Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mid-Cretaceous oceanic anoxic events in the Pacific Ocean revealed by carbon-isotope stratigraphy of the Calera Limestone, California, USA

The paleoceanographic history of the Pacific Ocean during the mid-Cretaceous is poorly constrained due to the loss of much of the contemporaneous Pacific seafloor to subduction and difficulties in recovering chert-rich sediments by ocean drilling. Pelagic sediments that were originally deposited in the Pacific Ocean but that have been subsequently accreted during subduction potentially provide an alternative paleoceanographic archive. This study presents micropaleontological and carbon-isotope data from the Calera Limestone, part of the classic Franciscan Complex exposed in Permanente Quarry, central California, USA. In the three stratigraphic sections studied, pelagic limestones with low organic-carbon contents are the dominant lithology. However, two stratigraphic intervals are recognized that contain organic carbon, and these date to the early Aptian and late Albian–early Cenomanian. These time intervals correspond to two mid-Cretaceous oceanic anoxic events (OAEs): early Aptian OAE1a (equivalent to the “Selli level”) and late Albian OAE1d (equivalent to the “Breistroffer event”). It is well established that both of these events were associated with significant carbon-isotope excursions, which are also shown to exist in the Calera Limestone. The record of OAE1a from the Calera Limestone complements ocean drilling records by providing further evidence for variability in the sedimentary and stratigraphic record of this event. The carbon-isotope data from the late Albian–early Cenomanian provide the first detailed chemobiostratigraphic record of this period for the Pacific Ocean, confirming that environmental change occurred at this time in the Pacific, possibly related to OAE1d.
Risk factors for unresectable pancreatic cancer following high‐intensity focused ultrasound treatment

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive malignant tumors with poor prognosis. High‐intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is an effective and safe treatment option for advanced pancreatic cancer, however, the survival time of patients after the treatment was different. So, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the high‐risk characteristics and prognosis of unresectable pancreatic cancer after HIFU treatment.
Relationship between esophageal squamous cell carcinoma risk and alcohol‐related ALDH2 and ADH1B polymorphisms: Evidence from a meta‐analysis and Mendelian randomization analysis

Previous studies have shown that ALDH2 and ADH1B genes may be associated with alcohol metabolism and the risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), with inconsistent results. This meta‐analysis aimed at comprehensively assessing the associations between ALDH2 and ADH1B polymorphisms and the risk of ESCC to synthesize and clarify the evidence.
Sedimentology of Some South Carolina Tidal-Creek Point Bars, and a Comparison With Their Fluvial Counterparts

Abstract The geometry of intertidal point bars in South Carolina’s predominantly mesotidal (tidal range 1.4 m to 2.6 m) marsh creek system is determined by tidal current ebb-dominance and meander geometry, primarily radius of curvature. The distribution of sedimentary facies is controlled by lateral segregation of flood and ebb currents set up by bar geometry and is further modified by tidal current time-velocity asymmetry. Ebb current dominance causes all point bars to be skewed toward, to trail away from the ebb side of a meander bend. This ebb dominance is purely a function of the entire inlet-marsh system and is present even in systems where freshwater influx is absent. On tight meanders (r/w 3) produce long narrow bars with relatively deep, flood-dominant chutes. Chute bars occur infrequently, but where present are ebb-oriented. Bar extremities are sand wave and megaripple fields. Their ebb- and flood-orientations (on the floodward and seaward ends, respectively) are preserved throughout the tidal cycle by shielding of the higher mid-bar area, where smaller bedforms and flat beds predominate. Mud occurs as drapes in larger bedform troughs and as thin beds on mid-bar crests. Chutes are silty muds, usually devoid of bedforms. Point bars on very gentle meanders (r/w >>3) are fully welded to the bank, and resemble the “skew shoals” of fluvial systems. There is little or no current segregation on this type of bar. Gentle swales behind bar crests are filled with bioturbated muddy sand that is gradational into the adjacent marsh surface. The fundamental contrast between fluvial and tidal channels is the difference in the temporal relationship between water surface elevation and the concommitant flow velocity. In fluvial systems highest velocities accompany the highest river stages. In most tidal channels, however, highest velocities occur at an intermediate stage. This contrast results in vastly different modes of floodplain development. Because tidal channels migrate more slowly than river channels, and because in tidal systems floods are far more frequent, a relatively larger proportion of tidal creek sediments occurs as overbank deposits. Tidal creek and fluvial floodplain lithosomes are distinguishable not only on this basis of the relative importance of channel versus overbank deposits, but on the bases of fauna) diversity, bioturbate structures, orientations of cross-stratification, and characteristics of vertical point bar sequences that reflect tidal current segregation.
Identification of a coagulation‐related signature correlated with immune infiltration and their prognostic implications in lung adenocarcinoma

