarily on the most commonly-measured stellar parameters in sys­ tematic Galactic surveys of stars or star clusters: 1 . location with respect to the Galactic center2, 2. velocities and velocity dispersions3, 3. metallicity, defined as [Fe/H], and 4. age. As the point of departure, focus will be placed on a family of "key observables" -specific, testable correlations within this parameter space that constrain the Galactic formation
Do large language models resemble humans in language use?

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Vicuna have shown remarkable capacities in comprehending and producing language. However, their internal workings remain a black box, and it is unclear whether LLMs and chatbots can develop humanlike characteristics in language use. Cognitive scientists have devised many experiments that probe, and have made great progress in explaining, how people comprehend and produce language. We subjected ChatGPT and Vicuna to 12 of these experiments ranging from sounds to dialogue, preregistered and with 1000 runs (i.e., iterations) per experiment. ChatGPT and Vicuna replicated the human pattern of language use in 10 and 7 out of the 12 experiments, respectively. The models associated unfamiliar words with different meanings depending on their forms, continued to access recently encountered meanings of ambiguous words, reused recent sentence structures, attributed causality as a function of verb semantics, and accessed different meanings and retrieved different words depending on an interlocutor's identity. In addition, ChatGPT, but not Vicuna, nonliterally interpreted implausible sentences that were likely to have been corrupted by noise, drew reasonable inferences, and overlooked semantic fallacies in a sentence. Finally, unlike humans, neither model preferred using shorter words to convey less informative content, nor did they use context to resolve syntactic ambiguities. We discuss how these convergences and divergences may result from the transformer architecture. Overall, these experiments demonstrate that LLMs such as ChatGPT (and Vicuna to a lesser extent) are humanlike in many aspects of human language processing.
Iterative Loop Method Combining Active and Semi-Supervised Learning for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation

Semantic segmentation is an important technique for environment perception in intelligent transportation systems. With the rapid development of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), road scene analysis can usually achieve satisfactory results in the source domain. However, guaranteeing good generalization to different target domain scenarios remains a significant challenge. Recently, semi-supervised learning and active learning have been proposed to alleviate this problem. Semisupervised learning can improve model accuracy with massive unlabeled data, but some pseudo labels containing noise would be generated with limited or imbalanced training data. And there will be suboptimal models if human guidance is absent. Active learning can select more effective data to intervene, while the model accuracy can not be improved because the massive unlabeled data are not used. And the probability of querying sub-optimal samples will increase when the domain difference is too large, increasing annotation cost. This paper proposes an iterative loop method combining active and semisupervised learning for domain adaptive semantic segmentation. The method first uses semi-supervised to learn massive unlabeled data to improve model accuracy and provide more accurate selection models for active learning. Secondly, combined with the predictive uncertainty sample selection strategy of active learning, manual intervention is used to correct the pseudo-labels. Finally, flexible iterative loops achieve the best performance with minimal labeling cost. Extensive experiments show that our method establishes state-of-the-art performance on tasks of GTAV to Cityscapes, SYNTHIA to Cityscapes, improving by 4.9% mIoU and 5.2% mIoU, compared to the previous best method, respectively.
Geolocation Predicting of Tweets Using BERT-Based Models

This research is aimed to solve the tweet/user geolocation prediction task and provide a flexible methodology for the geotagging of textual big data. The suggested approach implements neural networks for natural language processing (NLP) to estimate the location as coordinate pairs (longitude, latitude) and two-dimensional Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). The scope of proposed models has been finetuned on a Twitter dataset using pretrained Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) as base models. Performance metrics show a median error of fewer than 30 km on a worldwide-level, and fewer than 15 km on the US-level datasets for the models trained and evaluated on text features of tweets' content and metadata context. Our source code and data are available at https://github.com/K4TEL/geo-twitter.git
Non-Concentration of Primes in $\Gamma \backslash PSL_2(\mathbb{R})$

