Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mantle Plume-Midocean Ridge Interaction: Geophysical Observations and Mantle Dynamics.

Abstract : We investigate the igneous and mantle dynamic processes of mantle plume midocean ridge interaction with geophysical observational and numerical modeling studies. Bathymetric and gravity anomalies along seafloor isochrons are examined at the Galapagos, Iceland, Azores, Tristan, and Easter plume ridge systems. Anomaly amplitudes decrease with increasing plume ridge distance whereas along-isochron widths decrease with increasing spreading rate. Three dimensional numerical models predict that along-axis plume width increases with plume volume flux but decreases with increasing spreading rate and plume ridge distance. Ridge migration is predicted to inhibit plume ridge interaction when ridges migrate toward plumes and enhance interaction when ridges migrate away from the plumes. The effects of decompression melting on plume density and viscosity do not appreciably affect the broad scale flow of the plume, but they do contribute significantly to predicted geophysical anomalies. Numerical models predict successfully the geophysical observations at the Iceland-Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Galapagos plume ridge systems. Predictions of geochemistry suggest that mixing between the plumes and ambient mantle most likely occurs below the asthenosphere. Models of the Iceland plume require substantial along-axis melt migration in order to explain a variety of geophysical and geochemical observations.
Role of spatial variability of rainfall intensity: improve‐ ment of Eagleson's classical model to explain the rela‐ tionship between the coefficient of variation of annual maximum discharge and catchment size

Eagleson's classical regional flood frequency model is investigated. Our intention was not to improve the model, but to reveal previously unidentified important and dominant hydrological processes in it. The change of the coefficient of variation (CV) of annual maximum discharge with catchment area can be viewed as representing the spatial variance of floods in a homogeneous region. Several researchers have reported that the CV decreases as the catchment area increases, at least for large areas. On the other hand, Eagleson's classical studies have been known as pioneer efforts that combine the concept of similarity analysis (scaling) with the derived flood frequency approach. As we have shown, the classical model can reproduce the empirical relationship between the mean annual maximum discharge and catchment area, but it cannot reproduce the empirical decreasing CV–catchment area curve. Therefore, we postulate that previously unidentified hydrological processes would be revealed if the classical model were improved to reproduce the decreasing of CV with catchment area. First, we attempted to improve the classical model by introducing a channel network, but this was ineffective. However, the classical model was improved by introducing a two‐parameter gamma distribution for rainfall intensity. What is important is not the gamma distribution itself, but those characteristics of spatial variability of rainfall intensity whose CV decreases with increasing catchment area. Introducing the variability of rainfall intensity into the hydrological simulations explains how the CV of rainfall intensity decreases with increasing catchment area. It is difficult to reflect the rainfall‐runoff processes in the model while neglecting the characteristics of rainfall intensity from the viewpoint of annual flood discharge variances. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Some mechanical aspects of arterial aging: physiological overview based on pulse wave analysis

Aging has a striking impact on the arterial structure and function. The principal structural change with age is medial degeneration that leads to a progressive stiffening of the large elastic arteries. Large artery stiffening increases aortic systolic and pulse pressures through an increase in the forward incident wave and an early return of the backward reflected wave. Peripheral muscular arteries/arterioles are only minimally affected in structure by aging itself, but impaired vasomotor function can alter their impedance properties and thereby increase reflection magnitude. An augmented aortic pressure due to enhanced wave reflection increases wasted left ventricular effort and causes cardiac hypertrophy. Increased pulsatile pressure and flow stresses extend to the vulnerable microcirculation of vasodilated organs such as the brain and kidneys, and can predispose to cerebral lacunar infarction and albuminuria. Although most currently available vasodilators appear to have little direct effect on degenerated elastic arteries, they can act instead on less-degenerated muscular arteries to markedly reduce peripheral wave reflection magnitude and central aortic pressure, and thus contribute to the regression of left ventricular hypertrophy. Further studies are necessary to examine whether the effect of vasodilator therapy on reducing wave reflection contributes similarly to the prevention of microvascular damage in the brain and kidneys.
Arithmetic (1;e)-curves and Belyĭ maps