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is a fatal form of lung cancer with a poor prognosis. Coagulation system had been confirmed closely related to tumor progression and the hypercoagulable state encouraged the immune infiltration and development of tumor cells, leading to a poor prognosis in cancer patients. However, the use of the coagulation‐related genes (CRGs) for prognosis in LUAD has yet to be determined. In this study, we constructed an immune‐related signature (CRRS) and identified a potential coagulation‐related biomarker (P2RX1).
Physicians’ Lived Experience of Breaking Bad News in Clinical Practice: Five Essentials of a Relational Process

The purpose of this study was to develop deeper knowledge about physicians’ lived experiences of breaking bad news by identifying their common meanings and interrelatedness along with their potential alignment with process-oriented and relational aspects. Based on the methodology of descriptive phenomenology, in-depth interviews were conducted with 22 physicians from a wide variety of specialties. The participants were invited to freely reflect upon their experiences of breaking bad news by describing situations that had worked well and less well. Results showed that breaking bad news was fundamentally experienced as a relational process constituted by the five essentials of Becoming the bad messenger, Expecting the unpredictable, Being on stage, Professionally managing hope, and Mindfulness of the emotional relationship. In line with recent research, this study confirms that clinical communication involves much more than just delivering the message. However, it also contributes to existing knowledge by focusing on the phenomenology of physicians’ experiences, which enables deeper understanding of the medical profession and the relational process of breaking bad news. As such, our findings are important to enable broader learning in, for example, medical education and continuing courses for clinical staff.
Analysis of elevation discrepancies along the Lop Nur ear-shaped stripes observed using GLAS and DGPS data

The Lop Nur is a dried-up salt lake lying in the eastern part of the Tarim Basin in China. The peculiar ear-shaped stripes in Lop Nur observed in satellite images have attracted the interest of investigators. It is believed that these stripes represent former lake shorelines, thus are valuable for studying the lake evolution. Owing to insufficient high-precision elevation data, the elevation along a given stripe was supposed to be constant. In this study, elevation data collected by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) and the Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) were carefully analysed. The combined topographic data for the ear-shaped region indicate that the elevations of the south shorelines are approximately 1 m higher than the north shorelines along the same stripe. We analyse the mechanisms of the phenomenon and suggest that the wind-driven water surface tilt at the time the ear-shaped stripes formed is the dominant one. The stripe profiles simulated by this mechanism show an excellent agreement with the measured stripe profiles.
Association of blood pressure and heart rate with carotid markers of vascular remodeling in the young: a case for early prevention