This paper generalizes the result of Sarnak and Ubis \cite{sarnak-ubis} about non-concentration of primes in horocycle orbits on $PSL_2(\mathbb{Z}) \backslash PSL_2(\mathbb{R})$ to any lattice in $PSL_2(\mathbb{R})$. The proof combines the asymptotic result of Str\"ombergsson \parencite{strombergsson} and Venkatesh's method \parencite{venkatesh} with the approach of Sarnak and Ubis of approximating horocycle pieces with periodic horocycles. The key step is to establish a dichotomy between $\{\xi h(t), t \in [0, T] \}$ having good equidistribution in $\Gamma \backslash PSL_2(\mathbb{R})$ and it being approximable by closed horocycle pieces with small period. In a follow-up paper, a similar approach will be used to show equidistribution of $\xi h(n^{1+\gamma})$ for small $\gamma>0$, generalizing Venkatesh's result \parencite{venkatesh} to non-compact $\Gamma$.
Continuous-wave solid-state two-Stokes Raman laser

We report an experimental study of the first cw solid-state Raman laser operating simultaneously at the frequencies of the first and second Stokes components. Simultaneous generation is ensured by a cavity with an enhanced finesse at both Stokes frequencies. The threshold pump powers for the first (3.4 W) and second (3.67 W) Stokes components suggest that the second Stokes generation follows a cascade mechanism. We demonstrate for the first time Raman conversion with intensity stability exceeding the pump radiation stability and show that this approach may find application in Raman spectroscopy.
Batf stabilizes Th17 cell development via impaired Stat5 recruitment of Ets1‐Runx1 complexes

Although the activator protein‐1 (AP‐1) factor Batf is required for Th17 cell development, its mechanisms of action to underpin the Th17 program are incompletely understood. Here, we find that Batf ensures Th17 cell identity in part by restricting alternative gene programs through its actions to restrain IL‐2 expression and IL‐2‐induced Stat5 activation. This, in turn, limits Stat5‐dependent recruitment of Ets1‐Runx1 factors to Th1‐ and Treg‐cell‐specific gene loci. Thus, in addition to pioneering regulatory elements in Th17‐specific loci, Batf acts indirectly to inhibit the assembly of a Stat5‐Ets1‐Runx1 complex that enhances the transcription of Th1‐ and Treg‐cell‐specific genes. These findings unveil an important role for Stat5‐Ets1‐Runx1 interactions in transcriptional networks that define alternate T cell fates and indicate that Batf plays an indispensable role in both inducing and maintaining the Th17 program through its actions to regulate the competing actions of Stat5‐assembled enhanceosomes that promote Th1‐ and Treg‐cell developmental programs.
Functional Somatic Disorders, Their Subtypes, and Their Association With Self-Rated Health in the German General Population

ABSTRACT Objective The heterogeneous conceptualizations and classifications of persistent and troublesome physical symptoms impede their adequate clinical management. Functional somatic disorder (FSD) is a recently suggested interface concept that is etiologically neutral and allows for dysfunctional psychobehavioral characteristics as well as somatic comorbidity. However, its prevalence and impact are not yet known. Methods We analyzed 2379 participants (mean age = 48.3 years, 52.5% female) from a representative German community survey using operationalized FSD criteria. These criteria defined FSD types based on somatic symptom count, type, and severity assessed by the Bodily Distress Syndrome Checklist. In addition, the associations of those types with health concerns, comorbidity, psychological distress, and self-rated health were determined. Results There were four clearly demarcated groups with no relevant bothering symptoms, with one or with few bothering symptoms from one organ system, and with multiple bothering symptoms from at least two organ systems. Psychological distress, health concerns, and comorbidity steadily increased, and self-rated health decreased according to the number and severity of symptoms. Somatic symptom burden, health concerns, and comorbidity independently predicted self-rated health, with no interaction effect between the latter two. Conclusions Our data support an FSD concept with two severity grades according to persistent and troublesome symptoms in one versus more organ systems. The delimitation of subtypes with psychobehavioral characteristics and/or with somatic comorbidity seems useful, while still allowing the demarcation of a group of participants with high symptom burden but without those additional characteristics.
The GloSea4 Ensemble Prediction System for Seasonal Forecasting

AbstractSeasonal forecasting systems, and related systems for decadal prediction, are crucial in the development of adaptation strategies to climate change. However, despite important achievements in this area in the last 10 years, significant levels of skill are only generally found over regions strongly connected with the El Nino–Southern Oscillation. With the aim of improving the skill of regional climate predictions in tropical and extratropical regions from intraseasonal to interannual time scales, a new Met Office global seasonal forecasting system (GloSea4) has been developed. This new system has been designed to be flexible and easy to upgrade so it can be fully integrated within the Met Office model development infrastructure. Overall, the analysis here shows an improvement of GloSea4 when compared to its predecessor. However, there are exceptions, such as the increased model biases that contribute to degrade the skill of Nino-3.4 SST forecasts starting in November. Global ENSO teleconnections an.
Freestanding lipid bilayer tensiometer for the study of mechanosensitive ion channels