Using the theory of Belyĭ maps, we calculate the algebraic curves associated to the Fuchsian groups of signature that are commensurable with a triangle group, along with the Picard-Fuchs differential equations on these curves, which are related to pullbacks of hypergeometric differential equations. We focus particularly on the -groups that are arithmetic.
Preference Learning in Terminology Extraction: A ROC-based approach

A key data preparation step in Text Mining, Term Extraction selects the terms, or collocation of words, attached to specific concepts. In this paper, the task of extracting relevant collocations is achieved through a supervised learning algorithm, exploiting a few collocations manually labelled as relevant/irrelevant. The candidate terms are described along 13 standard statistical criteria measures. From these examples, an evolutionary learning algorithm termed Roger, based on the optimization of the Area under the ROC curve criterion, extracts an order on the candidate terms. The robustness of the approach is demonstrated on two real-world domain applications, considering different domains (biology and human resources) and different languages (English and French).
A to Z GIS: An Illustrated Dictionary of Geographic Information Systems

As GIS technology has evolved and grown, so has the language of this powerful tool. Written, developed, and reviewed by more than 150 subject-matter experts, "A to Z GIS" is packed with more than 1,800 terms; nearly 400 full-color illustrations; and, seven encyclopedia-style appendix articles about annotation and labels, features, geometry, layers in ArcGIS, map projections and coordinate systems, remote sensing, and topology. "A to Z GIS" is a must-have resource for managers, programmers, users, writers, editors, and students discovering the interdisciplinary nature of GIS.
The Trithorax group protein Ash2l and Saf-A are recruited to the inactive X chromosome at the onset of stable X inactivation

Mammals compensate X chromosome gene dosage between the sexes by silencing of one of the two female X chromosomes. X inactivation is initiated in the early embryo and requires the non-coding Xist RNA, which encompasses the inactive X chromosome (Xi) and triggers its silencing. In differentiated cells, several factors including the histone variant macroH2A and the scaffold attachment factor SAF-A are recruited to the Xi and maintain its repression. Consequently, in female somatic cells the Xi remains stably silenced independently of Xist. Here, we identify the Trithorax group protein Ash2l as a novel component of the Xi. Ash2l is recruited by Xist concomitantly with Saf-A and macroH2A at the transition to Xi maintenance. Recruitment of these factors characterizes a developmental transition point for the chromatin composition of the Xi. Surprisingly, expression of a mutant Xist RNA that does not cause gene repression can trigger recruitment of Ash2l, Saf-A and macroH2A to the X chromosome, and can cause chromosome-wide histone H4 hypoacetylation. This suggests that a chromatin configuration is established on non-genic chromatin on the Xi by Xist to provide a repressive compartment that could be used for maintaining gene silencing. Gene silencing is mechanistically separable from the formation of this repressive compartment and, thus, requires additional pathways. This observation highlights a crucial role for spatial organization of chromatin changes in the maintenance of X inactivation.
The best GFF articles for 2013 and 2014

GFF is one of the world’s oldest continuing Earth Science journals, presently working on our 137th volume. We are very pleased to see that our journal and the papers we publish receive attention from scientists from all over the world. This is not only evident in the growing circulation of the journal through the Taylor & Francis network but also in the thousands of monthly article downloads and in an increasing Thomson Reuters Impact Factor for the journal – in 2014 up to 1.309.
Glyphing it! Children using markers in school

This paper describes a study that investigated the use of d-touch markers in designing learning content for knowledge sharing activities. It looked into design aspects children takes into account in ensuring that the learning content would be understood by their peers. It is believed that emerging design syntax, placement and accompanying visual cues within the markers helped in perceiving the learning content. This paper demonstrates children's view on the use of d-touch markers where they designed and used them within a Malaysian elementary school learning environment.
Analyzing CASE impact