Objective: The association of childhood blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) with intermediate markers of cardiovascular disease several decades later has been shown, but studies on more short-term outcomes are scarce. Using population-based data, this study investigates the association of four BP parameters and HR in childhood with three carotid markers for vascular remodeling one decade later. Methods: At the 11-year follow–up, 4607 participants of the nationwide KiGGS cohort aged 14 to 28 years had semi-automated sonographic carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) measurements. We investigated associations of baseline (age 3–17 years) and follow-up SBP, DBP, mean arterial pressure (MAP), pulse pressure (PP) and resting heart rate (RHR), with CIMT and lumen diameter at or above the 90th percentile and distensibility coefficient at or below the tenth percentile in logistic regressions. Analyses were further adjusted using a composite cardiovascular risk (CVR) score of BMI, triglycerides, total/HDL-cholesterol-ratio and HbA1c. Results: SBP, DBP, MAP and RHR were significantly and similarly associated with all carotid measures 11 years later, for example an odds ratio (OR) of 1.17 [confidence interval (CI) 1.06–1.29] for one standard deviation SBP increase with elevated CIMT when adjusting for sex, age and CVR score. Cross–sectionally, the strongest association was found for MAP with reduced distensibility coefficient (OR 1.76; CI 1.59–1.94). Conclusion: This population-based cohort study shows robust and consistent associations between childhood BP and RHR and three carotid measures of vascular remodeling only one decade later, clearly underscoring the potential importance of preventing high BP already early in the life course.
Evaluation of the Completeness of Managed Care Data to Identify Cancer Diagnoses and Treatments for Patients in the SEER-Medicare Data

Background: The utility of codes on Medicare Advantage (MA) data to capture cancer diagnoses and treatment for cancer patients is unknown. Objective: This study compared cancer diagnoses and treatments on MA encounter data (MA data) with the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results (SEER) data. Subjects: Subjects were patients enrolled in either MA or Medicare fee-for-service (MFFS) when diagnosed with incident breast, colorectal, prostate, or lung cancer, 2015–2017, in a SEER cancer registry. Measures: MA data, from 2 months before to 12 months following SEER diagnosis, were reviewed to identify cancer diagnoses, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy (RT). MA data were compared with SEER to determine their sensitivity to capture cancer diagnoses and sensitivity/specificity to identify surgeries. The agreement between SEER and Medicare data regarding receipt of chemotherapy and RT was measured by Kappa statistics. A similar comparison to SEER diagnoses/treatments was made using MFFS claims to provide context for the SEER-MA comparison. Results: The study included 186,449 patients, 38% in MA. MA data had 92%+ sensitivity to identify SEER cancer diagnosis and 90%+ sensitivity for cancer surgery. Specificity for surgery was >84%, except for breast cancer (52%). Kappa statistics for agreement between SEER and MA data regarding chemotherapy varied by cancer, 0.61–0.82, and for receipt of RT exceeded 0.75 for all cancers. Results observed for MFFS claims were similar to those in MA data. Conclusion: For 4 common cancers, MA data included most cancer diagnoses and general types of cancer treatment reported in the SEER data. More research is needed to assess additional cancers and detailed treatments.
GEOPHYSICAL MODELLING OF THE MOLOPO FARMS COMPLEX IN SOUTHERN BOTSWANA; IMPLICATIONS FOR ITS EMPLACEMENT WITHIN THE ~2 GA LARGE IGNEOUS PROVINCES OF SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA

The Molopo Farms Complex is an extremely poorly exposed, major, ultramafic-mafic layered intrusion straddling the southern border of Botswana with South Africa. It lies within the south-western part of the ~2.0 Ga large igneous province of southern and central Africa that includes the better known Bushveld Complex. Integrated interpretation of regional gravity data and new high-resolution airborne magnetic data have constrained the geometry of the Molopo Farms Complex in southern Botswana as a strongly faulted, polyphase intrusion compartmentalised by regional ductile shear zones. Previous models showing that the Complex was emplaced in at least two discrete stages are supported. Ultramafic rocks were initially emplaced as a semi-coherent lopolithic sheet up to about 4 km in thickness cutting across Transvaal Supergroup strata that had already been folded into open eastwest trending dome and basin structures with wavelengths of about 4 km. Steeply dipping, dyke-like ultramafic bodies adjacent to, and within major shears are inferred to be solidified feeders to the main lopolithic part of the MFC. It is likely that the initial ultramafic sheet was emplaced at a high crustal level (<3 km depth) into an attenuated Transvaal Supergroup sequence. This lack of a thick hanging wall sequence is thought to be significant for the emplacement of the succeeding mafic sheets. The ultramafic sheet thermally altered its wall rock and also created a complex fracture system in its hanging wall rocks. Differentiation within the ultramafic sheet produced basal harzburgites overlain by bronzites and possibly mafic sheets. Later mafic/basic sheets and dykes, again fed along shear-controlled, steeply dipping zones, spread into the fracture network created by the initial emplacement of the ultramafic lopolith to form a distinctive spider’s-web pattern on high-resolution airborne magnetic maps. It is proposed that either post-emplacement regional folding or gravitational collapse of the basal ultramafic lopolith produced a major basin with a ~40 km eastwest diameter, north of the Jwaneng-Makopong Shear Zone and smaller basin to the southeast. The newly postulated, steeply dipping ultramafic/mafic feeders, as well as the ultramafic lopolith and areas with anomalous nickel values in soils are considered to be prospective for PGE-bearing magmatic nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation. Magmatic rocks dated at about 2.0 Ga are a common feature, not only of the Kaapvaal Craton, but of all the African cratonic blocks south of the Equator. Reactivated intracratonic faults and shears appear to control emplacement of individual magmatic complexes although a sub-continental thermal anomaly unconfined by lithospheric plate boundaries is a likely driving force for the widespread magmatism.
Air quality photochemical study over Amazonia Area, Brazil

This work presents the results of a photochemical modelling system composed of MM5-SMOKE-CMAQ on Brazilian Amazonia area, been a pioneered implementation task. These results focus on the biogenic and biomass burning emissions and the impact of these emissions on regional air quality. Global and local anthropogenic emissions data, satellite-derived biomass burning inventories, and biogenic emissions calculated with MEGAN model were used to estimate emissions over the domain. The goal is the development of air quality model input data for CMAQ. Results are consistent with O 3 formation theory and CO hotspot concentration matches with the geographic area of biomass burning.
The Rise of Open Science: Tracking the Evolution and Perceived Value of Data and Methods Link-Sharing Practices

In recent years, funding agencies and journals increasingly advocate for open science practices (e.g. data and method sharing) to improve the transparency, access, and reproducibility of science. However, quantifying these practices at scale has proven difficult. In this work, we leverage a large-scale dataset of 1.1M papers from arXiv that are representative of the fields of physics, math, and computer science to analyze the adoption of data and method link-sharing practices over time and their impact on article reception. To identify links to data and methods, we train a neural text classification model to automatically classify URL types based on contextual mentions in papers. We find evidence that the practice of link-sharing to methods and data is spreading as more papers include such URLs over time. Reproducibility efforts may also be spreading because the same links are being increasingly reused across papers (especially in computer science); and these links are increasingly concentrated within fewer web domains (e.g. Github) over time. Lastly, articles that share data and method links receive increased recognition in terms of citation count, with a stronger effect when the shared links are active (rather than defunct). Together, these findings demonstrate the increased spread and perceived value of data and method sharing practices in open science.
Ablation Study to Clarify the Mechanism of Object Segmentation in Multi-Object Representation Learning