Significance Stretch-activated ion channels respond to tension in cellular membranes, transducing mechanical stimuli into physiological responses, including the sense of touch and blood pressure regulation. However, the precise measurement of tensions required to activate mechanosensitive ion channels is lacking, since techniques thus far have relied on less accurate determinations of shear force or pipette pressure. This study presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of an instrument to assess simultaneously ion-channel current and lateral membrane tension. We show that the system can control tensions spanning a range of values relevant to most stretch-activated channels. Using the mammalian ion channel TRAAK, we construct tension activation curves and determine its tension sensitivity.
Utilizing Plasma Circulating Tumor DNA Sequencing for Precision Medicine in the Management of Solid Cancers

Plasma circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) sequencing has demonstrated clinical utility for tumor molecular profiling at initial diagnosis or tumor progression in advanced solid cancers and is being rapidly incorporated into the clinical practice guidelines, including non–small cell lung and breast cancer. Despite relatively low sensitivity, plasma ctDNA sequencing has several advantages over tissue-based assays, including ease of sampling, rapid turnaround time, repeatability, and the ability to overcome spatial heterogeneity, which makes it ideal for investigating acquired resistance and monitoring tumor evolution and dynamics. With technological advancement and declining costs, the clinical application of plasma ctDNA is expanding, and numerous ongoing clinical trials are examining its potential to guide the management of advanced, localized, and even preclinical cancers of various tumor types. The ability of plasma ctDNA analysis to detect minimal residual disease following curative treatment in the absence of clinical disease is among its most promising attributes. Plasma ctDNA sequencing can also facilitate the conduct of clinical trials and drug development, particularly in immunotherapy. In order to incorporate plasma ctDNA sequencing for clinical decision-making, it is important to understand the preanalytical and analytical factors that may affect its sensitivity and reliability.
Advances in post-operative prognostic models for hepatocellular carcinoma

肝细胞癌（HCC）是全球最常见的恶性肿瘤之一,同时也是癌症相关死亡的主要原因之一。 对于肝癌,尤其是早期和中期肝癌,外科手术是首选同时也是最有效的治疗方法。 但HCC的高度异质性,给其患者的预后带来了巨大的挑战。 预后模型的构建将有助于对手术治疗患者进行预后分层,并指导临床医生采取个体化治疗,从而提高患者的生存率。 目前,HCC的预后评估主要基于几种常用的HCC分期系统（如TNM分期、意大利肝癌计划评分（CLIP）和巴塞罗那分期（BCLC））。 然而,鉴于这些分期系统存在的不足,也为了提高预后预测的准确性,研究人员进一步纳入患者的其他预后因素,如微血管浸润,并提出了一些新的预后模型。 本综述就当前常见的肝癌临床分期系统及近年提出的新预后模型进行阐述,以期为今后的临床研究提供思路。 Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies and a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Surgery remains the primary and most successful therapy option for the treatment of early- and mid-stage HCCs, but the high heterogeneity of HCC renders prognostic prediction challenging. The construction of relevant prognostic models helps to stratify the prognosis of surgically treated patients and guide personalized clinical decision-making, thereby improving patient survival rates. Currently, the prognostic assessment of HCC is based on several commonly used staging systems, such as Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM), Cancer of the Liver Italian Program (CLIP), and Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC). Given the insufficiency of these staging systems and the aim to improve the accuracy of prognostic prediction, researchers have incorporated further prognostic factors, such as microvascular infiltration, and proposed some new prognostic models for HCC. To provide insights into the prospects of clinical oncology research, this review describes the commonly used HCC staging systems and new models proposed in recent years.
Live birth following an innovative artificial oocyte activation protocol using double calcium stimulators