In large-scale software development, tools are frequently adopted at high cost, to increase quality and productivity. A method for quantitative analysis of the impact of such tool insertions would allow an organization to plan and assess tool insertions. However, currently, there are no practical methods available to accomplish such an analysis. The "Tool Insertion Impact Analysis Method" (TIM/Impact) has been developed to address this deficiency. TIM/ Impact uses quantitative process modeling to analyze tool insertion impact throughout a range of alternative scenarios of processes and project sizes. The method has been validated through a case study in the context of large-scale industrial software development. In this paper, TIM/Impact is introduced, and the data gathered in the study is described and analyzed. In the context of the study, it was found that the process used in the project and the size of the project play a significant role in determining whether the insertion of a tool is an improvement or rather a waste of resources. It was also found that it is always necessary to increase the allocated resources in order to improve quality, even if a tool is introduced, but through the insertion of a tool, quality improvement can be considerably cheaper than without inserting a tool. It is concluded that TIM/Impact can be a valuable aid for making decisions on how a process should be carried out. By providing resource requirement estimates, TIM/Impact can guide the selection of an appropriate technology and process.
Improved CLP Scheduling with Task Intervals

In this paper we present a new technique that can be used to improve performance of job scheduling with a constraint programming language. We show how, by focusing on some special sets of tasks, one can bring CLP in the same range of efficiency as traditional OR algorithms on a classical benchmark (MT10 [MT63]), thus making CLP both a flexible and an efficient technique for such combinatorial problems. We then present our programming methodology which we have successfully used on many problems, and draw conclusions on what features constraint programming languages should offer to allow its use.
FlyTED: the Drosophila Testis Gene Expression Database

FlyTED, the Drosophila Testis Gene Expression Database, is a biological research database for gene expression images from the testis of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. It currently contains 2762 mRNA in situ hybridization images and ancillary metadata revealing the patterns of gene expression of 817 Drosophila genes in testes of wild type flies and of seven meiotic arrest mutant strains in which spermatogenesis is defective. This database has been built by adapting a widely used digital library repository software system, EPrints (http://eprints.org/software/), and provides both web-based search and browse interfaces, and programmatic access via an SQL dump, OAI-PMH and SPARQL. FlyTED is available at http://www.fly-ted.org/.
CCBL: A Language for Better Supporting Context Centered Programming in the Smart Home

This paper presents CCBL (Cascading Contexts Based Language), an end-user programming language dedicated to Smart Home. We design CCBL to avoid the problems encountered by end-users programming with ECA (Event Conditions Actions), which is the dominant approach in the domain. We present the results of an experiment where we asked 21 adults (11 experimented programmers and 10 non-programmers) to express four increasingly complex behaviors using both CCBL and ECA. We show that significantly less errors were made using CCBL than using ECA. From this experiment, we also propose some categorization and explanation of the errors made when using ECA and explain why users avoid these errors when programming with CCBL.
Estimation of variances in a heteroscedastic RCA(1) model

The paper concerns with a heteroscedastic random coefficient autoregressive model (RCA) of the form X t = b t X t - 1 + Y t . Two different procedures for estimating σ 2 t = EY 2 t , σ 2 b = Eb 2 t or σ 2 B = E(b t - Eb t ) 2 , respectively, are described under the special seasonal behaviour of σ 2 t . For both types of estimators strong consistency and asymptotic normality are proved.
The Effects of Experimental Sleep Apnea on Cardiac and Respiratory Functions in 6 and 18 Month Old Dystrophic (mdx) Mice