Multi-object representation learning aims to represent complex real-world visual input using the composition of multiple objects. Representation learning methods have often used unsupervised learning to segment an input image into individual objects and encode these objects into each latent vector. However, it is not clear how previous methods have achieved the appropriate segmentation of individual objects. Additionally, most of the previous methods regularize the latent vectors using a Variational Autoencoder (VAE). Therefore, it is not clear whether VAE regularization contributes to appropriate object segmentation. To elucidate the mechanism of object segmentation in multi-object representation learning, we conducted an ablation study on MONet, which is a typical method. MONet represents multiple objects using pairs that consist of an attention mask and the latent vector corresponding to the attention mask. Each latent vector is encoded from the input image and attention mask. Then, the component image and attention mask are decoded from each latent vector. The loss function of MONet consists of 1) the sum of reconstruction losses between the input image and decoded component image, 2) the VAE regularization loss of the latent vector, and 3) the reconstruction loss of the attention mask to explicitly encode shape information. We conducted an ablation study on these three loss functions to investigate the effect on segmentation performance. Our results showed that the VAE regularization loss did not affect segmentation performance and the others losses did affect it. Based on this result, we hypothesize that it is important to maximize the attention mask of the image region best represented by a single latent vector corresponding to the attention mask. We confirmed this hypothesis by evaluating a new loss function with the same mechanism as the hypothesis.
Interpreting the Value of Flexibility in AC Security-Constrained Transmission Expansion Planning via a Cooperative Game Framework

Security-constrained transmission expansion planning (SCTEP) is an inherently complex problem that requires simultaneously solving multiple contingency states of the system (usually corresponding to N-1 security criterion). Existing studies focus on effectively finding optimal solutions; however, single optimal solutions are not sufficient to interpret the value of flexibility (e.g., from energy storage systems) and support system planners in well-informed decision making. In view of planning uncertainties, it is necessary to estimate the contributions of flexibility to various objectives and prioritise the most effective investments. In this regard, this work introduces a SCTEP tool that enables interpreting the value of flexibility in terms of contributions to avoided load curtailment and total expected system cost reduction. Inspired by cooperative game theory, the tool ranks the contributions of flexibility providers and compares them against traditional line reinforcements. This information can be used by system planners to prioritise investments with higher contributions and synergistic capabilities.
Assessing phase reconstruction accuracy for different nonlinear curvature wavefront sensor configurations

Abstract. The nonlinear curvature wavefront sensor (nlCWFS) offers improved sensitivity for adaptive optics systems compared with existing WFSs, such as the Shack–Hartmann. The nominal nlCWFS design uses a series of imaging planes offset from the pupil along the optical propagation axis as inputs to a numerically iterative reconstruction algorithm. Research into the nlCWFS has assumed that the device uses four measurement planes configured symmetrically around the optical system pupil. This assumption is not strictly required. In this paper, we perform the first systematic exploration of the location, number, and spatial sampling of measurement planes for the nlCWFS. Our numerical simulations show that the original, symmetric four-plane configuration produces the most consistently accurate results in the shortest time over a broad range of seeing conditions. We find that the inner measurement planes should be situated past the Talbot distance corresponding to a spatial period of r0. The outer planes should be large enough to fully capture the field intensity and be situated beyond a distance corresponding to a Fresnel-number-scaled equivalent of Z ≈ 50 km for a D = 0.5 m pupil with λ = 532 nm. The minimum spatial sampling required for diffraction-limited performance is 4 to 5 pixels per r0 as defined in the pupil plane. We find that neither three-plane nor five-plane configurations offer significant improvements compared with the original design. These results can impact future implementations of the nlCWFS by informing sensor design.
Recovering Single-Crossing Preferences From Approval Ballots

An electorate with fully-ranked innate preferences casts approval votes over a finite set of alternatives. As a result, only partial information about the true preferences is revealed to the voting authorities. In an effort to understand the nature of the true preferences given only partial information, one might ask whether the unknown innate preferences could possibly be single-crossing. The existence of a polynomial time algorithm to determine this has been asked as an outstanding problem in the works of Elkind and Lackner. We hereby give a polynomial time algorithm determining a single-crossing collection of fully-ranked preferences that could have induced the elicited approval ballots, or reporting the nonexistence thereof. Moreover, we consider the problem of identifying negative instances with a set of forbidden sub-ballots, showing that any such characterization requires infinitely many forbidden configurations.