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is an effective method for human-assisted reproductive technology, especially for male-factor infertility. However, the average fertilization rate of ICSI is 70%, and total fertilization failure occurs in 3% of cycles. [1] Oocyte activation de ﬁ ciency is the primary cause of fertilization failure. Typically, sperm penetration evokes intracellular calcium (Ca 2+ ) oscillations and causes oocyte activation. Oocyte activation de ﬁ ciency can be overcome by arti ﬁ cial oocyte activation (AOA), involving various mechanical, electric, or chemical stimuli. [2] Chemical activation is commonly applied in in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics using Ca 2+ stimulators, such as ionomycin, calcimycin, and strontium chloride (SrCl 2 ). The process induces either a single spike or pulsating waves of intracytoplasmic Ca 2+ concentration increases. The conventional AOA protocol, based on a single Ca 2+ stimulator, has increased fertilization rates of couples who had previously experienced total fertilization failure after undergoing ICSI. However, conventional AOA is not adequately effective in overcoming fertilization failure in all patients. In the
A new view on abrupt climate changes and the bipolar seesaw based on paleotemperatures from Iberian Margin sediments

Significance The evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation remains difficult to constrain from direct measurements. During the last glacial cycle, the strength of this circulation covaried with temperature in the North Atlantic, itself connected to Southern Hemisphere temperature. However, this interhemispheric connection was mostly studied using Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, resulting in an incomplete picture of the thermal bipolar seesaw. Using new temperature records from the Iberian Margin, a new Bipolar Seesaw Index, and Southern Hemisphere temperature simulations, we discriminate Northern Hemisphere cold events with and without massive iceberg discharges into the North Atlantic. Our data-model comparison implies a relationship that is more complex than a simple flip-flop between two climate states linked to a tipping point threshold.
Stable Lagrange points of large planets as possible regions where WIMPs could be sought

In this paper we show that the physical properties of the Lagrange points of large planets could provide an effective mechanism for trapping dark matter, if dark matter really exists in our solar system. Certainly, the familiar trapping mechanism of a potential well combined with some dissipative processes is not a good candidate for particles like WIMPs which are supposed to be very slippery. However, in each of the Lagrange regions, L4 and L5, of large planets the potential has a maximum which together with the Coriolis force provides an effective trapping mechanism without the need of any kind of friction. This is a purely inertial and gravitational mechanism with no assumptions on other possible interactions. Hence if the density of dark matter is not negligible in this part of the universe, a direct experiment to be considered is the establishment of a satellite in orbit around one of the stable Lagrange points, L4 or L5, of Jupiter.
An IGFBP7hi endothelial cell subset drives T cell extravasation in psoriasis via endothelial glycocalyx degradation

Dysfunction of vascular endothelial cells (ECs) facilitates imbalanced immune responses and tissue hyperinflammation. However, the heterogeneous functions of skin ECs and their underlying mechanism in dermatoses remain to be determined. Here, focusing on the pathogenic role of skin ECs in psoriasis, we characterized the molecular and functional heterogeneity of skin ECs from healthy individuals and psoriasis patients at the single-cell level. We found that endothelial glycocalyx destruction, a major feature of EC dysfunction in psoriasis, was a driving force during the process of T cell extravasation. Interestingly, we identified a skin EC subset, IGFBP7hi ECs, in psoriasis. This subset actively responded to psoriatic-related cytokine signaling, secreted IGFBP7, damaged the endothelial glycocalyx, exposed the adhesion molecules underneath, and prepared the endothelium for immune-cell adhesion and transmigration, thus aggravating skin inflammation. More importantly, we provided evidence in a psoriasis-like mouse model that anti-IGFBP7 treatment showed promising therapeutic effects for restoring the endothelial glycocalyx and alleviating skin inflammation. Taken together, our results depict the distinct functions of EC clusters in healthy and psoriatic skin, identify IGFBP7hi ECs as an active subset modulating vascular function and cutaneous inflammation, and indicate that targeting IGFBP7 is a potential therapeutic strategy in psoriasis.
Multi‐level design optimization using target cascading, an improvement of convergence

Purpose – Analytical target cascading (ATC) is a hierarchical multi‐level design methodology. According to the state‐of‐the‐art, it is confirmed that for problems with unattainable targets, strict design consistency cannot be achieved with finite weighting factors. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approach – A new formulation is proposed to improve the ATC convergence. The weighted sum of deviation metric is transformed into a multi‐objective formulation. An original optimization problem with a single global optimal solution is used as a benchmark.Findings – It is found that carrying out an industrial application to design optimally a tram traction system demonstrates the efficiency of the proposed solution.Originality/value – This paper is of value in showing how to improve the convergence of a multi‐level optimization algorithm by best management of the consistency constraints.