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal disease where over 90% of patients succumb to respiratory or cardiac failure. Sleep apnea and sleep disordered breathing (SDB) are noted in a plurality of DMD patients, and the resulting nocturnal episodic hypoxia (EH) cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor to cardiac and respiratory dysfunction. In this study, we investigated the impact of long-term episodic hypoxia, which mimics the cyclic hypoxia seen in sleep apnea, on cardiac and respiratory function in a murine model of DMD (mdx mice). Since the severity and prevalence of sleep apnea in DMD increases with age, we studied the impact of EH on young (6-month) and on older (18-month) mdx mice. Mice were either exposed for 12 weeks to EH (8 hours/day, 5 days/week) or to room air. We noted a significant increase in left ventricular (LV) dilatation (transthoracic echocardiography) on EH exposure in both age groups, but reduced LV contractility was seen only in 6-month old mice. With EH exposure, an increased fibrosis (hydroxyproline) was noted in both cardiac and diaphragm muscle in 18-month but not 6-month old mice. No significant change in relative diaphragm strength (in-vitro) was noted on EH exposure in 18-month old mice. In contrast, EH exposed 6-month old mice showed a significant increase in relative diaphragm strength. EH exposure did not result in any significant change in ventilatory parameters (barometric plethysmography) in awake 6-month old mdx mice. In contrast, 18-month old mdx mice showed considerable ventilatory dysfunction, consistent with reduced ventilatory reserve. Our findings highlight that sleep apnea impacts respiratory and cardiac function in muscular dystrophy, and that EH can have divergent effects on both systems. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study to investigate the impact of EH on cardiac and respiratory function in mdx mice.
Some Approaches to Improve the Interpretability of Neuro-Fuzzy Classifiers

Neuro-fuzzy classi cation systems make it possible to obtain a suitable fuzzy classi er by learning from data. Nevertheless, in some cases the derived rule base is hard to interpret. In this paper we discuss some approaches to improve the interpretability of neuro-fuzzy classi cation systems. We present modi ed learning strategies to derive fuzzy classi cation rules from data, and some methods to simplify the found rule base to improve the interpretability of the resulting fuzzy system.
Validity and Reliability in Social Science Research.

Concepts of reliability and validity in social science research are introduced and major methods to assess reliability and validity reviewed with examples from the literature. The thrust of the paper is to provide novice researchers with an understanding of the general problem of validity in social science research and to acquaint them with approaches to developing strong support for the validity of their research.
New general features based on superpixels for image segmentation learning

Segmenting an image is usually one of the major and most challenging steps in the pipeline of biomedical image analysis. One classical and promising approach is to consider segmentation as a classification task, where the aim is to assign to each pixel the label of the objects it belongs to. Pixels are therefore described by a vector of features, where each feature is calculated on the pixel itself or, more frequently, on a sliding window centered on the pixel. In this work, we propose to replace the sliding window by superpixels, i.e. regions which adapt to the image content. We call the resulting features SAF (Superpixel Adaptive Feature). Their contribution is highlighted on a biomedical database of melanocytes images. Qualitative and quantitative analyses show that they are better suited for segmentation purposes than the sliding window approach.
Automatic day-2 intervention by a multidisciplinary antimicrobial stewardship-team leads to multiple positive effects

Background: Antimicrobial resistance rates are increasing. This is, among others, caused by incorrect or inappropriate use of antimicrobials. To target this, a multidisciplinary antimicrobial stewardship-team (A-Team) was implemented at the University Medical Center Groningen on a urology ward. Goal of this study is to evaluate the clinical effects of the case-audits done by this team, looking at length of stay (LOS) and antimicrobial use. Methods: Automatic e-mail alerts were sent after 48 h of consecutive antimicrobial use triggering the case-audits, consisting of an A-Team member visiting the ward, discussing the patient’s therapy with the bed-side physician and together deciding on further treatment based on available diagnostics and guidelines. Clinical effects of the audits were evaluated through an Interrupted Time Series analysis and a retrospective historic cohort. Results: A significant systemic reduction of antimicrobial consumption for all patients on the ward, both with and without case-audits was observed. Furthermore, LOS for patients with case-audits who were admitted primarily due to infections decreased to 6.20 days (95% CI: 5.59–6.81) compared to the historic cohort (7.57 days; 95% CI: 6.92–8.21; p = 0.012). Antimicrobial consumption decreased for these patients from 8.17 DDD/patient (95% CI: 7.10–9.24) to 5.93 DDD/patient (95% CI: 5.02–6.83; p = 0.008). For patients with severe underlying diseases (e.g., cancer) these outcome measures remained unchanged. Conclusion: The evaluation showed a considerable positive impact. Antibiotic use of the whole ward was reduced, transcending the intervened patients. Furthermore, LOS and mean antimicrobial consumption for a subgroup was reduced, thereby improving patient care and potentially lowering resistance rates.
MafB/c-Maf Deficiency Enables Self-Renewal of Differentiated Functional Macrophages

Self-Renewing Macrophages The capacity for self-renewal is associated with progenitor cell populations and is lost upon differentiation. Aziz et al. (p. 867) discovered an exception to this rule when mouse monocytes and macrophages deficient in the transcription factors MafB and c-Maf were cultured in the presence of the growth factor, macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF). Under these conditions, MafB/c-Maf–deficient cells were able to divide continuously while maintaining the phenotype and function of mature cells. Unexpectedly, when these in vitro–cultured cells were transferred into mice, they did not induce tumors, despite continuing to divide, but rather incorporated themselves into tissues and adopted normal macrophage functions. Suppression of two genes involved in the self-renewal capacity of inducible pluripotent stem cells, KLF4 and c-Myc, inhibited the ability of MafB/c-Maf–deficient macrophages to self-renew. Such long-term propagation of a differentiated cell population that does not result in transformation when reintroduced in vivo has exciting therapeutic potential. The absence of two transcription factors allows long-term propagation of a differentiated immune cell population that is nontumorigenic. In metazoan organisms, terminal differentiation is generally tightly linked to cell cycle exit, whereas the undifferentiated state of pluripotent stem cells is associated with unlimited self-renewal. Here, we report that combined deficiency for the transcription factors MafB and c-Maf enables extended expansion of mature monocytes and macrophages in culture without loss of differentiated phenotype and function. Upon transplantation, the expanded cells are nontumorigenic and contribute to functional macrophage populations in vivo. Small hairpin RNA inactivation shows that continuous proliferation of MafB/c-Maf deficient macrophages requires concomitant up-regulation of two pluripotent stem cell–inducing factors, KLF4 and c-Myc. Our results indicate that MafB/c-MafB deficiency renders self-renewal compatible with terminal differentiation. It thus appears possible to amplify functional differentiated cells without malignant transformation or stem cell intermediates.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa: Homogeneity or heterogeneity?

Abstract This article examines the geography of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa in a time and space perspective. Drawing on a variety of sources, an interesting picture of HIV/AIDS spread emerges, one that is quite at odds with the popular perception of an increasing HIV prevalence in most of the region. A significant decline has been underway in Uganda. There has also been stability or levelling off in countries such as Zambia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Cote d'Ivoire. In sharp contrast, prevalence is increasing in Tanzania, Swaziland and Central African Republic (CAR). The article heeds the important point that transmission of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa not only displays differing patterns but differing reasons for those patterns between countries and regions proximate to each other. Thus, no single policy can be adopted for all countries.
The experiences of ‘new’ East European immigrants in the UK labour market

This paper explores the experiences of new European immigrants (from Albania, Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro and Ukraine) in the UK labour market, in relation to their education and training at home, as well as the extent of occupational mobility within the UK. It draws on a survey of nearly 400 new immigrants interviewed in late 2005, and a similar number of long-term residents in Brighton & Hove, Hackney and Harrow. The study does not show signs of heavy competition for jobs between the immigrants and long-term residents. Labour shortages appear to remain, with East Europeans reporting low levels of unemployment and long-term residents reporting little antipathy towards these newcomers.